But Janet stared back at her. Her blouse seemed to have lost another button. Wendy could see more of the curves of her breasts, the darkness inside her half-closed blouse, where the lace camisole tattooed her bare body. Just one brushing touch to make that unbuttoned blouse fall open, to see Janet’s plunging cleavage in more detail than ever before—to know if that look in her eyes was desire or disdain.
“Keep going,” Janet said, her voice husky. Almost hoarse.
Wendy didn’t look at the paper again. “‘Her legs are crossed, but when she uncrosses them, I can see into her skirt. She’s not wearing any panties. Her cunt is beautiful.’” The word, crude and overwhelming, sounded bizarrely loud in the office. Like someone could overhear.
Janet shifted her legs. Her skirt moved a scant half-inch up her thigh.
Wendy could see smooth skin, firm muscle; tense muscle. She looked back up into Janet’s eyes. It was getting hard to look away from them for too long.
“‘I start to go to her. She says no: I’m her employee. She’s the boss. I should show my…’” Wendy had to swallow “‘…my respect. I get down on my knees. Then I put my hands on the floor. I swear, I could feel every fiber of the carpet. Like I was really touching it. And, on all fours, I cross the office, convinced I wasn’t dreaming, feeling the carpet under my knees and my hands and feeling Janet look at me like she’s looking through me into that hot pit in my stomach, just like when I’m at work and I catch her staring at me from across the room. I crawl underneath her desk.”
Wendy was acutely aware of her breathing. Every breath granting her a reprieve from having to read this, and frustratingly putting more distance between seeing what Janet’s reaction would be.
“‘I kiss her knee and she spreads her legs and I can smell her, really smell her, you know how long it’s been since I’ve smelled a woman there? And I could’ve sworn that was how Janet’s cunt would smell, I woke up almost wanting to sniff her panties so I could know for…for…’”
“For sure?” Janet ventured. Her hands weren’t on the desk anymore. They were delicately poised on the hem of her skirt, thumb and forefinger alone, skimming its length up her knees, up her thighs…
“For sure,” Wendy confirmed numbly. This wasn’t some game. Janet was way too dignified to be so brazen for a joke. This was actually—she was actually propositioning her. Her gaze fled from Janet, like she’d been staring into the sun—finding no solace in the stark, sexual words of the document. “‘I bow my head, feeling my ears rub against her inner thighs as I move closer and closer to her cunt. I knew from the beginning it was wet, but the closer I get, the more I learn just how wet she is. How much she wants me. I decide to try something different, something I think will please her. Closing my eyes, I—’”
That was the end of the page. Wendy moved to shift through the sheaf of papers to the one below it, but her fingers were clumsy, and she sort of crumpled the page on top and dropped a few and, worst of all, said “Oopsie!”
Janet cocked her head. “I think that’s enough.”
She stopped the recording. She’d been sitting parallel to the camera—it’d caught none of what she’d been doing.
“I can keep going if you want,” Wendy said through the lump in her throat. Then—either because she wanted to show Janet up or just wanted to spend more time in Janet’s presence on the off-chance Janet’s hands could do more things with her skirt—she went a step further. “You can leave the camera off.”
There. That was about as open an invitation as Wendy could make without combusting on the spot. Her anxiety was screaming at her to jump through the nearest window (fastest way to leave the building), her pussy was demanding she take off some underwear (her nipples concurred), and her stomach was standing by to reintroduce last night’s peach cobbler if Janet did the sensible thing and told her to fuck off.
“I like having the camera on.” Janet smiled jauntily. “Do you know why?”
Wendy felt faint. Was this what being hypnotized felt like? Stop looking at Janet’s skirt, she is definitely still wearing it! “Why?”
“Because when it’s late at night, and I’m bored, I can watch this recording. I have a very nice TV, Wendy. Great sound system, too.”
“I bet,” Wendy said, sounding vaguely like she was having a stroke.
“And while I watch it, in the privacy of my own home, I can touch myself. My womanhood. My breasts. My clit.”
Hearing Janet Lace say the word ‘clit’; Wendy thought she came a little.
Janet’s smile widened, like she had some radar for Lace-induced orgasms. “Whatever I want, really. I’m sure you’ve thought about touching me, so you can understand how much I would enjoy it.”
Wendy just nodded. Had she died? Was this Purgatory? Please, Demon Janet, show me some more of your gams before poking me with a pitchfork.
Janet nodded to herself, like she was more mentally setting plans aloud than communicating with Wendy. “And watching you, listening to you—I think I’ll most definitely come. While I imagine you under my desk. Eating me out.” She clapped her hands together in the self-congratulatory manner of all office bosses.
Wendy jumped.
“I just have that same fantasy, you know. What’re the odds? Having you service me while I take a phone call or compose an e-mail. It’s the kind of thing I’d really enjoy.”
Sheer need drove Wendy’s thighs together, squeezed them so tightly she’d need a crowbar to get them apart. “Uh-huh,” she said, unable to fully close her mouth after that utterance.
Janet scooped up the camera. “Well. Thank you for helping me get this out of the way so quickly and painlessly. I was hoping to have this wrapped up by the end of the business day. I think you should be able to beat rush hour and I 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 baluster, staring down at her. It was too far for them to really hear each other without phones, mollifying the ridiculousness of the situation somewhat, but Wendy still felt like shouting across the thirty or forty feet between them. Preferably something rude.
“What do you care?” Wendy asked. “What is it, anyway? Seven Habits of Highly Efficient People Who Don’t Get Fired For Sexual Harassment?”
Even from a distance, Wendy could see Janet’s brows knit together. “Who fired you?”
“You did!”
“You’re not fired.”
“Yes, I am!”
“Wendy, who would know better, you or me?”
Wendy realized, familiarly enough, that she was being ridiculous. She took a deep, calming breath and tried to force her brain out of sleep mode. “So what’s in the box?”
“Go home. Then open it.”
“Oh, so the bomb only takes me out?”
Forty feet between them and Janet managed to fill it all with confused indignation. “It’s not a bomb!”
“Office supplies, then? You gonna frame me for stealing office supplies?” Wendy shook the box. “Maybe a tablet…”
“If it is a bomb, I’m sure shaking it’s a good idea.”
“You said it wasn’t a bomb.”
“You said it was!”
“Well, I say things, okay, I think out loud!”
“Good to know you do your thinking some way.”
Wendy harrumphed. Maybe the kiss had just been so good because Janet hadn’t been talking. “What is it?”
“Go home and find out. I gave you the rest of the day off for a reason.”
“Tell me or I’ll open it.”
“I said not to open it!”
Wendy peeled the tape back. “Janet?”
“Don’t open it in public, dummy, it’s a vibrator!”
Oh. Well then.
Janet took her own calming breath—more affected by their whatever than Wendy had figured—and then lowered her voice from the shrill hiss that had just gone into Wendy’s ear. Resuming the seductive timbre it’d had in her office, Janet said, “I would really like it if you were inspired by me. The same way I am by you. Especially if you could send me…proof, shall we say?”
All the air had left Wendy’s lungs, never to return. “Proof. Okay,” she wheezed.
“You have my phone number,” Janet finished, and hung up her phone. Without a second look, she turned around and walked.
Well, that ass was inspiring.
Her legs decidedly unsteady, Wendy put one foot in front of the other, the lobby stretching before her for an eternity, each of them determined to outlast the other.
She wasn’t fired.
She was going to masturbate while thinking about Janet Lace.
While filming herself doing it.
For Janet Lace.
She wondered how this would affect the bonus situation…
Well, it was a vibrator, Wendy could say that with some confidence. What it was supposed to vibrate, she had no idea. Oil derricks? Small naval ships? Kinky elephants? Jesus, it looked like a suppository for Optimus Prime. It looked like a baby redesigned by H.R. Giger. It looked like the little dangling thing at the back of your throat if you were a monster truck.
Wendy definitely didn’t have enough lubricant for this. Maybe she was supposed to ride it? Had it come with a saddle? She checked the box. No saddle.
“Maybe she forgot the saddle.” Wendy took a drag from the bottle. She’d been saving the tequila for a special occasion, it being a gift and her not really liking tequila, but if there was one way to describe having your boss sexually proposition you, getting a vibrator from her, and then not being able to figure out the mechanics of clitoral stimulation like she was a guy or something, she supposed ‘special’ was on the list.
Maybe it was literally a massager. Like, for your back. If she laid down on it, it would work the kinks out of her back, and that was Janet’s fetish.
Only it looked like it would roll around, like a medicine ball. A medicine ball that had also tried to kill Sarah Connor.
She swigged some more tequila. It was getting better the more she had of it. Maybe that was the design principle behind the vibrator. Sure, the first foot or so would hurt, but then, like, by the metric system…
E-mail. Wendy happily
abandoned the vibrator-slash-possible-Roswell-artifact to get on her laptop. She would send Janet a nice e-mail saying that, while she was very excited about the prospect of kinky sex with her—preferably kinky in the sense of Miley Cyrus trying to be shocking, not the backroom of a sex shop—she would prefer something that had less mental association with a C-section for her. Maybe, it being their first date and all, Janet could just pee on her?
Wendy quickly hit backspace. Don’t suggest peeing, obviously. Handcuffs? Probably give her a cramp. Whips? Riding crops? Painful. She didn’t get the appeal. If she wanted sex to hurt, she would date a woman with long nails.
“I was born in the wrong decade,” Wendy lamented to her computer. “I managed to be prepubescent through the years when just being a lesbian was kinky enough, and now that I’m in my twenties, I have to pretend I like strap-ons.”
Maybe a dog collar. That wasn’t so bad. A little demeaning, but hell, she rode the subway. Of course, a collar also meant she’d have to let Janet put a leash on her, right? Again, not so bad, but it definitely seemed like there should be a hard NO in there somewhere.
Wendy counted off on her fingers. “Barking like a dog. Walking around on all fours… I should probably only be called a bitch once or twice. I’m not that hip, that’s not a friendly thing for me.”
She jotted that down. This was coming together nicely. What else, what else was kinky—blindfolds. She would totally let Janet blindfold her. And ice cubes. She didn’t really get the appeal of rubbing ice cubes all over someone, but if Janet was into that, she could meet her halfway. And leather clothes—she could do that, as long as it wasn’t summer. Leather didn’t breathe, after all.
Wendy took another swig. She could absolutely be kinky. It wasn’t a problem at all. Not like she’d never had a weird sexual fantasy in her life.
Going into work the next morning, Wendy felt a sense of relief that was almost giddy; Janet liked her. She felt a sense of nervousness that would’ve given Larry King three heart attacks. She’d actually admitted some of the things she wanted to do with Janet. They could actually happen. Or Janet could think she was a sick freak, or a wussy sick freak who wasn’t even sure about being peed on, or just…not enough. Not pretty enough, not experienced enough, not old enough. Whatever she wanted to give Janet, it didn’t tip the scales; too bad, so sad, go to the back of the line.
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