11. Week 8: Muse in Satin

Georgia was satin now—emerald, slit-thigh, the kind of dress that made waiters forget the specials. Lanie’s rubies glinted dully under the restaurant’s chandelier, their usual venom muted. *Like a snake fasting*, she thought, swirling merlot as the poet traced her palm lines with a poet’s hunger.

“Divorced?” he asked, his voice like bourbon-aged velvet.

Lane’s smile fractured. A beat too long. “Yes.”

She didn’t correct him. Didn’t sneer sissy or half-wed. Just let the lie hang, ripe as rot.

Georgia’s seams cinched—phantom lungs collapsing—as the poet nodded, oblivious.

Lanie leaned forward, cleavage eclipsing Georgia’s silent scream. “He preferred… devotion over a woman's more primal needs.” Her heel ground the gown’s hem into the carpet. A thread snapped.

The poet chuckled. Georgia tasted bile.

He wrote her a sonnet on the menu—'Your laugh, a struck bell'—and she laughed exactly like that, sharp and shivering. Georgia’s seams prickled.

In his loft, he undressed her like unwrapping a relic. Georgia’s satin slithered to the floor, forgotten. For the first time since that night, Georgia realised, panic rising. Lanie’s bare skin glowed in the lamplight, rubies winking as she arched onto the mattress.

“You deserve all of me," Lanie whispered.

He entered her gently, murmuring "muse, muse, muse" like a prayer. Georgia lay crumpled by the bed, **** to watch Lanie’s hips rise in rhythms she’d never had since this began. *Too slow. Too tender.*

“You’re my epilogue,” he groaned, thumb brushing her cheek—a caress, not a command.

Lanie’s moan was honeyed, foreign. “God, yes—”

Georgia burned, a dry socket where lightning struck. She wept openly, threads dampening with tears she could not shed.

After, Lanie gathered her from the floor. “Sshh, girlfriend,” she crooned, patting Georgia’s bodice like a spooked pet. “He’s just a verse. You’re the whole damn psalm.”

But she didn’t use Georgia to wipe his spend from her thighs. Didn’t drape her over lampshades to crust. Just… folded her gently into the overnight bag as she borrowed his sister's T-shirt and shorts.

The poet kissed Lanie’s wrist at the door. “Tomorrow?”

“I’ll wear red,” she promised, her voice gauzy as a bride’s veil.

Home. Lanie stood before the mirror, Georgia’s satin limp in her grip. The rubies pulsed—begging.

“Almost got me,” Lanie purred, unclasping the piercing for the first time. It hit the velvet box with a final click. She slid her hand between her legs, sighing, “John, John—” as she came, holding on to the borrowed clothes.

Georgia, trapped in silk, screamed soundlessly.

Later, much later, Lanie heard a broken Georgia as she stroked her hem.

*You unclipped me. You chose him.*

“Only his cock, kitten.” But her smirk faltered.

Georgia lunged through the mental tether—*pathetic, always pathetic*—and felt Lanie’s pulse stutter.

A beat.

Lanie snorted, tossing Georgia onto the dry-clean pile. “Relax. He’s week eight of part three. You’re the fucking index.”

But later, in bed, she wore the borrowed clothes to sleep.