BUILT MY STAGE ON RED FLAGS AND BAD MEN
Holly
“What can I say? Dude understood the assignment.”
The spotlight hit her like a slow-motion strike, and Holly welcomed it. Let it crawl over her skin like worship, as though the spotlight had finally caught the storm she’d been holding back all season. Her matador jacket hung off her shoulders like a crown. Bold, masculine, merciless, framing the glint of her intricately beaded red bodysuit beneath. Her black pants clung like paint, hugging her every muscle right down to the tapered calves, where pristine white socks kissed Spanish-buckled shoes. Holly’s hair was slicked back into a severe, low bun. Her eyes smoked and cut like Grace Jones at the Met Gala.
The first slither ofToxic Ponygrowled across the stage, and her bodythrummed. She was absolutely dripping in the aftershocks of watching all six feet and four inches of Nate launch into barely leashed brutalityjust for her.She’d counted him out at one point.Called him a himbo, a walking caution sign with a killer jawline and no discipline.
But when he’d shoved Lars into the wall and bristled with that same crackling intensity he must’ve carried onto the ice?Fucking hell.She wanted to see it.Feelit. Wanted to curl up rink-side and watch him ruin someone in her name while she cheered like a lovesick fangirl.
But first, he was going to surrender toher.
Live.
On stage.
She was already winding her hands up like she was reeling something in, the sharp crack of her right leg snapping out and slicing sideways, then dragging back slow, deliberate, like her foot was licking something unholy up off the floor. The crowd gasped. The judges sat up. And behind her was Nate. Following. Exactly two steps back, just like they’d rehearsed.
He wore simple black Latin pants and matching shoes, with an open red velvet vest framing the thick lines of muscle. His Viking tattoos coiled up both pale arms like a promise of violence and protection. Holly felt the weight of him before he even reached her. The heat of his stare lit her up like a fuse, but she didn’t turn to him yet.
Holly owned the stage like she hadn’t just watched him go feral for her backstage. As though her dreams weren’t full of what it would feel like to pinhimdown and makehimbeg. When they reached center stage, she ripped her hand from his as if it burned her. Then spun. Let the jacket flare, the power drop.
The matador didn’t need the cape. Not until shecalledhim.
She stalked downstage right, hips stirring the air, the tempo of the song undulating. She lifted her chin and took the pose,daring him to follow. Every twist of her body was a declaration.I’m not yours. I don’t bend. I follow.She moved with punishing sharpness, hips slicing, arms cutting the air like blades, every step masculine, dominant,sovereign.
Nate answered like her shadow. He circled her with heat in his eyes and restraint in every muscle, all coiled tension and barely leashed need. One moment he was the snarling bull, dangerous, and poised to devour. The next, he was the cape, wrapping around her with the precision of someonedesperateto protect what he worshipped.
She lunged. He caught. She spun. He dropped into a slide, knees brushing the floor as his hands followed the path of her body without ever stealing her power. They carved through the music like a storm through silk, chaos and control in perfect tandem. Heat shimmered through the audience like smoke as Holly cracked into a whip turn and landed in a lunge so low it looked like a death threat.
Her arm shot out, a dangerous challenge written in the curve of her fingers.Come closer. Try me.And he did, slow and controlled, reverent in every step like a man crossing holy ground. Their hands met briefly before her palm pressed flat against his chest, right over his heart. With a trembling breath, she dragged it down his sternum. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t seductive. It wasgrateful, a warrior’s apology to her sword for every cut she’d asked it to make.
The room shook from the bass, from the heat, and from the collective breath no one remembered they were holding. Then came theexplosion.
They cut through the final figure of their routine, landing the final pose like they were breaking bedposts. Nate dropped low,not justfallingbutsurrendering. He slid on his knees like he was sliding on the ice, between the gateway of her long legs with a controlled precision that made it look like worship instead of choreography.
He caught the movement and stopped sharply in front of her, arms stretched out, palms up like he was offering himself at her feet. His head tipped back to expose his jaw to the crowd as he gazed up at her, wide-eyed. A man praying for permission to exist in her orbit.
Holly didn’t blink.
She stepped over one of his huge shoulders without even bothering to look down, keeping the pressure just in the ball of her foot. Her gaze was pinned to the nearest camera as she notched her chin up like a fucking conqueror, before her eyes snapped to Nate. Her finger trailed his jaw slowly, tilting his face up like she was daring him to look away. One last savage pivot of her hips, and her heel finally hit the floor on the last note of the song like the kiss of a goddamn guillotine.
And the studioerupted.
Holly’s chest heaved, eyes burning, skin slick with sweat and fury and something that felt like freedom. Nate stayed bowed behind her, hands on the floor,trembling. Not from exertion. From what they’d justconfessedin muscle and breath and goddamn body heat without even speaking a word.
She offered him a hand to help him up off the floor and he took it like it was a prayer while the audience went nuts over the role-reversal. His fingers caressed hers, grounding them both in the aftershock. He rose with devotion, every inch of him answering her on instinct, like he washersand always had been.
She turned to face him. Eyes wild, breathing hard. Body flushed and humming, strung tight from adrenaline andneedand something too deep to name. She could still feel the echo of him between her thighs, the drag of his body sliding through hers like a promise.
“That,” he whispered just for her, “waseverythingyou’ve never said to me.”
Holly’s fingers twitched like she might reach for him again and pull him close, climb inside him,stay. Her world narrowed to the man who’d bared his soul to her with nothing but muscle and obedience, who let herusehim to tell the story her heart had been screaming all along.
“Yeah,” she breathed, voice trembling. “I know.”
“Well,”boomed a voice entirely too cheerful for what had just occurred, as Indie took to the stage. “If anyone has a pulse left, you might want to check on your neighbor’s because I’m pretty sure we just witnessed a sexual exorcism.”
