He growled, an unintelligible sound low in his throat. He had so much to say, to try to make her understand, but the words were stuck in his suddenly dry throat, choking him. He needed an outlet for the rage, the confusion, even the hurt that was storming through him, and Jo was safe. She’d always been safe.
Instead of shaking her stupid, he tugged her against him, crushing her lips against his. She shoved at his shoulder seconds before he felt a hint of the tension leave her body, her lips softening beneath his.
And then a stabbing pain as she sank those razor-sharp little teeth of hers into his lower lip.
“Motherfuck—” He reared back, clapping a hand to his injured lip. It came away bloody, but before he could utter another word, Jo followed the bite with a straight shot to his solar plexus.
His breath escaped his body in one giant cloud. Wheezing, he doubled over, sinking back into his chair, one arm around his stomach, the other pressed to his lip.
“What the actual fuck, Jo?” If she’d wanted to stop him in his tracks, she’d done it—he couldn’t believe she’d hit him. He’d have been proud of her right hook if he didn’t think there was a distinct possibility that he was going to vomit all over her bare feet. “What was that for?”
“Are you serious right now?” She laughed, but the sound was dry and harsh. “I can barely look at you right now, so you sure as fuck don’t get to touch me.”
“What?” He tried to focus on her face, but his head was spinning. “Jo. What?”
She sucked a breath in through her nose before jamming a finger right in front of his face. “You don’t touch me unless I want to be touched. And you sure as hell don’t try to kiss me when you’re breaking my heart.”
He watched, at a complete loss for words as she stepped back, putting some much-needed space between them. Crossing her arms over her chest, she started to shake, and when she looked back at him, her eyes were shiny and red, though not a single tear actually spilled.
Without another word, she turned and made her way to the door. She didn’t slam it, didn’t even close it—just left it hanging partway open like a wound that needed stitches but couldn’t be closed.
He should call out. Go after her.
He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
She’d cut him open, flayed his flesh, and he didn’t know how to fix it. Didn’t know if he could.
Instead, he sat motionless in his chair until the sun came up, warring with himself. He was furious with Jo, with his dad, with his dead mom, with himself. He was absolutely, utterly incapable of dealing with any of it.
When pale golden light began to filter through the paned glass of his window, he stood. Strode to his closet. Opened the small safe inside it, retrieving his passport, birth certificate and the stacks of cash that he kept just for the hell of it. Pulling a supple, chocolate-brown leather trench coat from his closet, he stuffed the retrieved items into the pockets and threw the coat over his shoulders.
By the time the sun was fully up, shining fat and high in the sky, Theo was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Now
THE NUMBER ONE question in my in-box? The biggest thing that readers want to know? It’s how much of what I report on is something that I actually do. Yes, you filthy-minded little freaks want to know all the dirty details, and I know why...because if I’ve tried it, then you’re not so weird if you do, too.
If you’re waiting with bated breath for me to answer, you’re going to have to keep on waiting. Why? Because I think that if you want to let your freak flag fly, you should find the guts to hoist it yourself. Color it with your own kinks, and don’t be afraid to invite a partner...or three.
Now keep reading as I chat with Emma Muse, a cam girl with over six hundred thousand Instagram followers, about why so many women are choosing to pleasure themselves on camera for money, and why she thinks it’s a viable career—not to mention fun!
Sluttily yours,
Jojo Kink
* * *
Exhaling hugely, Jo sat back in her rickety desk chair. Lacing her fingers together, she twisted them outward, extending her arms and arching her back in a giant stretch. She’d only been working on this post for a couple of hours, but she’d been so into it that she hadn’t been paying attention to her posture, and as the minutes had ticked by, she hunched up tighter with every word that she typed.
Scrolling back up, she reread the introduction and couldn’t quite hold back her grin. The post was good, and she wasn’t one for false modesty, especially when she was alone in her bedroom with no one to see her crow over it.
She knew that she could write. She’d been doing it steadily for pay for years, which was a pretty good sign that she wasn’t a complete hack. But after a seemingly endless period of churning out things that other people wanted, writing about something that interested her felt like she’d grown a pair of giant, feathery wings.
Reading the post through one more time, she made a few small edits before copying the text to her blog site, Jojo Kink. As it uploaded, she opened her blog’s email in-box, scanning through the messages and the alerts of comments on her blog, which ranged from rapturous praise to things like Die in hell, skank.
Skank. Ha. If only they knew.
Checking the box that would allow her to delete everything with one click, she emptied her in-box, then blinked at the single message that slid in right after. Marked urgent, it carried the subject Job Opportunity.
“Oh, I just bet.” She rolled her eyes and almost deleted this one, too. She received “job offers” every week, and most of them were invitations to meet up with very gracious gentlemen who were interested in letting her blow them. She mostly ignored them, but once in a while she skimmed over one of these fascinating missives and her temper—her Achilles’ heel—would get the better of her. It never failed to amaze her how many men couldn’t understand that no woman on this earth wanted an unsolicited dick pic. Actually, most didn’t want a dick pic, period, but pointing that out usually just resulted in a flurry of them.
She was in the mood to argue, though, so she opened the email, bracing herself for a veiny close-up. She was surprised that, instead of an image of throbbing male genitalia, the email contained an actual message, complete with a website link.
To Ms. Kink,
My name is John Brooke; I’m a freelance business mentor currently working with the dating app Crossing Lines. We at Crossing Lines would like to meet with you to discuss the possibility of writing some blog posts for our site. We love your voice and think that you are just what we need to appeal to the female demographic.
We would love to hear back from you, at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
John Brooke and the Crossing Lines team
“Say what?” Jo sat up straight as hummingbirds of excitement flocked through her veins. Clicking on the site link, she found herself staring at a logo that she actually knew. Crossing Lines had been everywhere lately—she was pretty sure her youngest sister, Amy, actually had a profile on it. Their advertising was slick—they clearly had a lot of money behind them.
And they wanted her? How the hell had they found her blog, anyway? Her blog had decent traffic, but she was a medium-size fish in a gigantic pond.
“Who the hell cares?” She wasn’t an idiot. This was huge. Palms suddenly slick with sweat, she scrambled to reply. John Brooke, whoever he was, must have still been in his email, because he came back again almost instantly, asking her if she had time to meet the next morning. When she agreed, he gave her an address close to the financial district in downtown Boston and told her they looked forward to meeting with her. She didn’t have a clue who else was included in the they, but the thrill fizzing through her wouldn’t let her care.
Shoving back from her desk, she closed her eyes and savored the moment. She could hear music coming from Beth’s room, some kind of wei
rd electro-pop that she normally couldn’t stand, but right now it was perfect, and she did a little walk-dance of joy around her cramped room to the beat.
She’d been writing for years. Years. She’d started with the local paper, and her secret dream had been to go to journalism school. When her sister Beth had gotten sick, though, and the family had started to drown in debt, she switched tracks. Words were her skill set, so she searched out the best way to make quick cash from them. Her ghostwriting gigs—writing stories to spec for other people—had been what allowed them to stay in their grand old historic home, but she’d always felt like she lost a bit of herself when she signed away the rights to something that had come from within her.
Now Beth had hooked up with Ford, and while at first Jo had been certain he’d been using her little sister as a stroll through a kinky park, she now had to admit that he’d saved their asses, for no reason other than his love for Beth. His idea to build a small boutique hotel on part of their massive property had led to a source of viable income for their family, which meant that Jo could finally, finally, write whatever the hell she wanted.
She’d been surprised at how much she’d enjoyed ghostwriting erotic stories, and that was what had led to the idea for Jojo Kink. Researching and interviewing people about freaky sexual topics threw in that love of journalism and, it turned out, was just fun.
But writing for a big company didn’t mean that she couldn’t still blog—at least she hoped it didn’t. And writing for a big company meant money. She brought in a bit through ads on her site, but a regular paycheck...
She couldn’t even imagine what she’d do with that. She’d never had one.
Thinking of the hotel reminded her that Ford had organized a sneak-peek open house for Marchande Boutique for that evening...and it was in just over an hour.
“Shit.” Breathing a bit heavily from her dancing, she looked around the room, a bit lost.
Dressing up? She hated it.
Socializing with human beings who weren’t part of her social circle? She hated it even more. There was a reason that she chose to make a living from behind a computer screen.
If she tried to stay home, though, her sisters would drag her bodily from her room, and experience had taught her that Amy went for the hair, the bitch. Sighing as though the world was ending, which the stone in her gut told her it was, she shuffled across her room to her tiny closet.
She hoped that Ford would be okay with ripped jeans and a T-shirt, because that was all that she owned.
“Aah!” Opening her closet, she ducked when something flew through the air. Batting at her head as though something might be nestled in her hair, she exhaled on a laugh when she realized that the flying object had been something swooshing on a hanger—a dress. No wonder she hadn’t expected it.
A dress. What the hell?
Scowling, she unhooked the hanger from her closet door. A note fluttered to the floor as she did.
Jo,
No, you can’t wear jeans to the open house. Wear this instead.
Meg
(PS: Matching shoes are under your bed.)
“Shit.” Jo groaned out loud. She did not wear dresses. In fact, she mostly wore men’s clothing. She was used to people wondering if she was a lesbian—the way she dressed, the way she carried herself, the lack of any long-term relationship seemed to invite the question. She’d even wondered herself for a while if the lack of sexual interest she’d had in men since Theo was because she wasn’t attracted to them as a species.
One female fling later and she’d discovered that that wasn’t right, either. She was who she was—not a lesbian, not a boy trapped in a girl body. She was just Jo, and she was far happier when she dressed how she wanted, behaved how she wanted, dated—or didn’t—who she wanted.
She thought her sisters understood that, and she felt her infamous temper rise as she examined the offensive garment.
The fabric was actually quite nice—some kind of heavy, silky stuff, none of that wispy, flirty fabric that always made her feel like she was half naked. The top part had a halter neck, which she liked, and though the back dipped lower than she was comfortable with, she actually quite liked the fact that the tattoo on her back—a stunning phoenix inked by her sister Amy—would be shown off.
That left the skirt part, which she didn’t think she could get past—except that when she examined it, it wasn’t a skirt at all, but rather shorts. Meg had gotten her what she supposed would be called a romper, and the relief was like chugging icy lemonade on a scorching-hot day.
A quick glance under the bed showed that her older sister had had enough sense not to get her high heels, either—the shoes Meg had chosen were flat, gladiator-type sandals, with straps that wound up her calves. She could deal with that.
After slithering into the simple garment and struggling with but ultimately conquering the shoes, she looked in the mirror and thought that maybe, this time, Meg had known what she was talking about. Jo didn’t feel like she was playing dress-up, she was fairly comfortable and she wasn’t wearing jeans—everybody won.
Flicking a glance at the time on her phone, she saw that she only had five minutes to get across the grounds to the hotel. With any luck, her sisters had already left, and no one would try to attack her with lipstick or a hair straightener.
“Slayyyyy.” Giving one last look in the mirror, she tried out the word that Amy used whenever she was trying to tell someone that they were looking hot. She placed a hand on her hip and tried out a seductive, come-hither expression before bursting out laughing.
Ironic for someone with a blog called Jojo Kink, she thought as she clattered down the stairs and out the front door, that its owner wasn’t the least bit, and had never been, sexy.
CHAPTER SIX
“IT’S JUST LIP GLOSS,” Meg insisted as she aimed the wand from a glossy tube of red goop at Jo’s face.
“I don’t want it!” Ducking, Jo tried to avoid the lip gloss, and Meg missed, swabbing Jo’s cheek instead.
“Now look what you did,” Meg sighed as Jo scowled. Leaning in, she rubbed at the red stuff on Jo’s cheek and then, lightning quick, swabbed a matching stripe on the other cheek. “There. It’ll work as blush. Now you at least look like you’ve seen the sun sometime in the last decade.”
“For fuck’s sake, Meg.” Holding up her hands to fend off another attack, Jo took a giant step back, putting space between herself and her fashion-loving older sister. “I’m wearing the outfit. Isn’t that enough?”
“The blush looks good,” Meg continued as if she hadn’t heard Jo speak, “but you’d look even better if you’d just let me comb your hair.”
“Don’t touch it,” Jo warned, backing up yet again. She’d kept her formerly long, chestnut waves in a sleek bob since she’d hit her twenties, the only reason being that, in her opinion, she never needed to do anything to it—it always looked the same. “Seriously, Meg. The energy it takes me to fend you off is the energy I should be using to smile at strangers without baring my teeth.”
“Fine,” her sister huffed, turning her attention to her own reflection. As usual, she looked like an Instagram post—something Jo knew she could never achieve, even if the thought of spending several hours on her hair and makeup didn’t make her want to stab herself in the eye.
“You look good enough for both of us,” Jo insisted, herding her sister to the door of the funky little bathroom in the lobby of the hotel. There was a fireplace and a lounge chair inside the room, which puzzled her—why would anyone want to hang out in the bathroom?—but she supposed that Ford knew what he was doing. Actually, maybe she’d sit in that chair and hide here for the rest of the evening...
Before the door closed behind Meg, though, she turned and grabbed Jo’s hand, tugging her back into the lobby. Snagging a fresh glass of sparkling wine from a passing waiter in what looked like a vintage tux, she pressed
it into Jo’s hand, then gestured around the room.
“Chug that, then go mingle,” she ordered, straightening her sequined, spaghetti-strapped sheath. “Ford said we had to. You don’t want to disappoint Beth.”
Damn it. Meg knew that Beth was Jo’s kryptonite—the sister she’d always been closest to, the sister she still was terrified of losing if her illness came back.
Yeah, she’d do anything for Beth—even mingle.
Pasting what she suspected was a terrifying smile on her face, she shuffled a few awkward steps farther into the room. Chugging down her sparkling wine so fast that it burned, she grabbed a second glass as a prop while she stood awkwardly, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“You look like you could use some company.” Jo looked up as a man sidled up next to her. He smiled, revealing toothpaste-commercial teeth, and she cocked her head, taking him in.
He was good-looking, she supposed. Objectively, he was tall and well built, with the kind of body that wore a suit well. His features were distinct, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. He even had a dimple in his chin.
“Are you all right?” His blinding smile faltered, and she realized that she’d left the silence run on too long as she studied him. She had a bad habit of doing this, losing track of the conversation as she scrutinized a potential partner, wondering what the hell was wrong with her when she inevitably wasn’t interested.
Again.
“I’m fine, thank you.” She smiled politely, sipping at her wine. “Why are you here?”
Her potential suitor blinked, and Jo winced. Man, she sucked at small talk. “What I mean is, what brings you to this event?” There. That sounded fancy enough.
“I’m one of Ford’s friends from back home.” He sipped his own wine, looking at her over the edge. “I’m barking up the wrong tree here, aren’t I?”
Between the Lines Page 4
