Page 146 of Arrow

She worked two knuckles in, getting me ready for more, and the look on her face, focused but playful, as if she was teasing parallel universes where this ended in us on opposite sides of something bloody, sent a shiver from my spine down to the pivots of my knees. She arched her brow, eyes flicking between my mouth and my cunt, as if to memorize the way I blushed all the way to my navel at her touch.

The crowd roared at any uptick in tempo, and on the other side of the cage bars, I could see half a dozen men and women with their hands pressed to the glass, fogging it over with hungry breath.

I let my back bend, head lolling so far that my scalp grazed the metal mesh. Harley followed, sliding her fingers deeper, then curled them until I nearly yelped.

When I bucked, dragging her hand in that last centimeter, she leaned in and whispered, “You’re going to get us both in trouble, you know that?”

Her breath was hot against my ear, her fingers still working inside me as the crowd beyond the cage grew more frenzied.

I laughed, a sound that tasted like freedom and spite. “Trouble is exactly what I’m looking for tonight.”

Her eyes widened slightly as she caught my meaning.

She knew who I was—who I belonged to.

Everyone in this city knew.

The chain’s absence from my throat felt like a declaration of war, and maybe it was.

“Your man will kill me,” she whispered, but she didn’t stop. Her thumb found my clit and circled it lazily.

“Fuck Arrow Romanov. He’s not my man tonight,” I said, grinding down harder on her hand. “And I sure as hell am not his.”

The music throbbed around us, bass so deep I could feel it in my teeth. I closed my eyes and let the sensation wash over me—her fingers, the heat of the crowd, the knowledge that I was betraying Arrow in the most public way possible. It should have felt wrong. It didn’t.

Harley’s lips found my neck, exactly where Arrow had marked me last. She bit down, reclaiming the bruise, and I moaned loud enough for the front row to hear. Someone threw money at the cage. Someone else whistled. I didn’t care about any of them.

“Make me come,” I commanded, tangling my fingers in her hair. “Make me forget him.”

She obliged, and fucked me with her hand, gently but relentlessly, thumb working a spiral around my clit, while, with her other hand, she pulled my face to hers and kissed me the way you’d hoard the last sip of oxygen in the world.

The crowd pressed closer, hands up, the glass a pulsating membrane between what they wanted and what they could never touch. I laughed into Harley’s mouth, letting her own the rhythm, the wet staccato of her knuckles dragging the ache out of me while she matched my every tremor with a tightening of her wrist and a slow circling pressure that made the world disappear into white noise.

Clinging to the bars, the metal bit into my palms as she worked me harder, and the crowd sharpened to a singularity of faces, each one melting into and out of focus as my eyes rolled back. I felt the edge gather, like a shrapnel halo, and for a moment I spared a thought—Arrow, somewhere above, watching and knowing and probably losing his mind at the idea of anyone else’s hands inside me.

The thought made me come even harder—a cataclysmic snap that left every muscle in my body wire-taut and ribbed with heat.

Harley felt it, grinned, and twisted her wrist just so, stretching the pleasure into a velvet noose that had me gasping, half-strangled by want.

The crowd cheered, a raw, animal face to the city’s relentless hunger. I straightened, righted myself on her lap, and, for the cameras, because there were always cameras, ran my hand down her jaw, tasting the salt and the metallic tang that lingered on her tongue from my blood.

I let the moment linger, then let her fuck my mouth slowly with her fingers and sucked the taste of my cunt clean while the club reeled in waves around us.

She laughed, a purr at the back of her throat, then tucked her face behind my ear and mugged for the crowd, licking my neck as I bared it shamelessly to the cage. The show was raw, and the crowd was hungry, almost reverential. I could see men staring, their jaws slack as the two of us vibrated the cage with our bright, illicit heat. Women, too—some with envy, some with possibility. I relished every last calorie of their want.

Backstage, Harley crashed beside me on the vinyl sofa. The air was thick with sweat and the girls’ sweet, chemical perfume—little rival currents of ambition and exhaustion swirling between them. By the time break rolled around, Isadora found us backstage, with her hands on her hips, arms folded, looking every inch the brined, unkillable queen.

“What the fuck, Harlowe?” she hissed, but her fondness floated the bitterness. “You want to start a war between your fiancé and every girl on my payroll?”

Harley, to her credit, looked only slightly abashed. “I thought it was good for business.”

“It is,” Isadora said, “but next time, maybe don’t make it look like you’re about to fuck on the bar. If Arrow comes down here armed, I’m charging a cover for the body count.”

Harley smirked, stretching her arms over her head. “He can take a number like everyone else. I’ll let him cut the line, though.”

I fished a joint out of Harley’s thigh-garter, flicked it to life, and took a drag while Isadora watched me through slitted eyes.

“Arrow’s too busy tonight to care what I do,” I lied. “He’d have to stop fucking his ex long enough to realize I’m not locked in a glass case at home.”