HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 57

Chapter 57

Chapter 57

Bianca

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I noticed it before I could even understand what I was noticing, the way Adrian’s whole body had gone rigid the moment Julian walked onto the floor. He didn’t move from behind that glass wall of his office, but something in the way he stood there, arms folded, told me this wasn’t simple curiosity about a visitor. This was something else entirely.

I didn’t know the story behind it, not yet, but I knew enough about people to recognize when two of them were standing on opposite sides of something broken. Whatever it was between Adrian and this man who looked enough like him to be mistaken for him from a distance, it wasn’t small, and it wasn’t recent.

Julian had introduced himself a few minutes earlier, all smiles and easy charm, holding my hand a beat longer than necessary while he asked me what I did there. I had answered him politely, the way I answered everyone, but something about him made the politeness easier than it usually was.

He laughed easily, he didn’t carry himself like a man who needed anyone to be impressed by him, even though most people clearly were within seconds of meeting him.

Then Felix had appeared out of nowhere with an emergency file that didn’t feel like much of an emergency once I actually looked at it, and I’d been pulled away before Julian and I finished whatever conversation we just started. I assumed it was a coincidence at the time. I maybe wrong, but I didn’t know that yet.

Julian stopped by my desk again on his way out, leaning slightly against the edge of it. “They’re keeping you busy,” he said, glancing toward the hallway I had just walked back from.

“Apparently,” I said. “Endless emergencies today.”

He smiled at that, the kind of smile that reached his eyes properly instead of just sitting on his mouth. “I’m sure they are.” He

said.

We talked for a few more minutes, nothing important, just easy conversation about nothing in particular, and I found myself relaxing in a way that surprised me a little. Julian was funny without trying too hard to be, uncomplicated in a way that felt almost like relief after weeks of decoding every loaded silence and careful word that came out of Adrian.

Julian said what he meant, he didn’t make you sit there afterward wondering what he actually meant underneath what he said.

I glanced toward Adrian’s office once while Julian was talking, and he was still there, still watching, his expression unreadable from that distance but his attention clearly fixed on exactly where we stood. I looked away before he could catch me noticing.

Julian eventually said his goodbyes, promised he would be back around sometime soon, and walked off toward the elevator with the same easy energy he walked in with. I went back to my desk thinking that was the end of it but it was not the end of

For the rest of the afternoon, Adrian was impossible. There was no other word for it. Every time I paused near someone’s desk for a normal conversation, a task appeared out of nowhere. Pull this file. Confirm that meeting. Check on a vendor email that, when I actually opened it, had nothing urgent in it at all. By my count, he had summoned me through Felix or directly himself eleven separate times before four o’clock, each one more transparent than the last.

By the eleventh time, I had stopped pretending I didn’t notice the pattern. I found him in the copy room, of all places. standing near the machine with a folder in his hand that I was fairly certain he didn’t actually need. I walked in after him and pulled the door shut behind me, harder than necessary, the latch clicking loud in the small space.

He looked up clearly registering the door closing, and something in his face shifted, like he already knew exactly what Conversation was about happen and had simply been waiting for it.

13:56 Thu, Jul 23

Chapter 57

“You have summoned me eleven times today.” I said, crossing my arms.

“I needed things done,” he said, far too calmly for someone who had just been caught.

“Or you needed me away from Julian.”

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He opened his mouth, paused, and I watched him visibly decide against whatever excuse he had been about to offer. He closed it again, and when he finally spoke, the word came out simple and unguarded.

“Yes.”

“Why.”

He looked at me then, a long, charged look that filled the entire small room with something heavier than the question deserved.

“Because I have watched someone I trusted take something I valued once before,” he said. “I am not doing it again.” /

The honesty of it caught me completely off guard. I had expected deflection, some clever answer designed to slide past the real one, but instead he had just handed me something raw and unprotected, no performance attached to it at all.

For a second I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I reached up instead and straightened his tie, even though it had already been perfectly straight before I touched it.

My hands stayed there afterward, resting against his lapels, not quite ready to drop back to my sides.

“I am not something to be taken, Sir,” I said quietly. “I make my own choices.”

“I know that.”

“Then trust me to make them. Well…” I paused.

“He can increase my salary by 100%.” I added smiling.

“Oh… really.” He looked down at my hands still pressed against his chest.

“I am working on it,” he said.

I tugged his lapels slightly, not even sure why I did it, and he came forward without hesitation, closing whatever space had been left between us.

We were kissing before I finished whatever thought had been forming in my head, his hands sliding to my waist, mine moving up to the back of his neck, and the copy room, with its narrow walls and its smell of ink and warm paper, was absolutely not built for whatever was happening in it. That fact felt entirely irrelevant at the moment.

His hands found my waist and lifted me onto the edge of the copier without warning, and the machine, apparently unimpressed by the romantic timing, immediately whirred to life beneath me, lights flashing, paper feeding through with a mechanical hum that broke the moment in the most ridiculous way possible.

We both froze for half a second before bursting into laughter against each other’s mouths, his forehead dropping against mine, my shoulders shaking with it.

The laughing lasted about four seconds before it stopped being the priority. At some point my shoe had come off entirely. landing somewhere near the recycling bin, and his jacket had ended up draped over the paper tray, both casualties of however long we had actually been in there.

Afterward we straightened ourselves out in the cramped space as best as we could, both of us flushed, both of us fixing buttons and collars with hands that weren’t entirely steady yet. I found my shoe near the bin and slipped it back on while he reached for his jacket the copier behind us finally settling back into silence after spitting out an entire stack of unnecessary

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