Begin filming. Scene eight, single take. Action!
The camera came in from behind, trained on the pale expanse of her back.Rong Shu had familiarized herself with the script beforehand. Though a stand-in, she was still essentially an actress. Her job wasn’t simply to put her body on display. She had to perform.
To help the actors stay immersed and to make post-production editing easier, both parties in the scene would deliver a few lines of dialogue.
The shooting was at juncture where Rong Shu was needed. The particular scene took place three years after the female lead had broken things off with the male lead. The female lead’s husband had suffered a catastrophic business collapse, the family on the brink of bankruptcy, and she had traced the destruction back to the male lead’s hand. She had come to beg him for mercy.
The moment the director called action, Shen Baizhu slipped into character without a single beat of hesitation. He drew from the cigar, a thin veil of smoke drifting across his features.
“Lady Liu, your husband’s situation is rather difficult to resolve. It all depends on how sincere you’re willing to be.”
He let the word ‘sincere’ roll slowly between his teeth, his provocative gaze falling directly onto her bare skin, carrying within it a restrained, simmering edge. The desire to shatter the woman who had once walked away from him.
“I understand. I understand.”
Rong Shu spoke the words through what sounded almost like a choked sob, her thighs shifting with visible hesitation, grazing lightly against his calf. A test. A struggle.
Shen Baizhu was not accustomed to physical contact with women. A flicker of discomfort moved through his eyes.
Then the woman gathered herself, lowered her head, and in one decisive motion swung her leg over and settled onto his lap.
What hit Shen Baizhu first was a wave of warm rose fragrance. Then the settled, undeniable weight on his legs. Through two thin layers of skin, a faint heat transferred across.
Where their skin met, it felt like a low fever had taken hold.
The woman above him was still trembling faintly from the crying, each small shudder sending the softest friction against him, like an invisible hook catching somewhere it shouldn’t.
Her voice from moments ago, sweet and soft, rolled through him again. Something deep in his bones began to stir and clamor, a scorching heat, like boiling water rising from the inside out.
He felt distinctly unsettled.
He had never been this physically close to a woman before. This was his first bed scene as well. In the past, the roles he had taken to elevate his career had all been serious period epics and espionage thrillers. Nothing that called for anything like this.
Out of professional discipline, his expression remained cold on the surface. He pressed on with his lines.
“Stop playing innocent. Lady Liu, surely you don’t want to watch your husband get backed into a corner with nowhere to turn. What a pity. Three years ago, you were the one who walked away from me. Do you regret it?”
Shen Baizhu gripped her jaw and forced her to meet his gaze, the motion sharp and unsparing, raising a faint red mark along her chin almost immediately.
The character Rong Shu was playing still carried herself with pride. She held his stare without flinching.
“No regrets.”
“Kill me, do whatever you want. Just let Jingyu go.”
Her voice went soft at the name Jingyu.
The last piece of fabric fell away without hesitation.
Revealing an expanse of white, like snow that had packed at a mountain’s peak across long winters. Luminous. Full.
Shen Baizhu pulled in a sharp, quiet breath. Fortunately the camera was focused on the trembling of her shoulders, not on his face.
But her slight, unsteady shivering was enough to make his throat tighten against his will.
He gripped her jaw harder without meaning to.
The red mark deepened.
A glassy sheen gathered at the corners of Rong Shu’s eyes. A small, broken sound slipped from her throat, soft and catching, like a cat’s paw scratching his chest, leaving him suspended somewhere between composure and the loss of it.