“He took her down to the bed and pounded into her pussy like there was no tomorrow.”
“With fire in his eyes, he ravaged her until she unraveled.”
“He filled her warm, wet hole and took her body on a ride that she’d never forget.”
Those words weren’t even worth editing, so I closed the Word document and uncorked a bottle of wine.
Grabbing my phone, I decided to use the rest of today’s writing time to message some of my friends on the Words & Letters app.
My inbox was full of new letters from Amy, Taylor, Sasha, and Arnold—fellow smut authors. Unfortunately, all of their letters were littered with lines about suffering from creative burnout and writer’s block.
That’s literally the last thing I need to talk about today.
I scrolled past their messages and saw a response from the man I’d come to know the most on this app—the man who I faithfully messaged every day about everything and nothing at all.
Ryan.
Outside of my best friend, he was the closest connection in my life right now, and I wasn’t sure whether that was worthy of happiness or pity. I also wasn’t sure whether I wanted to thrash him or be grateful for him most of the time, since his sarcasm often toed the line between brilliance and assholery.
As I waited for his message to load, I considered asking him out for a cup of coffee sometime next month. I’d thought about it quite a few times before—especially on nights when we exchanged letters until the early hours of the morning, but I always held back.
Blame it on the romance writer in me, but a part of me wished that he was as sexy as his writing style, and that one day we’d find a way to be together. The other part of me—the far saner part, knew that if someone at his age was single, there was only one reason why: No other woman wanted him. Huge red flags, keep it moving.
Laughing, I took my time reading his latest letter.
Letter Topic: Awards, Dildos, & Such
Dear Bella,
Congratulations on winning The Golden Cock at the Digital Erotica Awards this week. I’m sure that accomplishment is something that none of your college friends will ever be able to claim. (I noticed that the award comes with a glass dildo. Perhaps the judges know how lonely you’ve been since you dumped your boyfriend during these past few months…)
I’m attaching my longer letter behind this one, but not much has happened in my life this week. Well, unless you want to count one of my close friends setting me up on another disastrous blind date. (I’ve decided to put all the details in my other letter.)
Ryan
PS—I refreshed your Amazon page and noticed that you haven’t published since May. You’ve been working on the same book for four weeks now. What’s the problem?
I immediately started typing a response to his PS note, explaining how I hadn’t had sex in forever, that my creativity had officially run dry, and my sex scenes these past few weeks were nowhere near as good as they used to be. And before I knew it, tears were pricking my eyes—the cold reality of writer’s block settling in.
Here I am, writing about how a hard cock feels between the heroine’s lips, or how deep he can go in her pussy, and I can’t remember the last time I experienced it myself. I mean, you don’t necessarily have to have hot sex to write it (I highly doubt that Stephen King has ever murdered anyone in the name of inspiration for his thrillers), but I’ve never had writer’s block before, and I think my six-month drought may have something to do with it…
This story is supposed to be so simple—They’re next door neighbors who have sex—that’s it—and I can’t get past the damn kiss.
I stopped and looked over my words, my finger hovering over the send button, my brain begging me to delete each and every one.
Over the past seven months of exchanging letters, we’d definitely discussed my work, but never in depth, and I never revealed anything about the actual scenes in my book.
In fact, none of our conversations ever truly revolved around sex; it was all platonic.
Sure, we slipped in a few innuendoes here or there, dipped some of our personal stories in sexual undertones, and lately we’d been a bit dirtier than usual, but we never stretched things too far.
Coming to my senses, I deleted my words and kept my response to the PS note simple.
PS—There is no problem. I’m just taking my time with this one, since it’s a bit longer. That’s all. It’ll be published by the end of the week. No worries!
TWO
Ryan/Dane
“The end of the week”
Letter Topic: Your Next Book.
Dear Bella,
My Hot Neighbor is still not published, and you’ve emailed me at least sixteen letters this week. I copied/pasted them onto one document to get a total word count, and it’s twenty thousand words, i.e., one hundred pages.