Page 32 of Arrow
We weren’t putting on a show for anyone but the man on the other side—no crowd, no bored regulars, just Arrow Romanov learning what kind of bride his future would taste like.
“I’m not done yet,” I ground out.
Zephyr loosed the corset and yanked it down in one clean motion, naked from waist up and collar still biting in, fingers skating down until he cupped the heat between my thighs. I jerked, but god did I want to see Arrow’s face at the sight.
“Open,” he whispered, and I did, knee to knee, letting his fingers part me.
He let the moment hang.
A snap. A click of metal, then cold wrapped around my wrists—cuffs this time, not rope, and the panic hit me. Zephyr yanked my arms behind me, immobilizing me at the window. I wanted to twist, to kick, but the metal bit and my pulse exploded.
“Pretty girl,” he murmured, almost to himself. “He’s nearly feral for you.”
I opened my mouth to curse, but all that came out was a moan. He pressed his palm between my thighs and left it there, hot and heavy, denying even friction. My heart jackhammered.
Through the fabric mask, noise blurred into a hum, and I imagined Arrow’s face split by a smile, the white sweep of his teeth slicing through the ink-black observation booth. My skin prickled, raw and alive, waiting for the next strike.
Zephyr edged his hand higher, fingers gliding inside, and fuck, I could not help the whimper. Humiliation burned in my cheeks.
“Say thank you,” he ordered, his lips so close they scraped my ear.
“Thank you,” I matched him, daring him to punish me again.
He did. He caught my nipple between his thumb and knuckle, twisted hard enough to make me yelp, and then soothed the sting with the pad of his tongue. Mixed signals, but I drank them down to the last drop.
Zephyr worked me with slow, careful fingers, keeping me right at the edge, never giving release. My breath fogged the glass as I soaked the acrylic stage, hating what the voyeurs must have been thinking—hating, even more, how much I wanted to be seen.
Strip me down, expose every nerve, make me his. That was Arrow’s game, even if he didn’t have the balls to play it himself.
The vibration of authority shifted in the room. Zephyr’s hands went rigid, then he let go, abandoning me there, panting with the mask still tight. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of my rasping breaths and the sick, sweet scent of friction and sweat.
Then a door opened, and heavy footsteps approached—unhurried, and absolute.
I heard the high click of cufflinks, the soft thunder of bespoke soles, and then silence.
Arrow.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. I felt the weight of his gaze sear through the fabric and skin and nerve to the root of me.
A gloveless hand, somehow hotter than Zephyr’s, cupped my jaw, his thumb dragged lines along the bone. He pressed his thumb into the groove below my lower lip, shifting my face up. I inhaled—the scent of gin, cedar, and cigarette filling my nostrils. He held me, suspended, until the tension in my neck ached.
“You like putting on a show,” Arrow murmured, voice so low it vibrated in my ribs.
I was alone with him in the glass coffin with my wrists cuffed. I bared my teeth, every sense boiling with adrenaline, and a battered yearning for obliteration.
“Open your mouth.”
He tilted my chin higher.
I hesitated. He pressed harder, thumb bruising my jaw, and waited. I opened it, and he spat in it. The shock of it snapped me out of my body, and for one feral, shivering second, I hated him enough to want to come. I swallowed because I was raised to do so, and imagined he was smiling.
“I’ll always make you swallow,” he said, wiping his thumb across my lips, smearing the black to a bruise.
“I’d cut off your hand for trying,” I spat back.
“You could try.” Arrow leaned in, mouth pressed almost to my ear, breath hot enough to scald. “And then you’ll die with the taste of me on your tongue, little viper.”
My pulse hammered so wildly it audibly thumped inside the latex, and I thought, for a splinter of time, that I could snap my teeth shut and take him with me.
