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

Kirkwood lab. That’s test one. Test two should take place maybe an hour later. A few hours at the most, because they go to lunch, someone pulls a fire alarm, what have you. It doesn’t, the code’s completely different. All of them are like that.”

“So? Kirkwood ran one test for the RadarVoid program, then some different tests, then they came back to it.”

“For all of them? Or are we just looking at the most successful ten tests out of fifty? Out of a hundred? Out of two hundred?”

“C’mon, we don’t do that.”

“We don’t?”

“No. Savin Aerospace has a reputation to uphold, we don’t cook the books like that.”

“You said it yourself. Everyone cooks the books.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“I didn’t get this far by being something else.”

Janet’s phone rattled. She took in a sharp hiss of breath before she answered it. “Roberta, hello…”

They were still going at it hammer and tongs when the MP dropped them off at the hotel. Wendy made it through the lobby before watching Janet’s reverse-massage wrack her body up into knots became too much for her. “I’ll take the stairs,” she said, and left Janet in the elevator not even noticing her.

Ten flights of stairs later, she was keenly aware of the difference between her fatigue last night, when Janet had wrung her out just enough to be comfortably exhausted, and just hating her legs. Sore, and really regretting going with kitten heels that morning, she went down the hallway and heard Janet shouting right through the walls.

“It was a trial separation, Roberta, a trial separation! Not a hall pass to go fuck your way through the nearest sorority!”

Wendy let herself into the room. Might as well have been invisible. She went to get herself a glass of water.

“You thought I’d be okay with it, fuck you, you thought I’d be okay with it, if I was okay with it, I would’ve told you to take a weekend in Ibiza and be done with it!”

No ice. Wendy picked up the bucket, went around to the ice machine—conveniently right next to their Shriner-free room—filled it, came back, added ice water, took a drink, sat down.

Better. Much better.

“If you want to run off and play trial lawyer, fine, but you can do it on your own dime! You are not getting one red cent for abandoning me, it is my money, I earned it, and I would rather burn it than let you use it as your goddamn safety net. Have some fucking balls and live in a studio apartment like the twenty-year-old you so desperately, obviously want to be!”

Wendy had not known a cell phone could be slammed. But she guessed if you pressed the disconnect button hard enough… She slipped off her shoes and stood up, groaning, wondering if she could talk Janet into taking a bath together. Flying for half a day, hours in taxis and Humvees, sleeping on an unfamiliar bed…they deserved a hot tub, something.

“Janet?” Wendy called, stepping out onto the balcony with her. Stupid of her—she should’ve thought to pack massage oil, have something on hand to rub Janet down with when the tension got to her. Good move for a girlfriend to have. “Is everything all right?”

Janet wheeled on her and was kissing her so abruptly it was like Wendy had just breathed her in. Wendy stumbled back into the hotel room, practically carried by Janet, and suddenly felt Janet’s hand sliding down her pants, stroking at the neatly trimmed hair between her legs, and Wendy didn’t know how girls could stand to be bare down there when it was so much better to have something for your lover to run their fingers through, something to tug on.

But Janet wasn’t just touching her, Janet was scraping at her, making Wendy tense, making her close her thighs instinctively, trap Janet’s hands, because while there was a hint of moisture inside her, there was not much, not enough, and if Janet tried to enter her it would hurt.

Wendy expected Janet to realize this, having Wendy’s thighs squeezing her hand still, but Janet forced her hand farther, kissed Wendy even harder. It wasn’t overwhelming, it was noxious—the warmth of Janet was too hot, the scent of her stung Wendy’s nostrils, everything was too fast and too much and not enough Janet.

“Open your legs,” Janet hissed. Her voice rose with frustration. “Open your fucking legs, I’m not going to tell you again, this is what you wanted, this is what you like!”

“Watchword,” Wendy said, shocked at how weak her voice sounded, how her eyes stung, and she felt itchy and sweaty all over, not how it’d been before but like she was being touched by someone else, a stranger. “Watchword, Janet, watchword—”

Janet took her hand away. She stopped kissing Wendy. And after a moment, she took a step back, letting the air rush back into Wendy’s personal space, and Wendy realized just how hard it’d been to breathe. It’d only been half a minute, but she still gasped in air.

“What’s wrong?” Janet asked. She was forcing calm, regulating herself, and it gratified Wendy to read not a trace of her aggravation, not anymore. It was replaced by concern, and if that still chafed at Janet’s fraught temperament, it was at least not directed at Wendy.

“I don’t mind a little kink,” Wendy said, “but at least one of us should enjoy it.”

“I thought you would like that,” Janet insisted. “That you liked it like that.”

“Well, I don’t.” Wendy sighed and went to the bed, slumping onto the mattress before her feet could get in on the act as well. “It’s not your fault. Last night—last night was great. That was just too much, you know? And it felt like you weren’t even thinking of me. You were just…”

“Roberta,” Janet said. She sounded gratifyingly guilty. “I’m in control and I’m me and then she calls me and…seems like the first time either of us has cared in years.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I think