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

to fall in love with her, to not have to be gay so much as dating another woman. On her own, there was this worry, incomprehensible to her younger peers, that she’d go from her to one of them, a dyke, a lesbian—someone who now had to meet criteria and follow a code of conduct. But she was still her, no different. She felt more herself in a way, but she thought that was just Wendy. Someone else wouldn’t have done, male or female. There was something especially pleasing about her that Janet couldn’t define, but that she was very much looking forward to finding.

She was a woman who fucked other women, in the presence of women who fucked women. If it didn’t feel quite right, it also didn’t feel odd, strange. It was relaxing, in its own way. To sit and sip her whiskey and be in the room where other women were kissing, dancing—falling in love.

“How about we put that on my tab, darlin’?” a woman said, and Janet looked up to see her—tall and well-built, with an intriguingly symmetrical face—standing over her. So that’s the level I’m operating at. Not bad.

“No thanks,” Janet replied, and the words tasted sweet. “I’m seeing someone.”

CHAPTER 8

Wendy was at work and not working. Not at the moment, at any rate. Her phone was on her desk and she kept looking at it like it was the prop in a magic trick. She had pictures of Janet naked on it. It was crazy. It was insane. Playboy didn’t even do nudity anymore. She had more nudity than Playboy, on her phone, and it was of her boss. She could look at it anytime. Right this second. Or this second. Or this second.

“Got a second, Ms. Cedar?” Janet asked her, head in the door.

Wendy resisted the urge to snap up her phone and hide it. It wasn’t even powered on. “Sure. Come on in.”

Janet closed the door to the partition behind her and Wendy felt her pulse race. Just being in the room with Janet—and with Janet’s nipple, which she’d seen—was suddenly something intoxicating.

“There’s a war games event coming up at the proving grounds in Yuma. DARPA will be showing off all their latest toys, basically a sales demo where they’ll decide what to order and how much.” She came around Wendy’s desk and laid out a brochure over her keyboard. Several, in fact. There was one for a modest hotel, another for the event itself. “Frederickson’s going, he’s asked me to put my best people on a sales pitch he can deliver. I’d like you to familiarize yourself with the exhibition and prepare the necessary stats. How our bird compares to this and that. It’s not a very glamorous piece of work, but it could help our contract.”

Janet was leaning on Wendy’s desk, over her, and her blouse was not as tight as it usually was. Wendy could see not just her cleavage, but how it curved inward. God, how had she ever not stared at that? Well, she had, but surreptitiously. The way she was trying to now. “I’ll get right on it,” Wendy promised.

“Just so you know, Ms. Cedar, this assignment has nothing to do with last night. Your performance has been exemplary, regardless of any interpersonal interactions.”

“And I do love performing for you,” Wendy replied, while her brain inwardly went WHAT?

Janet smiled fitfully. “Not to discuss events outside the office which hold no bearing on our work—”

“Perish the thought.”

“—but do you have any…notes?”

“Notes?”

Janet flicked her fingers against one of the brochures. “Whoever designed this pamphlet received notes,” she reasoned.

“Last night wasn’t a pamphlet.”

“Then no…issues? Not even ones you in particular might have, but more what a reasonable adult might have?”

“No issues,” Wendy said, smiling reassuringly. “Very much no issues.”

“Good.” Janet made a face that expressed an attempt to laugh it off without coming anywhere near laughing. “I’m sure sometimes the brochure designer gets it right on the first try too.”

“One thing?”

“Yes?” Janet asked, a flicker of doubt crossing her face.

“Being called Ms. Cedar is nice and all, but my name is Wendy. And yours is Janet, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“You’re quite right. It is Janet. Janet Pauline.”

Wendy grunted a little. “Huh. Really.”

“Please don’t take a page from Ms. Smile’s book and start calling me Jan.”

A heavy footfall outside the door jerked Janet’s face up, and they both watched as a blurry business suit passed alongside the pebbled Lexan.

Janet straightened, her voice chilling from the husky register it’d fallen into. “On another note, please delete the files I sent you last night, for security reasons. Any further reference to them that you need, I can provide personally.”

“I will do that,” said Wendy, who would not do that. “Anything else?”

“One small question.” Janet straightened, ready to head for the door. “Did you wash your hands after you fingered yourself? Because I didn’t.”

Wendy blinked. As a self-defense mechanism, her brain struggled for something other than the mental picture she had just gotten. “So you masturbated this morning, right? It’s not like you haven’t bathed or washed your hands since last night? Because…because you had to have eaten breakfast…”

Janet put a finger to her lips. “Sh.”

“What’s the best moment in your life?”

Wendy puffed air into her cheeks and blew it out slowly. She was at Wednesday dinner with her sister, and with her brother-in-law and nephew at the table, she was in no mood to complicate the digestion of a perfectly good pork roast with figuring out the answer to that.

“What’re yours?” she replied.

“Birth of my child,” Regan ventured.

“Marrying the love of my life,” Keith said.

“Can you have the same one?” Wendy asked, handing Mac what was left of her roast. He proved to have a great future career as a human garbage disposal.

“Well, if we can’t have the same one,” Regan said, “I should get the marriage, because I wore a pretty dress, and Keith, you should get childbirth, because,” she lowered her voice drastically past