She had to shout it—the music’s volume demanded it. She leaned over the table, leading with that deep vee, pursed her red-to-the-edge-of-black lips in an exaggerated kiss.
“Haven’t seen you around.”
“Haven’t been around.”
“Yeah, another detox, right? I need a drink.” She picked up his glass, downed some. “Jesus, WTF.”
“Mineral water, twist of lemon.” He took the glass back from her, set it aside.
“How the mighty have fallen. You get up off that fine ass and want to live again, I’m over there.”
She hip-swung her way to another booth where Janis and some of the usual crowd piled together.
“Hey, Lox. I wondered if you’d show up tonight.”
“I said I would, didn’t I?” She screwed her ass between two others, slouched back, angled toward Glaze’s booth. Spread her legs.
Her smug smile faded when she glanced toward his booth, saw he not only wasn’t looking, he had his head together with the new tits.
In retaliation, she laid her hand on the cock of the man beside her, gave it a teasing squeeze. “Who do I have to fuck to get a drink and a tab?”
She grabbed a drink off the table at random, downed it. And didn’t see the woman with the blue dreads come out of the shadows to sit at the end of the bar.
Loxie hit the obliging Janis for another tab of Buzz, pulled the obliging cock—Bennie, she remembered, maybe Bernie—onto the dance floor. Pushed through the twisting, grinding bodies so she’d be in Glaze’s line of sight.
She turned her back to her partner, ground her ass into his crotch, arched and gleamed when his hands slid over her breasts, tugged lightly at the chains.
When Glaze looked at her this time, she slithered up and down the body behind her, ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. And, lowering her hand in front of her crotch, curled her fingers in invitation.
His eyes didn’t fire with lust, as they always did. Instead … Was that fucking pity? she thought. Enraged, she nearly leaped to his booth, vicious words ready to scream from
her throat. She stoked the rage by spinning around, grinding crotch to crotch, grinding mouth to mouth, fully aware that more than one clubgoer had pulled out a ’link to record the moment.
Everyone would see—every-fucking-body would see. She was known, wanted, envied.
She listened, blood cold, as Bennie or Bernie or whoever the hell he was told her all the things he wanted to do to her.
“Later. I need that drink.”
She cast a look over her shoulder on the way back to the booth, but Glaze wasn’t watching her. In fact, he signaled for the check.
Leaving, she thought. Let him. Fuck him. She nudged the hands groping and pawing all over her away.
“I said later.” Snatching up the martini glass filled with deep red, she drained it dry with a long series of swallows.
She heard the shout-out to the Glaze as the band kicked into one of their hits.
Perfect, she thought. Now she had to listen to that shit when …
A woman moved, just for a moment, into her field of vision. Red hair, blue side dreads. All the layers of enhancements couldn’t disguise the fact she’d already hit the 4-0 mark.
Old bitch, smug smile, fucking crazy eyes. She started to shoot her the finger, started to demand another drink, another tab.
And it all came flooding back.
Poison. Pomtini. Stay out of the clubs.
“No.” She croaked it out, grabbed her dance partner, tried to scream.