Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

“If I consider your offer,” I add the unsaid, because I know exactly where
he’s going with this. We’ve had this conversation.
But he just laughs quietly, dropping his gaze and inching closer. “Oh,
you’ve had time to consider it,” he taunts. “Now, I need an answer.”
I gave you my answer.
“She’s pretty,” he whispers suddenly.
I pause.
“Soft, blonde, young... Lips that taste like a milkshake, and that’s not
even half as good as the taste of her tongue.”
My stomach coils and knots, wanting my boot in his face. Picturing that
entitled smile covered in blood.
“And she’ll want everything you do to her,” he says.
I toss the coat on a nearby chair and start to move around him, but he
steps in front of me and pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket, holding it up to
me.
“You do this,” he says, clarifying. “And I will get you this part.”
He hands me the paper, and I hesitate, not for a second indulging his
offer, but my curiosity has the better of me.
Unfolding the paper, I see it’s a check. From Garrett Ames.
To the school.
In the note, it reads For the theater department.
I stare at the twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation which, I assume, is
Callum’s angle here. Lambert gets some play money for next school year if
she lets me have the role I want. And Callum will take care of it, if I give him
what he wants.
So this is how the world works, is it? I put on a sex show with some chick
I don’t know for a group of slobbering frat boys, and I’ll live happily ever
after?
Or will all my hard work and time and good intentions really just come
down to how well I forever perform on the casting couch?
I feel Callum move around me as I study the check longer than I like. It’s
real. It’s signed.
It’s easy money to the Ames’. They wouldn’t even notice it missing.
The stage hardens under my shoes, and I feel the heat of the spotlight that
isn’t even shining and the eyes of every seat filled.
I can picture it, it’s opening night. The snow falls over my head, and I’m
going to die one of the most powerful deaths ever written for stage.