She was a woman.
It was natural that she would pull the highest bids.
Half the VIPs on that floor had made advances toward her at one point or another.
If she wore her signature cat ears and mask, they’d recognize her immediately and start outbidding each other just to keep the next man from winning.
She had watched it happen with female performers who were half as captivating as her.
Jax had essentially handed her the win and dressed it up as a threat.
“Okay.”
He blinked.
“Okay?”
“I said okay, Jax. See you on auction night.” She cleaned herself up, handed the towel back, and walked out.
She was still fighting her smile when she pushed through to the main bar area and nearly walked into Alex.
The smile died.
He was at the far end of the bar with a drink and a bouquet of flowers propped against the stool beside him.
He looked up and his whole face softened.
“There you are. I’ve been here almost an hour. Why aren’t you performing? I brought-”
“I’ve been with Jax,” she said.
She watched his face carefully.
Something quick and unreadable moved through his eyes.
‘What the hell are you thinking, Alexander Voss?
Do you even care that I’ve spent two hours with my ex?’
“Cool,” Alex said.
“Has he been bothering you?”
Lena was taken aback.
She decided to go further.
“No, actually. He proposed a challenge.” She told him everything, making sure to land the most important part clearly…
“if I lose, Jax gets to fuck me every day for seven days.” And she waited for his reaction.
He paused.
Then he finished his drink, set the glass down, and stood.
He rubbed her arms with both palms.
“You’re going to win. Which means Jax disappears from our lives.” He cupped her cheek.
“You know that, right?”
“You’re not bothered that I’ll be completely naked on a stage?”
“That’s Lena in her natural element.” He smiled.
“I love it for you.” He tilted his head.
“How about we go to our private room right now and see if that ass can finally take my cock?”
Lena rolled her eyes and stepped out of his grip.
He frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer but walked away.
He followed and caught her arm gently.
She pushed him off without a word.
He tried again.
She pushed him again.
He stopped following.
She grabbed her coat and left.
In the cab she muttered to herself, “Darn you, Alex. You absolute psychopath.”
*****
“Good morning. Talk to me.”
Two hours later: “I don’t understand what I did.”
That evening: “Your apartment is still a mess. Let me at least send someone to fix it.”
Next day: “I miss you.”
The day after: “Are you eating?”
Then: “I know you’re reading these.”
Then: “Please.”
She read every single one and replied to none, because he never showed up.
The more texts that came without him appearing at her door, the more certain she became.
He just wants to claim my ass and move on.
These texts are for show so he can say he tried if I ever bring it up.
The Alex of three weeks ago would have broken down her door by now.
She put her phone face down and went to get ready for auction night.
*****
“Twenty-five thousand!”
“Fifty!”
“Seventy-five!”
The bids flew across the dimly lit room, thick with cigar smoke, expensive cologne, and the energy of men who had more money than patience.
On stage, a woman named Celeste was on her knees in nothing but silver chains, a stagehand’s fist in her hair, a prop cock at her lips.
“One hundred thousand!” someone shouted.
Glinda smiled from her podium in a tight red dress that made clear she had no intention of letting age dim anything.
“Do I hear one-twenty?” Her voice floated smooth and unhurried over the crowd.
Close to fifty VIP exclusives filled the curved seating, mostly men in suits with their jackets loose and their guards down.
The bodies always came last at these auctions.
Earlier in the evening Glinda had moved through the full list: a night with a renowned dominatrix aboard a private yacht that went for $800,000, a bespoke Zen experience package with a personal performer for a full month, three original pieces from an anonymous collector that sparked a brief war in the room, and two curated performance experiences that left everyone warm, loose, and ready to spend freely.
Now they wanted flesh.
Backstage, Lena watched through a gap in the curtain, her long black coat covering everything.
Her pulse was climbing and she let it.
The room had no idea what was coming.
No performer had ever gone fully naked at a Zen auction.
The shock alone would send the numbers into another stratosphere.
She smiled under her mask.
She felt a body heat at her back.
She knew without turning who it was, and knowing he was naked under his own coat did something irritating to her stomach.
“If you’re here to make me back down,” she said, eyes still on the stage, “don’t bother.”
He chuckled.
“Just making sure you have your necklace.” His hands came around to her throat and fastened a thin silver chain at her nape, the small Zen logo catching the light against her collarbone.
It distinguished staff from contracted performers, a detail that shifted how VIPs read the person wearing it.
“Can’t have them thinking they’re bidding on just anyone.” His breath warmed the top of her spine.
“Break a leg… even though I’ve already won tonight.”
She said nothing.
Classic Jax.
She wasn’t letting a throwaway line undo a week of preparation.
Glinda’s voice lifted over the room.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, our next offering tonight is something a little different…”
The lighting shifted.
Two male staffers in black wheeled a giant glittering clamshell to the center of the stage, six feet wide, chrome and pearl white, pulling every spotlight in the room.
The audience leaned forward.
The shell opened.
Lena was inside on a bed of silk, posed like a sleeping Venus, one leg crossed over the other, resting against the chrome interior, chin tilted, eyes cast down.
A staffer pulled the silk away.
“One-fifty!”
“Two hundred!”
“Two-fifty!”
Lena placed her palms in the stagehands’ waiting hands, rose carefully in her heels, and stepped out of the shell.
Her heels clicked against the marble as she moved toward the edge of the stage.
With every step closer to the front row, the lips of her cunt tingled and swelled faintly, her body drinking in every pair of eyes zeroed on that bare, pretty V.
“Three hundred!”
“Five hundred thousand!”
“A million!”
Murmurs broke out across the room.
“Look at that body… I think I know her…”
“I want her to drink from me…”
“Two million!”
Inside, she was laughing.
Sex-starved billionaires losing their minds over a naked woman walking toward them.
This was control in its purest form.
“Three million!”
“Four!”
“Five!”
“Five million. Going once… going twice…”
“Five point one!”
Glinda’s gavel came down.
“SOLD!”
Lena gave a small nod to the room and walked off stage.
Behind the curtain she pulled her mask off, chest heaving.
Five point one million dollars.
A fucking record!
She found Jax waiting in the wings and walked straight to him.
“Well? Top that.”
“Tch.” He smirked.
“I hope you’re still this bratty when we’ve got our dicks buried in you.”
Lena went still.
“We?” She stared at him.
“Dicks? As in plural? What the-”
Jax was already walking onto the stage.
“Next,” Glinda announced, “a display of masculine power…”
Jax stopped center stage and dropped his coat.
No pose, no performance, nothing at all to intrigue the guests.
Just a coat hitting the floor and Jax standing there in the spotlight like the room had always belonged to him.
Silence.
Then: “Ten thousand.”
Backstage, Lena snorted.
Ten grand.
She had pulled five million and this man got ten thousand dollars.
“Ten million.”
The snort died in her throat.
The entire hall went silent.
She rushed from behind the curtain onto the stage to see who in the world had just bid ten million dollars on Jax.
Three figures were visible.
Glinda at the podium.
Jax on stage.
And in the VIP seating, a man standing with a bid card in his hand who looked exactly like Jax.
Same face, same curly hair, except his chin was slightly fuller with the soft weight of a double chin.
“The fuck?” Lena’s skin went cold.
“Twenty million!”
She turned toward the new voice and her knees gave out.
She went straight down onto the stage floor.
Because the man who had just called twenty million dollars also looked exactly like Jax.
“Th… three Jaxs???”