Every swipe only dragged him deeper into her head, and he was everywhere. Behind her, whispering filth in Danish she didn’t understand. In front of her, hand tangled in her hair, voice low and vicious as he told her what she’d beg for next.
She bit her lip, moaning low and wounded. Her free hand fisted the sheets as her hips stuttered, and she applied the exact amount of pressure she needed like an addict hunting a hit. She was too far gone to stop now. Her body was betraying her in real time, spiraling toward a release she didn’t want to name.
“No, not him,” she gasped, even as her fingers movedharder. “Not him?—”
Liar.
The orgasm shattered her. Her spine bowed off the mattress. Her legs locked tight around her own wrist, holding herself there like she couldtrapthe memory of him inside. Holly’s mouth dropped open in a broken, moaning cry that sounded obscene in the cozy light of her tiny bedroom. For a moment, all she could hear was her own heartbeat, loud and violent in the echo chamber of her body.
And then… stillness. Collapse.
Her trembling hand slipped free, her breath ragged as she stared up at the ceiling. Holly was dazed and flushed from throat to chest, her tank top clinging to the sweat of her own betrayal.
She hated him. She hated how easy it was to want him. And worst of all?
She still wanted him just as badly as she did before her little lapse of judgement.
11
MY THERAPIST WILL BE HEARING ABOUT THIS
Holly
“It’s not tension. It’s choreographed resentment with a side of pelvic proximity.”
The morning after their Rumba aired, Holly Martinez became the unwilling poster girl for ‘Sexual Tension: Live Edition.’ Her phone buzzed like a vibrator with a vengeance, overflowing with texts, tags, and a flurry of hashtags she didnotconsent to, like #rumbareckoning, #steponmenate, and the pièce de résistance: #hate2hot.
She lay flat on her yoga mat in her rehearsal studio, legs up the wall, breathing through her pre-warmup stretches like she wasn’t being eviscerated by a thousand TikTok edits of her and Nate in that final pose. Hip to hip. Chest to chest. Her expression: fire. His?Starvation.
They were trending, and she felt a twinge of something inconvenient low in her belly as she tried to focus on her breathing.
"You good?" Martin’s too-chipper voice cut through her concentration, followed by the low whirr of a handheld gimbal camera, already rolling.
"I was until I saw someone call our dance 'pre-orgasmic foreplay on national television,'" Holly muttered, not even bothering to look up.
"That one got two million likes in three hours," Martin chuckled."You're welcome."
"I didn’t say thank you."
From the far end of the room, Nate groaned as he came through the door with two iced lattes, like a horny golden retriever who’d learned her one true weakness was chilled espresso with almond milk. Holly couldfeelhim looking at her with that quiet, slow burn behind his sunglasses (indoors, of course), like she was the punchline to his favorite dirty joke.
"Morning, sweetheart," he called, voice thick with too much smug and not enough shame.
She didn’t turn her head. Didn’thaveto. Her peripheral vision was full of him. Gray sweatpants slung low, like a fucking menace. Pitch-black curls covered with a backwards baseball cap but still damp from something. Towel around his neck like he just finished wrecking his coach’s daughter.
The worst part was that he put the coffees down and started stretching with actual commitment today. Long, lean muscle shifting beneath skin. Obnoxiously graceful for someone who still couldn’t hold a half-beat.
"How does it feel?" he asked from across the room with a swagger that could knock over furniture. "To know the whole internet wants to watch us fuck in a rehearsal closet?"
"Like throwing up in my mouth on repeat," Holly said flatly.
He crouched beside her, all casual testosterone, and tilted his head just enough to see the lock screen of her phone. "#Hate2Hot," he read aloud, tongue lingering on the wordhotlike he wanted to burn her with it."Catchy."
She snatched her phone off him with a sigh. "Don’t let it go to your head."
"Too late."
Martin clapped his hands like a deranged circus monkey. "Enough chit-chat, lovebirds! We need more content! More heat! Production’s thrilled. They want cheeky interviews, behind-the-scenes flirting, and maybe a hand-hold or two on the way out of the studio lot today."
