himself back in his pants and pulled his shirt on. When he turned back around all signs of mischief were gone. He looked solemn and sad.
“I want to help you with your work,” he said. “But you have to understand, princess, I’m not the guy of your dreams. Don’t go falling for me or anything. I’d catch you, because you’re my friend. But I’d set you back on your feet, not carry you off into the sunset.”
He leaned in and kissed me on my cheek. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you. I’m going to go now. Call me if you need me, okay?”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer. He opened the door and then he was gone.
Chapter Eleven
“You lost the magic.”
My hands sweat as I held the phone to my face and listened to Moira discuss the latest submission of my next few chapters.
“It starts off great. I don’t usually like masturbation scenes, but this one was hot.”
After Christopher left three nights ago, I wrote like mad. The hot scene she referred to was pretty simple to write. It flowed through my fingers as smoothly as I’d stroked Christopher’s hard, thick, veiny cock.
“But after the masturbation scene, everything goes south,” Moira said. “In the male POV, this doesn’t sound like any guy I know. You have him pledging his love at only a quarter of the way into the book. No real guy would do that.”
Not unless they lived in my head. I’d thrown myself at a guy who I’d known less than a week. And like he’d promised, he’d caught me and set me back in my place on the sofa. But in my book, he swept my heroine off her feet and pledged to her his soul.
“It’s completely unrealistic, Mary Kate. Plus, there’s no tension. She gets everything she wants. The story is basically over as soon as it begins. There needs to be conflict, you know that.”
God, I was so sick of conflict. Why couldn’t a book just be girl meets boy, they fall in love, and live happily-ever-after? No cheating to prove his manhood. No working late nights leaving her alone to tend the children. No hurdles, or twins, to jump over.
“Plus, this penetration sex scene is so cold,” Moira continued. “It reads like insert tab A into slot B. You wrote a beautiful first kiss, a scorching hot masturbation scene. But then what happened?”
What happened was I still had an un-popped cherry. I hadn’t called Christopher. I couldn’t. I was embarrassed and my feelings hadn’t gone away. My body betrayed me every night as I dreamed of him and woke with soaked sheets; my nipples hardened and aching for him. My core clenching and begging to be filled by him.
“Mary Kate, we’re counting on you,” said Moira. “I have everything locked into place. Was I wrong about you? Is this too much for you? Can you do this?”
“I can,” I said. “It’s just a rough patch. I know how to fix it.”
Moira disconnected and a monotone dial tone filled the line. I terminated the line, sat my phone down, and pulled my laptop towards me. I hit the delete key on large paragraphs of words. But at the end of my search and destroy mission, I still had no clue how to fill the void.
I knew how sex worked, of course. I’d tried watching the Candida Royalle DVD. There was no mugging the camera. But there was still a disconnect, something impersonal about those performances on the screen. Something fake in each person’s countenance because they were acting on some level. The story lines were plausible and easy to follow. The scenes were pretty, the lighting beautiful, the editing seamless, the actors attractive. The performances were better than Internet porn, but there was still no connection. These people were fucking, not making love.
It was the same thing that was missing in my books. The parts Moira connected with, I had personal experience with. The parts she rejected, I had no connection to offer. I looked at my phone sitting silent on my desk.
Was I seriously considering giving up my virginity to save my career?
Did I have