Page 46 of Written By a Woman

Then Signe’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open before she gasped, “Oh god!” and reached for it.

I immediately pulled my hand back, and I could not tell you why that was my first reaction to her trying to rip her phone out of my hands, but it was.

I raised it higher above my head, my eyes still scanning the text in a frenzy, as if my life depended on it.

“Please, I-I’m going to come!” I panted, earning another growl from Zayne as he feasted on me.

“Oh my god! It’s not what you think it is!” Signe squealed, reaching her hand up and hopping up and down attempting to get her phone back. I choked on an inhale as I read that last line because, holy shit, itwasSigne’s book.

I felt her grip on the skin of my forearm, desperately trying to get my hand back down to her level, but I resisted. I was grinning now, going as far as to adjust my glasses on my nose against her grabby hands so that I could focus better on the phone that was above both of our eye levels. I even let my thumb scroll to see the rest of the text after I finished reading that scene, making Signe release a screech that evidenced how mortified she was.

“What do we have here, Signe?” Was that really my voice? I tried to clear it, making it sound less gravelly and dry. I wanted to go for friendly teasing, but my words came out in a lower tone. She immediately froze, her hands gripping my arm that held her phone out of reach tightened.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” she finally let go of my arm and covered her face with her hands, her shoulders hunching in on herself. I could see through her hands that her ears were as red as her hair, and part of me reveled in the fact that she was just as embarrassed and shocked as I was.

Even though these wereherwords.

Signe wrote this, using a character loosely based onme.

Not that I was supposed to know this.

Then, someone outside the office laughed very loudly. The laugh of someone who was probably drinking alcohol, and I felt my heart sink into my gut. I snapped out of it.

This was so wildly inappropriate.

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, quickly swiping out of whatever app that story was saved in, and pulled one of her hands back from her face to place her phone in her palm, “That was—I didn’t mean to make you—I—” I sighed, stepping back from Signe until my back hit the wall of my office, and pinched the bridge of my nose, “I did not mean to make you feel uncomfortable. That was unprofessional of me.”

Signe was silent, and like the coward I was, I kept my eyes closed as I silently counted in my head attempting to control my body’s visceral reaction to Signe’s writing.

Nothing but the laughter and voices from the party taking place outside of my office echoed between us in my office, which suddenly felt way too small.

I decided to inhale and be the bigger person, my hand now scraping itself down my face as I turned my head to the side, where my office window was, and spoke, “If you want to reach out to Jaqueline to file a report, I completely—”

“What?” Signe asked.

I ground my jaw, before repeating, “If I made you uncomfortable, you could reach out to HR to protect—”

“Wait, wait,” Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Signe’s hands rise, palms out as her arms held her iPad to her chest, “Are you sureyoushouldn’t be the one filing a report right now?”

I felt my brow scrunch before I turned to look at her, pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose to make sure I was both seeing and hearing her right, “Me?”

“Yeah,” Signe blinked, before something clicked behind her expression, “I mean…I’m the one who gave you my phone with…” she waved her hand vaguely, “I didn’t mean to, like, scandalize you with smut.”

“Scandalize me?” I asked, my heart racing a little at how calm she was acting about all of this.

“Well, yeah,” Signe lifted a shoulder again, “I mean, you didn’t ask to see—well—what I read.” I decided to ignore that Signe was choosing to make me believe that this was a random book she happened to be reading and not her very own manuscript.

I shook my head, “I should have closed out of it as soon as I started reading. I shouldn’t have held it out of your reach, or—”

“Oh my god,” Signe rolled her eyes, her cheeks still deliciously red, “You were teasing me. It’s fine. Friends tease each other.”

I ground my teeth together before trying again, “But as your superior, I shouldn’t put you in a position where—”

“Zaid, it’s fine,” Signe sliced her hand through the air, as if that was the end of the discussion, “Let’s just agree that neither one of us felt like we were sexually harassing the other and move on. Yes, you’re my superior, but we’re also friends. Let’s pretend that I didn’t just hand you my phone with explicit smut on the screen.”

I blinked, before staring at her to see if she was serious.

She stared at me in return, her red brows rising a little bit as if challenging me.

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