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It’s also a pleasant one, the noise meshing together and skipping across the breeze. Despite their reluctance to end this nonsense, he can count on one hand the number of organic, meandering discussions he’s had with others. None of them have been this unpredictable.

So where is this chatter coming from? What caused this flood?

Did he miss something? Was the currant nectar laced with alcohol?

Around them, waterfalls range from powerful downpours, to modest surges that rush down stacked mantles of rock, to rivulets that split over the tiered slabs.

They spend a subsequent hour hypnotized by the effusion while withdrawing into their own thoughts. After that spell of silence, Envy perks up. “Oh, I forgot a crucial pleasure on my list: the sound of a long, hard orgasm.”

“Male or female?” she queries, swerving back to him, her arms wrapped around her upturned legs.

“Don’t make me choose,” he pleads. “They’re both scrumptious.”

“That’s true.”

Which gives him pause. He’s aware that she’s as fond of females and males as he is, but as for a tally… “How many have you been with?”

“You’ve had two-hundred years to ask me that. And you definitely could’ve gotten that out of me when we were humping.”

“That’s not what I wanted to get out of you,” he purrs.

“Why the sudden interest?” she demands over the waterfalls. “Hoping to compare yourself?”

“That depends. Did you like sleeping with me?”

“You know I did.”

“I know that you bounced on me like a rabbit in heat, came like a comet, and then evacuated the premises like a vestal virgin. That’s what I know.”

“You had your fun. I didn’t leave you hanging.” She holds up her hand before he can open his mouth. “Bad choice of words.”

“Trust me, I wasn’t hanging.”

“You relieved tension.”

“What about lasting aftershocks? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“So this is about you.”

“I’m a god,” he says without preamble.

Honestly, what else is there to say? Self-congratulation is underrated in mortals, not deities. Naturally it’s about validation, and of course he wants verification of his prowess. There’s no other reason. It has nothing to do with how she internalizes the experience for herself. That’s her business, not his.

Isn’t it? Then why is he curious about her ideas of intimacy and whether she yearns for it? Why is he curious to know how deeply he can push that button?

And why the fuck is he itching to know the sounds she’d make if he found that button? If he tapped his finger against it lightly, ever so lightly, prolonging the buzz.

A fog weaves through his head at the very thought of skimming her flesh until she’s in anguish, until she’s begging him for things she can’t name. How high would those cries get? Would they flick at his tailbone and make him shiver?

They’ve done everything short of kissing, yet it’s as if they’ve done nothing. Fair enough, since they’d never surpassed anything sexually clinical.

But there had been moments, incidents in which he’d taken her hand and brushed his mouth across her knuckles. One time, she’d responding by calling him an idiot. Yet she’d tucked her face behind her hair and almost smiled.

Almost. Like earlier, when they’d been ensconced by the lagoon.

Envy gives a start, realizing that his fingernails have sunk into a vine swooning across the rock. He’d severed one of the poor magenta leaves from its spiral.

Sorrow doesn’t notice as she shimmies off the boulder and saunters past him. “I’d rather not know what I’m missing.”