HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 82

Chapter 82

Chapter 82

Adrian

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I was walking out of the hall, my eyes moving around the room one more time to check if she had already left. That was when I found Amanad was sitting near the second door, at that small round table near the edge of the room, and I felt a smile pull at my mouth without me even trying. I looked around and I saw Bianca sitting across from her.

But the smile didn’t last, Julian was standing beside their table, leaning down toward her, and she was smiling up at him like whatever he was saying actually mattered. He said something else and leaned in closer, and she smiled again, wider this time, her whole face lighting up in a way that made my jaw tighten.

I couldn’t watch that, so I turned away and kept walking toward the exit, my hands curling into fists at my sides before 1 forced them to relax.

Victoria was standing near the door when I got there, waiting for what I assumed was Julian, her arms crossed and her face twisted into that disgusted look she always wore when she thought nobody important was watching her. She didn’t even glance my way, great because I wasn’t in the mood for whatever she had to say tonight.

I was only a few steps from the car when I pulled my phone out and typed a message to Bianca without giving myself time to think it through properly. I didn’t like what I had seen back there, I didn’t like the way Julian kept finding reasons to stand close to her, kept finding reasons to make her laugh, and I liked even less that she seemed to be making it easy for him. She had been proving stubborn all night, and I was done watching it happen from a distance.

I found Felix standing near the front of the car and walked straight up to him.

“Go in there and tell Bianca to meet me in the car,” I said, then before he could move, I added, “you don’t have to come with

her.”

He nodded once and turned to head back inside. I climbed into the back seat and let the door shut behind me, the quiet of the car settling around me almost immediately, swallowing up the noise of the party still going on somewhere behind those big glass doors. I sat there with my elbow resting against the window, staring out at nothing in particular, and my mind kept dragging itself back to her.

She had looked beautiful tonight not in the way I usually notice beautiful women casually, the kind of noticing that came and went without leaving a mark, but in a way that had settled itself somewhere behind my ribs and refused to leave.

That dress and the necklace sitting against her collarbone exactly where I had put it. The way she had laughed with Amanda earlier before Julian ever showed up and ruined it.

I thought about her laughing at something he said and felt my hand curl into a fist against my knee. I thought about how close he had leaned toward her, how his voice had probably dropped the way it always did when he wanted a woman to feel like she was the only person in the room.

I knew that trick, I had watched him use it a hundred times before on a hundred different women around him, and it drove me half out of my mind imagining Bianca sitting there thinking he is a good person.

I caught myself then, actually caught myself mid thought, and let out a short breath through my nose. This was new territory for me, this pacing my mind kept doing whenever her name came up. I wasn’t used to wanting to put my hands around someone’s throat over something as small as a smile aimed at another man.

I wasn’t used to wanting anything this badly at all, if I was being honest with myself, and I wasn’t in the habit of being honest with myself very often.

Felix’s voice cut through the window before I fully registered it. He must have caught up with her somewhere near the entrance, because I heard him telling her, from a distance, that the car parked there belonged to the CEO and that she should head over

Chapter 82

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That pulled me straight out of my head, a few seconds later I heard her heels against the pavement, uneven little steps like she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be walking in this direction at all. She reached the door and tapped it lightly before pulling it open.

“Come in,” I said, before she could even fully process the invitation.

She slid into the seat beside me, and the moment she did, her perfume filled the whole car, something warm and soft that I was already starting to associate with her and only her but this night, it hit me harder than I expected it to.

“Close the door.” I told her.

She did, pulling it shut with more force than necessary, the sound of it landing sharp in the quiet space between us.

“Felix said you wanted to see me,” she said, her tone sharp, like she was already counting down the seconds until she could leave again. She didn’t even look at me properly when she said it, her eyes fixed somewhere near the window instead.

God, that dress and sitting this close to her. I could see every detail I had only caught glimpses of from across the ballroom earlier, the way the fabric sat against her skin, the necklace still resting exactly where I kept it.

She looked absolutely gorgeous, and it annoyed me more than it should have that Julian had gotten a front row seat to that tonight while I had been stuck across the room dealing with some investor who wouldn’t stop talking about numbers nobody cared about.

“Oh, you can say that.” I said, keeping my voice level even though nothing about what I was feeling right now was level, “but refuse to answer my question.”

She turned to look at me then, finally, her eyebrows pulling together in confusion, or maybe it was defiance, it was hard to tell with her sometimes.

Her mouth opened slightly like she was about to argue, or explain, or maybe just tell me exactly where I could put my question, and I found myself leaning back slightly against the seat, waiting to see which one it would be.

“What question,” she said, and there it was, that stubborn tilt to her chin that I had come to recognize over these past weeks, the one that showed up whenever she had decided she wasn’t going to make things easy for me.

“You know exactly what question,” I said, watching her face carefully now, watching the way her jaw tightened just slightly at my tone. “What was Julian talking to you about.”

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