Page 42 of Wicked Temptations
My brain was still offline, struggling to process. “I need to clean—”
“No.” His voice went hard. “You’re going to pull your pants up exactly like that and walk back out there. You’re going to spend the rest of the night with my cum drying on your skin.”
The command in his tone made my spent cock twitch. The switch was impossible; he’d just been on his knees, sucking me like it was all he was good for, and now he was back in control, demanding and perverted.
“Do it.”
My hands shook as I tucked myself back into my boxer shorts. His cum smeared against my skin, soaking into the fabric. I pulled my jeans up, and the denim pressed everything closer, making it impossible to ignore.
I’d just finished fixing my belt when Jude’s hand shot out and grabbed the front of my shirt, yanking me forward until we were nose to nose. For one breathless second, I thought he was going to kiss me. His eyes dropped to my mouth, and my heart hammered against my ribs, and everything in me was wound too tight.
I needed this. I wanted to claim his mouth with my own and work him over until I was swallowing the sounds of his pleasure.
But he didn’t, and I was once again left wanting.
“No one else touches you,” he said instead, his voice low and dangerous. “You understand me? No one.”
I should’ve argued. Should’ve told him to go to hell. But the possessiveness in his tone, the way his fingers dug into my shirt like he couldn’t quite let go, made the words die in my throat.
“Yeah,” I managed. “I understand.”
Chapter 11
Jude
Ithadbeenoneweek—seven nights of madness since Murphy’s—and I still couldn’t get enough.
We’d settled into something that defied definition. Enemies with benefits, maybe. That term had started rattling around in my skull somewhere around Thursday, when Ash had pinned me against the prop storage wall after our second run through and we’d rutted against each other like animals in heat. No talking, no touching. Just friction and fury and the kind of release that left us damp and uncomfortable for the rest of the night.
Our performances had also never been better. The numbers didn’t lie: park attendance was up, our zones had the longest lines, and Mia kept sending screenshots of social media metrics that actually made Parker smile. That was rare.
The promo shots from the night of the storm had gone viral, each post getting hundreds of thousands of shares andthe comments that ranged from thirsty to downright filthy. Someone had created a GIF of the moment Ash had grabbed me by the throat, and Mia swore it had been used in response threads with the word ‘Daddy’ over forty thousand times.
I’d always cultivated this. The dark romance angle, the aesthetic that made certain corners of social media lose their minds. Taylor and I had been popular, sure. We’d gotten our share of fan edits and shipping posts. But this? This was different. This was insane.
The analytics Mia showed me were staggering. Fan accounts dedicated solely to us. Think pieces about the chemistry. TikToks analysing our body language frame by frame. People were buying park tickets specifically to see us, planning entire trips around our performance schedule.
We were becoming something bigger than just some ‘scare actors’ with a Halloween vibe. We were icons of violent attraction, but I was too caught up in the secret war Ash and I fought in the dark to care.
Tonight’s crowd was already thick when I stalked through the foggy haze.
The downside of our sudden fame became clear the moment I tried to weave through the crowd. Hands reached for me constantly; phones thrust in my face begging for selfies. I’d started declining every request because otherwise I’d spend the entire shift posing instead of performing. Someone grabbed my vest, another tried to touch my hair.
“Just one picture!”
“Can you sign my shirt?”
Christ.
I yanked free from grasping fingers, shot them my coldest glare—the one that usually made people back off—and disappeared into the fog before they could follow.
Somewhere in the darkness, Ash was moving. I could feel him like a second pulse racing under my skin.
Our overall choreography had become suggestion rather than script. We’d stopped following Parker’s notes entirely, and I’d allowed myself to stop stressing over the lack of control.
Instead, we fed off each other’s energy, and let the tension between us bleed into every interaction. When Ash went high, I went low. When I circled left, he mirrored right. The guests ate it up. Screamed and cheered and pulled out their phones to capture every second. After all, no two shows were the same.
A group of college girls spotted me and immediately started squealing. It wasn’t the scared kind of squeal. It was the excited kind.
