Page 16 of Wicked Temptations
I hated that he could call me out so easily—that he saw through my bullshit. I just hoped he couldn’t see everything, like how watching someone else touch him made me want to break things or how the idea of him with anyone else made me physically ill. And I really prayed he couldn’t see how I wanted to be the only one who got to see him laugh like that, touch him like that, have access to him in any way that mattered.
Because admitting it would mean acknowledging I’d already lost the battle I’d been fighting since the moment we met. The one where I pretended I didn’t want him so badly it hollowed me out.
“You know what?” He stepped back, and his voice went cold. “Forget it. I’m done talking to you.”
He walked away, and I stood there breathing hard, feeling like I’d just been gutted.
***
The rest of the shift was a special kind of hell. I couldn’t stop thinking about that guy, about whatever they’d talked about, about Ash texting him later. Ash hadn’t replied to my text last night, and I’d as good as told him I was obsessed with him, so why would he text this guy later?
My mind spiraled through increasingly horrible scenarios, each one worse than the last, each one featuring Ash smiling at someone who wasn’t me. Focusing his attention on someone who wasn’t me.
By the time our final fight sequence came around, I was ready to lose my goddamn mind.
We took our positions in the fog and where the strobe lights cut through the darkness in disorienting bursts. I told myself I could be professional and that I could get through one more choreographed encounter without making everything worse.
But then Ash dropped from the scaffolding and landed in front of me, and something in his expression made my breath catch. He looked furious. Wrecked. Like he was barely holding himself together. Like he was done pretending this weird connection between us didn’t affect him.
Good. That made two of us.
I was so fucking mad at him that when we collided, it was rougher than usual. Harder. I got slammed into a support beam with enough force that pain sparked down my spine, and when I retaliated by tackling him into the decorative barriers, I didn’t pull the impact at all. The crowd was screaming, probably thinking this was the best performance they’d ever seen.
They had no idea.
Ash got me in a headlock, and I twisted out and ended up with his back against my chest, my arm banded across his collarbones. We were both breathing hard, hearts hammering, and neither of us moved for a beat too long.
The heat of him seared me even through the layers of costume and leather. His pulse thundered against my forearm.
“What do you want from me?” The words sounded ripped out of him, raw and desperate in a way that gutted me.
“Everything,” I said into his ear, and felt him go rigid against me.
I swear it wasn’t me who spoke. It was the dark, ugly side of me escaping the prison I’d kept it in since Dylan.
But Ash didn’t pull away. He didn’t fight or kick or toss me over his shoulder like I rightly deserved. He just froze, like I’d finally said the thing that changed the rules between us.
The sequence timer hit, and we had to separate. He disappeared into the fog, and I stood there with my pulse racing and the certainty that something had to give. Tonight. Right now. Before this thing between us tore meapart.
Chapter 7
Jude
Closingtimecame,andI got the sticky mess of stage makeup off as fast as I could, barely registering the other performers around me. I had to find Ash. Had to—what? Apologize? Explain? Pin him against a wall and make him understand that he was mine even if I was too fucked up to say it properly?
I headed for the parking lot, figuring that he would have bolted himself, but stopped when I heard voices down one of the back corridors. Ash’s voice. And that guyagain.
He was a persistent fucker.
I turned the corner and saw them standing in the shadows between equipment crates. The guy was leaning in, saying something about getting drinks this weekend, and Ash wasn’t shutting it down. He wasn’t moving away.
My vision went red.
I crossed the distance in four strides, and when I reached them, I didn’t think. I just grabbed Ash’s wrist and yanked him away from the guy, pulling him deeper into the corridor, into the darkness where the overhead lights didn’t quite reach.
“What the—” Ash started, but I cut him off by slamming him against the concrete wall.
“You’re done,” I said, my voice coming out rough. “You’re done talking to him.”
