30. Thirty #3
Clinging to the bars, the metal bit into my palms as she worked me harder, and the crowd sharpened to a singularity of faces, each one melting into and out of focus as my eyes rolled back.
I felt the edge gather, like a shrapnel halo, and for a moment I spared a thought—Arrow, somewhere above, watching and knowing and probably losing his mind at the idea of anyone else’s hands inside me.
The thought made me come even harder—a cataclysmic snap that left every muscle in my body wire-taut and ribbed with heat.
Harley felt it, grinned, and twisted her wrist just so, stretching the pleasure into a velvet noose that had me gasping, half-strangled by want.
The crowd cheered, a raw, animal face to the city’s relentless hunger. I straightened, righted myself on her lap, and, for the cameras, because there were always cameras, ran my hand down her jaw, tasting the salt and the metallic tang that lingered on her tongue from my blood.
I let the moment linger, then let her fuck my mouth slowly with her fingers and sucked the taste of my cunt clean while the club reeled in waves around us.
She laughed, a purr at the back of her throat, then tucked her face behind my ear and mugged for the crowd, licking my neck as I bared it shamelessly to the cage.
The show was raw, and the crowd was hungry, almost reverential.
I could see men staring, their jaws slack as the two of us vibrated the cage with our bright, illicit heat.
Women, too—some with envy, some with possibility.
I relished every last calorie of their want.
Backstage, Harley crashed beside me on the vinyl sofa.
The air was thick with sweat and the girls’ sweet, chemical perfume—little rival currents of ambition and exhaustion swirling between them.
By the time break rolled around, Isadora found us backstage, with her hands on her hips, arms folded, looking every inch the brined, unkillable queen.
“What the fuck, Harlowe?” she hissed, but her fondness floated the bitterness. “You want to start a war between your fiancé and every girl on my payroll?”
Harley, to her credit, looked only slightly abashed. “I thought it was good for business.”
“It is,” Isadora said, “but next time, maybe don’t make it look like you’re about to fuck on the bar. If Arrow comes down here armed, I’m charging a cover for the body count.”
Harley smirked, stretching her arms over her head. “He can take a number like everyone else. I’ll let him cut the line, though.”
I fished a joint out of Harley’s thigh-garter, flicked it to life, and took a drag while Isadora watched me through slitted eyes.
“Arrow’s too busy tonight to care what I do,” I lied. “He’d have to stop fucking his ex long enough to realize I’m not locked in a glass case at home.”
Isadora shook her head, a slow benediction of the impossibly lost. “Jesus Christ, you’ve got a death wish, girl. You’re the most beautiful kind of drama, but even you can’t fuck two families out of war.”
She sidled up to light a joint off the same match, her nails clicking the lighter with the addict’s defiance she hid from the girls.
I liked the way Isadora moved, like she knew how to walk through the crossfire and still keep the smoke out of her eyes.
She leaned in, her mouth close enough to stain my ear with words meant for just us.
“Romanovs don’t forgive easily. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I flicked ash into the cup by my thigh. “I’m not married to him, yet. He gets no say in what I do in my free time, especially after tonight.”
Isadora grinned before walking out. “Oh, sweet girl, to be as na?ve as you.”
Harley peeled her fishnets halfway to her knees and nuzzled her cheek to my bare shoulder. “You like him. Like, stalker-level like.”
“Oh, fuck off.” But it was a lie, and the ease of it soothed something in both of us. She patted my thigh and nodded down, right at the restless geometry of my wrists, still mapped with a haze of last night’s bruising.
“They always mark you up this good, or just the psychos?”
I splayed my hands, admiring. “Only the ones worth destroying after.”
The club filtered our tips that night—not fair, but we made up for it in shots of mezcal smuggled in a Gatorade bottle taped beneath the bar.
Harley drank from the bottle, never breaking eye contact, and wiped her mouth with her thumb, then dragged it down my ribs with a lazy precision that was equal parts possessive and cruel.
“Tell the truth,” she said, voice velveted by the liquor. “You like the risk—knowing he’s watching. Knowing the Virelli girl might finally get what’s coming with one wrong night.”
“I like the show.” I licked the sweat from my top lip, then shot a glance at her wrist, veiled with black silk ribbon and a tattoo I couldn’t parse in the half-dark. “You plan to start trouble, or just collect it like everyone else here?”
Harley shrugged, pressing the cold bottle to my inner thigh, and watched me flinch. “Trouble’s only fun if you can finish it. Most people just want to get close enough to taste the risk, then they run right back to safety.”
She nuzzled the bottle against my skin a heartbeat longer than a joke would last. I didn’t move away.