Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

Become a worldwide superstar.
“She didn’t want to get in trouble, but I needed to know and she
understood,” Clay says. “I stood back, way back, and watched her embalm
him. Wash him. Patch up the gashes from his car wreck. The track marks on
his arms and how gaunt his face had become. She cut his hair. Put makeup on
him. Dressed him.”
I was at that funeral. He was a friend of Army’s.
“He looked alive again,” she goes on, lightning flashing across her skin.
She put him back together so he could be remembered how I’m sure he
wanted to be. He looked nineteen again, with his whole life ahead of him.
Before life tore him apart.”
My mom probably wishes she was remembered differently. Or better. I’m
not sure it would’ve been a comfort, seeing her dressed in her best at a
funeral, even if we could’ve afforded one, but people don’t deserve to be
remembered for how they died.
“She wouldn’t let me watch her prepare my brother, of course, but after
Henry was buried, I…” She hesitated. “I started coming back. I’ve gone back
again and again—helping, learning—because every time her phone rings,
someone needs her. Someone is looking for guidance and comfort, and I need
to be reminded that life is short. I don’t know what happens when we die…”
Her breathing shakes, and I inch in closer. “But I do know life is too short.
There is no tomorrow. This is all there is.”
“This is all there is,” I repeat.
And I reach out and touch her face. Clay. I smooth out the lines of worry
and anger. The fighting and the hurt. I wipe away her tears with my thumb,
feeling her warm skin and how she’s the softest thing I’ve ever touched.
“Livvy,” she whimpers, squirming against me.
“Clay.”
She leans into it and exhales, her warm breath wafting over my mouth,
and slowly slides her arm around my waist, pulling me in close.
“I’m scared,” she murmurs.
“Me too.”
I still don’t trust her. I know this is a mistake.
But fuck, I need to feel her once. All of her. Just once. Fuck it.
I want to feel her come undone.
She bites my bottom lip between her teeth, and I gasp, feeling it all over
my body, and I slip my hand down inside her sleep shorts and inside her