Page 35 of Gilded Fake

“Come dance with us,” Harper says to me, dragging me onto the floor as the DJ starts back up. “Unless you’re too high and mighty to mix with commoners now, King Colt.”

“Too good for you? Never,” I say, relaxing for the first time since I emerged from my stupor on stage. “Not to mention you’d probably kick my ass if I tried that shit.”

She grins up at me with her painted red lips, looking hot as hell and somehow edgy, despite her polished wardrobe. “I have been known to put kings on their knees,” she says, balling her hands into fists and giving my shoulder a quick jab.

“Whoa, watch where you throw those things, Appleteeny,” I say, raising my hands and grinning back at her. “You can’t be waving a deadly weapon around in the middle of prom like that.”

“Aww, my bad,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You know I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

“Go love on someone else,” Royal says, pulling Harper into his arms and glowering at me. She links her hands behind his neck and starts to move against him, and he holds her tiny waist in his huge hands. They gaze into each other’s eyes and immediately disappear into their own world, everyone around them forgotten.

Which leaves me with Gloria Walton, who’s swaying to the music with her eyes closed, one hand toying with the edge of her skirt while the fingers of the other rest in the hollow at the base of her throat. She no longer looks like the sassy, sexy pinup girl she did on stage, when she was putting on a show for the audience, performing like she did all through high school.

She looks beautiful and tragic dancing by herself, the fallen queen now abandoned and bullied, shamed for her existence and the things she did to survive the cruel world of the elite.

I step closer, not wanting to interrupt whatever bittersweet memory grips her in its teeth in this moment. I watch her swaying alone, the swirling lights overhead caressing her smooth cheek, her long lashes, those pink lips that can bring a man to his knees with a single smirk.

When the song finally ends, I slip my hands around her waist, pulling her in before some other guy notices that she’s the hottest thing here by a mile, that her strong thighs are bare and achingly touchable, that her tits are fucking phenomenal in that dress. That she’s on her own, here for the taking, vulnerable enough for some opportunistic asshole like Maverick to slide in and snatch her up.

“You’re going to get us in trouble,” she says, but she doesn’t pull away.

“Way too fucking late for that.”

“I told you to stop coming to the club.”

“And I told you I can’t.”

“Can’t?” she asks, quirking a brow. “Or won’t?”

“I’ll stop coming if you stop dancing.”

“Gotta make that coin.”

“Says the girl who threw ten thousand dollars back in my lap last time I came in.”

“I’m not a whore.” Her eyes grow hard, and she glares up at me even as her body moves closer, teasing me with its warmth, sending shivers down my spine.

“I know that,” I say quietly, pulling her in until we’re pressed together.

“Then give me a reason that’s not cash.”

Our gazes lock, and for a minute, we dance without speaking, our bodies flush against each other but not the way they are in the privacy of the Envy room. Here, they whisper instead of roaring.

I’m too fucked up to figure out what she means right now, since she’s told me over and over that the reason she’s dancing there is for money. Now she’s telling me to give her something else. I’ll work it out later, when I’m sober—if I remember this conversation at all. I try to replay her words a few times to lock them into my mind, but I know the pills have taken as many memories as the head injury by now.

“I’m surprised you showed up,” I say after a minute, deciding to change the subject to something I don’t have to memorize for later.

“The admin said that as last year’s prom queen, I was required to pass along the crown, and I’m on thin ice already, so I didn’t want to risk one more mark on my record.”

“And you didn’t wear a leather jacket and combat boots in protest?”

“Sometimes it’s nice to feel like a girl.”

“You always feel like a girl to me,” I say, tightening my hands on her hips and pulling her tighter against me.

“Excuse me.”

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