STRICTLY Come Dancing fans have been left hot under the collar after a sizzling performance between Pete Wicks and Jowita Przystał.
The couple have been fuelling romance rumours all week with their close connection, and only fanned the flames as they hit the dancefloor this week.
Performing a foxtrot to I Had Some Help by Post Malone and Morgan Wallace, Pete and Jowita depicted a country romance between a cowboy and his love interest.
Several points during the song saw them come millimetres away from sharing an on-screen kiss, with Pete drawing Jowita close during moves as she hung from his shoulders.
The song even ended with them leaning in for a kiss on a bale of hay while ‘watching the sun set’, before the lights cut off.
Even judges Motsi Mabuse and Shirley Ballas noticed the pair’s undeniable chemistry, and both commented it in their critiques.
Motsi said: “I think both of you, you had such a beautiful, flirty, romantic atmosphere, and I believed it was authentic. And then you started doing the ballroom part, and it was like a switch went up, and it was all about trying to show the good technique and all of that.”
“Paso Pete to cowboy Pete and I actually quite loved it,” noted Shirley, adding: “I mean, this chemistry is too hot to handle!”
Fans were quick to say similar things, desperate for the pair to become a romantic item away from the series.
“Jowita and pete make me feral i need them to get to the final so i can keep watching them almost kiss,” wrote one fan on X.
“How long before Pete tries to kiss Jowita properly?” questioned another.
“how many times can one pair nearly “fake “ kiss in one dance,” noted a third.
“If Pete and Jowita aren’t madly in love by the end of the season I will lose my s***,” joked a fourth.
The pair were eventually awarded 22 points for their effort, which means they may have to rely on public votes in order to keep them in the competition.
The score means they are third from the bottom of the leaderboard, beaten only by Paul Merson and Karen Hauer, and Toyah Wilcox and Neil Jones.
This week marks the first elimination, with the public vote lines being opened for the first time this series.
The public vote will be combined with the judges’, and the bottom two scorers will land in the dreaded dance-off.
It will then be up to the judges to choose who to send home.
The results show airs on Sunday night on BBC One.
As is tradition, the first week scores are rolled over and combined into the second week. Here’s how the leaderboard now looks after the combined scores
