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Written In Stone _By Sliver Jade

Jaxin Briggs— with her dimples, her pretty honey colored eyes, long and wavy hair and boyish style— preferred the shadows. Her golden pen and ability to describe a woman in the most sexiest and heart-throbbing ways wouldn’t allow her to stay hidden away from the world for long. Her writings piqued interests and moistened panties. As soon as her blogs were updated, they received hits that only one could imagine. Her inbox was full of young potentials who wanted to know her sex, her race, her particular preference of any woman. Yet, her eyes were set on young Phoenix— the enchantress that forced Jaxin to raise her pen and peck her keys to begin with.

With a job opportunity on the line, Jaxin was able to live her deepest fantasies before leaving, but at what cost? Phoenix, with her own issues, doesn’t have a choice but to slip her hand inside her bottoms and only think of the stallion that came her way and left Florida behind. After four years, a proper steamy welcome home is supposed to be in order, but the pair get more than what they bargained for when the fickle walls of their reality come crashing down around them, having Jaxin to regret her choice to leave, and having Phoenix to question everything about their situation.

TAKE A PEEK INSIDE!

CHAPTER ONE
“The Prey…”

JAX

She sits there so pristine as if kept by God himself. The natural glow of her skin can’t and won’t be matched by cosmetics. If there were one wish on any dying man’s breath, it would be to kiss her sweet lips or to taste her poisonous nectar before they left their earthly vessel. Calling her name should be a sin. Only those truly worthy should have the advantage— nay, privilege— of singing such a perfect pitch…

 I tapped my pen on the edge of my composition notebook when having such a sudden brain-freeze. All of the words that I could pen so poetically about this one girl was so omnipotent at the moment. It wasn’t like I wasn’t capable of describing her. I could see her vividly with her head tilted to the side, most likely checking her texts underneath her desk to keep a low profile in Mr. Anderson’s room. Had he discovered such a forbidden device, he would’ve snatched it and read whatever was on it aloud. Embarrassed? She wouldn’t have been. She had the most confidence that I had ever seen. That was it! 

Poised with so much confidence, she kills with a switch in her hips. She easily snatches souls from the bodies of men with a curl of her thick lips that she keeps glossed and lined with black and red. The figure of a goddess or an inanimate object such as a soda bottle is not in comparison to how well she’s built. She has the power to make any young fool who boasts and prides himself on having multiple women, cower at her feet with a touch of her coffin-style nails.


“Briggs! Front office!”


I completed my sentence before I took my eyes up to Mr. Anderson at the front of the room. Everyone was staring at me. It would’ve been easier not to suffer the pain from the daggers and wondrous looks they were giving me, had I not pushed my square-framed specs up on the bridge of my nose. Instantly, my prescribed lenses told me to fuck myself and the fact that I wished to be invisible. If I wasn’t flesh for the last seven years that I lived in this town, then I most definitely wasn't at this moment.

To prove my theory, Mr. Anderson squinted and pointed at me in the back of the class, in the corner of the room. “You? You’re Briggs?”

To save myself from any more embarrassment, I snatched up my satchel and bolted out of the backdoor. Had I been in trouble? Not a chance in hell. I didn’t do anything besides study, write in my notebook, and update my blog nightly. Often I took photos and made them into cinematic black and white portraits, then placed them on my website just for the hell of it. Since moving to Jacksonville, Florida, I had completed thirty novels in seven years, which isn’t particularly easy when factoring in homework, hobbies, and spirals full of my work that had to be typed in between all of that. Friends? None. I believed in three things. That was keeping out of people’s way, minding my business, and keeping a fresh pack of ink pens. You never know when inspiration is going to be sparked. I wasn’t seen. I wasn’t known. I liked it that way. Point proven when a teacher you’ve had since Freshman year doesn’t even remember who you are. I was literally the only student in Junior High and High School to decline the esteemed entrance of Honors’ Society. It was because I didn’t want to go through with the ceremony. They sent me an official certificate and letter in the mail anyway. I didn’t have social anxiety. I had a problem with attention.

As soon as I entered the front office, Ms. Gates sat there with her butterfly wing tip specs hanging close to the edge of her nose. I could tell from the reflection of her lenses that she was trying to surf Facebook on her free time. Still, I tapped the bell on the front desk to get her attention. This woman was a mean one. I had duties in this office last year for a class period, and I gagged every time I took a peek at her unsightly hairy mole on the corner of her pointed chin. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how she looked like a sleepy bulldog yet, she was as mean as an untrained pit bull.


“Yes?” she asked rudely with a raspy voice that let you know how many cigarettes that she smoked in her lifetime to lose the majority of her vocal functions.

I adjusted the strap of my satchel over the shoulder of my hoodie. “I’m… I’m Briggs?”

“Well, is you or ain’t you? You ain’t supposed to question yourself, son.”

If only that statement could’ve been a comment on my blog, I would’ve copied it, pasted it, and edited it for her. No wonder she was in her late sixties, still working for a school district that had yet to give her some recognition. With the use of her glasses, she paid no mind to the fact that I was, in fact, a girl. Maybe it was my hoodie that hid my assets well and gave her the impression otherwise. Either way, this elderly woman was a very poor service advocate.

“Yes, ma’am,” I opted to say among the other many intelligent verbal lashings I could’ve given her. “I am Briggs.”

Just speaking it into existence almost scared the hell out of me. It was the first time I had admitted who I was. Little did I know, it wouldn’t be the last.

She leaned over onto the conference phone that was stationed so perfectly on the edge of her desk, collecting dust, and called for the principle. When she hung up, she nodded in the direction of the office door at her left.

I gulped as I made my way there. Hopefully, I wouldn’t receive detention for being a nobody.

To my surprise, a man in a black suit sat there. The first thought I had was that he worked for the government. Still, why would an official visit me? The closer I had gotten, the more I recognized him as one of my idols. But why would he come to see me?

“You?” he asked me. “You’re Jaxin Briggs? Ha! I thought you would be a boy with that name.”

“Come and sit down, Jaxin,” Principal Morris told me with his hand stretched out to the extra seat in front of his desk. He resembled someone of low class in the presence of the man who looked like he had just stepped off the set of a GQ magazine shoot. “Mr. Garret here has some very interesting news here.”

“G-Garrett?” I stammered as I inched further inside the office. I knew this man looked kind of familiar to me, but my principal had just given me confirmation that my idol was there in the flesh to visit. “As in Loc Garrett? The writer for XXL Magazine?”

He spread his arms as if to put on a façade, as to be humble over his status. “I’m the one and only. It looks like I’m not the only incredible writer here. I’ve seen some very great things penned by you, Jax. Uh, you mind if I call you ‘Jax’? All writers have to have a catchy pen name. ‘Jax’ should be yours. It’s sooo… unisex. Now, listen. I’ve gone through a great deal to find out who you are. My daughter reads your blogs religiously. She’s always sharing your stuff on Tumblr and gushing over what you say. At first, I thought you were all hype. That was until I read one of your posts. You chose the right alias to call yourself the Poetik Savage. Even your fiction is beautifully written. You almost gave my fifteen-year-old a heart attack when you posted, umm…" He wildly snapped his fingers to try and remember the title. “Lucious in Love.”

 
“In Love with a Menace,” I corrected him, not sure if it was my time to talk yet since he rambled on with seemingly no punctuation.

“That’s it! That’s it, right there. Now my question to you is… are you ready to go to the next level, Jax? I hired three private investigators and a hacker to track you down. On top of that, I flew from LA to Florida just to sit in your school’s office. I would be very disappointed if you declined my offer.”

“What’s the next level?” I asked skeptically.

“Come and work for us at XXL after graduation.”

“This is a joke, right? The Loc Garrett wants me to come and work for him after I leave school.”

“No joke. Listen.” He pulled at the tight black slacks he was wearing and leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “We’re opening an exclusive, online branch in New York. We’re gathering the hottest bloggers to post critiques, tutorials, and relationship and fashion advice. I selected you for our music and novel critiques. The way you write… I need that. You can be vicious with something and write it so beautifully that artists wouldn’t even understand that they have been ripped to shreds by you. Come on, Jax. What do you say?”

“I think… I’ll speak to my family about it first.”

Loc Garrett gave me his card that day, and it was a day that I would never forget. Specifically, because when I got home, dinner was on the table by four, like it always was. I put my bag down in my room and jogged down the steps into the dining room in nothing but my muscle shirt, camping shorts, and socks. I left my glasses on and took my hair down from the ponytail it was in. As soon as I sat at the table, my uncle Pete just had to say something to me.

He took a pull from his vapor and blew the smoke clear across the table into my face. I acted like it didn’t affect me, but we knew that it had. I just didn’t say anything. He was my mother’s senior by ten years, so she felt that it was her duty to help take care of the fifty-year-old who was diagnosed with liver cancer several years ago. I thought, seven years ago when we moved here just to take him in, that he lied about it. He wasn’t dead yet, and I gritted my teeth at it whenever I thought of it.

“You know you ain't-a boy, right?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to look into his Teflon colored face to answer his question, so I pulled my phone out underneath the table to check my messages on Tumblr. Sometimes it was hard to post every question that I had about my fiction or my nightly dedication, but I did the best I could. I would even do a special birthday dedication poetically if someone asked me to, and that was only out of the kindness of my heart. I just had to be specific in who I chose. They had to be like me. They had to be hardly seen or noticed to get my attention.

“Aye, girl. You know you hear me talkin’ to you.”

I looked up from my phone and tilted my head at him. He just wouldn’t quit until I had a rebuttal that would, in fact, shred him to pieces.

“Do somethin’ to that hair of yours.”

“Now you know you need to quit,” my mama said as she swayed over to the kitchen table to place our plates in front of us. “Jaxin is not a child anymore, Pete. If she rips you one good time, you can’t be mad.”

 
"The problem is that you didn’t make her play with dolls when she was little, Gloria.”

My mama shoved her fists into her sides and cocked a brow at him. “Your son played with enough dolls for the both of them, for two lifetimes. Stop playing yourself and eat your food, you old coot. Jaxin, how was school?”

 
“Got a job offer,” I said, feeling her peck my cheek.

“Oh? And who is this offer from? You know how I feel about you getting a job. You make enough off your royalties from the books you’ve published. That’s what? A good three to four grand a month. You should stick with that.” Finally, my mama brought her plate to the table and sat next to me. “Upload something new and stop giving all your books away. Hell, I’m sure that those little girls on Tumblr will be willing to buy something that they’ve already read by you anyway.”

“The literary industry is very iffy, mama. One day you could be on top, and the next, you could be flat on your face. My salary isn’t guaranteed, so I think I’m going to take this job. I’m just not sure how you feel about it.”

“What is this job? Spit it out.”

“It’s to write for XXL Magazine.”

“Shut up!” she gasped. “When? What about school?”

“We didn’t get into all that just yet. I needed to talk to you before I took another step because I would have to move to New York for it.”

“New York?” she whined. My mother’s golden cheeks had become rosy just then. “But… Jax… that’s in… New York. You really want to go all the way up there?”

“Might as well,” Uncle Pete commented, stuffing his face. “Only freaks and geeks go up north just to fit in.”

I pushed away from the table. “And on that note, Ma, I would say that Uncle Pete is right. I’m a freak and a geek who makes more money in a month than he’s seen in six of them on that five hundred dollars he makes a month from disability. Allow me to go and freak and geek my way up to three times the income I have now. Don’t use so much salt on your mash potatoes, old man. You might do me a favor and die already by running your blood pressure up.”

He dropped his fork with his mouth agape.

“Jax,” my mama called me with a hiss.

“I’ll eat later. I have fans and readers to please. Uncle Pete wouldn’t know what that was like, even if he dreamed it. Hell, he can’t even please his damn self with that arthritis in his wrists. Too bad for him. He’s just mad because I can get a young, hot, taut young woman to do me, and he can’t. But it’ll be alright. At least one of us will be able to keep a wife. Ain’t that right, Uncle Pete?” I threw him a wink before skipping out of the kitchen, holding the crotch of my shorts.

I went back up to my room where I logged on to Tumblr. The new message I had gotten took my breath away and caused my entire existence to crash around my ankles.

“Are you Jaxin Briggs? If so, I have your notebook. If you want to see it again, come to the beach for Senior Skip Day. Meet me near the big rock that looks like it has a huge face carved in it.”

I hurried to empty my bag to try and find my notebook. It was no use. The last thing I remembered was writing in it, getting up to leave, and I didn’t think to stop and put my book back inside my bag. I had even left my pen. I plopped down on my bed, cradling my head in my hands with my wild hair covering my face. How could I have been so fucking stupid? I had never left my books before. This was the worst fucking day of my life. My book could ruin me.

  ***END OF SAMPLE***
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