Then I examined my own heart, and there you were

"Wow, I know I was in here at the very beginning, but it still astounds me how ritzy this place is," Emma marveled as she and Turner entered the hotel.

"It's insane," he agreed. "I think they did it to try and butter me up here."

"I wouldn't put it past them," Emma responded in concurrence.

"So, what's the plan?" Turner asked. "Anything in particular you're craving to eat?"

"I could kill for some good barbecue," she answered. "Like maybe some pulled pork, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, like a typical cook out."

"A woman after my own heart," Turner said with pride. He was an avid fan of cookout meals, barbecue, and anything of that sort. Even if Emma got her terms mixed up a bit, it was still a bit of...not vindication, but something akin to that. "I'll get them to make that for us pronto."

As he arrived in the penthouse, he kicked off his shoes and ordered two of the meal that Emma had requested. She was a little taken aback by how quickly he had adapted to living in this type of lifestyle, on an island that he had been kidnapped to with some of his closest friends, enemies, and anyone in between. Although, she relented, if she got to live in a place like this, she would be able to get behind it a lot quicker. She knew he was only getting to living like this, not the idea that the ten of the closest females to him were competing for his affection.

"Go ahead, make yourself at home, because it's gonna have to be your home for tonight," he said. "You can change back into those more comfortable clothes if you want, I can't imagine it'd be that easy to stay in that dress all night."

Wait, he wasn't insinuating that she just undress here...right?

"Oh, god, no, I didn't mean that," Turner clarified almost as if he was reading her thoughts, although in reality he was just reading her facial expressions and was able to interpret them with a pretty decent level of success after years of knowing her. "I meant that there's plenty of places inside this room, or heck the hotel in general if you wanted some privacy to get changed. I don't think we'll be out on the town any more today, it's just gonna be the two of us, and you really don't have to dress fancy for me."

Why was he acting this way? It could be just that he was trying to be as accommodating as he could be, but it was a little weird that he was being this accommodating. Goddamn it, he was supposed to be the harem master on this show, the one that had girls showering him with attention, he wasn't supposed to be the one showering all the girls with attention.

Whatever, no matter the reason, it was definitely welcome. Emma had been a little lonely in the past day or so, her roommate being over double her age and not really relating well to her, and a good chunk of her friends from college taken from her in a snap. If Turner was going to be catering to her of his own volition, then she wasn't gonna complain about it.

Emma walked into the bathroom inside Turner's room to change yet again, and Turner breathed a sign of relief. It wasn't exhausting to get along well with her, that came naturally to the two of them from knowing each other so long. What was exhausting, though, was trying to play hopscotch around all of the different situations that Kendra was trying to **** them in. How many more would there be throughout the night? With Emma as one of the most popular girls, is Kendra going to try to capitalize on that? Will she ever give up, or will this not rest until the two of them end up having sex?

Turner tried to put those thoughts on the back burner. If he was going to try and make this night special for Emma, he couldn't constantly be worried. His wits needed to be kept about him, though, and this was what was making him tired. Constantly trying to maintain the tenuous balance. His experience had been very analytical, but you couldn't analyze people the same way that you could analyze criminal targets.

While he was brooding, Emma came back into the main room, wearing her long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants again. She gave him a gentle smile that helped calm his nerves.

"Hey, you okay?" she asked him, sensing his uneasiness.

"Yeah, I'm alright," he said. He was honestly fine, mostly, it was just the situation was a little unfortunate. "Just everything that's been going on, it's making my head spin."

"Well then, we'll just have to get you distracted," Emma said energetically. "That's what I've been doing, and it's worked wonders. What d'you got on this TV here?"

"I can realistically get anything," Turner answered. "I haven't fiddled with it much, at all really, but to my knowledge it shows anything from Earth."

"Perfect," Emma responded, again not giving information for her plans.

The next hour or two really helped Turner a lot more. The food arrived shortly after, and the two of them chowed down on some amazing food while watching a show that the two of them had gotten independently invested in. Again, they were laughing and having fun without a care in the world, ignoring the circumstances that they were in, on the show they were themselves on. A few times, Emma wanted to reach out for Turner's hand, or rest on his shoulder, but she kept her wits about her and caught herself before getting too carried away.

As the evening wore into the night, the arrangements for sleeping came back to the forefront of their minds.

"I'm getting pretty tired, ready to turn in?" Emma asked as she yawned.

"Sure," Turner assented. "I just need to get into my pajamas."

"What the fuck is going on?" Emma wondered as she laid awake in bed. Turner had fallen asleep likely an hour or so ago, but she hadn't been so lucky. The temperature kept fluctuating; one minute she'd be freezing cold and the next minute she'd be burning up. Apparently it wasn't the outside temperature, because he was sleeping soundly.

Emma was going through a particularly hot spell at the present moment. She was laying on top of all of the sheets and blankets on the bed, but she was still too hot to go to sleep.

"I can't just NOT go to sleep," she reasoned. "I've pulled many all-nighters before, but this competition is like nothing I've been in before, it's nonstop energy-zapping."

What if she just took off her sweatpants? It's not like she would be naked in the bed, she still had her panties and shirt on. Turner wouldn't mind, especially if she stayed on her side of the bed and then explained her motives in the morning.

That was all the reasoning she needed, she took her sweatpants off as discreetly and quietly as she could, and threw them across the room. After getting back under the covers, the temperature was perfect, and she began to doze off...

...Until she was freezing cold again.

"Great," she thought to herself. "I threw my freaking sweatpants a mile and a half away, and I don't really want to be going back and forth picking them up and taking them off."

Her eyes wandered over to Turner. Surely...he was warm, right? Although wouldn't cuddling up to him be just as bad as waking him up, or even worse? It'd probably wake him up too, and then there'd be the added "bonus" of her bottomless form contacting his.

"Fuck it, you only life once," she thought, as she slowly scooted over to Turner's sleeping form. She did it very tenuously, as she ran it over in her head again and again, deciding that he wouldn't mind, right? It wouldn't lead to anything sexual, right?

Turner would've said that he was having a good dream, but he had done his best to stop remembering any aspects of his dreams after the debacle that happened with Abby. Not remembering any of them wouldn't make any effects go away, but it would give him some peace of mind. It was moreso ignorance, but he wanted to have a little bit of peace, even if it was undeserved.

That was when he felt something cold press up against his lower leg.

He had changed into basketball shorts and an undershirt, since he didn't own any pajamas and didn't really feel like going up and buying any. That meant that a good portion of his legs were exposed, but the air in the room was set to just the perfect temperature, which made it more surprising when he heard Emma say "I'm cold."

"What?" he groggily asked.

"I'm freezing up," Emma restated. "I was burning a few minutes ago, so I kicked my pants off somewhere in the room, and now I'm feeling cold again."

He froze for a minute. Not in terms of temperature, but in terms of movement and his thinking. Emma wanted to cuddle with him?

Well, it didn't inherently have to be sexual. She had kicked her pants off to the side of the room, and this was probably the work of Kendra again, but Turner could control himself, he could only hope that Emma could do the same. It wasn't like he could just deny doing this with her; both because he didn't want to show favoritism and because he couldn't leave her out to dry.

He turned around, and Emma curled up into a ball inside his arms. She went to sleep almost immediately, furthering Turner's belief that Kendra was behind this in order to get the two of them closer together.

Cuddled With Turner: 3 VP!

Turner may not have been dreaming, but Emma certainly was. It seemed to be another part of Kendra's continued **** on Emma's situation throughout the entire night, and she was only starting to realize the gravity of the transformation she had been placed under. Just like the dream that had transformed Abby, Emma's dream was highly sexual in nature. She didn't really notice the details of what all was happening, but it involved a certain man named something that started with a T. Timothy...? Tyler...no, wait, of course it was Turner.

She woke up again in the middle of the night, but not because of the temperature, which had remained just perfect to sleep in. Turner was still out like a log, but she had just had an orgasm, in the middle of sleeping.

"Shit, how in the living fuck am I gonna explain whatever this mess is to Turner?", she thought to herself as she lay there awake. "I could just tell him it was a result of the transformation, which is true, but he'd probably get all weird about it again. He's already got too much on his plate anyways, I don't want to keep piling things on."

She was about to get up and out of bed to change what she was wearing, but quickly remembered two things. One, Turner still had her locked next to him, and two, she didn't have the luxury of having all her clothes at her immediate disposal like she did at home. She was a guest for the night, all the clothes here were the ones she brought and Turner's array.

"Maybe I'll just go back to sleep and this will all be a part of a larger nightmare," she reasoned. "Either that or he might get up before me and save the awkward discussion between the two of us that normally would happen in the morning."

Another thought dawned upon her. She was still stuck at the back of the pack with zero victory points thanks to her poor performance in the challenge. She still believed it was unfair that Kathryn could get out in the first round and still manage to obtain more victory points than Abby or herself, but she needed to do something to make up the deficit that she was faced with, because elimination didn't seem like something she wanted to subject herself to. Time was running out too...but doing anything with him now felt wrong, because he was ****.

Who knows what the morning would bring, though?