Scissor Link by Georgette Kaplan (good books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

might be able to catch the subway, which is a great relief. Don’t you find it hard to unwind when you leave unfinished business at the office?”

This time, Wendy didn’t answer. The capacity for speech had deserted her. All she could think of was the sensation of afterglow in her groin—the wet, leaden warmth of the voluptuous pleasure she’d felt. Janet had done that. Without even touching her. Without taking off a single item of clothing.

Janet looked Wendy over, looking faintly embarrassed by the state she’d reduced her to. Then she shrugged and moved for the door. “I think I’ll give you a raise,” she said in passing.

Wendy grabbed her arm.

Janet looked at her as usual. Warningly. Chidingly. Challengingly. “Miss Cedar—”

“Wendy,” she corrected, and kissed Janet as hard as she could.

Well, that was her tongue down Janet’s throat.

Wendy had forgotten for a moment. Because it was a good kiss. A really, really good kiss. Janet’s mouth just fit to hers, lips moving in sudden harmony, moving against hers, under hers, her tongue pushing against Wendy’s in a way seemingly designed to elicit the outright pornographic moan that Wendy felt rise up in her throat. So for a good twenty seconds, Wendy’s mind was blank and all she could think was:

A. she was kissing the fuck out of someone, and

B. they were kissing the fuck out of her right back.

Then she stopped and oh God, oh God, she was kissing Janet. Her boss Janet. Another woman Janet. Boss-lady Janet. Janet Lace.

Her

Fucking

Boss.

Wendy pulled away, seeing the exact same storm of indecision on Janet’s face that must’ve been on her own. Almost confusion over what had happened, the sudden passion that had seized them. The fact of how pleasurable it had been, how heated it had been, and the fact of who it had been with, and how, and why.

She’d kissed her fucking boss and her fucking boss had liked it.

Just in Wendy’s opinion.

Because just like that, Janet snapped shut again, her face blank except for the slightest pursing of her lips, reddened as they were by a trace of Wendy’s lipstick. Wendy’s eyes were drawn to it; Janet seemed to be on the verge of sucking on her lower lip, maybe? But she restrained herself.

Janet’s teeth showed a sharp, ivory white as she spoke. “I think you should go.”

Wendy said, in a voice about as small as it could get without consciously being a whisper, “Oh.”

She felt numb, and a strong sense of curiosity at her own numbness. She really hadn’t known her own heart could just flatline like that. She wasn’t in high school anymore. She didn’t crush on people that hard. Only apparently she had been crushing on Janet exactly that hard, and apparently she’d actually hoped there could be something there on second ten of the twenty-second kiss, thinking this could be a heavily censored story for the grandkids one day. And then…nope. Flat-out denial, everything burnt to cinders in a second. She felt like gagging on sobs, vomiting as she cried, but, dead-faced, she turned around and went for the door.

Jesus. Her fucking boss.

Wendy didn’t bother going back to her desk. She went straight to the elevator. She was probably fired, and if she was operating on more than a fifth-grade reading level, she might’ve thought to collect some things from her desk. No, no, not under Janet’s watchful eye; tail between her legs, gathering up her things like she was looting a corpse. She didn’t care if it took ten hours, she’d wait for Janet to leave, then get her things. The security guards all liked her, they’d let her in for a few minutes, believe her when she said she wouldn’t drop a deuce on anything. Right now, she just had to go. Just go. See if there was anywhere she could scream her lungs out without getting the police called.

She was walking through the lobby with vague plans of ducking into an alley, crying her eyes out, and maybe getting stabbed by a mugger for good measure, when suddenly Elizabeth was in front of her. She held a box.

“Janet wanted me to give you this,” she said. “You really thought we were dating?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Wendy replied, stiffly taking the box as Elizabeth passed it to her. Her severance papers, probably. Hell, maybe all of her personal stuff. Janet wouldn’t even let her sulk back to box it up herself. Maybe she’d had it cleaned out while they were talking. Maybe she was some kind of psycho who got off on humiliating her employees before she fired them. Maybe you shouldn’t have kissed your fucking boss, Wendy.

“Hey,” Elizabeth said, suddenly sounding as concerned as a well-paid psychologist. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Go, go, get out of here. Mistress Janet probably wants a latte.”

“All right,” Elizabeth agreed, looking like she’d much rather soothe and comfort Wendy by any means necessary. On any other day, Wendy would’ve loved that. “Call me if you need anything?”

“Yeah.” Wendy would not sniffle. She would not. “Of course.”

With a nod and a final sympathetic look, Elizabeth headed back.

It occurred to Wendy that she’d just seen Elizabeth for the last time. She’d just seen everyone for the last time.

She couldn’t think about that. The box in her hands was solid, one of those Amazon jobs, a block of cardboard taped shut at the top. Wendy got out her keys and dragged them along the taped opening, and was jostling her keys back into her pocket when her phone rang.

Like another ball had just been added to her juggling act, Wendy mixed up tucking the box under her arm and switching the keys for her phone, finally stopping to put her keys firmly in her pocket (the phone maddeningly, insistently ringing) and then drawing the phone out. She answered it in a huff. “What?”

“Don’t open the box here,” Janet said.

Wendy looked around. On the second floor, overlooking the first floor lobby, Janet was leaning on the