didn’t have the goods needed to make it in the sex industry, when looks and size were everything.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here. It’s hours past shut down time.” Glancing once more at his computer screen, hoping to see a new incoming message from Kat, he rolled his shoulders to ease the mounting tension. Nothing. Hopefully by Monday, she’d give him exactly what he needed.
He flicked the switch, shutting it down for the weekend. Moving toward the door, he tossed his jacket over his forearm and turned off the overhead fluorescent lighting. Kent tagged along at his heels.
“What’s the club called?”
“Night Kitty. You’ll soon see why,” Kent said, rubbing a hand over his chin. “You can get more pussy there than an alley cat.”
“I’m just going for a couple of beers. I’m not into picking up strangers at bars.” They walked down the dimly lit deserted hallways of the office building. This late on a Friday they’d be lucky to see a janitor still about.
“You sure you’re not a little fluffy? What kind of man turns down getting some when it’s offered?”
“I have women I know where I can make a booty–call. And, I’m man enough to snatch your girl if I wanted.” All these comments about his manhood were grating his last nerve. So what if it’d been a good while since he’d had sex? That didn’t mean anything.
So what if he relied on emails for pleasure? It didn’t make him any less of a man because he had a fantasy woman who made him jerk off his own wad after he read her work.
“What’d you say this place is called, again?” he asked, tension coiling in his gut. They walked across the parking lot now, but not even the cooler night air offered relief to his irritation.
“Night Kitty.”
They entered Jamal’s SUV in silence.
“Good. Let’s go.” He slid his Escalade into drive, anxious to get there. Last month’s issues of Kat’s magazines wouldn’t be enough for long.
A blank screen.
For a writer this spells disaster. The screen was bare, and all Kat Mason could do was sit there staring. Chomping down on the inside of her cheek, she gulped down a deep breath as she attempted to focus her mind on past projects. Not like anything else she’d done could save her butt now.
Feeling the rise of nervous tension, she twisted her fingers, wondering what others in her profession would think of her, leader of the pack, in this frantic position. To most people a blank screen may not seem like a big deal, open and ready for whatever comes to mind, but for her it was ruin.
Prostitutes don’t get paid when they don’t turn tricks, just like she didn’t get compensated if she didn’t put out stories.
With slumping shoulders, dread pressed upon her. The tiny cursor on the top of the page flashed like a big loser beacon. Clamping her lids shut, she fought off a surge of frustration. Deadline loomed and at this rate she’d have to email her agent and tell him she wasn’t going to make it.
Taking a squeeze of baby lotion, she rubbed it into her tired hands. What do I know about sex? She thought back over her disastrous past relationships. There weren’t many, but they’d all sucked. She was a wallflower and good men kept their distance.
“Three years, nine months, and almost two weeks, and I’m fresh out of material.” She smirked at the irony. As a favor to her momma, who’d written headlines for a men’s trash magazine, Kat had taken over when arthritis ended her momma’s career. She wasn’t sure how she pulled it off with her limited amount of sexual experience. But somehow she did.
Articles for the single erotica magazine had blossomed into many. Now she had an agent who pimped her pieces to the mass market. Before she knew what hit her, her persona was the hottest name in the genre, garnering national attention, top sales, and more than a thousand hits a day to her website.
Her most prominent column, Glory’s Stories, was published in five different monthly magazines that released the hottest, sexiest stuff she could imagine. Masturbation, fornication, threesomes and orgies—yeah, she’d written about those and then some. But right now, on a Friday evening, the article due Monday morning, she had a blank page.
Not even word one.
Glancing around her upstairs bedroom, Kat saw all of the toys of the trade—things she’d gathered over the years—for what she called research. Reaching across the desk, she lifted a translucent pink dildo; its weight heavier than it appeared. Batteries. How could she write about a vibrating dildo if she’d never felt one in her hand? She stroked down the smooth length of the plastic cock.
Bringing the shiny head to her mouth, she glided it along her lower lip, using her tongue to smooth it. It tasted faintly like her pussy, held the subtle hint of sex and caused a moistening in her cotton panties. Feeling heat lick across her skin, she tossed the dildo to the bed.
This wasn’t time for self–gratification. She’d tried that too many times, written about it nearly as often. “Good brothas aren’t easy to come by,” Kat mumbled to herself, to justify her need for the synthetic flesh, rather than enjoying the feel of a real man. “Or cum by.” She laughed at the oh–so–sorry truth. “Call me desperate.”
With her eyes closed, she slanted her face toward the ceiling, silently willing some wondrous idea to strike her. She needed something—a spark to make her next story fresh and exciting. To make it something she’d never attempted before.
She needed brilliance that would make her agent, Jamal, eager to pursue the money she sought for hours of writing, not to mention the added bonus of knowing about the erection he got when he read her work. She only wished she had a face to match to the hours of email conversations they’d shared. Knowing what his eyes looked like when he got aroused would have been the icing on the cake.
Spinning her office chair, Kat’s gaze landed on her stuffed and overflowing extra closet. Repressing the turn of her lips into a smile, she studied all she’d acquired. She had it all—none used, but all there—for when she needed to describe an outfit or get into the mood of a character. There were whips and handcuffs, some fur–lined, some cold–hard steel. Black leather boots that reached mid thigh and tipped with four–inch silver spikes as heels.
She had sexy lingerie, lacy blacks with g–string panties. Red one–piece suits open to the nipples and crotchless. She even had a few baby–doll type sets, complete with pink lace, rose–shaped ribbons and petite satin bows. None seemed to offer the inspiration she desperately required. She needed something new. Different. Thrilling.
Flipping the button on her computer, she sent it into sleep mode and hit the switch of the light. Kat stalked to the mirror and studied her lackluster outfit. Her usual writing garb: sweatpants, t–shirt, floppy–eared bunny slippers. Her black perm–straightened hair was secured into a loose ponytail, in need of a root touch–up.
Pressing her full lips together, she thought of adding a touch of gloss, but feeling drab, decided what she needed was a splash of color to match the caramel tone of her skin. Glancing back at her computer, Kat released a pent–up breath and decided to escape her self–imposed dungeon. She needed time away from work, to freshen up and go out. Out anywhere, where there’d be people to watch and where she’d be able to draw new material.
A
