Page 157 of Arrow

His cock split me, the raw slap of hips on ass muffled only by the wet, fleshy thunder of our bodies colliding at maximum. There was no sense of time. No floor, no ceiling. Only a boiling vertical concrete blur outside, and the knowledge that when this ended, it would either be in murder or in something so close you couldn’t tell the difference.

He let go of my wrists and seized a handful of hair, yanking my head back so I gasped.

“Keep your eyes up,” he grunted. “I want you to watch.”

I watched myself in the reflection of the elevator walls—hips arched, mouth open. I watched him jackhammer inside me, veins in his neck threatening to burst, sweat slicking every inch of his wild, beautiful self. I watched us as ruin, as prophecy. I watched a girl become a war crime, and the man who would love her only if he could destroy every last inch. He fucked me, relentless and punitive, until the elevator’s glass fogged around us, until the red cherry of the emergency stop button was the only thing that glared in my peripheral.

He bent to my ear. “Which is it, Harlowe? Do you want me, or do you want to kill me?”

“Why not both?” I rasped, tears scalding the rim of my lashes.

He liked that. He liked it so much he stopped fucking for a beat, the cock of his throbbing hot inside me, then started a new cadence, deeper, each thrust bordering on violence but never crossing all the way to cruelty.

His hand wrenched my hair to the side, and using his ruined voice, he hissed, “I want it burned into you. No one touches what’s mine.”

He continued to fuck my ass with a tempo that wanted to erase any previous lovers from the record, to overwrite Harley’s teeth with something deeper and more permanent. The friction was tenderized by the torrent of arousal running down my thighs, and with every thrust, he grunted, low and mean, “You don’t get to leave me. Not even in your head.”

The words were myth, sacrament, and violence as old as the city. I came again, this time so hard I thought my heart would silence itself. He let me thrash, let me try to claw the wall, then finished himself, fists locked at my waist as he emptied himself inside me, cock pumping until I could feel the perfect, sticky bloom of his cum coating me inside and out.

My knees buckled. He didn’t let me fall; he pressed his body into mine, keeping me flat to the wall, breathing hard enough that each exhale frosted the metal. Slowly, he loosened his grip on my hair, then my neck, then my wrists.

We stood there, suspended in glass and cold, and the aftermath of being very nearly murdered. The silence in the elevator was obscene, the only noise was the wet, erotic drip of his cum and my cunt leaking together down the inside of my thigh. I didn’t look at him. I watched myself in the mirrored wall, watched the mascara streaks, the bruises, the little tremor that lived now forever in my hands.

Arrow tucked himself away, rolled his shoulders in a gesture that was impossibly composed. Then, with no menace, he reached out and pressed the restart button. The elevator lurched, exhaled, and continued its climb. He stepped back, giving me two feet of space as if he were an old friend who’d just bumped into me at a cocktail party.

I breathed. I watched for any tell in his body, any sign he was about to finish what I’d started with the knife. But if anything, Arrow was less angry now, more at ease, a wolf that had finally devoured the lamb and realized it tasted exactly as advertised.

He took out a handkerchief from his back pocket, a little ostentatious, embroidered A, and wiped the sweat from his face, then held it against the stab wound I left him with, expression unreadable. I waited, panting, my wrists pink and my face twitchy with the heat of not knowing what came next.

I watched him through the glass, his reflection bisected by the scratch in the mirrored panel, and felt myself brighten into the truth. I liked this. I liked this so much I could barely see straight, could barely remember what it was to want anything that wasn’t his blood, his cum, his violence, and his need.

The elevator chimed, a sound so ordinary it almost broke the spell. The doors yawned open to a wall of smoke and cologne and six feet of leather-jacketed sin.

Fuck my life.

Orion.

He strolled in like he’d been summoned by the devil himself, a cigarette dangling from his fingers, eyes glittering as if he’d just walked in on a scandal he wanted front-row tickets to.

“Well, well,” he drawled, gaze flicking between Arrow’s wound and my face, which probably looked like I’d just been caught red-handed breaking and entering a man’s soul. “Is this the floor where foreplay turns into a felony, or should I come back in five?”

Arrow didn’t move.

Didn’t even blink.

I tried to push away, but his grip shifted subtly—just enough to say you’re not going anywhere.

Orion took a drag, exhaled smoke in a perfect ring. “You know, I thought I heard the sound of sexual tension echoing down the hallway. Glad to see I wasn’t hallucinating.”

“Just having a conversation with Harlowe,” Arrow replied with a smile.

Orion’s brow rose. “Well, in that case . . .” He took another drag and looked me up and down; no doubt, he saw the cum dripping down my thighs. “Don’t mind me. Just enjoying the vibes in here. Nothing says unresolved trauma like being held hostage in an elevator by the man you probably dream about strangling with his own belt.”

I tried to twist free—pride, not hope, propelling the motion—but Arrow’s body locked me in an easy, indifferent counter. He was showboating for Orion now, savoring the blush in my face, the mess on my thighs. I hated the part of myself that sparked under the attention, that made my jaw sharpen, and my stare brighten with the knowledge of being a spectacle.

Orion leaned against the elevator wall, crossing his boot at the ankle. “You two ever considered therapy?” he asked. “I hear there are support groups for people like you two. Or maybe, like, a couples spa.”

Arrow’s laugh was a scrape, salt, and chrome. “This is our therapy.”