Page 31 of Arrow

Anyone who knew me understood that the closer I got to danger, the more I craved it.

The hallway to the mirror-glass room was lined with security, but tonight, there were eyes in the walls, an extra layer of protection that felt less like safety and more like a coffin lined in velvet.

Zephyr opened the door, and we walked onto the black vinyl stage. Somewhere, behind the black glass, Arrow Romanov was watching, and I tasted the gravity of his attention.

The scene started slowly—a silent negotiation in gestures and glances. Zephyr took the lead, as always, coiling a length of rope around his fist, then brushing my jaw with the back of his knuckles. There was a violence to his gentleness. He pushed me to my knees, pressed the crown of my head down until my cheek skimmed the cold vinyl, and wound the rope around my wrists behind my back.

He yanked me back hard, and I tasted blood where my teeth caught my tongue.

Zephyr was methodical, never performative. He didn’t play to the crowd, only to me. He tested the knots, tugged upward, and the pain sang up my nerves like a lit fuse. The sudden pressure unmoored me, bent my spine in a perfect curve, and I waited for the first strike the way a wolf waits for the knife.

He swung the cat-o’-nine-tails gently through the air—a warning. Then lower, across my thighs, hot and precise. The heads were leather-wrapped, wetted before the show. Each impact stuck, then peeled away, leaving a line of fire.

I didn’t make a sound, not until the second volley came, laid crosswise over the first. The pain was measured, growing only as quickly as I could match it, and I exhaled through clenched teeth, refusing to break for Arrow or anyone.

Zephyr’s hand tightened in my hair, yanking my head back to force me to face the glass. I stared at my own reflection, olive skin, mouth painted crimson, with a bruise ghosting the angle of my throat where the collar pressed. I didn’t see Arrow, but I felt the heat of his gaze everywhere, omnipresent and suffocating.

His voice was low, so only I could hear. “He’s here.”

“I know,” I said, the syllables trembling between triumph and terror.

Zephyr let me hang, the tension in my shoulders exquisite—every nerve screaming for release or destruction, whichever came first.

“Are you ready for the next part?” His mouth brushed the shell of my ear.

“Do it,” I hissed. And so he did.

He untied the knots with brutal efficiency, then spun me around to face the darkness of the window, splaying my palms against it. He pressed against me from behind, so I could feel the slick heat of his sweat through the latex of my corset, his breathing echoing in my ragged panting. I caught my reflection, and for the briefest moment, the pale glint of something colder behind the glass—Arrow’s face—a god behind a confessional screen.

Zephyr’s hands were on my hips, hard enough to bruise, and his mouth found my neck just above the collar. I bared my teeth, more animal than human, and let my head fall back onto his shoulder, arching for the pain that followed. He bent my elbow behind my back and drove my cheek against the glass, pressing me so tight I could taste the chemical tang of window cleaner on my tongue.

Each breath fogged it, a ragged halo around my face, while Zephyr used his free hand to snap the collar like a leash, forcing my head up and my eyes wide. I could almost see Arrow’s features behind the one-way mirror—flat, cruel, and rapt.

The whip fell again—across my back this time, just below the edge of the corset, and this time I did make a noise. The sound was half-throated, a sharp, raw wound forcibly drawn from me. Everything blurred, the heat, the ache, the squeeze of fabric and flesh.

Zephyr propped me against the glass, splayed, and ran his tongue up the side of my throat.

“You’re doing it for him,” he whispered, almost gently. I would have spat in his face if I hadn’t already started to tremble.

Watching my face, Zephyr searched my pupils, and gauged just how much fight I had left. He found it and smiled with a glimpse of real, unscripted respect.

He let me go.

I melted to a crouch, knees open, face pressed to the glass as he reached down and caught my hair, forcing me to look straight into the black window. Then, he wrapped my head with a blindfold and tied it tight, eliminating my vision. He stayed quiet for a few seconds, and I heard some rustling nearby.

Zephyr’s favorite act was eliminating one or more senses. He said it raised the others to compensate for the loss of sight and, in turn, would make the sensations more intense.

His hands drifted down my spine and hooked into the zipper of the corset, dragging it open one inch at a time until my lungs tasted air again.

The climate in the room had changed.

It was harder.

The silence felt heavy, like Arrow’s demands for an exclusive show had replaced the air itself.

A shudder ran up my legs, and if Zephyr felt weakness, he didn’t mention it. Crueler than before, he slid his palm up beneath the open panels of latex and cupped my breast, his thumb circling the red of my nipple until I hissed.

“You could safe out,” he whispered.