Page 149 of Arrow

My whole body ached, every nerve a fuse, and Harley pressed her luck, working the baton with one hand and two fingers from the other, splitting me open for whatever new shape pleasure could find. The slick, rude sound of me echoed against the velvet and made me blush, deep and raw, at the thought of who might be watching the camera feeds in the back office, if even after hours, Arrow’s men kept a lazy eye on the infamous daughter of Giovanni Virelli in her private ruin. The thought only made my cunt clutch harder.

I thrashed, gasping, and Harley, seeing I was at the boundary, relented just enough to pull the steel rod free, trailing it gently from my ass as if unsheathing a sword. I whimpered, high and hot. She ran her tongue lazily up the length of my slit, then climbed up my body, straddling my hips, hair wild, face radiant with sweat and come and the effort of making me break again and again.

She leaned down, lips so faint at my ear, I barely caught the words. “Now that you’re warmed up, I want your fucking mouth on my pussy.”

That was all I needed. Harley crawled up my body and turned around so that her pussy hovered over my face. She spread her knees wide, angled her hips down.

“Show me you mean it, Virelli.”

Her breath was hot over me, and I realized she wanted to eat me out while I did the same to her.

Harley dropped her cunt to my mouth, and I went at her. I slid my fingers into her while I devoured the soft slip of her, tasting her, inhaling her each time I came up for a gasp. She did the same, grinding her wet, soft heat over my face while her fingers picked up where the baton left off, sliding inside me, coaxing out the last nerves I had left. I tongued her clit until she started to shake, the muscles in her thighs twitching as she rocked above me.

She fucked my mouth for the show, but the way she whimpered told me it was more. Harley wasn’t trying to win, now. She was just trying to shatter and drag me with her. We fell into a feral rhythm, the pulse of her cunt on my tongue, her voice low and calling out my name, then the relentless working of her fingers splitting me open until I couldn’t tell if the velvet was screaming, or I was.

Harley clenched down hard on my fingers, the walls of her heat fluttering, throbbing—a textbook come, if textbooks contributed a full chapter just to the art of being ruined by another woman’s mouth. I let her finish, let her ride the aftershocks on my jaw.

But I didn’t stop. I kept at her, working my fingers in and out, slow at first, then rapid, pistoning with each tremor she gave me.

I wanted to break her, or have her break me right back, and as she started to come again, she let out a guttural, “Oh, fuck, Echo—don’t stop.”

And I didn’t, not even when she shivered so hard she almost toppled off my face.

Her taste was pure and salty, embarrassed only by how honest it was. She came again, hips working in ragged staccato, then collapsed forward, head burrowed in the velvet while her fingers moved in and out of me.

“Fuck,” I gasped. “You’re going to make me come again.”

She braced herself, digging her fingers in my thighs to keep them open, and then shoved the baton into my cunt. With one hand, she thrust it in and out of me, while she shoved two fingers into my ass, working them both at the same time. Her tongue swirled my clit. My body arched off the velvet, and I screamed.

My cunt spasmed so hard it tried to spit her out, but she held on, lapping the mess from my thighs, tongue greedy and wild, until I pushed her away, too spent to even fight the aftershocks.

Her gaze drifted down. “Your fiancé is a fucking idiot for not locking you up every night.”

I wiped my arm across my mouth, and Harley kissed it, teeth catching the tender skin of my wrist. The room pulsed with a blue afterburn, our sweat streaking the velvet in comet trails, the smell of ozone and ruined bodies saturating the inch of air between us. I stirred, wrist still threaded through the restraint, and Harley, always the showman, unbuckled it with her teeth and let my hand fall onto her thigh.

We giggled—the small, savage kind of laugh reserved for women who have just committed a new and beautiful crime with each other. Then she collapsed into the crook of my body, sliding sideways so her head tipped against my shoulder, hair a greasy, glitter-soaked curtain tangled with mine.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

The exhaustion had a flavor.

I licked sweat from her clavicle, and she carded her fingers absentmindedly through my hair, settling into the hush.

“You said you’ve only done that with people you want to destroy,” Harley murmured. “Am I lucky, or just doomed?”

A snort. “Both,” I said, and meant it.

She nipped my jaw just enough to pinch. “He’ll find out, you know. Romanovs always do. Just don’t let him take it out on me unless he invites me to dinner first.” She stretched, cat-like, ribs showing under the mesh as she recovered her top from the floor, then lounged back, watching me with a new, measured pleasure. “You ever going to leave him?” She flicked a dried clump of mascara off her thumb, not waiting for a real answer.

I thought about it as I sprawled, ruined, across the velvet. About Arrow, about the way his shadow was stitched into the lining of every room I entered. I wanted to say yes, of course, but the true answer braided itself between my ribs and burrowed there.

“If he makes me,” I said, “I’ll break his heart and then let the city finish him for me.”

Harley barked a laugh, but not an unkind one. There’s a specific chemistry you get from staring someone in the eyes while they gut you, and both of us recognized the species.

She leaned in, kissed my cheek, and whispered, “If you ever need to run, call me. I’ll hide you.”

I took it for the bond it was, more useful than a secret, but harder than most of the love I’d ever been offered. “Deal,” I said, “but next time you’re topping, bring tequila.”