Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

“You dance nice,” she says.
She leans into the doorframe, pulling her gum out of her mouth and
sticking it in a piece of foil.
I steel my spine. “None of that was for you.”
“All of that was for me.”
She finally looks up, cocking her head, and even though I can’t see her
eyes, I feel the self-satisfaction rolling off of her.
Bitch.
“How much have you had to drink, Clay?”
Not nearly enough. The slight buzz in my head is probably from the
hundred bodies downstairs, sucking up the oxygen, rather than the shots I did
in the car.
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
A flash of white and I know she’s smiling. I glance above me and then
back to Liv, knowing her slut is waiting either in the service room, or up at
the lantern. I wouldn’t have missed them if they’d come back down.
She sticks the foil back into her pocket and steps farther into the room.
“About that dress, Clay,” she says. “You’re losing weight. I need to measure
you again.”
The dress? She’s making it after all?
I don’t give a shit about the dress.
She closes the door behind her, and the music fades a little more, my
hands shaking the closer she gets. I hear my breathing now.
“Hold out your arms,” she says in barely a whisper.
But I don’t. “How do you know I’m losing weight?”
She approaches, taking out her phone and opening an app. Her eyes meet
mine, and while she doesn’t reply out loud, I read it in her eyes. She knows
my body.
A thrill courses through me, and I dip my head a little, wanting her mouth
only a few inches away. But I hold back.
I hadn’t been trying to lose weight. I’d just…forgotten to eat. I’d spent
more time at the gym the past week. I was waking earlier and staying up
later, my head preoccupied.
She forces my arms wide, ready to use her phone and some kind of
measuring app, I guess, but I push her hand away. “Who is she?”