Page 95 of Smut

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.”

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