Page 120 of Arrow

“Was there something else you wanted?” he said, feigning casual as he started to clean up, but the urge in his eyes was so sharp I could almost taste it.

I leaned back against the counter, letting the sweater slip off my shoulder. Bare skin, collarbone, the edge of the chain visible. I watched him carefully—the way his jaw tightened, how his grip on the spatula didn’t loosen but his knuckles went white. He was playing at indifference, but his body was screaming. The catch in his breath. The slight flush creeping up his neck.

He was losing.

“Savoring the quiet, that’s all,” I said. “I assumed at least three people would have tried to kill us by now.”

He grinned. “Give it time.”

Beautiful, that smile. Lethal, too.

Arrow moved around the counter in three strides and set his palms flat against the stone on either side of me. Caged. The granite was cold under my back, but his body was a furnace, barely a breath between us. He could’ve broken the counter in half and wouldn’t have cared—nothing was getting between him and me right now.

I looked him over, slowly, cataloging the swelling bite at his jaw, the new bruises on his collarbone, the faintest trace of a scratch across the back of his hand. I wanted to dig my teeth into him all over again.

“Do you always get this sentimental after sex?” I leaned back slightly, tilting my head.

He didn’t flinch. “Sentiment is just anger with a mask on. You bored already, Harlowe?”

My hair fell back, exposing the necklace with his initials. His eyes followed the movement, then lingered on my throat for a second too long before meeting mine.

“A little. I want to know when this post-coital honeymoon ends and the old Romanov psycho kicks back in.”

A genuine laugh escaped him, soft and disbelieving. He reached across and anchored his palm at the nape of my neck, thumb catching on the chain, index finger tracing the seam of my jaw.

“You think I’m not already ten steps ahead?” His other hand closed over the back of my hand, nails scraping the knuckles idly. “Right now, every asset on the Virelli side is watching their phone for who gets clipped first. It’s—” He paused, searching for the word. “Beautiful.”

“Pathological, you mean.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” Arrow murmured. He studied the dazzle of the sun on my hair like evidence in a crime. “You’re not scared?”

I shrugged. “Of what? You? I don’t have the energy.”

He let his palm wander, up to press the chain into my pulse, a calm threat. “Not good for the brand, little viper.”

“Why viper?” I asked. “Why not something bigger? Meaner?”

“Because vipers are small but venomous.” His eyes met mine. “And they strike when cornered. You do the same thing.”

“And the ‘little’ part?”

“That’s because I’m bigger.” His grip tightened on my neck. “And I like reminding you.”

I shivered, but let him hold me there, the tension a relief compared to the collapse of the night that just passed. The words were right there, crowding my throat. You’re burrowing into me. I can feel you under my skin, in my chest, rewiring something I can’t name. I wanted to tell him something true—that I was losing my grip on myself, that every time he touched me I became less certain where I ended and he began.

That terrified me more than anything he’d done with his hands, or his mouth, or the chain around my neck.

But saying it out loud would make it real. Would give him ammunition I couldn’t take back.

Arrow didn’t do vulnerability, he consumed it, weaponized it, and turned it into another way to own you. And I wasn’t ready to hand him that kind of power. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

So I swallowed the confession and reached for something safer. Something that wouldn’t crack me open in his kitchen.

“What if I said I wanted to see Frank?”

Something flickered behind his eyes. “You can, if you want.” He let go of my hand, but not my neck. “He’ll come if you call him. He’s under your orders now.”

It was a line drawn in something less than blood but more than law, and I watched him flare with pride at how well I understood the leverage.