Chapter 65: Disguise

Tom’s thumb remained suspended over the reject icon until the final second.

00:00:01

Then he moved.

Not away from the risk, he moved toward it.

The accept confirmation lit across the interface, and the side mission locked into place with a muted pulse. For a moment he only stood there in silence, the weight of the choice settling properly now that it was no longer theoretical.

A public location for a higher grade of reward? Where would that be?

[Mission accepted,] [Try not to waste the opportunity to get a higher grade of the reward, host.] the System said.

"Yeah, yeah..."Tom exhaled through his nose and picked up his phone again. Stella’s message still waited on the screen, the penthouse address and the pizza-deliverer instruction sitting there like a closed design.

He thought about how far he could push the change without making her refuse outright. Somewhere exposed enough to matter but not absurd. A place with real public traffic and just enough ordinary cover to make the indecency sharper.

A self-service fueling station...?

Tom furrowed his brows with uncertainty but he began to analyze the efficiency of it;

"There will be bright lights, passing cars, people coming and going and it would be privacy only if we created it..."

"At least that isn’t too absurd to suggest to her right?" Tom asked the empty room

"Right." He answered for himself then began typing a reply to Stella’s message;

**I’m not in the mood for walls tonight.**

**I want something with a pulse, something** thrilling. **Meet me at the fueling station on Ridgeway, near the overpass.**

**By the way, I have something with me you’ll like. The kind that makes the body behave badly. Disguise if you need to.**

He read the message once, then sent it.

The phone screen dimmed in his hand. Only after it was gone did the practical difficulty fully land. She had chosen her penthouse specifically because she did not want to be seen. Asking her to reverse that was not a small adjustment. It was a test of how much pull he actually had.

"Well, let’s see how it will go." He muttered, set the phone down and simply waited.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stella saw the message while she was still standing near the foot of her bed, bringing her loose hair to a bun. She had just finished washing the hair.

At first she only frowned.

A fueling station.

Not her penthouse, not a private suite. Not even a locked-away room with controlled access. He had taken her instruction and rewritten it.

"What does he think of himself?"

Her pride reacted first. She was Stella Marchetti. She did not wander into fluorescent-lit public places at night for men, no matter how good their hands were. The entire point of the disguise and the penthouse had been containment of risk, of rumor, of herself.

She typed the beginning of a refusal, then stopped.

The second part of his message snagged against her thoughts and held.

’*I have something with me you’ll like.*

*The kind that makes the body behave badly.*’

Her thighs pressed together before she authorized the movement. The memory of his fingers inside her in that locked restroom returned with insulting clarity, the stretch, the wetness, the fact that she had clenched around him while her fiancé waited downstairs. She had told herself that a private meeting would be enough to manage the craving on her own terms.

Now he was changing the terms.

"No," she said under her breath, as if hearing the word aloud would give it more authority. "I’m not doing that."

She put the phone down and went finish her bath. She had only gone out of the bathroom to carry the hair oil she forgot to put in the bathroom.

The hot water should have helped. It usually did in washing the day off, restoring the controlled version of herself that cameras and contracts preferred. Tonight it only made her more aware of her skin. Every pass of her hands over her body seemed to catch on the unfinished state he had left her in. By the time she turned off the water, the refusal she had spoken into the empty bathroom already felt thinner.

She dried off slowly.

Then, without fully agreeing with herself, she opened the drawer that held the black lingerie she had planned to wear for him. It was Lacy and sultry, which she had chosen earlier with private intent.

She put it on, the fabric settling against skin that still felt too responsive, and only after that did she reach for the oversized gown and the face cap. She pulled her hair into a tight ponytail.

The outfit hid her shape leaving her in a version of herself designed not to be recognized at a glance.

Only when she was already dressed did she pick the phone back up.

**On my way.**

The message got sent before her pride could mount a second argument.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sean, Stella’s personal driver was efficient, as always. He did not ask unnecessary questions when Stella called, and he accepted the explanation she gave him with professional neutrality;

There was an outdoor scene for her to rehearse, and she needed maximum privacy. She ordered that she must not be observed while she connected to the role. It was thin if examined too closely, but Sean’s job was not to examine. It was to drive.

He brought around one of the smaller, less conspicuous cars from the building’s private lot. Stella sat in the back with the gown arranged carefully over her legs, her face angled away from the windows whenever traffic thickened, as Sean drove through the city.

She told herself, more than once, that she could still turn around.

Yet, she did not.

A few minutes later, Sean stopped where she instructed. It was a short walk from the fueling station near the overpass. Stella waited until the car had pulled away before she started walking. The gown moved around her legs with each step, the lingerie beneath the big, ugly gown remained a private fact known only to her.

She arrived at the fueling station and sighted Tom’s black Mercedes, parked toward the edge of the lot, with the engine turned off and its lights dimmed.

Stella’s pulse kicked once, sharp and traitorous.

She crossed the remaining distance at a controlled pace, opened the passenger door, and slid inside. The door shut with a muted thud that sealed out a bit of the station’s noise.

For a second she only sat there, just breathing heavily...

Then she turned her head toward him.

"Hey you, I came." she called out in a low voice.