We’re working together at her place now, since we’re beyond watching movies for inspiration, and are in an intense writing phase that requires laser-like focus.

I like her apartment. There are a lot of good coffee places and restaurants within walking distance—not that we go there together. It’s clear that she lives with someone who is good with a sewing machine, because the sofa is probably from Ikea but it’s covered with a rich blue velvet slipcover that makes it look like a million bucks. The silver silk curtains are custom-made and they keep the white sheers closed all day to let the light through and hide the view of the neighboring building. There are so many throw pillows in the living room—it’s a guy’s nightmare—but it somehow works to make it all feel comfortable and sexy at the same time. And then there are the books. There is one large bookshelf in the living room that holds Erin’s books and DVDs and Blu-rays, many of which are included in my own collection—something she has failed to mention. I really like it here. It’s a hell of a lot nicer than her dorm room at Emerson—but I don’t want to think about that.

Today I brought her a brand new roll of gold duct tape. It wasn’t a gift or anything—I just grabbed one from my collection. But I wanted her to have it. I don’t like that she doesn’t have duct tape. Everyone should have duct tape. I brought her a large bag of plain potato chips, to demonstrate how to use and re-use duct tape as a bag sealer, but she proceeded to demonstrate how she can eat an entire bag of potato chips in one sitting and then simply place the bag in the recycling bin. It’s pretty impressive.

I also don’t like that she doesn’t have a security system. She says her baseball bat and off-putting sarcasm are her security system, but it certainly wouldn’t keep me away.

So far, honestly, I haven’t discovered one thing that would keep me away from her. I think she’s just great. I keep thinking that my Mom would probably like her. She wouldn’t be obvious about it or anything, because my Dad’s such a dick about anyone who doesn’t come from money, but I bet my Mom would secretly dig this girl. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this kind of thought, not since the succubus from Hell formerly known as my fiancée.

Erin has really gotten the hang of this horror scriptwriting thing. I’m starting to realize just how lucky I am to get the chance to work with her. Beyond getting the chance to spend time with her—it’s an actual pleasure to write with her and this script might actually kick ass.

It is very difficult to concentrate on the script when she looks like this, although we’ve somehow managed to write ten new pages today already, so we’ve met our quota. Erin wants to keep going until we get to the end of the second act, which is a good idea.

But staring at her hot body is an even better idea. I honestly can’t think of a better one, except for touching and licking and inserting myself into her hot body. We haven’t had sex since that perfect triple-header in San Luis Obispo, and it’s a miracle that I’ve actually been able to work with her without ripping her clothes off. I’m actually quite proud of myself for that.

I know it’s not smart to mess around while we’re working together. Sam’s dated two women that he was working with and they never worked together again after they broke up. But—they were crazy hot-tempered singer-musicians. Erin’s not like that. She’s from Idaho. She’s a writer. She’s a brat, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders, and she’s in that head all the time. I trust that we can make this work. Whatever “this” is.

I try to get my head back in the game, so I bark out a line of dialogue that I think the wife should say in the script and tell her to type it up. She glares at me.

“Just type it up further down the page so we don’t forget.”

“I’m writing everything in order.”

“Just do it.”

“Fine—fuck you!” She hammers away at the keyboard with her pretty little fingers. “I like the line, but how do we justify her saying it?...Never mind, I know.” She types up some stage direction and another line of dialogue as connective tissue, and the scene works. It’s like alchemy. We’re awesome together.

I hold up my hand for a high-five, which she reluctantly gives me. “It’s just…”

I roll my eyes. Here comes the neurotic whining. “What now?”

“What if we’re getting the demon possession stuff wrong? I think we should be doing more research.”

“How many people in the audience do you think are going to be demonologists? It’s a movie. It’s entertainment. People will go to this movie to be scared and entertained. Let it go.”

“I’m just used to doing more research.”

“That’s a delaying tactic. It’s our job to make up our own rules that make sense within the world that we have created, and to stick to those rules. That’s it. Moving on.”

She sighs. Not in the good way. “I just think it’s irresponsible.”

“To whom?! Demons?!”

She purses her lips. She knows I’m right. Instead of saying so, she goes back to typing. Atta girl.

She’s wearing a really thin T-shirt and no bra and I can see the outline of her perfect pink nipples and she’s wearing a casual little short skirt so I can see her taut golden legs and she’s acting like it’s no big deal. This is how she dresses at home and she doesn’t care how she looks. Her hair is up in a ponytail, like that day when I first saw her in Boston. She’s pretty and sexy and she smells like a delicious cookie that I want to eat and Christ Almighty I’ve had my work cut out for me today.

She raises her arms over her head and stretches, making her tiny T-shirt stretch tighter over her flirty nipples and I make a soft guttural sound in the back of my throat. I give her a look. She knows what the look means.

“We have to get to the end of the act break today.” She sounds like a first grade teacher talking to a naughty little boy, and it just makes me want to fuck her even more.

“Okay.”

She rubs her neck and groans. It’s obviously really stiff. So is her neck.

I remove my glasses and offer to massage her neck and shoulders.

She looks at me like I just told her I’m an exiled Nigerian prince who needs to borrow money that I will repay in one month with interest. But, to my surprise, she says okay.

She will regret this, immediately. Because I’m good at this. I’m very good at this. She remains seated in her chair at the dining table. I stand behind her, rub my hands together to warm them up, then place them on her shoulders. I massage her neck, gently at first, before I start to knead her flesh more deeply, pressing in with my thumbs, pinching and tugging and rubbing and circling and pounding.

She takes a deep breath and holds it for a long time before she exhales. I take a risk and kiss the back of her neck. She tilts her head back, eyes closed. She doesn’t flinch. My hands move down her back then around and under her T-shirt, up to her beautiful soft breasts. I kiss her neck as I massage her swelling tits, her petal pink nipples hard beneath my hands.

She sighs. “I’m going to keep working.”

“Good idea, keep working.” She leans forward and starts typing.

Meanwhile, I keep working on her. My left hand squeezes her left breast and my right hand makes its way down her belly and into the front of her skirt. “You spelled ‘their’ wrong,” I say. She is breathing heavily. She re-types the word as my fingers slide past her panties and gently massage her clit. She whispers, “oh shit” but continues typing.

“You just typed ‘fuck you Braddock.”

“Fuck you Braddock.”

My fingers are inside of her now. She’s so warm and slippery and tight.

“This is very unprofessional,” she says. She starts to rock back and forth, ever so slightly, in sync with my movements.

“Not if we end up with a great script.”

I’m so hard and I want to fuck her but I want to make her come first.

I remove my hands from her. She looks up at me, wondering why I’m stopping. I walk over to the other side of the table, pull the chair out. “Keep working,” I say. “Get us to the end of the act. She hears the noises in the basement and she’s looking for him and the noises suddenly stop.”

“Yes I know I know.”

I kneel down on the floor and make my way over to her, under the table.

She squeezes her legs together at first. I run my hands up her legs, then down to her knees and I gently squeeze them. Let me in. Her legs relax just a bit. I pull her panties down and she lets me, kicks them off from around her ankles. I grab onto her ass and she is dripping wet when I lick her. I feel her tense up. She holds onto the edge of the desk. She’s already so close. My thumb keeps pressure on her clit while my tongue goes to work below, alternately gentle and vigorous, swirling around and pulsating. She’s running her fingers through my hair and then I suck on her clit, and her whole body stiffens and then releases and I dig my fingers into her flesh and push my tongue inside of her as far as it will go—I could live inside of her there—I feel the waves start, and then I hear her say “wait, stop. Get inside of me. Hurry up.” She pulls away.

“Yes ma’am,” I say. I pull a condom out of my wallet, tear it open with my teeth.

She stands up and gestures for me to sit in the chair. I sit down, saluting her with my giant erection, and in one second she’s on top of me, pressing down onto me and it feels amazing. She does a lot of work, tightening and relaxing around my cock, her hips rocking back and forth, showing me that she’s in charge now, and we’re both breathing hard and loud and she’s there—her head tilts back and she’s so loud, “Oh God oh God oh FUCK!” and I have to force myself not to say her name because I know that would freak her out, so I grunt and groan and I thrust and I hold tight to her hips as I come and she tightens her legs around me, pressing up as close to me as possible, and it’s brilliant.

“To reiterate,” she deadpans, once she’s caught her breath, “we are not dating.”

“No we aren’t. But we sure do fuck good.”

“You are not wrong about that, sir.”

I smile. “Writing partners with benefits.”

“Temporary writing partners,” she says. “With limited benefits.”

After I have freshened up, I return to the sofa, where she is now sitting with her laptop, in her flimsy top and boyshorts. I hear her talking, but all of the blood is rushing straight to my dick again. I want a poster of her like this. I think she’s asking me about my former fiancée. Which is interesting, because she doesn’t usually ask me personal questions.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about it back at Emerson?”

“’It?’”

“Your engagement.”

“Because I was starting over in a new city. I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. What was her name?”

“Courtney.”

“Of course it was.”

“She was my first girlfriend. From senior year.”

“You loved her?”

“She was my first girlfriend. I was still trying to be someone else back then. Someone who belonged in my family. She was the right girl for that guy.”

“Why did it end?”

I take a deep breath. I don’t want Erin to know that much about Courtney. Not that I have anything to hide, I just don’t want her thinking that there was anyone all that important before her. But I do want her to know that she can ask me anything, so here goes: “It ended because I told her I wanted to be a screenwriter, and that I was dropping out of business school. She moved out the next day. I haven’t spoken to her since.”

She laughs. “You’re joking.”

“Nope. She said she should have known I was a writer because I fucked like an alcoholic manic-depressive with no money.”

She wrinkles her brow, God bless her. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t think she knew what it meant. I was the first person she ever had sex with. But I’m sure she’s happy now. She’s married to a guy who fucks like a real estate developer on Prozac.”

“Sounds like a smart lady.”

“She did the right thing.”

“So you were sad when I met you.”

“I was pissed. And humiliated.” You helped me to get over that.

“I don’t blame you. I am sorry. That sucks…I’m glad you’re a screenwriter.” She says it shyly, almost blushing, like it’s embarrassing for her to say something even vaguely nice to me.

“Thanks. I’m glad you’re a screenwriter.”

She smiles and shakes her head.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Have you been in love before?”

“’Before?’”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I was madly in love with my high school boyfriend, yes. Peter. He was very nice.”

I almost regret asking. “St. Peter. From Idaho?”

“Yes. Peter from Idaho. He was a great first boyfriend. He was really cute and sweet and he was…safe.”

“Glad to hear it. So what happened?”

“Well, I went to college in Boston, he eventually went to Germany, we were supposed to spend that first Christmas break together, but he called and told me that he’d fallen in love with a French girl. So I never saw him again.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She shrugs.

“He didn’t try to talk to you anymore or anything?”

“He sent a few apology emails, wanting to be friends, but I mean, what was there to talk about. It was over. He broke my heart.”

Well now I know who she was talking to on the phone that first time I saw her, the one who made her smile so beautifully, but I’m searching my memory trying to remember a time when she seemed to be heartbroken at Emerson. There was never a period where she had swollen eyes or missed classes or was out drinking like crazy. “How did you…I mean. Were you upset?”

“Yeah, Braddock. I was upset. But I was also kind of relieved, to be honest. Once I’d gotten busy at Emerson, and was super into writing, it became really obvious that I didn’t have that much to talk to Peter about anymore, and we were growing apart. We didn’t fight or anything, I just…I guess I fell out of love with him. Which was depressing. But at least I got to experience a really nice first love…So that’s that.”

You are amazing.

“You look surprised. I know—it’s like the only thing I have a relatively healthy attitude about, and I don’t even know why I’m not all broken up about it, but I just like remembering the good times with him. It’s weird.”

I feel myself leaning towards her. I want to kiss her. She leans away from me. “Back to work.”

Perhaps, because I am feeling vulnerable after talking about my terrible ex, I start blabbing on about how we need to make the dialogue “less dialogue-y” while she is typing. She hates it when I go on about this, because dialogue is her thing, but I can’t seem to stop and I can tell it’s getting on her nerves. Without saying a word, she gets up, grabs the roll of duct tape, rips off a piece and sticks it over my mouth. This does shut me up but it also pisses me off. What an asshole. Then she removes my shirt. I am less pissed off, because this is interesting. She disappears behind me, forces my arms behind my back and I feel her duct taping my wrists together. You little minx. This definitely beats “potato chip bag sealer” for best use of duct tape. She frowns at me, but can’t hold the frown for long. She grins. She gets down on her knees, between my legs, unzips me, and does things to my genitals that I am quite certain I will be thinking about daily until I die.

That does it.

Erin Duffy owns my cock.

I am ruined.