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stepped away.
He washed quickly, expertly, without seeming to favor any part over the other.
It was becoming clear he was the stoic type where pain was concerned.
    “I can’t believe macho posturing is interplanetary.”
    “What?” He turned to her. She saw only the good side of his
face—the dark-rimmed eye above the chiseled cheekbone.
    “Some of that must hurt.”
    “Part of training as a lover is learning to absorb physical
pain.”
    “Why?” she asked. “You don’t let women beat you, do you?”
    “Of course.” He turned the water
off and leaned out of the tub to grab her towel and hand it to her. She
motioned to another on a rack beside the door.
    The rest she managed in a sort of stupor, trying not to
think too much of whips and chains and sex dungeons. Or Rick, and what she’d once called home. Jane dried off, blotted excess water from her
hair, pulled on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, and crawled into her bed.
    There wasn’t any other bed. Her alien companion soon got in
beside her. He was naked now. She stiffened slightly at the touch of his smooth
chest against her arm.
    “I’m in control of myself.”
    He’d said that before in the same sultry whisper.
    “What exactly does that mean?”
    “It means the state of my cock should never worry you.”
    “Can you just make that thing go up and down at will?”
    “Yes.”
    “Huh,” said Jane. Could Earth men do that too? She didn’t
know. Didn’t know much of anything about sex, actually. Before Rick there’d been little opportunity to learn, and after Rick there’d
been a strong desire not to know more than she had to. “What counts as sex for
you?”
    He paused. She thought she felt his body shift a tiny bit
beside her. “Any honest, unreserved exchange or pleasure counts as sex to me.”
    “Like food sex? Vampire sex? The kind that keeps you guys alive?”
    Another meditative shifting of his body
beside hers. “It isn’t actually like food,” he said. “Perhaps a little
like vampire blood, assuming anyone has any idea what that’s like. To me, the
closest parallel is temperature.”
    “Temperature?” His skin felt very
warm to her.
    “My sexual balance is the same as your internal thermostat. A
lack of contact is more like exposure to the elements than starvation. If
you’ve ever been very, very cold, you know that there’s a strong drive to get
warm again. A drive so powerful and all-consuming it can overcome the will to
reason. From what I’ve heard, sexual deprivation is much like that: an alarming
kind of pain that triggers a will to survive, precluding any other thoughts.
After which, there’s a gradual lessening of awareness, followed by a deep and
final sleep.”
    “Huh,” Jane said again. That actually made sense. She hated
to be cold. For a moment she imagined dying huddled somewhere in the icy
mountains. Was he really suffering that way? He didn’t seem to be. “What about
Backusian women? Do they suffer from sexual cold as well?”
    “They do,” he said. “But men are more susceptible.”
    “So how does that work out? Are women just expected to be
cock-warmers when they don’t feel like it?”
    “Not likely,” he said with a chuckle. “Backusian women
wouldn’t stand for that. Long centuries have taught us how to make sex worth
their while.”
    Jane was skeptical. Maybe even cynical. But she was also ready to help him balance out his sex-o-stat if she could.
He’d helped her with that spider, which was something huge for her. The fact
he’d taken care of everything without making her feel bad for needing it was
worth a less than pleasant favor in return.
    Within reason.
    “So what really counts as sex?” she said. “Spell it out this
time. No poetry.”
    “Anything is sex,” Raj said. “So long as
it’s real and hot and satisfying.”
    Jane took a second to consider that.
    “Anything,” she repeated. “Including
handjobs.”
    “Delightful,” Raj said easily.
    Jane let out a sigh. She’d