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But to do so would throw my career away. “Amalia, I’ve worked too hard and too long?—”
“Wait. Just hear me out,” she interrupts. “I have an idea.”
Shit. Here comes the bargaining.
I start to shake my head, hoping to let her down easily, but she smacks her hands on the desk, startling both of us.
“Hear me out, Levi. Look. The last thing I want to do is damage your literary career in any way. You’re on an upward trajectory. I know that. You know that. Everyone at Empire knows that. We can’t let anything threaten that.”
Then why is she still pestering me?
“We’ll use a pen name, Levi. No one will ever know. That’s how most romance is published anyway, although you probably already know that.”
I’ve already thought this one through. “I considered that idea, Amalia. But I just don’t want to risk it. Too much at stake.”
She takes a deep breath and looks at me for a moment. Henry told me how she’d been crying in the stairwell at my book signing, and how he felt terrible for her. How she’s afraid of losing her job, and that Ryder Night is her guarantee that she won’t. I know he’s been on the verge of pressing me to let her have the book, but the man is smart and careful about choosing his battles. But he hasn’t brought it up recently, most likelybiding his time, waiting for me to have a weak moment where I cave and let the world do whatever it wants with me.
On the other hand, Henry knows better than to mess with his meal ticket. He doesn’t want to put that in any more danger than I do.
Amalia straightens up in her chair and I brace myself for the hard sell. “Levi, did you know romance is the fastest growing fiction genre? That it is a major player in the publishing industry? That romance gets credit for being the driver in e-book adoption among readers? Or that romance rakes in well over a billion dollars a year, covering a third of the entire fiction market?”
Jesus, she sounds like a commercial.
“I… I didn’t know that… that level of detail about romance, Amalia. I really don’t know much about the genre at all, except that it’s popular. And, that I don’t want to write it.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Why? Because you feel it’s not highbrow enough for you? Or is it that it’s read primarily by women, and in writing it you’d be wasting your time and talent creating books for people like me?”
Jesus, she’s like a pit bull, just without the bad breath. Seriously, she keeps coming after me, like pecking away one bit of flesh at a time will wear me down.
“None of that is true, Amalia, really. Romance just isn’t… mything.”
She sits back in her seat, studying me. And probably deciding how she’d like to kill me.
Fuck, she is hot. And not only that, but I like the her in spite of myself. I feel like she can be trusted and that she really means well with my book. But it’s a risk I can’t afford to take.
“It’s just that, Amalia, my publishing a romance novel would be… embarrassing.”
She taps her fingers on the arm of her wooden chair, then gets to her feet. “If that’s the way you feel, that you would be embarrassed should anyone ever find out—which they won’t if you use a pen name—then you’re right. I agree with you. This book should not be published. Because, God knows, you would beembarrassed.”
She pulls on her crossbody bag and hightails it to my front door, her boots banging on my wooden floor. Her gorgeous ass shakes from side to side, and then she’s gone before I can tell her my idea.
24
LEVI
Ryder Night.I wrote those stories in a few days flat. They poured out of my fingertips onto the keyboard like water out of a sieve. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It felt good, actually great, to write them and get some of my kinky-ass fantasies out of my head and onto paper. I mean, some of the stories I wrote, of course I’d never manifest, but it’s fun to think about them. Fun to jerk off to them, too.
The gang bang story honestly came from a friend of mine. He’s married to this wild woman and her birthday wish was to be pretend-kidnapped and ravished by multiple men. He set this up and it solidified an already-successful marriage.
I’m not saying something like that is my jam, but people get off in all sorts of ways.
And thinking about Amalia reading my naughty words makes me hard as hell.
With her gone, I step into my shower to try and cool down. It doesn’t work, and I go lie on my bed, naked, with a painful hard-on.
Only one way to get rid of it.
I stroke myself as I imagine her walking into my room, catching me jerking off.
