Page 124 of Arrow

Arrow’s smile split the darkness. “You want to?”

Arching a brow, I let the blanket slide to my feet, standing shameless in his shirt and bare thighs. “Are you offering?”

“I wasn’t thinking of myself. But you might need to, one day. You should know if you can stomach it.”

Silence hung between us.

Looking at me for a long while, eyes not leaving my face, he waited, like he was asking me to tell him what kind of future I wanted.

What I wanted from him.

What I wanted from us.

“I’m a Virelli,” I said finally. “There’s nothing I can’t stomach.”

He let that hang, beautifully, violently, then stepped in, looming tall over me.

“Perfect.”

Grabbing my wrist hard, he ran his thumb up the blue vein in the crook of my elbow. “You’d be lethal if you ever stopped holding out.”

“Maybe I just need the right target.”

He took a half-step back, the space so loaded it nearly cracked my skull. He watched me in the mirror. Not a word was exchanged, but the agreement was absolute.

Cupping both my collarbones, thumbs pinning the chain, he drew me in until our foreheads mashed. I expected a kiss, the devouring kind, but instead, he just hovered there, his breath hot against my lips, then pulled away.

“Would you take my life if I asked you to?” Arrow whispered, voice shorn to the blade. “Would you kill me, little viper? Put a bullet in my heart?”

The question landed in my chest and splintered. Sucking in the scent of him, I opened my mouth and let the answer be the only promise I would ever keep.

“I’d do it slow.”

“Good.”

Taking my wrist, he pressed it to his heart, daring me to find a weakness beneath. We stood in front of the mirror, a Virelli and a Romanov, stripped raw, and staring at each other until the future looked as small and obvious as the vein throbbing under my thumb. Wrapping his hand around my throat, he squeezed tight.

I let him.

He lowered me, lips ghosting the corner of my jaw. Threading my arms around his neck, I pressed my body against the hard length of him and let myself melt into whatever came next.

The chain, taut at my throat, choked a line of fire and pleasure up through my skull.

Hooking my thighs to the marble, he hoisted me onto the bathroom counter. My knees grazed his ribs. Bracing both hands at either side of my hips, pinning me, he waited—not for permission, but for confirmation, to see if I’d blink, look away, or feign reluctance.

The hush in the penthouse was so encompassing, I swore I could hear the echo of my blood.

Grabbing a chunk of his hair, I yanked his mouth to mine so hard our teeth knocked together.

His mouth tasted of rust and bile, violence on his tongue. Running his tongue along the inside of my mouth, he teased the tip of my tongue. I sucked it, drank him, and felt the first pulse of want hit my groin like a detonator. He kissed down my neck, then took the chain between his teeth, dragging it through his mouth slowly.

My hands wandered up the ridges and planes of his stomach and chest, fingertips pressing gently over faded scars. His skin trembled with currents too potent to be called shivers.

Studying the cocktail of wounds—the purpled bite by his clavicle, the cut across his shoulder, the webbing of bruises across his ribs, and the crescent moons on his flanks where my nails had broken skin—I catalogued every mark.

Arrow watched me explore him, my hands moving over the sweat and blood marking his chest and shoulders, never flinching at any of it. He wore blood as a badge, and the shimmer of the city behind us let me see what kind of art two bodies could make with violence.

Hissing when I grazed a fresh scratch just above his nipple, with a lazy push, he opened my knees wider, slotting himself between them. He kissed me with the slow patience of a man who had decided never to die.