Page 24 of Wicked Temptations
And I had no clue what to do about it.
By the time I needed to leave for work, my nerves were shot. I grabbed my gear bag and headed out, telling myself I could be professional. Could work next to Jude and not make it weird.
Surely even I could survive a six-hour shift without doing something stupid.
***
The employee lot was already half-full when I arrived. I scanned for Jude’s car automatically, found it in its usual spot, and felt my stomach drop. He was here. Early as always. Which meant I’d have to face him in the changing room surrounded by other performers, and we’d have to pretend we were just coworkers who happened to have explosive sexual tension and unresolved feelings.
Perfect. Great.
Everything wasfine.
I grabbed my bag and headed inside, taking the long route through the back tunnels because I needed an extra minute to get my head together. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh white, and I could hear voices echoing from the changing room.
I could do this. Professional. Calm. Not at all thinking about the way he’d felt inside or the sounds he’d made or the hate in his eyes afterwards.
I pushed open the changing room door and immediately found him.
Jude was at his locker, already half-dressed in his tactical pants, pulling on his tank top. The bite marks on his throat werestill visible, faded but there, and when he turned at the sound of the door, his eyes met mine.
Neither of us moved. The room was full of other performers, but they all disappeared. There was just him, looking at me like he hadn’t slept either, like the past two days had been as brutal for him as they’d been for me.
Then someone called his name, and the moment broke. He turned away to answer, and I headed to my own locker before anyone could notice me staring.
***
Our first scheduled fight wasn’t until nine tonight, which gave me two hours to pretend I was fine. I scared the shit out of a group of college kids, posed for photos with some fans who recognized me from TikTok, and tried not to think about how empty this all felt without the edge Jude and I had before we’d complicated everything.
When nine o’clock struck, I took my position and waited.
We collided right on cue, but something was different, even accounting for our fluctuating encounters. He grabbed me harder than usual, fingers digging into my vest, and when I shoved him back, he didn’t let go. We went through the choreography, trading positions and blows, but there was a desperation underneath it that hadn’t been there before. Like we were both trying to say something through the violence that we couldn’t say with words.
When I ended up on top of him, I threw caution to the wind and pinned his wrists above his head. Jude’s hips shifted up, and I felt him hard against my thigh. The crowd was screaming, phones out—not that they could see anything important—but my world had narrowed to the way he was glaring at me with fire in his eyes.
I wanted to kiss him and then fuck him into the pavement until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
“Get off me.”
His voice was angry, the words catching in his throat. But his cock told a different story.
I leaned down, close enough that only he could hear me over the screaming crowd. “Make me.”
His eyes flashed. Something wild and violent flickered across his face, and I thought he might actually do it. Might flip us. Pin me. Take what he wanted right here in front of everyone.
Instead, he bucked his hips up hard, throwing me off balance. I rolled with it, letting momentum carry me backward, and he was on me in an instant. His knee jammed between my thighs, his hand fisted in my vest, dragging me up to my feet by sheer force.
“You want to play games?”
Unfortunately, or maybe thankfully, the music swelled, marking our cue to separate, and like good little puppets, we moved back. We stood there, chests heaving, glaring at each other while the crowd went absolutely feral around us.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I do.”
He shoved me backward into the fog and then disappeared into the strobe lights.
***
The rest of the shift was torture.
