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"God, no," she breathes, her nails scraping lightly down my back, igniting nerve endings I didn't know I had.

I slide my hand higher, finding the edge of delicate underwear, tracing the lace with one finger. She arches into the touch, her eyes half-closed, lips swollen from my kisses. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen—Lena Carter completely undone, the carefully constructed persona nowhere in sight.

She pulls me back to her mouth, the kiss turning desperate, almost frantic. I press my thigh between her legs, giving her something to grind against, and she makes a broken sound into my mouth that nearly shatters my control entirely.

"I want you," I confess against her ear, beyond caring about the implications, about our arrangement, about anything but the woman in my arms. "Right now. Right here."

"Yes," she agrees, her hands fumbling with my belt. "Please, Max."

The distant sound of laughter jolts us back to reality—not close, but a reminder that we're in a public hallway at a high-profile charity event, not the privacy of my apartment. We freeze, both breathing hard, the moment of madness receding enough for reason to reassert itself.

Slowly, reluctantly, I step back, creating space between us. Lena immediately smooths down her dress, though her hands are visibly shaking. I tuck my shirt back in, trying to make myself look less like someone who was seconds away from taking a woman against a wall in the Plaza Hotel.

"That was..." I trail off, not sure how to categorize what just happened.

"A convincing performance," she finishes for me, not quite meeting my eyes as she fixes her lipstick with a practiced touch. "For our audience."

The excuse is paper-thin—the security guard was gone within seconds, couldn't have seen the way she trembled under my hands, the way my name sounded on her lips, the promises we whispered against each other's skin.

But I recognize the lifeline she's offering. A way to pretend this was just another part of our arrangement, not something real that would force us to confront the growing complication between us.

"Very convincing," I agree, hating myself a little for the cowardice, for taking the easy way out. "You're quite the actress."

Something flickers in her eyes—hurt, maybe, or disappointment—before it's carefully masked. "As are you the actor." She checks her reflection in a compact mirror, erasing all evidence of our encounter with efficiency that would be impressive if it didn't feel like she was erasing me in the process. "We should get back. Victoria will be looking for us."

I nod, running a hand through my thoroughly disheveled hair in a futile attempt to fix it. "After you."

She hesitates, looking like she wants to say something more, but ultimately turns and walks back toward the ballroom, her posture perfect, her gait steady as if she wasn't just falling apart in my arms.

I follow a few steps behind, watching the graceful movement of her hips in that silver dress, remembering how they felt beneath my hands, how she pressed against me with unmistakable need. My body still thrums with unfulfilled desire, my lips still taste of her, but already she's rebuilding the walls between us, brick by careful brick.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur of small talk and performative smiles. Victoria finds us, cooing over our "natural chemistry" as her photographer captures candid shots of us looking at each other across champagne flutes. Lena plays her part flawlessly, the consummate professional, while I struggle to focus on anything but the phantom feel of her skin beneath my fingertips.

When it's finally time to leave, we share a car in silence that vibrates with everything we're not saying. The space between us on the backseat might as well be miles for all that either of us attempts to bridge it.

"Well," she says as the car pulls up to her building. "That was a successful evening."

"Very," I agree, the word tasting like ash. "You'll get your contract."

She nods, hand already on the door handle. "Thank you for tonight. For everything."

"Just playing my part," I echo her earlier words, unable to keep the bitterness entirely from my voice.

She pauses, finally meeting my eyes directly for the first time since our encounter in the hallway. "Max, about what happened?—"

"Don't worry about it," I cut her off, not wanting to hear whatever carefully crafted explanation she's prepared. "It was convincing. That's all that matters, right?"

A flash of something—hurt? anger? frustration?—crosses her face before the mask slips back into place. "Right," she agrees, her voice soft. "Goodnight, Max."

"Goodnight, Lena."

I watch her disappear into her building, the silver dress catching the streetlight one last time before she's gone. Only then do I allow myself to slump back against the seat, the full weight of my predicament crashing down on me.

The bet with Ryan seems like a distant memory now, a juvenile game started before I understood the stakes. Because despite all my best efforts, despite knowing better, despite the artifice of our arrangement, I'm dangerously close to losing—not just the bet, but myself in the process.

The worst part isn't that we kissed, or even that we pretended it was just for show afterward. It's that for a brief, incandescent moment in that hallway, when her eyes met mine and her body pressed against me without reservation, everything felt real. And I'm no longer sure how to tell the difference between the performance and the truth—or if there's any difference left at all.

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