Page 46 of Arrow

I wanted to claw his eyes out. “Then why the fuck are you here, if you hate noise? Why don’t you go find some other poor girl to bug, you limp dick douche.”

Arrow grinned. “Limp dick,” he repeated, then grabbed my wrist again and steered me into one of the confessional booths.

The booth door banged behind us. From the other side of the screen, the world became muffled, reduced to the scent of perfume, heat, and the residue of cigarette ash.

The velvet seat pressed against my back as he knelt so abruptly I almost kicked him. I tensed, but he only came closer, leaning in so his jaw brushed my bare thigh as both hands settled on the cushion beside my knees.

A pulse of panic, or anticipation, bloomed in my chest. His inhale came slow and greedy through his nose, and for the slightest second, his composure flickered. The predator was hungry, but was something else, too—something wounded, or maybe just obsessed.

“I thought I was clear about staying away from here.”

“You were. I didn’t listen.” I tilted my chin up, refusing to be cowed even as his proximity made my skin prickle with awareness.

Arrow’s eyes darkened, pupils expanding until only a thin ring of ice blue remained. “You never do. That’s becoming a problem.”

“Your problem, not mine.” I tried to shift away, but the confessional was too small, my back already pressed against the wooden panel.

His breath was hot on my skin. “You think I don’t know the difference between a whore and a martyr?” The words slithered upward along my thigh. “You want to be worshipped and destroyed at the same time.” He tasted the inside of my knee, then bit it just shy of where I really wanted his mouth. “But you’ll spend your entire life hunting for a punishment worse than me. You’ll never find it, Harlowe. I’ll make sure of that.”

I stared down at him, at the black glimmer of his hair and the unblinking tension in his posture. “You’re not my priest,” I spat, but it came out hoarse, softer than I wanted. “You don’t get to absolve shit. Least of all yourself, Romanov.” I said his family name with venom.

If it fazed him, he didn’t show it.

His lips dragged slowly enough to be cruel, teeth brushing against my sensitive skin.

“I’m not here for absolution,” he said, his voice as sure as pain. “But you should know that you can’t run from this.”

The nip came hard, not enough to mark, but enough to make my whole leg jump. When he pulled back, I saw now that there was no warmth in his eyes. The bite was because he could.

I shoved his chest. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

My hand never made contact with his face—caught mid-slap. His grip was iron, but not bruising.

“I’m your fiancé, Harlowe. And as much as I don’t want to be, I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re disgusting,” I spat, twisting my wrist hard, until he was forced to loosen his grip.

He did, but not before running his thumb over the inside of my palm, tracing the faint scars where the barbed wire around my brother’s corpse had ripped my palms apart.

Silence thickened. My breath sawed in and out.

Arrow looked up at me from his knees, every muscle held in a preternatural restraint. “You tell yourself story after story about what you’ll do when you meet the monster in the dark, that you’ll scream, you’ll fight, and you’ll win.” His mouth ticked up at one edge, a smile that wasn’t. “You’re old enough to know better, Harlowe. The monster always wins.”

Rising effortlessly, he leaned until the air between us was as tight as cello wire. I wanted to slap him, or kiss him, or both, but I did neither. I glared at him, my body vibrating. He held my stare effortlessly, then shrugged off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves, a mannerism I was beginning to enjoy. I realized now that his hands weren’t the hands of a man who lived in offices and boardrooms; they were the hands of a man who used them for hurting and for saving.

And maybe Arrow Romanov only knew how to do both at once.

A platinum lighter appeared from his pocket. One flick, and the flame bloomed. Its light turned him gold and evil. He gestured to my bare wrist, where the bruises from Zephyr’s earlier session were already blooming faint purple.

Arrow liked my pain. He wanted to brand me with it, like a signature only he had the right to apply. Everything in me wanted to recoil, to twist away, but I’d spent years honing hate into diamond clarity.

I held his gaze and waited for him to blink first.

He didn’t.

The lighter snapped shut, then disappeared into his pocket. Straightening, he looked down at me as if appraising a new kind of damage. “You’re not afraid of me,” he mused, almost to himself.

“You wish.”