Page 1 of Wicked Temptations
Chapter 1
Jude
Imovedthroughthechaos like I was born in it, dashing in and out of the strobe lights and fog.
Three teenage girls shrieked as I skidded up behind them, my boots screeching across the pavement with a theatrical flair that I’d perfected over three seasons. I tilted my head slowly, letting them see the black streaks of makeup running from my eyes down to my jaw, and smiled. Not friendly.
I was never friendly during showtime.
“Run,” I whispered, and they did.
I loved this part. The control. That’s what I really craved. Out here, I decided who felt fear and when they ran. The way people’s fear responses were so predictable, so easy to manipulate with nothing but body language and timing.
Ridgeway Park’s Scream Scene nights had been my kingdom for three years. I built my reputation on being the performerwho committed hardest to the aesthetic, who never broke character, who could make grown men flinch with just a look. The OG Hunter. The blueprint. Management knew it, the other performers knew it, and most importantly, the crowds knew it.
The Hunters were Ridgeway’s premium attraction. We weren’t your typical haunted house ghouls stumbling around in rubber masks. We were the apex predators of the park, dressed in tactical gear and buckles, faces painted like death, hunting guests and each other through industrial mazes set to pounding music.Wewere post-apocalyptic soldiers who’d gone feral; dark romance book covers come to life; thirst trap meets genuine terror; the Eric Draven successors for a generation too young to remember the classic incarnation, way before the franchise sucked.
For the last two years, I’d performed with Taylor as my partner. We’d built the Hunters aesthetic from scratch, turned it into something that spawned thousands of TikToks and made Ridgeway one of the most talked-about Halloween attractions in the region. Taylor had been easy to work with. We’d grab beers after shifts, argue about the best horror movies, trade notes on new scare techniques. He’d laugh when I got too intense about perfecting a sequence, and I’d give him shit when he showed up late because his kid had a soccer game.
Then Taylor got a touring gig with a theater company and bailed three weeks before opening night. I was happy for him—genuinely—but it still felt like losing something I hadn’t realized I’d been taking for granted.
Management scrambled to find a replacement, and now I had Ash.
Fucking Ash.
I had wanted to roll solo this year. Just me, stalking the fog alone like some urban legend. Or maybe team up with Simon on weekends when he could spare time from his day job. Thatwould give the crowds their choreographed stage fights without the commitment of a full partnership.
But management had other ideas.
“The Hunters work in pairs,” Parker had said. “It’s what people expect.”
So now I was stuck with Ash.
Ash, who’d been hired two days before the start of the season after a rushed audition and who looked at me like I was supposed to mentor him through every goddamn step.
Ash, who’d been here three weeks and already acted like he owned the place. The one who kept going off script during our choreographed fights and moved through the zones like he was made of violence and bad decisions waiting to happen.
And it wasfucking Ashwho was currently standing on top of a cargo container, backlit by red floodlights and soaking up the attention like he was owed it.
I’d heard him before I saw him because the crowd’s energy had shifted, their screams pitching higher.
Great.
He was early again, and that pissed me off even more.
His tactical gear hugged him in all the right places—I could acknowledge that objectively, the same way I could acknowledge that a painting was well-executed without wanting to take it home. He wasn’t as large a guy as Simon, but he had me beat on breadth alone. His shoulder-to-waist ratio had a whole-ass following on Instagram, much to my horror, and he’d added more buckles to his costume since last week that flaunted his form. He was copying my style but making it his own, which somehow made it worse.
Someone once said imitation was the highest form of flattery; that person was a fucking idiot.
Ash’s eyes met mine across the smoke and distance. His mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. More like a challenge.
Then he jumped.
The crowd lost their minds as Ash dropped ten feet and rolled, coming up in a crouch that transitioned seamlessly into a sprint. He was headed straight for my section, which wasn’t part of the blocking we’d rehearsed.
This was dangerous. Not the stunt—he clearly knew what he was doing. But the way my pulse kicked up watching him move and the way something uncomfortable twisted in my chest. That was the real threat. I’d felt this before. That pull toward someone who could get under my skin if I let them. The last time I’d ignored those instincts, I’d spent six months trying to pick up the pieces and rebuild walls that never should have come down.
But that was irrelevant in this competition between us. And I understood competition. It kept things simple and easy to compartmentalize.
