**

"Dana?"

"Hmm?" she asks from her spot on the bed. We have nothing to do tomorrow so we sat up late, talking and avoiding things, her in bed where she fell a few hours ago after pizza and me on the floor, laying on the couch cushions.

"You up?"

"No, go to sleep," she sighs. The heat is back, oppressive and steaming, making you want to lie there and not move, or speak. Of course I never go along with anything, let alone the protocol of a heatwave.

"Did you take care of your shoulder?"

"Mmm- in a minute," she tells me sleepily.

It's sticky and humid and my tee shirt is clinging to me. I don't know why I'm wearing them in this weather anyway. Modesty from Dana, I suppose, which is one on the dumbest . . .

"I'm gonna jump in the shower," I tell her and she mumbles a response. I toss through my laundry and pull out some boxer shorts, screw the towel, I'd like to keep the cold water on me as long as possible.

I look over my shoulder and see her sprawled on my bed, still in a pair of jeans and my shirt, sweating and uncomfortable. The fabric is sticking to her back and . . . My head is muddled by the heat.

Yeah. Just any site of her, especially in my clothes . . .

Damn heat.

**

"Dana? Dana? Wake up."

Harry's voice is drawing me from my sleep, but I really don't feel like letting it. Even through I'm hot and sticky, and it's one of those uncomfortable sleeps that makes you want to twist around to feel better but you're too lazy to try.

"I don' wan' to," I say, hoping it comes out like I think it does.

"Come on, you'll feel better after you jump in the shower. You have to take care of your shoulder."

Why did he mention that? At those words the cut begins to throb and I whimper in a way that could only be called pathetic. But, still, I struggle up, unhappy at the interruption but too tired to argue and too uncomfortable to lie down again.

He helps me up and I go over to the bureau, reaching into it for a cotton gown with thin straps that match the state of the fabric. I rub it between my fingers and it's barely a wisp, good for this weather. Pushing things around I grab a pair of cotton panties with some stupid tiny flowers or something on them and stumble off into the bathroom.

**

She comes out twenty minutes later, obviously still tired and I remember she didn't get much sleep. The white cotton is thin, and sets low on her chest and perhaps she's too worn to realize it but what skin isn't exposed by low fabric and tiny straps is virtually seen through the cotton in the light of the lamp. I swallow and she looks a little uncomfortable, she definitely isn't aware, and maybe she's recalling that night but I'm not going to. We aren't supposed to . . . I should have worn something more then boxer shorts.

"Can you put some of this on?" she asks holding out a yellow tube. "I'm too sleepy to reach."

I nod, taking it from her and she has to reach out to hand it to me. Then it's like all of the sudden she realizes she has to move closer so I can apply it and she blushes, spinning quickly to hide it, but I catch it anyhow.

Swallowing a lump in my throat, and a stirring that was starting to make itself known, I get to work on her back. Letting the feeling of guilt and anger at who did this to her wash over me and quell my feelings.

**

His breath falls on me and in the heat it's even more burning, the thankful cooling my skin accepted is washing away from that area and rushing between my legs magically turning hot to make me shift slightly and have him pull his hand away. I feel it hover back over the space and somehow it doesn't burn so much anymore when he slides the last bit on my skin.

"Done," he says in a puff.

"Thanks," I tell him turning almost against him and belittling myself for it. Brushing . . .

A normal reaction. It's a normal reaction for a male to become aroused around . . . Forget it.

I take the tube from his antibiotic-slicked fingers and carry it with me to the bed, tossing it onto the nightstand.

"Good night," I say, laying on my stomach, brushing my hair away from my cut and it's goopy medicine. I can't turn my head away from him without a little of my hair falling into the antibiotic - that and he is looking at me with an erection and there are some things you have to stare at.

Just snap your eyes shut. Simple. Simple. If he'd stop star -

Okay, shut.

There.

Now he's behind my eyelids.

Great.

I hear him moving and for some reason I think the bed is going to dip any moment with his weight as he crawls onto it but instead the light clicks off and I hear him settle aside me on the cushioned floor.

He's showered and smells like soap and . . . My chest is fluttering, the pit of my stomach is burning and my thighs becoming moist with the heat as I press them together stiffly. He smells like . . .

Lauren Davis.

Remember that, he smells incredible but he did have the scent of her before. If it hurts let it hurt and I'm too tired to make excuses for why I feel that pain. But, I will be a friend and to be that I have to remind myself that's all I am to him. He lives with me, and he fucks Lauren Davis.

Even if he's washed her scent down the drain the scratch mark I've been trying to ignore on his neck is still there.