Page 56 of Corrupted Queen

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I blurt.

Gabriel glances down at me with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” I force a smile. “Back in a jiff.”

I unlatch from his side and stride across the room toward the bathroom, heat glazing my cheeks. I just need a breathing room, and maybe a pep talk in the mirror. This is all starting to feel too real, and I find myself wanting to slip into the fantasy and not come out. I don’t know if I can bear Gabriel turning cold on me again. I think it might kill me.

I stomp into the bathroom and go to the sink at the far end, running cool water over my hands as I gaze at my reflection.

Don’t be stupid,I tell myself, conviction making the words echo in my head.You are strong. This will not kill you.

Then why does my heart already feel like it’s breaking? All this reading between the lines, the unspoken feelings, the subterfuge … It’s getting to be too much.

Before I can continue this suddenly very serious and ill-timed identity crisis, I hear a commotion outside the bathroom. There is a woman screaming, something about being used as someone’s fuck toy. This event just got a whole lot more interesting, and I welcome the distraction.

I hustle out of the bathroom, only to find that the object of the woman’s quarrel is not, as I figured it would be, some well-deserving douchebag. There’s no doubt about it.

She’s yelling at Gabriel.

21

Gabriel

Until one minute ago, everything was going so well. Alexis and I were facilitating a successful image overhaul, and in the process reestablishing a tender familiarity between us that I’d missed in the face of all my recent stresses. We only had a couple hours left at this fundraiser and then I’d be free to take Alexis home and show her my appreciation. The way her green dress draped over her curves had been tempting me all night.

And then ... this bitch.

“No wonder you never called!” the angry brunette slurs, eyes narrowed into slits. She tilts a little from left to right in front of me, her cheeks flushed with drink. “You’ve got a little family, and there’s no room in it for the girls you fuck and discard like garbage.”

She’s pretty, or would be if she wasn’t shouting and staggering with indignity. But I have never seen her before in my life.

“You have me mistaken with someone else,” I tell her, searching through the crowd for Alexis. I don’t want her to see this. Even though I do not know this woman, and certainly haven’t slept with her, I don’t know the kinds of conclusions Alexis might draw.

“Gabriel Belluci,” the woman sneers. Her brown eyes drag lazily from my toes to my face. “I know exactly who you are and what kind of man you are.”

Her shrill tone has invited the curious stares of all those within earshot. I want to throttle her for embarrassing me like this, but constrained as I am by my mild-mannered billionaire persona, there is little I can do to stop her. Cameras flash around me. We have become the most interesting spectacle at the gala.

“You’re nothing but a using piece of shit!” the woman rages. She is close enough to my face that some of her spittle paints my cheek. I wipe it off, disgusted.

“I don’t know who you are,” I growl.

“Don’t know who I am?” She turns to face the growing crowd, addressing them like a gladiator spurring the support of the coliseum. “This asshole told me that I was special, that he never took strange women to bed. But apparently I meant so little to him that he didn’t even bother remembering my face. I wonder how many women he has done this to!”

I tap her arm, gently swinging her back around even though all I want to do is wrench her to face me and warn her to stop with her game right now before I end it for her.

“Miss,” I say, trying to sound calmer than I feel. “I don’t know who you are, but I can guarantee you that we have not slept together.”

She curls her lip. “You’re right. There wasn’t much sleeping involved.”

“What’s this?”

I turn to see Alexis cutting through the crowd, frown creased in consternation. Fuck.

She strides right up to the woman, folding her arms. “Who are you?”

“Your boyfriend’s whore, apparently.” The woman’s eyes flash with malice.

Alexis shakes her head. “Wrong. Because I know for a fact that Gabriel doesn’t have any whores, so that means you’re just trying to stir something up.” She stops forward, eyes level with the stranger’s. “I don’t know why you would do that, but you need to stop. Now.”

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