10. Ten
TEN
ARROW
Goddamn the Virelli princess’s mouth.
After finding her in the motel room, remembering the way she performed a rebellious striptease in front of me, then at the club—watching her submit to another man’s hands—something primal had awakened in me.
I’d tasted her defiance on my tongue when I kissed her.
Felt her hatred vibrating through her teeth as she fought not to bite down on my cock.
I stood under the shower, letting scalding water pound against my shoulders as I replayed the image of her on her knees, mascara streaming down her face, the obsidian collar gleaming against her throat. The way she’d looked at me with pure venom even as she swallowed.
Mine.
The thought was primitive, possessive in a way I rarely allowed myself to be. I wasn't a man who formed attachments. I acquired assets, neutralized threats, and maintained control.
Women, in my experience, had always been predictable. Possessions to be acquired, used, and discarded when they no longer served a purpose.
But Harlowe Virelli wasn’t just another acquisition. She was becoming an obsession. She fought me at every turn, her hatred burning so bright it could blind a man less controlled than me. It was like trying to tame a wildfire.
I turned off the shower and reached for a towel. The wedding was approaching, and I needed her to be compliant enough to stand beside me at the altar without causing a scene. The world needed to see us united, even if, privately, we were at war.
Which led me to seek her out in the only place she couldn’t stay away from.
The next night, La Lune Noire was winding down, but the place was still full of couples fucking as they watched the show on the stage.
My gaze followed theirs, and I knew she’d be there.
She needed the release in the way the wounded needed to prove they’re still breathing.
There was a part of me that enjoyed the push-and-pull, the absolute way she defied social norms and expected behavior of a Virelli princess.
I pushed my way through the perfume-heavy crowd, ignoring the hands that brushed against my sleeve, the eyes that followed my progress with hungry recognition. The Romanov heir in a sex club made for good gossip, but I wasn’t here for entertainment.
Harlowe was on stage, again and always, as if she’d only ever existed on stages, with a halo of bruises on her thighs and her neck. They were stark and deliberate against her olive skin and the sheer white slip she wore.
Zephyr held the stage with her, lacing a leather belt around her waist. The buckle gleamed in the blue lights overhead. She let her head fall to one side, exposing her neck, and shot a look through the dim light like she was daring anyone to claim her.
Standing on the threshold, I could have ended the show with a snap of my fingers, but I wanted to see how far she’d go.
The dom’s fingers played at the edges of her shoulder blades, a touch so rehearsed it was barely a touch at all, just the threat of more. It measured the silent plea in her posture—wreck me, but do it faster than he can. She needed an audience for her undoing.
She sank to her knees without prompting, the fabric pooling into a puddle of silk, and he drew the belt taut behind her back, binding her elbows tight.
Tilting her chin, her onyx hair streamed over her shoulder, and the naked grace of her skin made the crowd lean in, hungry for the moment when the pain would collapse into spectacle or mutiny.
I tracked the twitch in Zephyr’s jaw, the practiced shake in his hands as he planted one palm on the top of her head and pressed down, pinning her like a specimen for the gods to judge.
Her mouth parted, first in a gasp, then in a smile. He wrapped the belt once, then twice around her elbows, cinching them hard against the line of her back. Then, he wrapped a leather strap around her throat, threading it through the ring at the front of the belt.
It wasn’t torture, not yet, but in the silence, you could hear the air narrow in her windpipe, the hush of self-betrayal as his thumb found the hinge of her jaw.
The crowd drank it up. It was a communion of prurience and envy, with all those couples in their fancy clothes and rented selves, loving her for what they wished they could do with impunity.
Harlowe didn’t resist the hands on her or the eyes; she made a meal of it. Her hips tilted forward, her knees bruised by the floor, and her gaze swept the club until she found me in the dark.
She flinched, just once, a half-second flicker, like a clock’s hand skipping a number. Zephyr saw it, and so did I. He leaned into her, mouth to her ear, but his eyes cut to mine, as if to say: “There’s only so much I can do before she breaks in two.”
Harlowe stared at him, silently, but never flinched.
Then she made the only move she could, opening her mouth, jaw slack, and let him push two fingers between her lips.
She bit, holding them between her teeth until Zephyr jerked, beads of sweat at his brow, and forced her open wider, prying the jaw with brutal sweetness.
The audience stilled. Even the unicorn couples, wild-eyed and red-knuckled at their private cages, froze in the glare of her performance. The suffering was real enough that even I, a connoisseur, felt the old, slow tickle in the back of my skull, a pleasure so sharp it calcified into wonder.
Zephyr pressed forward and, in a flourish, twisted her head to the side, exposing her throat, and the belt pressed deep at her pulse.
He set the heel of his palm above the collar and bore down by fractions, millimeters, until her face purpled, her cheeks ballooning in a way that was almost comical until you noted the splay of her legs and the way her eyes fixed on a spot far above the balconies, where the light had ruptured into a tiny, perfect halo.
The audience held its breath now. Zephyr released. Harlowe sagged, drooling at the mouth, perfectly slack for a half-second before she exploded, where her elbows jerked hard against the binding. Her shoulders strained until the crowd collectively gasped, thinking she’d snap both at the socket.
She never broke herself, not entirely. She knew how to balance the damage and keep the attention. Zephyr guided her to the wood, hand flattening over her skull to hold her bowed, as if praying at gunpoint.
In the front row, a hedge-fund Dracula in a Hermès tie missed his date’s mouth while feeding her a cherry. Slick daubs of juice ran down her chin as she watched, enthralled.
Further back, a woman’s stifled sob wove through the dark as her dom squeezed her shoulder in approval.
Harlowe was the cathedral’s main event and its sacrificial lamb, every eye locked on her, but now it was different, because now she knew I was here.
She shouldn’t have looked at me. There are rules in this business, written in the marrow, and the first is, you never glance at the hunter while the act is still going on. It gives too much away.
Zephyr’s eyes tracked her gaze, then shot to me, and I nodded, giving him permission, an animal tic of respect and resignation.
He throttled her tighter in the belt, a single cruel beat past comfort, the way you check if a tooth is rotten by tapping it until the nerve screams. Her jaw spasmed. Her throat bobbed.
There are a million micro-compromises for surrender, but Harlowe made them all look magnificent.
He released her neck, let her collapse onto her shoulder, hair spilling like a mourning dress over her face.
Pausing, Zephyr studied the twitch of her hands behind her back, then lifted her again so the audience could see the aftermath: ruined, gasping, but with a glint of triumph in the whites of her eyes.
He spun her, her elbows banded by leather, her hair pasted in stripes over her mouth, and set her upright again.
That’s when I broke the rules and walked onstage.
I didn’t do it for spectacle. I did it because if anyone was going to own her humiliation, it would be me.
The bouncers recognized me and looked away as I approached the stage.
The crowd watched me with wide eyes and their half-smothered greed was palpable as they anticipated something better than rehearsed violence.
Zephyr clocked me first, and for a moment, the scorn in his eyes was nearly noble, while his hand rested on Harlowe’s shoulder.
I didn’t slow down. I walked right through the low footlights and stepped to Harlowe’s side.
Her chest heaved, sweat between her breasts glistening in the lights.
Her mouth was open, but her eyes were fixed on the crowd, refusing to look my way.
I closed my hand over the back of her neck, thumb under her wet jaw, and lifted her gently to her knees.
She shuddered, maybe from the effort, maybe from the shame, maybe from hope that I’d finish it with a single snap.
The leather belt dug deep into the flesh above her collarbones. I let my fingers trace the bruised map there, demonstrating for the crowd the new territory: mine, now, not Zephyr’s, not anyone else’s.
Zephyr’s hands hovered, uncertain. He regarded me, and for a second, the distilled hatred between us felt clean, like the moment before a prizefight. It was quiet and sacred.
With flat, measured care, I undid the buckle at Harlowe’s elbows first. She didn’t tremble, but the way she flexed against the binding made it seem as though she relished the pain of returning blood, the shock of sensation spiraling up her arms.
I waited for her to either thank me or spit in my face.
Harlowe did neither.
Instead, she stared out across the auditorium, daring anyone in the dark to look away.
So, I offered her my hand. Not because I was a gentleman, but because I wanted every asshole in the room to see that if you could ruin a thing this perfectly, you should also have the right to display it.
She took it. She knew optics.
The crowd saw a transfer of power, and maybe it was—her to me, me to her, but never, ever to them.