Scissor Link Georgette Kaplan (best self help books to read .TXT) 📖

was perfectly audible. Wendy raised her voice. “‘I open the door. Or I try to, because just as I’m reaching it, it flies open, and who should be coming out but Elizabeth, bare-ass naked. Thank you, subconscious.’” Wendy deliberately met Janet’s eyes to dryly enunciate “‘Smiley face.’”

Janet offered her a thin smile as she paused the recording. Then pressed her intercom button. “Elizabeth, would you join us for a moment?”

“Yeah, boss,” Elizabeth replied, and Wendy’s heart skipped a beat.

Goddamn, but Janet knew every trick in the book. That confidence was part of what made her so appealing,but it was a bitch to have it turned on you. As hot—Wendy meant to think ‘empowering,’ she immediately corrected herself—as it was to see Janet demolish some jackass who doubted her credentials or criticized her because of her personal life rather than her work—and as fun as it was to imagine what else Janet might be a master of—at the moment, Wendy wished Janet was at least a little bit human, feeling at least a little bit of the vulnerability she felt.

Elizabeth came in, still looking like she and Janet were role-playing some sort of Mad Men sex scene.

Janet greeted her with a warm smile, in marked contrast to the decidedly more pinched one she had given Wendy. At the moment, Wendy would’ve given anything to be on Janet’s grin list.

“Wendy here,” Janet said, “is under the impression that we’re lovers.”

“I didn’t say that,” Wendy said quickly.

“You implied it.”

“I did not!”

Janet rewound the camcorder. Played the last few seconds. The audio quality was excellent. Wendy had bought a digital camera and somehow it only managed pictures in sepia tones. Of course Janet would practically have her own Q Branch in comparison.

“I think that’s a very clear implication,” Janet said, while Wendy looked around for a fire extinguisher that could handle her burning cheeks. “Now, Elizabeth,” Janet continued, “are we dating?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you single?”

“No. There’s this chick in security, she’s great, tightest ass you’ve ever seen—”

“Katie?” Wendy guessed, and Elizabeth nodded enthusiastically.

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Janet said with a note of finality. “And am I single?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thanks. That will be all.”

Dismissed, Elizabeth turned on her heel and left the room. She closed the door behind her.

“You may resume,” Janet said, pressing the record button again.

Wendy gave her a fixed look, barely glancing at the paper. She remembered the dream all too clearly. “‘I go into the office and there Janet is. Behind her desk.’”

Wendy paused, noting Janet’s current position with dark irony. As if in response—and there was definitely a wan acknowledgment in how Janet’s eyebrows jostled curiously—Janet got up from her perch, came around her desk, and now leaned against it, facing Wendy. She looked even more unbelievable in full, her pencil skirt gracing her legs like dark leaves after a brisk spring rain, her white silk blouse tight to her body. It’d fallen lower with her motion, the unbuttoned portion gaping wide over the beginnings of the black lace camisole underneath.

Wendy felt absurdly tempted by that glimpse, like Janet had set out bait for her and was ready to spring a trap when she went for it. There was the slightest of upticks at the corner of Janet’s mouth; a smirking smile waiting to be born when Wendy accepted the challenge. Wendy didn’t know if she should ignore it or… There was no way Janet wanted her to make a move, was there?

Of course not. Absolutely not. She was just trying to fluster Wendy and Wendy had to be unflusterable. Or, you know, an actual word.

Damn, Janet’s necklace… Wendy would give a lot to spend five minutes as that necklace. Be close to that cleavage and be wrapped around Janet’s throat? Wasn’t that the American Dream?

“‘She starts riding me—’” Here Wendy paused, giving Janet her own impish look. She might not’ve been able to keep a relationship going for so much as three dates, but she could sure as hell get one started, and looks like the one she gave Janet were a big reason why. In terms of eye-fucking, her dick was bomb.

“‘As usual,’” Wendy continued, gratified to see Janet blink a few times. “‘I don’t know what it is—no one likes getting read the riot act. But when Janet does it, it’s like I’m a teenager again. My palms are sweaty and my throat is dry and my knees are weak. All that…’”

Wendy paused again, unconsciously this time. Christ, this really was embarrassing. Was Janet really doing it for some sort of ego trip or was she trying to cover her ass against some sort of lawsuit?

“‘All that intelligence and intensity focused on me, even castigating me, it’s intoxicating. I almost want her to make me cry. Slap me. Hug me and tell me she knows I’m doing my best. I don’t even know. All I know is, in the dream I don’t have to know. I don’t have to worry about doing the right thing, because Janet takes control. She tells me I’ve been slacking off, being inefficient, the usual—and that if I’m not getting paid to work, maybe I should be doing something else…’”

Wendy’s voice trailed off. Her eyes had been locked on the page, going over the crisp black letters. There was not a single dot of blotted ink. Janet’s printer had put it all down perfectly, making it look realer than real. On her computer, the words had been minutely distorted by her old monitor with its lightly-smeared screen, but on paper, they might as well have been carved in stone.

She couldn’t bear to look up, to see Janet waiting expectantly. Her hands gripping the edge of her desk. Those long fingers curling into the darkness underneath…

“Is this what you want?” Wendy asked in a low voice, wondering if Janet would call the whole thing off, say it was all a prank, that she just wanted to know how far Wendy would go before sniffing bullshit.

But Janet stared back at her. Her blouse seemed to have lost