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Garrett smiles at the tabletop and says nothing. This is probably his revenge for the time I accidentally told Isaac that hellhounds shit glitter. Meanwhile, Cam’s still gazing enquiringly at me.
“Well, I don’t know a lot about it, but incubi need sexual energy to stay healthy, right?”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Oh, I get it now. Because I’ll be spending so much of my time in the cave, it cuts the number of hours I’ll be able to feed. Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that.”
It’s become apparent to me, in the few hours I’ve known him, that unless it’s directly related to puzzles there are a lot of things Cam doesn’t pay attention to.
“How many people are in this place, again? Like, sexually active adults. And how spread out are they?”
“Around nine hundred,” I tell him. “The village covers an area of just over a square kilometer.” As the person who designed the village, those facts are burned into my brain.
“What’s that in miles? I’m American, and we don’t cope well with the metric system.”
“A bit more than half a mile.”
He screws up his face like he’s thinking. “And there’s no negative feelings toward sex, right? Like… a chastity cult or something?”
Zac coughs, and I fight against the laugh that wants to explode from my chest. He’s being serious, and this is an important subject.
I can’t quite manage an answer, though.
“Nope!” Garrett announces cheerfully. “The village has the same healthy attitude toward sex that the rest of the community does. If you want it, have it. If you don’t, don’t. No human religious puritanicalism here!”
“Is that even a word?” Asher asks him, and he shrugs.
“It is now. Language evolves over time, and I’m evolving it.”
Cam doesn’t seem to notice the byplay. “That’s good. That many sexual people in that area should generate enough passive energy to keep me going.” He frowns. “Oh, but I’ll be in the cave for a lot of the day.”
Asher shoots him an incredulous look. I get it—we were talking about the cave, so how could he have forgotten the cave? But I’m accepting the fact that Cam’s priorities are different from ours, and that means his brain works differently. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Hmm. If I start getting lethargic and spacey, you might need to take me to a more populated area,” he instructs me, and panic stabs my chest. He already seems a little spacey to me—does that mean I need to act now?
“What would that look like?” Garrett finally steps in to save me. “I’ve never been around an incubus or succubus with starvation sickness.”
“I’ve had it so many times,” Cam announces cheerfully, as though his life wasn’t at risk. “I get caught up in work and forget about everything else, sometimes. It’s easier to order takeout food than it is to order a takeout sex worker.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Cam
In the middleof taking a sip from his glass, Zac snorts soda up his nose and makes a sound somewhere between a yell and a squeal. “That burns! Fuck!”
Asher passes him a napkin and then turns his intense gaze on me. “A takeout sex worker? Is that a thing?”
I glance around the table. Garrett’s the only one who doesn’t seem fazed. Micah’s staring with his mouth open and a glazed expression. It’s cute. I like when the big, tough-looking guys get all flustered. “Not as much of a thing as I wish it was,” I reply. “Last-minute requests for a sex worker to come to your home—someone you know has consented to the work, not been trafficked or forced into it by circumstances—are expensive, and while my puzzles sell well, they don’t sell that well.”
“So what do you do?” Zac asks, fascinated.
I shrug. “I bought a house that’s close to strip clubs. There’s enough residual lust to keep me fed. Before that, I used to have to leave my house and go in search of a hookup or something.”
Micah looks confused. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but how does it work, exactly? I know you don’t have to have sex, but is watching a stripper enough?”
I sit up straighter, enjoying this. Most people already know this stuff. I never realized I’d enjoy educating others on the needs of my species. “That’s not a yes or no question. A stripper is doing their job, right? So there’s no guarantee they’ll be turned on as they perform. Maybe they will because they like being watched, or maybe they’re thinking about their grocery list. If I’m the only one there, watching them, my own arousal won’t feed me.”
“Ahh.” He nods. “But in a strip club, there are other people watching and getting turned on.”
“Exactly.”
