HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 55

Chapter 55

Chapter 55

Adrian

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The door opened slower than I expected, like she was deciding whether to let it open all the way or just enough to see who was standing there at that hour.

When she saw it was me, her eyes went wide in a way that almost made me laugh. She had a towel tied loosely around her chest, hair pulled back with whatever was closest. That was so quick.

“Sir,” she said, voice cracking somewhere in the middle of the word, “what are you doing here?”

“You said next time I shouldn’t just sit outside in the car like a stranger,” I reminded her. “You said next time I should come

in.”

She blinked at me, clearly trying to remember when she had ever said something like that, and from the way her face shifted I could tell the memory had landed. It was from weeks back, after another late drop off, when she’d half joked that waiting outside felt rude, like I was a delivery man instead of whatever I actually was to her. I had filed it away without telling her I would actually use it.

“That was a joke,” she said.

“Didn’t sound like one.”

She stood there a second longer, toothbrush still in hand, clearly running through every possible reason to send me back down those stairs. In the end she just stepped aside and let the door swing open the rest of the way, muttering something about how I was impossible to argue with, which I took as full permission.

Her apartment was smaller than I imagined, but it had her stamped into every corner of it. A kettle sitting crooked on the gas, a stack of novels by the window with one bent at the spine like she’d dropped it one too many times, the smell of something fried still lingering faintly from earlier in the evening. It felt lived in, real, nothing like the careful emptiness of my own place.

“You can sit,” she said, gesturing vaguely at a worn couch pushed against the wall, “I need two minutes.”

She disappeared behind a door that I assumed led to her bathroom, leaving me standing in the middle of her living room like an intruder who had somehow talked his way past security.

I didn’t sit, I walked instead, taking slow steps, looking for what it could tell me about her that she hadn’t already said out loud.

When she came back a few minutes later, the towel had been swapped for something looser, a soft shirt that slipped slightly off one shoulder, and her hair was down now, loose in a way I hadn’t seen before. She caught me watching and rolled her eyes like she expected nothing less.

“So,” she said, crossing her arms, “now that you’ve successfully invited yourself in, what’s the plan?”

“No plan,” I said. “I just didn’t want to leave yet.”

She studied me for a moment, like she was trying to decide if that was a real answer or just something convenient I had picked to say. Whatever she settled on, it must have been enough, because the tension in her shoulders eased just slightly and she walked closer, stopping right in front of me with barely any space left between us.

“You’re staring,” she said quietly.

“I know”

“It’s rude”

13:56 Thu, Jul 23

Chapter 55

“I know that too.”

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She tilted her head up slightly, and that was all it took. I reached for her face first, just my hand against her jaw, and she didn’t pull away, didn’t even flinch, just let her eyes fall shut like she had already made peace with whatever came next.

The kiss started slowly, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Her hands found the front of my shirt, fingers curling into the fabric like she needed something to hold onto, and I pulled her closer until there was nothing left between us but breath.

She tasted like mint and something faintly sweet, and every time she pulled back even slightly to catch her breath, I followed her, unwilling to let even a few inches separate us again.

We stumbled back slightly until she hit the edge of the couch, laughing softly against my mouth and I caught her waist to steady her before she could fall the rest of the way. I kissed her again like I was trying to memorize the exact feeling before it slipped away.

Her hands moved from my chest to the back of my neck, pulling me down slightly, and somewhere in the middle of all that I forgot every careful plan I had walked in with. There was nothing measured about it anymore, just her mouth against mine, her fingers gripping tighter, my hand sliding along the curve of her waist like I had been waiting months to finally do exactly that.

When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing harder than either wanted to admit, she rested her forehead against my chest for a second, like she needed a moment to remember how to stand on her own. I kept my arms around her, not in any hurry to let go, my chin resting lightly against the top of her head while my heartbeat slowly found its way back to something normal.

It was only then, glancing past her shoulder while she steadied herself, that I noticed the wall behind the couch properly for the first time.

There were three pieces hanging there, unevenly spaced, clearly not store bought, definitely not the kind of thing you picked up from a random market stall. Bold colors bled into each other in ways that looked deliberate even in their chaos, strong black lines cutting across the canvas like they were holding the whole thing together by force.

One was mostly red and gold, violent and warm at the same time. Another was darker, blues twisting into something that almost looked like a storm if you stared at it long enough.

“You did these?” I asked, nodding toward the wall.

She glanced behind her, suddenly a little shy in a way I hadn’t seen from her before. “Old hobby,” she said. “I don’t really talk about it.”

I didn’t say anything else about it, just let my eyes linger there a moment longer before looking away, but something about it had already settled somewhere I couldn’t easily shake off. I had seen a lot of art in my life, the expensive kind that hung in lobbies and boardrooms because someone’s decorator said it should, but none of it had ever made me feel anything close to what those three uneven canvases did, hanging crooked on a rented wall in an apartment that smelled like fried plantain.

We talked a little longer after that, nothing important, mostly her teasing me about how long it took me to actually knock once I got to her door, and me pretending I had no idea what she was talking about.

Eventually I told her I should go, mostly because staying any longer felt like a decision I wasn’t ready to fully make yet, and she walked me to the door without arguing.

“Goodnight, sir,” she said, leaning against the frame.

“Adrian. I corrected, the same way she always corrected me.

She smiled at that, soft and a little tired, and shut the door gently behind me once I stepped out.

On my way down the stars, I stopped without really deciding to, turned back toward her door for a second, then pulled out my phone instead and walked back toward the living room window from outside, angling the camera through the gap in her

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