She gathered herself and shook out her arms in a desperate attempt to cool her armpits. A dull headache joined the itchy sensation of her too-tight braids. She resisted the urge to scratch, since she’d only gotten them done yesterday and still wanted them to have that fresh look. Oh, but she could have used an ibuprofen. Victoria swung her glossy black braids, some decorated with cowrie shells and gold cuffs, behind her shoulder and smoothed down her skirt before leaving her office.

In the hallway, she glanced at the open doors and spotted Paula’s office. Paula Michaels was an adjunct who shared workspace with two other part-time lecturers. When she wasn’t lesson planning, the rest of her time was spent writing romance novels that made women flush and swoon. Victoria admired her friend’s passion to create and grade papers at the same time. She peeked in Paula’s work station and saw her friend with her feet on her desk, balancing a pencil between her lip and nose.

“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” Victoria asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Paula glanced up, letting the pencil fall from her face. “A bit of both,” she said with a grin.

Paula was alone with a small measure of privacy, so Victoria invited herself in and sat at her desk. “What are you working hard on and what are you slacking on?”

Her friend put her sneakered feet on the floor and straightened up in her chair. After she stuck the pencil in her short afro, she swung her computer monitor around to face Victoria. “Read that,” she said, pointing a bubblegum-pink fingernail at the screen.

Victoria squinted and leaned forward. “Billy yanked her panties down her thighs...”

“To yourself,” Paula said.

“Is this your new book?”

“Hm-hmm.”

Victoria skimmed the page before resting her chin on her knuckles. “Mmh.”

“Is that a good ‘mmh’ or a bad ‘mmh’?”

“Do you have to say the p-word so much?”

Paula let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes. “My readers love the p-word. What else am I going to call it?”

Victoria shrugged her shoulders, her hair ornaments clattering. “I don’t know,” she said. “The books I read have more subtle words like mound and womanhood.”

“Too much hedging. A lot of women like to get straight to the point, girl. If I labored over the millions of different ways to say pussy, I wouldn’t have time to write what Billy does to it.” She pointed to the second page, forcing Victoria to continue reading.

Victoria raised a brow as her face burned. “Jeez, Paula. Do guys even do that?”

Paula raised her own brow in response. “Ooh, baby, what is you doing?”