What Izzy can offer

Izzy swallowed. At Tystalten, it was never good to read too much into what a guest had to say. They could mention they would be giving you a huge tip and then forget it entirely by the time you were ready to leave their room. Money didn't mean anything to them. Or, in cases where they 'forgot,' sometimes it was that they needed to pretend that the money didn't matter, while they were actually skint--by Tystalten standards. And Izzy was worried about just that. She thought she could follow Mina's suggestion, but, pursing her lips, she felt like she couldn't trust in that thought. "Ah," she said, feeling like she was being carried away by some tide she had no control over, "Like what?" Paul's previous comment rang in her ears.

"Liiiiike," said Mina, crawling onto the couch and stretching her lithe body over its cushions. "Well, I dunno. What do you think?"

Izzy made eye contact with Paul, and then with Ward. "Like," she said, hoarse. Paul was smiling. She hated that kind of confidence. Arrogance, really, that was the right word. But she was buzzing, and the fact that Mina was there too made things more complicated. She could smell her perfume. It wafted up from behind her back. Like caramel. The scent was heavy and aggressive, viscous. Totally at odds with everything else about Mina. Except for her confidence, that is. Izzy found she didn't share it. The words wouldn't come.

Mina shifted again on the couch. She slipped closer to her friend and wrapped her arms around her waist. Izzy's breath caught. She sat up, but her hands settled on Mina's arms, afraid that she would think she was trying to pull away. She was most emphatically not. Her friend's body up against her back felt like heaven. The coke, she told herself. Or tried to. Except she could tell the difference between the two feelings. The warm and fuzzy was nothing like the iron nail of the high. "Maybe if they let you have another line, you could give them a little head."

For the second time in as many minutes, Izzy felt like she needed to swallow. Her throat didn't cooperate; her mouth was bone dry. "Them...?" she said.

"Yeah," purred Mina. "They both brought the coke. And they paid for this place together, right? It only seems fair you give both of them a hand."

Izzy suspected that Mina had much more than a hand in mind. Inside, she was being bombarded by flashes of everything Mina might be implying. It was almost too much. Too many long nights alone in the staff dorms. Too long since she'd had a proper boyfriend. Too high, too anxious, too... well, yeah, too much 'that' too. She pressed her thighs together. As the seconds ticked by, the flashes got to be overwhelming.