He didn’t know how he was going to survive, let alone continue his search for E’Var.

And he still wanted her. Daria. Lindaria. That small human with the frightened eyes who had taken him in. Not for her mind, which was formidable, or her will, with its unguessed-at depths. Not for her help in seeking the criminal Tagen had followed to Earth. Not even for her body, on which his eyes had so often lingered even while suppressants swam in his system and which he could imagine moving around him like a river.

In the grip of Heat, Heat without end in sight, Heat on this miserable alien world, here and now and bathed in sweat, all he wanted her for was sex. For only her cunt, clenching hot and wet and fast around him. For that, and for only that.

Tagen arched up off the bed, muffling his scream with a pillow and biting until he tasted feathers, as jets of lava-hot cum poured out of him. He twisted, pumping at the air in mad agony, spatters of semen raining down to cool over his burning flesh.

He fell back, gasping and spitting wet down, savoring the bliss of depletion. He stole a weary glance at the window, marking the position of this world’s sun and struggling to make sense of it and time, at last deciphering both. It was late afternoon. Daria would be up any minute with more food. Tagen was ravenous but he was also covered in his own seed.

He pushed himself up, swung his legs out over the bed and swaddled his hips in his sheets. He slipped down the hall to the washroom and indulged in a shower of cool, clean water before soaking and scrubbing at his bedding. That done, he returned to his room and hung the damp sheet over his open window like a curtain to dry. He’d need it again before dark, of that he was miserably sure. And he’d need it again tomorrow, and for as many days as it took before this damnable weather turned.

He prayed, fervently, that it would turn. In the unquiet shadows of his mind, he had begun to fear that it never would. Eighteen days of Heat he’d already withstood while safe from its effects, twice what could be found in an entire season on Jota, and it seemed to Tagen that it was only getting hotter.

A gentle tapping sounded at his door, followed by a hesitant whisper from his young human host. “Tagen, are you asleep?”

“No,” he answered, bending to gather all of the clothing that he could stand to wear. “Neither am I covered. Give me time. I will join you shortly.”

He listened to her footsteps recede away down the hall. Only after he couldn’t make them out any longer did he dress, easing his fastenings tight over his tender loins. After a moment’s weary thought, he pumped a little of Daria’s blessed lotion onto his hands and rubbed them together so that she would be able to smell it on him somewhere and so perhaps not wonder what he needed it for. For no one else but Daria would he concern himself, but his human host had a keen eye for trivialities.

He thought it might be a little cooler down in the kitchen, but the air was so damp he was even more uncomfortable. The stone tiles beneath his bare feet were blessedly cooler; he resisted with great effort the urge to drop full-length atop them. If Daria were not sitting there at the table, he would have done just that.

“It’s a little hot,” she said, as if apologizing, and set something in front of him in a bowl. “I guess we won’t get arrested if we eat dessert first.”

He watched her scrape at the contents of her bowl with a spoon and imitated her warily. Sweetness exploded in his mouth, frozen sugar, smooth as butter. He looked at her over his spoon in surprise. “What is this?”

“Ice cream. Vanilla. I didn’t know what you’d like, but I figured everyone likes vanilla.”

It stood to reason, Tagen supposed, that the people of a world so immersed in foul weather would find a thousand ways to cool themselves. He only wished they had discovered global climate control. He wondered, if he were quick enough, whether Daria would notice if he put a handful of the stuff down the front of his pants.

“I could make you up a sandwich if you’re still hungry,” she offered. “I know ice cream isn’t really very filling. And you should get something to drink. I worried a little when you never came downstairs. It’s easy to get dehydrated in the summer.”

“Please speak slower,” Tagen said wearily. “It is so difficult to follow you.”

“Well, okay, but as long as we’re having language lessons we ought to start with teaching you to implement contractions.”

He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Dehydrated,” he said.

“When your body dries out because you don’t drink enough water,” she said, enunciating very clearly and making Tagen feel slightly torn between amusement at her strict obedience and irritation at being thought blatantly stupid.

“Summer,” he said, swirling his spoon through his iced cream.

“That’s the season it is right now. Okay, so in an Earth year, we have four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. When the Earth moves around the sun it gets closer and further—”

She was moving her hand around her bowl to demonstrate, which made her rather easy to understand, and the concept was perfectly familiar to Tagen, even if he didn’t know the words. He tried to think of it as a vocabulary lesson instead of an insulting reference to his intelligence, and that made the careful, measured way she was speaking a little easier to bear.

“Right now is when the sun is closest to the planet, so it’s summer on this side, and that’s pretty much why it’s so hot and unpleasant for you. Sorry about that. Your guy E’Var picked a hell of time to come to Earth.”

“How long does your summer last? How many days?” he amended quickly. He knew that humans had made a number of different ways in which to measure out time, but his understanding was more or less limited to years, days, and a somewhat shaky grasp of hours.

“In days?” She looked stymied by the request, chewed her lip to think. “About…ninety, I guess. Give or take.”

For one frozen instant, his horror-struck mind tried to convince him that he had heard her say something else. Nine, perhaps, or even nineteen. Nineteen wouldn’t be so bad. He’d been here eighteen days already. He could—

Then a surge of rage erupted out from the very pit of him and his mind was slapped to white silence by the ferocity of his own voice.

“Ninety days of heat?!” he shouted, half-rising as though he meant to jump over the top of the table and grab her by the shoulders. “Ninety days?!” The plastic tumbler of iced water in his hand exploded, and Tagen stumbled back, knocking over his chair and trying to shake out the sharp shards imbedded in his palm. Blood and water splashed over his chest, the table, his melting ice cream.

Daria had scrambled up out of her chair and halfway onto the counter, her eyes huge and face pale. Tagen clenched his wounded hand into a fist and made himself right his chair and sit down on it until the urge to go on a destructive rampage faded into something he could control. He wanted to pick up the entire table and throw it through the nearest wall. He wanted to scream until his throat bled. He wanted to goddamn well go home. Fuck Earth and fuck E’Var. Ninety fucking days.

“Do you have a…something for my hand?” he asked quietly.

Daria fled from the room. She was gone a very long time. Tagen could hear her spastic, muffled crying, a short-lived storm of it, speedily restrained amid low, angry-sounding mutters. When she returned to the kitchen, her eyes were dry and only a little red. She was slightly smiling, and she was carrying a little box and a small metal pair of pinchers. She pulled her chair up beside him and took his hand, turning it into the light. She bent over him, carefully removing tiny slivers of plastic from his hand.

Through the bunched-open collar of her loose shirt, Tagen could see the swells of her breasts, the smooth, sleek curves of her body narrowing down into shadows. He looked away, at the small pools of blood and water in his palm.