by Karina Halle
“You’re here,” a voice booms from the counter.
I look over to see his father, who could be Blake’s double, albeit shorter, rounder, and with glasses. It’s funny, I’d always known him as the owner, and now to know him as Blake’s dad makes things a lot more interesting. I’m pretty sure he yelled at me once when I was in high school for trying to read “A Feast for Crows” without buying it. As you can imagine, I was here for a long time.
“And on time,” Blake says, flashing that charming smile of his on his dad. It doesn’t seem to work on him though. Then again, it barely works on me…no, really.
Oh, who am I kidding?
“Who is this?” his father asks.
“Dad, this is Amanda,” he says.
“Your girlfriend!” A kid’s voice fills the air, and after a few thumps of feet running on the hardwood, I see who I can only assume is Kevin emerging behind a row of books and running toward me with a plastic sword drawn. “You exist!”
My eyes dart to Blake and I raise my brows in question. Girlfriend?
“Yes, my girlfriend,” Blake says through a strained smile as he tries to pat Kevin’s head.
Kevin shies away and comes right over to me. “You’re his girlfriend. I’m his best friend,” he says proudly, poking his thumb into his chest.
“This is my stepbrother Kevin,” Blake explains.
“Did you tell her about LAIRE?” he asks excitedly.
“Laire?” I repeat. I’m still having problems with the girlfriend thing. Why would he tell them I’m his girlfriend?
“It’s an acronym,” Kevin explains to me, as if I’m dumb. “Live Action Interactive Role-Playing Explorers. There’s a battle at Beacon Hill Park and Blake promised me that the both of you were going to take me there.”
Obviously, this is the first I’ve heard of this. My gaze goes to Blake, amused. “Are you going to dress up like Loki?”
Blake frowns. “Um…”
“Because you know I’ll go if you dress like Loki.”
He wiggles his lips for a moment, trying to get out of it. “I’m not really sure that dressing up as other characters is allowed...”
“Yes it is!” Kevin says, waving his sword through the air. “That’s why this one is so fun! It’s like Comic Con but with fighting. I’m going as my own character, Betoolamous the Brave but you can wear whatever you want.”
“Still think this is a mistake,” their dad says with a sigh, turning back to the cash register. “Why can’t you go to a Justin Bieber concert like other kids your age?”
“Dad!” Blake says in horror. “No. That man is no longer child-appropriate. He has a lightning bolt tattooed on his face.”
“Cool, I want a lightning bolt on my face,” Kevin says with a wondrous look. “Just like Harry Potter.”
“See what you did, Dad?” Blake says.
“Actually, I think it’s a cross on his face,” his dad points out, glaring at them both. “But no one is getting any face tattoos!”
I watch them volleying back and forth for a moment before I realize I don’t really belong here, and the longer I stand here, the more I have to pretend that this whole girlfriend label isn’t weird.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Kevin,” I say, giving him a slight bow since he’s holding a sword and all. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Crawford.”
“Likewise,” he says absently, not looking up from the register.
“Call me,” I tell Blake quickly before turning on my heel and leaving before things get weirder.
I’m halfway down the street when I hear Blake calling after me.
I turn to see him dodging a man on a unicycle before he catches up.
“Sorry about that,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder. The unicycle guy pedals past, muttering obscenities.
“About what? Volunteering me for LARPing or telling your family I’m your girlfriend?”
“Both,” he says. “Come on, you know how I am. I had to tell them you were a girlfriend to get them off my back. I couldn’t tell them you were my writing partner.” He runs his hand through his floppy hair and looks off for a moment. When his gaze returns to mine, he flashes me a smug smile. “You know that we’re just fucking. That’s all we are, all we will be. It’s just good fun.”
Damn. I have to pretend that doesn’t hurt. For all intents and purposes, it shouldn’t hurt, but it does. C’est la vie.
“Right,” I say flatly.
He studies me. “You agree, don’t you? I mean that’s what you want. To be partners that fuck on the side.”
I manage a stiff smile. Sometimes I forget how crude he can be. “As long as writing is the priority.”
“Good, yes. Of course it will be,” he says, nodding quickly. He shoots a glance over his shoulder. “I have to get back to the store. Send me your files tonight and I’ll turn them over to the editor.”
“Sounds good,” I tell him. “Talk to you later.”
I turn away from him and head down the street as a force field comes over me, the one I used to have before I got all caught up in him. I don’t have any experience with casual sex, but if I want to keep having my fun, I’m going to have to learn to rein all my feelings in before things get complicated.
Then again, I’m having hot sex with my writing partner. I’m starting to think it’s complicated already.
15
Blake
I swear I don’t understand women.
I never will.
After I shagged the hell out of Amanda and she shagged the hell out of me, she totally lost the plot. And I don’t mean that in book terms. I mean, things got weird. I think it was because Kevin called her my girlfriend in front of her. And me. And my father. I could practically see her jumping out of her skin in horror.
But then after I explained to her that we were basically fuck buddies who worked together—an office romance, if you will—that didn’t help either. If anything, she seemed to shut down in front of my eyes, completely withdrawing.
If she were any other girl and this were any other situation, I would have just said “see ya, I have no time for your daft bullshit." But because I do like her, you know, as a person, as well as her being a good shag, and I work with her, that really wasn’t an option. We had to see each other whether we wanted to or not.
Actually, it ended up being for the best that we couldn’t ignore each other.
So we kept on meeting up to work on the book.
And we would put all that weird shit aside and we’d write.
We went through edits together one night.
And then I ate her out on the couch.
The next day we did more edits.
She sucked me off in my car when I dropped her off.
After that we tried our hand at formatting before I took her doggy-style on her bed, not even caring that her roommate could hear us.
Needless to say, we got the book professionally formatted instead.
Which left us more time to screw.
Fuck.
Shag.
Bang.
Basically anything that involved getting off.
Anything to loosen her up.
Anything to take advantage of her kinky side which was very slowly coming out to play.
And then…
Then we pressed publish.
And we sat back.
Waited.
Until the book was live.
Falling for the Secret Male Stripper, with its pithy blurb and headless model on the cover (holding a Photoshopped ruler, because of course he’s also a teacher) popped up on Amazon, ready to purchase.
We did it.
All systems are a go.
Amanda is curled next to me on the couch, her feet pressed up against my side, nursing a glass of red wine. Her glasses are off and her hair is down and her face is flushed for so many reasons, but I know one of them is because I just went down on her moments ago. I can still taste her on my tongue, something I don’t mind lingering.
/>
We both have our laptops out, and we’re both on Amazon’s KDP page monitoring our sales. The Facebook ads just started running, so we’re waiting to see if that translates into results because at the moment, we have zero.
I glance at her. “You sure the ad is running?”
“Yup,” she says, flicking over to the tab. “But I don’t think it’s been viewed yet. What about the bloggers you contacted?”
“They said they’d leave their reviews on Amazon today.”
“And they’re five-star reviews?”
“The ones I saw on Goodreads were,” I tell her. “But then there were a few one-star reviews from users who hadn’t even read the book.”
She scoffs. “Why would people do that?”
“Who knows. Maybe they saw the word “stripper” in the title and got offended.”
“Or maybe they read the blurb.”
“Or looked at the cover.”
“Maybe it’s my mom.”
“Maybe a stripper broke their heart and it’s a trigger book for them.”
“Any sales yet?”
“Nope.”
After a while, the waiting game gets pretty boring. And tense. And I know what we’re both thinking: we’ve made a huge mistake. The whole thing has gone tits up. Really, who were we kidding?
“Let’s go for a drink,” I tell her, desperate to get us out of this funk. We hop in Mr. Mean, cruising around Oak Bay before we head to Spinnakers. When we get to our usual table, Amanda brings out her phone and I can tell she’s going straight to the KDP site or the Top 100.
I hold out my hand. “Give it to me.”
Her head snaps up, a guilty, pleading look on her face. “Oh please, I have to know.”
“Nope.” I wiggle my fingers. “Give it or you’re getting a spanking later.”
A wicked grin spreads across her face and she holds the phone close to her chest. “Promise?”
“Fine. If you don’t give it, no spanking.”
She grumbles, rolling her eyes, but it works. She hands it over. I take her phone and slip it in my pocket.
“The ads are running,” I remind her. “The bloggers are promoting. If we had friends and family to tell, I’m sure they’d be spreading the word but we don’t, so this is the best we can do. Let’s just see how it does. Tomorrow, if there’s nothing, we’ll try something else. Maybe more money into ads or try contacting other bloggers. Have a giveaway on our Blake Lovecox author page.”
“We have no followers,” she points out.
“Maybe tomorrow we will. Hope for the future, live in the moment.” I say that just as the waitress delivers our drinks. “And this moment includes drinks.”
We say cheers again over our release day.
To being fucking done.
To potential sales.
We clink glasses to us.
We say cheers to letting go.
And we say cheers to good sex because when all is said and done, at least we have that.
I guess we’re just a pile of nerves, brimming with weeks of work and worry and strain because we end up drinking our faces off.
I mean, we got bloody obliterated. I think I start dancing on the pub’s pool table at one point, while Amanda rides the cue stick like a horse.
We take a cab back to my place where we promptly pass out on the bed. I have to wonder if all authors go through this on their release days.
When the next morning rolls around—actually it’s closer to noon—we can barely remember our names.
It’s a good thing.
There’s just the both of us, naked, gazing at each other with sloppy smiles, living through the hangover.
Then Amanda remembers the sales.
She stumbles out of bed and staggers to the living room, and I can hear her flip open the computer. I’ve nearly fallen back asleep when I hear her gasp.
“Oh. My. God. Oh my god!”
She’s either having a self-induced “Big O” or something brilliant has happened. I quickly fumble out of bed and join her, blinking hard at the light from the living room windows.
She’s kneeling on the floor, pointing to the laptop screen on the coffee table and grinning like she’s lost her bloody mind.
“One thousand,” she whispers, her mouth dropping open in a contained scream. “Ahhhhh!”
“What?” I’m sure I’ve heard her wrong.
“One thousand!” she shrieks.
I drop to my knees beside her, resting my hands on her shoulders and holding on tight.
“Open the Top 100, open the Top 100!” I tell her, eagerly peering over her.
Her fingers can’t move fast enough.
We both hold our breaths in unison as she clicks along each section until…
Eighty.
We are number eighty.
The fucking eightieth bestselling book in all of bloody Amazon, in all of the millions and millions of books.
Eighty.
I look at her, wide-eyed.
She looks at me.
We burst out laughing at the same time.
“Eighty!” I cry out. “Bloody hell! We fucking made it!”
“The book works!” she says. “The ads work! It all works!”
“We work,” I tell her, grabbing her face in my hands and kissing her softly, sweetly, a mix of emotions pouring through me. It only occurs to me then that I normally don’t kiss her like this—it’s always a part of foreplay or something that happens during sex.
But fuck, it feels good.
It feels right.
I slowly pull back and her eyes slowly flutter open, gazing at me with thoughts I’m too afraid to read into. Something serious beneath all the laughter. Something that strikes me hard in the gut.
I swallow hard and clear my throat. I need to get my head back in the game. “You know,” I say teasingly, running my hand down her neck, down her chest, cupping her breast. Her nipples immediately harden as my thumb brushes over them, circular and slow. “I owe you a spanking from last night.”
“A celebratory spank?” she asks deviously.
I’ve never spanked her before so I’m surprised to see her open to it.
“I’m not joking,” I say, raising my hand. “Eighty for the eightieth spot.”
She wiggles with anticipation and then closes her eyes, mouth open, neck arching back as I pinch her nipple hard.
“Will you pretend to be Ford Titan?” she says huskily, head lolling as I bring my mouth to her nipple and suck. Slowly, gently.
“If you’ll be the naughty school girl,” I murmur against her breast.
“Do we have a ruler?”
I raise my head, mouth going for her neck. “I have measuring tape.”
“Good enough. But you can only use twelve inches. Otherwise it’s not fair.”
“That’s what she said.”
“That’s what you wish she said.”
She’s got me there.
“We have our first one-star review,” Amanda grumbles from the patio.
I pad out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around my waist, and spot her with the computer out, looking like a pile of shit has just been dumped on her.
I mean, she’s still stunning wearing one of my worn U-Vic t-shirts, with the sun lit behind her, her face devoid of makeup, the freckles coming through. But her teeth seem to be grinding against each other and I think she’s about to toss the computer off the balcony.
“Well, we both knew that was inevitable,” I tell her as I walk up to her, reaching across the table to take a long swing of her coffee. “Not everyone likes every book, and the internet breeds assholes. It’s a wicked combination.”
It’s been three days since the book released and we’ve spent nearly every moment together watching it climb and climb to the number eleven spot on Amazon’s list. It’s funny how excited we were with eighty, but now that we’re almost in the top ten, it’s a letdown to be on the cusp of it. We got spoiled pretty fast, and the fear that we’ll fall from
our new height is building.
That said, sales are steady, the majority of reviews have been positive, and we’ve even started getting fan mail sent to our joint Blake Lovecox email account. I know we’re supposed to be writing new stuff to keep the momentum going, but the thrill of release week and marketing is taking over. The marketing never bloody ends! We have to pay more attention to our social media feeds—Facebook groups and blogs and Twitter and Instagram and Google Plus (just kidding—no one uses that), and we even got our cover designer to come up with a logo for us. Our tagline? “No gimmicks, just smut.”
“I get that people are jerks, but this is different,” she says, jabbing her finger at the screen. “This is from a blogger who writes her own books on the side without disclosing it, which is some really shady stuff. All this time she’s had a blog and leaving authors all sorts of nasty reviews, then gives her own books five stars. It’s not fair and now she’s being a total cunt to us.”
I can’t help but laugh every time I hear her use that word. It sounds so wonderfully wrong coming from those sweet lips. “Maybe she was having a bad day.”
“Yeah well, we’re her biggest competition now so obviously we’re on her radar.”
“Take it as a good sign,” I tell her, coming around and rubbing her shoulders. “This just means we’ve made people stand up and take notice. The more popular we get, the more arrows will be fired our way, and I bet a few of those reviews come from other authors anyway. But who cares? As long as we keep being honest and doing what we’re doing, their own desperation will ruin them. Just ignore them. And stop reading reviews.”
“I’ve tried, I can’t help it,” she cries out.
I slam her laptop shut. “There. Stop reading them. They will ruin you.”
“You haven’t even read it!” she protests. “All you’ve seen are four and five stars.”
“And I’m taking the five stars with a grain of salt,” I tell her. “Just as you should. Look, we’ve done the best we can with the subject we had. The book is done. It’s released into the world. You can’t control how people feel about it so reading reviews is absolutely pointless. Just ignore them and let’s move on.”