Page 37 of Arrow

“Do it,” she mouthed, not a plea or a dare, just the honest primal language of wanting a witness.

So I did, letting her see the flash of steel before I pressed it to her skin, just hard enough to pink the surface. Not enough to bleed, not yet, but enough to split the noise in the room from pleasure to reverence. I felt her shiver, her whole body quaking against the altar, and for a second, I wanted to slide the blade deeper, take her to the edge and see exactly where she’d break.

But that would have lacked originality. I wanted her alive, her memory intact, and the agony pure for years.

Pressing the knife to her hip, I carved the first letter of my name—just an A, a single arch, bright red against her perfect skin. When I let go, blood beaded, running like a tear down her thigh. She flinched, but her face told the crowd she’d come here for this.

Holding her gaze, I leaned in, my tongue flicking the cut. It tasted of salt and old bitterness and something only we could name. The crowd moaned as if they’d been struck.

The voyeurism in the room went from prurient to rapturous, and for one moment, we both belonged to something bigger than violence or debt.

It was power, naked and holy.

I sucked the blood until it stopped, then cleaned the knife on the hem of her slip, leaving a wet streak of crimson. I could have released her—I should have. But I could see the wetness of her arousal pool beneath her, her sweet pussy lips glistening in the light, and I couldn’t let her go.

Instead, I traced the flat of the knife handle down her sternum, watching her body arch against the cold metal. She shuddered, breath catching as I dragged it between her breasts.

A strip of her nightgown tore easily under the blade—silk surrendering without resistance. I wrapped the scrap around the handle, binding it loosely, letting the soft fabric catch the light.

Positioning the knife handle at her entrance, I hesitated so she could feel the weight of it, the promise of it. When I pushed inside her, she gasped—that gasp becoming a moan as I moved it slowly, letting the silk brush against her walls while her body clenched around it.

Her head fell back, her neck completely exposed to me.

The room throb with anticipation, every gaze crawling over the two of us. Then, just to prove her body was mine to display, I withdrew the knife, and dipped two fingers between her legs, letting the crowd see what shamed her more than violence ever could, the sticky evidence of her own need.

She jerked, nearly convulsed, and the moan that ripped from her throat was a sound I’d never heard from her before—a sound that spiked the crowd’s hunger into riot.

I pressed my thumb into the bleeding crescent of my mark on her hip while I fucked her with my fingers, slow and showy, while every last eye in the cathedral watched. Her whole body reached for it, arched into the pain. She tried to spread her thighs, but the cuffs held fast, so she bucked in tiny, exquisite increments.

When I bent to lick the blood and taste her together, the room hissed.

Catching her face in my hand, I squashed her cheeks so her lips bruised and parted, and said in her ear, “This is what it means to be a Romanov, moya malen’kaya gadyuka.⁠* Even your agony is performance.”

She spat at me, but I loved her more for it, so I forced another two fingers into her to make her voice shatter in a mewling, involuntary whimper. “You’re going to come like this, in front of them.”

I buried my face into her cunt, running my tongue through her wet, hot slit, groaning at the sweet taste of her. She bucked hard, a shockwave rippling up her torso into my mouth. I opened her with one hand, thumb grinding hot against the ruined red of my initial while I devoured her in long, cruel licks. She tasted of blood and the hollow ache of a girl who’d burned up every softer part of herself to make room for pain. I made it rough, dragging my nose across her clit, the point of my tongue flattening her to the altar, letting just enough air in that every flick brought her closer to rupture.

The audience was nearly silent. The cathedral was so entranced by the clarity of her suffering that time itself felt snared in the stretch between her breaths.

Truth be told, I’d never tasted pussy so fucking good. It was addictive. I wanted her to sob, to scream, but Harlowe made herself mute except for a ragged, warbling gasp as I worked a third finger alongside the others, spreading her wide, brutal in my pace. I held her eyes the whole time. I wanted the room to see her come apart and be unable to look anywhere but me.

Her wrists wrenched against the cuffs, the tendons in her pretty neck threatening to pop, her jaw unhinged as she let go. When she came, it was with a compressed wail that rolled up from somewhere deeper than the gut. Her whole body locked, shuddered, and then oscillated in these tight, tiny increments, like she was turning inside out in the attempt not to break. She didn’t beg, not for mercy, not for an end. She just stared at the crowd, and dared every face there to say they’d never seen violence this beautiful.

Sucking her clit until she wept, I licked tears from her cheeks, all in a deliberate, showman’s rhythm. The cuffs rattled against the bolts. I could have left her splayed in the aftermath for hours, but the audience was the kind that required closure. So I drew the knife again, toyed with it just shy of her collarbone, and threatened as if I’d bring the blade to her throat.

Harlowe bucked, arching high as I pressed the blade against her skin, and for the span of several heartbeats, she truly didn’t know if I’d kill her or marry her in blood. I traced the knife down her front, dancing over the swell of her belly, the blade flat, just enough to force cold into the heat of her twitching skin. Down it went, over bare skin and her glistening pussy, the crowd losing composure as I made sure the audience never forgot what they’d witnessed.

I left her open, ruined, and gorgeous, arms wrenched overhead and legs trembling with the phantom of pain, her cunt still leaking down the altar and onto my wrists. I palmed her face, my thumb in her mouth, and felt her bite, even then—bloody, desperate, and never yielding. When I finally released the cuffs, her hands fell limp, powerless from the strain, and I caught her body against mine before she could collapse off the platform.

The applause broke over us like a tide. Some in the front row were weeping. All eyes were on her.

Wrapping my jacket around her, I gathered her up, not cradling but carrying her as one does a precious relic. The white slip was stained crimson, and clear fluid was plastered to her hips, her throat striped from both Zephyr’s belt and my name. She blinked at the ceiling, eyelashes spidering with tears, but offered no sound to the world.

In the corner, Zephyr stood, hands tight, and jaw set. If he felt jealousy, it was the kind reserved for holy wars.

I wanted the audience to see my tongue in her ruined mouth, my hand cupping her face with a reverence. She relaxed into my grip, even as I cinched her tighter, a weightless defiance in her limp limbs that told me she was planning—always one step ahead in her riotous head.

Then, I carried her through the crowd. Nobody stood in my way. Not the doms, not the voyeurs, not the peacocking hedge-fund wolves, because they sensed that for once in their lives, they had seen a real fucking thing.