"You're only saying that because the writer wrote you in as my lover."

"Wait. You're gay?"

Jean heaved an overly dramatic sigh. "Not really. Though I'm so damn horny by now I'd fuck just about anyone. But it'll never work between us, Danny. I'm Dawn's lover, remember?"

"No, I wasn't in that scene," Danny reminded Jean with what sounded dangerously close to a whine. "I'm not supposed to know that."

"Well, you'll meet her in the middle of the chapter if we get that far, when she walks in on us."

Danny looked over his shoulder, careful to make sure no one was watching. In a loud stage whisper, he said, "You mean--I'm a plot device?"

Jean tossed his extremely long, way too blond hair over his shoulder with a well-practiced swing that knocked a lamp off the end table. "Look, Danny, here I am, gorgeous ex-male model, sitting sunbathing in these skimpy little Speedos not one other man in twenty would look good in, alone for the first time in three chapters, and I get a special delivery from a bike courier. An extremely hot bike courier in the skimpiest delivery uniform ever written, and one who has no more deliveries on his route this afternoon. Now all of a sudden you finally notice you're gay. What do you think?"

Danny struck an appropriately melodramatic pose. "Oh, God, I am a plot device! And a not very well written one, either! I'm so shallow! What's to become of me? My God, I'm likely to end up on the cutting room floor!"

"Ease up on the exclamation points." Jean swept up the pieces of the broken lamp, giving Danny a clear view of his impressive ass. "Cutting rooms are for movies. Besides, who cares? Work this right, and we might finally get to have sex. According to the plot summary we get to fuck like rabbits for the next ten pages. And this time I'm not even a werewolf. It could be fun!"

Dismissing the werewolf plot without another thought, Danny ran a hand over his enormous, square cut, chiseled to a knife edge, peel the skin off your fingers--ouch!--manly jaw, his hard-on throbbing against his overly tight courier shorts. "Yeah. I can live with that. As long as we're trapped in here..."

Jean whirled to face him, his deep ocean green eyes splattering surf on the carpet. "Trapped? What do you mean, trapped?"

Danny blinked. "Well, yeah ... I mean, we can't really go anywhere. Not till the author writes the next scene."

"Like that's going to happen," Jean snorted. "I've been stuck in this chapter for three months."

"Three months? Damn. What's up with that? And, come to think of it, how do you know?"

Jean dropped the dramatic pose and flopped on the couch, [Copy Edit: When did they move inside? Jean: "sitting sunbathing in these skimpy little Speedos"] his shoulders slumping. "Easy. She keeps writing the same scene over and over again. I stay the same, pretty much. You keep changing. But it never goes much past where you come to the door. Only since it's not been you each time, you probably wouldn't remember. It's called Writer's Block. She writes the scene, gets to the point where we're supposed to fuck, and then next thing you know, this day starts all over for me. Looks like it's happening again. I really thought it was going to work this time. I mean, you're hot! I'm hotter. We're both gorgeous, and available, so what's the problem? I was really looking forward to a good fuck this time. I'm never going to get laid. Talk about blue balls ... If she doesn't pull this thing together soon, I'm going to delete myself."

Danny dumped his courier bag on the floor and sat next to Jean. "Hey, come on. She can fix this. We'll be fine. Don't talk like that. I mean, it's not her first book, is it?"

"Worse than that. She's written six novellas--none of them finished--and this is her first try at writing a sex scene. They usually don't get this far. I know. I checked her computer files."

"Wait. You can access her computer files?"

"Yeah. She tried one in first person. Wrote the computer into the book, left it in the back bedroom."

The kernel of an idea sprouted in the back of Danny's brain. "So if you can access the files, you've read the rest of the book?"

"I'm telling you, there is no rest of the book. This is it. Chapter Three, the Great Betrayal, the scene that never happens. Seven versions of this file, and they all end about here."