Freighter Island
The next morning

"I propose a sexual experiment," Djetth announced without warning, shortly after she joined him by the fire and sat down to watch him prepare their breakfast.

"You slept well, I take it?" Martia-Djulia retorted. He'd been busy. Water was bubbling on the fire in two large, white, many-spiked shells. Two similar shells had been set off to the side to cool.

She reached forward, took the nearest one by one of its spikes, and sipped hot, tangy water from the shell's pink, contoured lip. Judging by the wet, sharpened sticks and the bright-eyed, iridescent corpses on a broad, deep green leaf, Djetth had been up early, spearing fish in the rising tide while she overslept.

Martia-Djulia shifted her position and one-handedly combed back her hair with her fingers. Djetth looked different - rougher, dirtier, and sexier. A dark shadow on his jaw softened the harshness of his odd-shaped beard.

Although he must have been aware of her puzzled scrutiny, he didn't look up from what he was doing. He had a fish draped across the palm of one hand and was carefully inserting a very sharp knife into a small hole in its lower abdomen. Martia-Djulia did not suppose for a heartbeat that his proposed experiment had anything to do with fish.

"This experiment would involve having sex, I assume?" she replied sarcastically.

If another conversation about sex was inevitable, she was grateful that he'd chosen to do it in broad daylight and on the far side of the fire.

"Don't you want to know whether you are ever again going to be capable of enjoying one of life's greatest physical pleasures?"

"Speak for yourself," she sneered, watching as his knife hand moved rhythmically, slicing open the fish. "Life's greatest pleasure, indeed!"

"Shall I rephrase? Are we maintaining a polite fiction that you have never enjoyed sex, sweetheart?" There was a disquietingly odd note in his voice that suggested he knew otherwise. Not for the first time, Martia-Djulia wondered whether her untrustworthy brother had told Djetth about her interlude with Commander Jason. Or worse. What if Tarrant-Arragon had kept a copy of the recording?

She spread her arms in a Look-Around-You gesture that ended in a shrug.

"What?" Djetth said, tossing down the now-gutted fish into a water-filled half shell.

"Sand. Insects. We're salty. We can't wash. We wipe ourselves with grass and sea weed. We clean our teeth with sticks. You have a beard. Sex is impossible."

"Details." He brought his flask to his lips, and threw back his head. His throat moved as he drank. For a dismayed moment, she thought he might be drinking irresponsibly. Then she remembered that she'd filled that flask with rainwater during the night.

"Details are important to me," she said with regal finality. The distasteful conversation was over.

"Here are some details, then," he retorted, undeterred. "I'll take you firmly by the hand, and lead you over the soft, shifting, midday-hot sand to where I have positioned one of our rescued seats from the plane in the shade." He fell silent, concentrating on the task in hand, as the tip of his knife penetrated a fishy body opening. Martia-Djulia couldn't help wondering if Djetth watched what he was doing with such intensity whenever he eased his penis into a new lover for the first time. Just then, he looked up and grinned at her.

"Where was I? In my love shack, with you cornered between me and the tightly upholstered seat back? I'll turn you around, so I am behind you with my legs astride yours. Placing one hand under your belly, and the other squarely between your shoulder blades, I'll bend you over the back of that seat. Your hips and belly will be snugly cradled by the contoured headrest. Your bare bottom will tremble against my hard groin."

"Will you be dressed?"

He ignored her.

"I'll hold you down with one hand, and pin you firmly in place with my hips, as I reach over with my other hand and fondle your breasts until they are swollen and heavy, and you beg me to grab them with both hands and fuck you hard."

Martia-Djulia hoped that Djetth couldn't see the heat she felt in her cheeks. She raised the conch to her lips, cradling it in both hands with the fierce spikes sticking out between her trembling fingers.

"All this time, and I'll take so much time that your senses will spin, you'll brace your splayed hands in front of you on the resilient cushion, all the better to bounce on, and -incidentally- to push back when you want to urge me to thrust deeper, or faster into you."

"You think so?" she muttered defiantly, determined that if this "experiment" were ever acted out, she would pass out before she did as he expected.

"Or, maybe I'll stroke you slowly from the curve of your waist down the back of your smooth thighs to the delicate dimples behind your knees. I'll massage your luscious bare bottom for hours if I feel like it, until you relax and part your trembling legs.

"Then, I'll thrust my thigh between yours. I'll reach down with my long fingers, and play with your pussy for as long as I like, and when you're wet and moaning from that, I'll slide three fingers in...."

She had to interrupt. He was going too far.

"What exactly is this supposed to prove?"

"That I'm a considerate lover?" he suggested with a question in his tone. "That I can do you very nicely without breathing on you, or roughing you up with my stubble, or ramming sand into you. What else were you worried about?"

"Are you suggesting that we have sex simply to see if you enjoy it?" she asked, frowning at the tremor she heard in her voice. She'd have to keep her remarks short, or he would notice that she was not unaffected by his lewd conversation. "Everyone knows that males don't need to be in love."

"Do females?" he retorted, and again she wondered what he knew. By now, he had removed the next fish's internal organs. Martia-Djulia swallowed, knowing that she had made a terrible mistake in mentioning love. No one was talking about love.

Smiling at her, Djetth held up the fish and explicitly pushed his three middle fingers into the cavity.

"A fish's insides flutter like a female having a small, long lasting orgasm. Would you like to come over here and put your fingers in it, to feel what you'll feel like to me?" Martia-Djulia shook her head and stayed where she was. "Maybe, sweetheart, we should have sex to prove to you that you can and will enjoy it."

"I enjoyed it once. I am very happy with my memories. I don't need you or your experiment to prove anything," she said stiffly.

"Once?" He raised an eyebrow. His lips twitched.