Page 140 of Arrow

I hauled her up by the chain, twisting her wrists behind her. Her shirt caught at her ribs, baring the lines of her body, and I turned us sideways on the couch. The city beyond seemed to pause, hanging on its own suspension while I forced her knees wide against the cushions and lined my cock up between her slick, hungry thighs.

She shivered, but didn’t pull away.

“Hurry the fuck up,” she panted.

But I wanted to hear her beg. I twisted her wrists tighter in the makeshift gold shackle, drove in slow enough to scrape pleasure over every inch of her, then stopped, just to watch her face contort.

When she bucked, I pulled out again, then in, then out, until she cussed at me in two languages and threatened to slash my throat in my sleep. Her threats made me smile. I liked her best when she hated me a little.

I pushed her to the edge, over and over, letting the city’s hush be the only applause.

Harlowe was panting in my ear, biting my shoulder, her whole body shivering with need by the time I let go and took her, hard enough to threaten the frame of the couch. She shattered on my cock, body arching up, head thrown back to bare her throat like some animal that never learned to be afraid of predators, only to become one.

The sounds she made were feral, untaught, so honest it nearly killed me.

I lifted her and carried her to the bed, and she watched me disappear into the closet with curiosity. I carried a leather chest back into the bedroom and set it at the foot of the bed, letting the click of the lock snap the air.

She watched, unblinking, hunger flaring in both pupils. I opened the case and took my time—a coiled black rope, handcuffs, anal plugs in surgical steel, vibrators, nipple clamps, and a black leather paddle—and fanned them across the blanket at her feet.

Harlowe didn’t ask, she just moved to kneel at the edge of the mattress, hair wild and mouth open.

“Do you want to choose?” I asked. “Or do you want me to?”

She looked at the array, jaw gone slack. “What if I want both?”

“We can do both,” I told her, and picked up the rope first.

It was perfect. Japanese made, and strong enough to lift a car or tie a girl so tight her blood sang. I made a careful show of looping the rope through her wrists, then to each post on the bed frame, a geometry born from both utility and the old hunger to display a prize. I let her feel the tension, the slow pull of skin into submission—and watched the muscle in her jaw refuse to go lax, even as the rest of her melted under my hands.

Her pulse was rapid, and her breath was weirdly calm.

Bending down, I traced my tongue along the raw edge of her thigh, tasting sweat, then salt, then the deep, red wine of her. Her hips jerked.

It was a reflex, and I could tell she hated how little control she had.

She wanted to win, even now.

Baring her teeth, she let a string of hissed threats between them.

When I pressed two fingers inside and curled them up, she fell silent and shut her eyes, clenching down hard enough that my knuckles cracked.

I wanted to make it last. I wanted her ruined for hours, not minutes. So, I rummaged through the arsenal of weapons and curios I’d assembled over the years. There was iron here, rosaries strung with teeth instead of beads, and a box of knives, each with a history that would outlast the men who’d bled for them. I picked a blade that felt right—a sleek, obsidian-handled switchblade, Russian made, custom, with the old crest etched on the hilt.

The sweaty sheen on her skin caught the high city light. Her hair spread around her face in a dark corona, violet at the tips where I’d yanked it hard enough to bring tears. Her eyes followed me as I moved, and when she saw the knife, she smiled, a twist of something transcendent and savage.

Crawling up the length of her body, I pressed the flat of the blade beneath her jaw, letting her feel the chill and the promise of it. She reacted, not with a flinch, but a lazy tilt of her head, vein pulsing under the edge, like she wanted to dare me to find out what color Romanov and Virelli blood would make when mixed straight out of the artery.

The point glided down her throat, between her breasts, tracing the delicate bones there. For a moment, I poised the knife at the rise of her left shoulder, and she exhaled. “Do it,” she whispered.

I pressed the tip just enough to dimple the skin—no blood, not yet—and then flicked it off slowly. She didn’t close her eyes, not even for a second.

Setting the blade at her lips, she opened wide, taking it like an offering. She licked the steel, her tongue dragging the length of it while her gaze stayed glued to mine, and I felt a line of pure voltage jump down my spine. I kissed her then, tangling her wrists in rope and my hand in her hair, fucking her mouth with my tongue until she whined, low and wild. I pressed the knife behind her ear, then up the scalp, razoring a thin, perfect line in the tangled violet until a lock peeled away, a relic of the moment. She moaned so perversely I almost laughed.

Every inch of her was trembling, and every slick line of muscle on her stomach was tuned to a pitch-perfect agony of wanting. I dragged the blade down, under her jaw, along the red seam where my chain had worn a choker burn, then stopped at the hollow of her throat. I could have cut her. Could have tested the boundary. But I wanted to see what she’d risk for more.

She arched her spine, lifting off the mattress, wrists yanking hard against the posts, and snarled, “What are you waiting for, killer?”

I pressed it in hard enough to give her a taste of real pain, the skin nicking just barely, a red bead forming at her pulse point. I bent and sucked it, cleansing the knife’s salt with my tongue, and watched her come apart at the wound, every muscle singing for the next shiver. She bit down on a scream, which turned into a ragged moan, her eyes rolling back before she fixed them on mine again.