Page 63 of Arrow

My knees buckled as I sat, and he caged me in with arms planted on either side, trapping me between his body and the table.

He leaned in, lips grazing my cheek, just below the bruise. I caught the faintest catch in his breath—a small twitch he didn’t bother to hide.

“You want to do damage?” he whispered. “Make me bleed for you?”

One hand slid to the hem of my nightgown and bunched it up, creased silk gathering against my thigh. “All you ever had to do was ask.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob. “You think this scares me?”

He bared his teeth. “I want it to. I want you terrified, and screaming, and so hungry for it you choke on the taste. That’s how I’ll know you’re real.”

Arrow forced my legs apart with a gentle but implacable pressure, using only the flat of his palm. I didn’t resist, wouldn’t have even if I could. The shock of the cold glass table met the heat between my thighs and sent fire up my nerves.

His hand slid up, over my knee, into the crease where it met my hip. Deliberate. No teasing. No slow torture. Just an assertion of ownership.

I wanted to spit in his face—claw the veins open beneath the skin. I dug my hands into the table, felt the tremor take over, and watched him watching me, like he wanted to measure every ounce of my weakness and keep it, preserved, for later.

He yanked my nightgown up, not with lust, but an angry sort of reverence. There was no pause for approval or gentle preamble.

Pressing his mouth to the inside of my knee, he inhaled a stuttering breath, then bit down hard enough to leave me ragged and gasping.

His hand followed, fingers cold on my thigh, until they found their destination, pushing my underwear to the side and touching my hot pussy. He groaned, like he was holding back.

With Zephyr, every touch was calculated, but he wasn’t Zephyr; Arrow didn’t want to deliver ritualized pain for the sake of some balanced ledger. He wanted to peel me—take me from the inside out. See which frail bits held and which snapped under his tongue.

One finger pushed inside, swift and unforgiving, and I made a guttural whine, not for him, but for myself, and the only rebellion I had left. He swallowed the sound hard and looked up, his eyes cutting straight through me.

“Go on,” he murmured. “I want to know how much you can stand before you cut your own throat to get away from me.”

His finger curled, and any rational thought I’d had about keeping my composure atomized into static. I reached for him, hands clumsy, fingers catching hard in the expensive fabric that bracketed his shoulder.

Was I pulling him closer or pushing him away?

Both, maybe. I wanted his mouth on mine, but more, I wanted to bite back, wanted to see if he bled or just oozed more of that lethal, glimmering hunger.

He must have read it in my bones, because he let go of my legs—let me dangle, breathless, for half of a beat, so that I could feel the ache of emptiness before slamming me back down with his palm flat at the base of my throat.

Not choking, not yet, but laying his claim with precise pressure.

My knees were splayed obscenely, my jaw high in the air, and for the first time tonight, I realized what it looked like when a woman surrendered, not out of defeat, but from an instinct older and filthier than love.

Arrow pulled me closer by the throat, so our faces were a hair apart, both of us panting with the effort of not making the first move.

“You want it that badly?”

He let my pulse stutter under his hand while his other hand slid down, between my thighs, blunt and so sure it made me moan without permission. He didn’t tease, didn’t ask or seek consent he hadn’t already taken with blood and terror. He hooked a second finger inside me and pumped slowly and steadily.

I bit down on his shoulder, biting for pain, for grounding, for any proof that I could affect the world or him or even myself. He let me mark him and only responded with a tightening at the corners of his eyes.

Arrow fucked his fingers deeper. There was pain, but he made it practical, useful, a hunger I could finally answer—tipped over, sweet and unbearable. I broke apart, my body arching up and back, gasping, the table slick under my hands, and for a weird, sublime moment, I realized I was crying.

Not sobbing, not grieving, just leaking salt and heat down my face as Arrow wrung everything out of me. He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing in my surrender like it was oxygen. His hand shook, just a bit, as he wiped my tears with his thumb.

“Beautiful,” he murmured against my temple, and I hated how much I needed to hear it.

I trembled against him, aftershocks ripping through me, my body betraying every principle I’d ever claimed to stand for. I wanted to blame biology or Stockholm syndrome or anything but the truth—that some depraved, twisted part of me had been waiting for this, for someone to take everything so I could stop fighting.

When it was over, he withdrew slowly, but not softly. He dragged his wet hand up and traced my cheek, smearing it in, and let me taste myself on his thumb.