Page 64 of Arrow
It was degradation, but it was honest.
A purity in how nothing about this moment belonged to anyone but us—not my father, not his father, and not the city that wanted our names as headlines.
He watched me swallow the salt, then drew his thumb down to my collarbone, and let his touch linger there.
I couldn’t speak.
My body felt hollowed out, scraped raw, and somehow, more alive than it had been in years.
I wanted to hate him, to hate myself, but all I could feel was a strange, terrible relief. I braced myself against the glass and waited for his next move.
But Arrow was done. He stepped back, leaving me panting on the table, and left the room.
I stayed there, my breath raw in my throat, cum slick on my thighs, and the ghost of his touch still burning between my legs.
It wasn’t until his footsteps faded that I slid off the table, my legs unsteady beneath me, and smoothed my nightgown down with trembling hands.
The aftermath of him clung to my tongue. I braced for the humiliation, for the memory to scab over with shame. Still, there was only a shaky new feeling, the unfamiliar comfort of being utterly, irrevocably alone in the moment after ruin.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to hate him completely—resist him absolutely. But I’d come apart in his hands like I was made for it. Like some part of me had been waiting for him to strip away my defenses.
I wondered where Arrow had gone. Was he in the next room, lurking with the patience of a professional, or back upstairs, debriefing with a bottle? Did monsters get the shakes after, the way their prey did? Did he care at all about the aftermath, or was he already plotting the next method to turn my skin against itself?
The house was so quiet I could hear the echo of my heart—thumping wet stillness up my throat. I wiped up the cum between my thighs with a bar towel and went into the kitchen, slumping onto the cool kitchen floor, knees pulled in, fighting the urge to cry.
I traced the marble’s veins with my gaze, searching for an escape route in their twisted paths. But every line converged on the same truth—you’re here.
You’re trapped.
This is forever.
Time dissolved. Heavy footsteps descended the stairs, and I pressed my back against the island, bracing for what came next. Arrow appeared in sweats, torso bare and fresh from the shower, water beading down the words and symbols tattooed over his ribs. There, in black and blood-red, a serpent curled around Latin and Cyrillic: “Victory is Silence.” I wondered if that was why he seemed so calm. I wondered if he knew that, in winning, he’d made his war unnecessary.
He glanced at me, hunched over on his kitchen floor, and poured himself a glass of water. “Can’t sleep?”
I felt small, humiliated, and alive in ways no one had ever managed before.
“You could say that,” I managed, wiping my nose on the back of my hand.
A sharp scrape of shame, but he didn’t flinch from it. He just leaned against the island, his silver eyes boring into me.
“First nights are always rough,” he said, pouring me a glass of water and handing it to me. His voice was more tired than threatening.
“You expect that to comfort me?” I scoffed.
“I was promised a lifetime,” he noted dryly. “Figure the least I can do is break the ice.”
I stood. I wanted to ask him to kill me now—to just get it over with.
“Have you ever spent even a single minute of your life not orchestrating someone else’s misery?”
My voice snagged—neither a challenge nor a plea, but something ugly and hungry that surprised us both.
He stared at me for a long moment, calculating the correct answer.
“Suffering is the only real currency left in this world,” he said at last, softly. “And I’ve never enjoyed being poor.”
I considered smashing the glass on the counter, holding the jagged edge to my wrist, and watching to see if he’d stop me or let me bleed on his marble. I set the empty glass in the sink. It landed with a quiet clink. I bit the inside of my cheek until copper filled my cheek, and the taste brought a thaw to the ice locked in my head.
