Page 96 of Smut

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.”

She pouts, looking absolutely adorable. “When did you become such a criticism guru?”

“Darling, I went to an all-boys school in England. You only heard criticism. You learn to handle it.”

“And somehow your ego survived intact and grew bigger than ever.”

I grin down at her, slipping my hand down the soft skin of her chest. “What can I say, it was overdue.”

“Seriously though,” she says, putting her hand on mine to stop me. “We have to keep going. With the writing,” she adds.

“All right, well, back to the drawing board.” I sit down across from her and steal her coffee again.

“Hey,” she chides me.

I shrug, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and pushing it back to her. “Sorry, darling, I’ll make you another cup. Okay, so we still have those other ideas we came up with.”

She rubs her lips together in thought. “We do. But I think we need more. Our tastes have evolved since then. At least our aspirations have. This book did really well. We have to come up with something that will do equally amazing. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan.”

“We really should have written in some characters that could have been spun-off of.”

“Nah, not in erotica. I say we do a tried and true staple with a twist.” She smiles to herself. “What about Slammed by the Single Dad?”

I laugh. “That could work,” I concede. “I’m guessing it’s self-explanatory.”

“Yeah…but never mind. Let’s put that aside for now.”

My mind starts flipping through all the books I see bloggers using all those eggplant emojis for (eggplant equals cock, by the way).

“I’ve got it,” I announce. “Dirty Broken Bad Boy Billionaire. About a billionaire with a big cock who loves to eat pussy but can’t commit.”

“It’s been done.”

“The title?”

“The concept.”

“Yeah…but there’s a twist! You see, the heroine is the nanny of his child. And she uncovers a secret about him.”

“Sounds a lot like Falling for the Secret Male Stripper.”

“Well, we can’t stray too far from the formula that works.”

“All right. Dirty Broken Bad Boy Billionaire is up next for Blake Lovecox.” She pauses, looking me up and down. “Can we put you on the cover, wearing a suit? I think that would be really hot.”

“Hot for the readers or hot for you?”

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