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

was impossible to feel drowsy with Wendy curled up next to her, sexual and innocent all at once. Janet tried shifting away from her—Roberta had never minded sleeping apart—but as if the thought of her ex-wife turned Janet’s body coarse, Wendy stirred.

“Wha-? What time is it?”

“Not yet noon. Go back to sleep.”

“Sleeping till noon? I’m corrupting you already.”

“We’re on presentation time. Sleep while we can, up and at ‘em four hours before the presentation. We can have a sleep cycle at home.”

“Then I guess it’s all you corrupting me,” Wendy tittered, and drew close to Janet, putting her hand to the rise and fall of Janet’s breasts, her body tucked under Janet’s arm.

Again, Janet tried to force herself to sleep, but again, it was impossible. Too warm, too naked, unfamiliar sheets and unfamiliar skin. “Wendy,” she said. “The sex acts…they were all right, correct?”

“The sex acts?” Janet felt Wendy’s lips curl against her skin. “Oh yeah. Very tolerable. Practically adequate.”

“Because I actually don’t…Roberta and I didn’t…” Janet squeezed her eyes shut and wouldn’t have opened them again, only now Wendy was looking at her. “I do like…being in control,” she said at length. “I mean, obviously. Especially after Roberta left. But we never really tried that. It was just this thing that interested me. And when I saw that e-mail of yours, I thought that’s what you wanted, too.”

“It is. I mean, kinda.” Wendy shrugged. “It was a weird dream, what can I tell you?”

“I’m not some sex goddess, Wendy,” Janet said bluntly. “I’ve done research, I’ve watched—” She saw Wendy’s eyes light up and almost could’ve been amused. “Documentaries, but I haven’t actually done anything like that before. It’s just things I would like to do. Sometimes things I’d like to have done to me. I never know if you’ll like them or not. I can’t promise it’ll always be that way…I got lucky.”

Janet could see Wendy struggle to pass up the pun. “One, you are a sex goddess. And two—” Wendy snatched Janet’s hand up while she was distracted like it was made of a precious mineral “—you being a sex goddess is not why I’m interested in you.”

“It’s not?”

“I’m interested in you because you gave me a job when anyone else would’ve buried me on the off-chance it would make them look good. And because you’re smart and a really good boss—absolutely the kind of person I want to be in twenty years, divorced and childless or not…and you’re beautiful, that helps, you are just…Roberta’s an idiot.”

“Well, she managed to snag a woman who’s younger than you are and teaches yoga, so…”

Wendy gave Janet’s hand a squeeze. “She’s an idiot.”

Janet nodded. Wendy was holding on to her hand—she didn’t have to. She couldn’t think of anything to do with it but pull it to her chest and not let go, but she hoped that would be enough for Wendy. “I really thought…with the vibrator, that that’s what you would like. I mean, women these days, you have so much more experience, you go to rainbow parties…”

“Me? Experience? What’s a rainbow party?”

“You know, you…people in high school, they put on different color lipsticks and they take turns…well, you know what every single Van Halen song was about?”

“Yeah, they taught us all about it in preschool.”

“Well, that happens, and so at the end, there’s a rainbow—”

“That’s disgusting. And no, no way anyone has ever done that. If anyone ever tells you that young people are having kinkier sex than you had when you were their age, it’s someone trying to sell papers. Or blogs, whatever it is these days.”

“Really?”

Wendy pulled herself up onto Janet by way of her grip on Janet’s hand, straddling her waist and hugging her torso. “Trust me, Janet, I’ve been in, like, two actual relationships and one of them was being catfished. I go to gay clubs and I stare at girls and I wait for someone to make the first move and I spend way too much on overpriced drinks. I give a subsidiary to the alcohol industry every time I try to get laid. So you don’t know about this stuff because you’ve been married for the last fifteen years or whatever? I don’t know about this stuff because I’m a weirdo loner with a massive crush on her boss. But if you want to figure it out, we’re two reasonably smart people. I think we can figure it out.”

Janet smiled. “And you really wouldn’t mind maybe a little of the e-mail stuff? If it wasn’t all the spirits talking?”

Wendy petted Janet’s hand. “I went as Ella Enchanted for Halloween last year. But maybe we could also just cuddle on a couch and watch Game of Thrones? Because honestly, I fantasize about that a little more than collars.”

“Game of Thrones?” Janet looked down at her hand and liked the look of it in Wendy’s. “I can work with that. Wendy.”

“Good, because I’m eighty percent sure that Yara and Daenerys are gonna bang. In fact…” Wendy undulated her body just enough for it to rub against Janet’s. “I kinda have some thoughts how that would go.”

“Wendy,” Janet took her shoulders and rolled her on to the other side of the bed. “I’m rather used to sleeping alone, at this point. Do you think you could stay on your side of the bed? I promise I’ll try to get used to sleeping as a matched pair again, but for now, with the presentation, my rest?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said, sounding so certain that she couldn’t possibly be. “No problem. We’re in the same bed, at least. That’s way better than I thought I’d do.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Janet said, and with only the cool blanket for company, she was asleep as soon as her eyes closed.

CHAPTER 10

All that was missing was a haze of cigar smoke.

The bunker at the Yuma Proving Grounds was lushly furnished, for a room built to withstand the hit of a stray shelling or crashing plane. Rich carpet covered