Page 138 of Arrow

Gripping her chin, I forced her to look at me. “Are we both making each other weak, then?”

“No,” she whispered, standing on her tiptoes to brush her lips against mine. “I think we’re making each other dangerous.”

“You know what happens if we’re wrong about this,” I said. “If I’m wrong about you⁠—”

“You die,” she finished for me. “And if I’m wrong about you, I die. Pretty simple math.”

“Nothing is simple about that.”

She slid her hands down my chest to the waistband of my pants. “Did you come back here to talk about betrayal all night, or did you come back for me?”

“Both. I need you to understand what we’re up against.”

“I understand perfectly.” She slid her hand inside my pants and gripped my hard cock. “My father wants you dead, your father wants me gone, and the entire criminal underworld is waiting to see which one of us betrays the other first.”

I groaned as she stroked me, dropping my forehead to hers. I bit my lip, resisting the primal urge to thrust into her hand. “And yet, here we are.”

“Here we are,” she echoed, her thumb circling the sensitive head of my cock. “So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to fuck me or are you going to worry about what everyone else thinks?”

Grabbing her wrist, I pinned it above her head against the glass, my other hand tangling in her hair. “ You know exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Show me,” she challenged, sapphire eyes glittering in the city lights.

Spinning her toward the window, I flattened her palms against the glass. Manhattan sprawled below us, a glittering carpet of lights and shadows—my kingdom, or what would be mine if we survived the week. I kicked her legs apart, one hand sliding up her thigh to find her soaking wet for me.

“You like the danger,” I growled against her ear, sliding two fingers inside her. “You get off on it.”

She arched back against me. “So do you.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The threat of death had always been an aphrodisiac in our world—the closer to the edge, the more alive you felt. But this was different. This wasn’t just about the rush. This was about her, about us. About whatever impossible future we might carve out of the blood and chaos.

29

TWENTY-NINE

ARROW

Two days later, after a long night going over plans with Atlas and Orion, I pitched up at the penthouse with a bottle of Chianti and a compulsion so raw I’d almost burned through two cars just getting across the bridge.

She was reading. Or half-reading, slouched on the lounge in nothing but old sweats and a band tee that looked like she’d stolen it from a dead boyfriend. She didn’t look up until I poured two full glasses, the red sloshing like hemoglobin in the wide-bellied bowl.

Arrow Romanov, domesticated by wine and need. If anyone could see me now, I’d be dead in the morning.

“Have a nice night at the office?” she drawled, eyes not leaving her book.

“Productivity was at an all-time high.”

She chuckled, the sound liquid and amused. “You’re leaking metaphors again. You know, most men just say what they mean.”

I set the glasses down and sat, spine bowed from the fatigue I never admitted to anyone but the walls. “Most men aren’t being hunted by their own reflections.”

This got her attention. She tucked her knees to her chest, scruffing the hem of the ancient tee until it grazed the inside of her thigh. “Arrow, are you trying to tell me you’re scared?”

“Trying? Harlowe, I’m screaming it at you.”

She stared, eyes narrowing as if struggling to find the angle she most enjoyed. “Scared of what, exactly?”

Scared of the quiet, of the city sleeping, of the pantomime of my father’s men pretending not to surveil this building even as I checked and re-checked the cameras. Scared of what hunger would do to us if left unsatisfied for one hour. Scared of my father’s name and mine, and what they’d splinter us into if we weren’t careful.