9. Nine
NINE
HARLOWE
Istared at Arrow, heat rising to my face. The fucker lounged against the wall like he owned the room—like he already owned me. The hangover pounded behind my eyes, but the rage pounding in my chest was louder.
“I don’t care about your threats.” I grabbed my clothes from the floor, clutching them against my chest. “You think I’m scared of you?”
His eyes tracked my movements with predatory focus. “I think you’re terrified of me. Not because of what I might do to you, but because of what I see in you.”
“You see nothing,” I spat, retreating to the bathroom, but he moved with impossible speed, blocking the doorway.
“You don’t get privacy after running,” he said, voice deadly calm. “Consider that your first consequence.”
My stomach lurched the moment he stepped close enough for me to catch his scent.
Don’t breathe. Don’t let him see.
But my traitorous lungs had already pulled in a breath, and with it came the intoxicating assault of him—that damn expensive cologne, something dark and woody with notes of bergamot and leather, seeping through. It was the scent of old money and older sins, refined and dangerous all at once.
I should have hated it. Probably should have recoiled from the way it wrapped around me like smoke, invasive and inescapable.
Instead, my pulse kicked up, a frantic drumbeat against my ribs that I prayed he couldn’t hear.
Beneath his cologne was something raw and metallic that my brain recognized even if my conscious mind wanted to deny it.
Violence.
Blood.
The scent of a predator who’d just fed. Had he really killed people last night? The rumors whispered in the powder rooms, the careful way people stepped aside when he entered a room, the darkness that lived behind those gray eyes—
My breath caught, and I hated myself for it. Hated the way my body responded to the danger he represented, the way heat pooled low in my belly even as every rational thought screamed at me to run. This man was a monster. A killer. The heir to my enemy I’d been raised to despise.
I found myself leaning infinitesimally closer, drawn by some primal instinct I couldn’t name and sure as hell wasn’t going to examine. My skin felt too tight and too hot. Every nerve ending had come alive, hyperaware of his proximity, of the way the air seemed to thicken between us.
Stop it. You’re stronger than this.
I forced my chin up, meeting his gaze with all the defiance I could muster, even as my heart hammered and my knees threatened to betray me. Even as that fucking cologne made my head swim and my resolve crack at the edges.
He smiled, slow and knowing, like he could read every traitorous response my body was having. Like he knew exactly what his presence did to me, how it unraveled the careful control I’d spent years perfecting.
I wanted to slap that smile off his face.
And yet, I wanted to close the distance between us and find out if he tasted as dangerous as he smelled.
The contradiction was going to destroy me.
“Fine,” I hissed, turning my back to him. “Enjoy the show.”
Peeling off my tank top, my skin prickled with awareness.
His eyes were on me, tracing the contours of my bare back, lingering on the bruises that hadn’t yet faded from my last session at La Lune Noire.
I hooked my thumbs into my underwear, hesitating for just a second before sliding them down and stepping out of them, completely naked.
Let him look.
Let him see that even though he’d claimed me, marked me, tracked me down, my body was still mine.
I could feel his gaze like a physical touch trailing down my spine. The air in the cheap motel room felt charged and electric. Reaching for my dress, I took my time sliding it over my head, making him wait. Making him watch.
“Satisfied?” I asked, turning to face him.
His expression hadn’t changed, but something in his eyes had—a darkness, a hunger that made my mouth go dry. He stepped aside, gesturing toward the door.
“After you.”
I grabbed my purse, trying to ignore how my hands trembled. The hangover wasn’t helping, nor was the lingering vodka taste coating my tongue. I needed water, aspirin, and about a thousand miles between Arrow Romanov and me.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, hating the vulnerability in my voice.
“Home.”
The next afternoon, Madame Isadora intercepted me at the velvet-roped vestibule of La Lune Noire with an envelope in her hand.
“Darling,” she purred, “your fiancé wishes to observe your work tonight.”
I snapped the envelope open. Inside was a black card with cursive handwriting.
Tonight. 11 PM. Wear the collar.
-Arrow
He’d sealed it with melted wax, stamped with the Romanov crest, as if I were being summoned to an execution.
“Did the sadist specify what kind of show?”
Isadora’s mouth curled into a sly smile. “Something memorable, I suspect. The room with the mirrored glass.”
I didn’t flinch. The club’s exhibition suite, where regulars could watch on one side of the two-way, was invisible to those on display. Magnified humiliation. I’d played in it before, but never with Arrow watching in the dark.
“Are you going to warn me about anything else?” I asked.
She gave me a look that said she pitied me, and maybe she did.
“He paid for absolute discretion. But I would make it . . . exclusive. If he’s pleased, he’s agreed to let me double your cut for the night.” She spun to leave, her heels scoring arpeggios down the onyx floor.
“How generous,” I scoffed.
I dressed for my Arrow-exclusive showcase. Latex corset, the dark color resembling that of dried blood, laced so tight my ribs ached. No bra, no panties—club rules, or maybe just mine. The collar, heavy around my neck, caught in the hollow of my throat.
If I were being honest, I liked being collared by a powerful man. However, when that man was Arrow Romanov, he could eat shit before I let him know that.
Two minutes before showtime, I stood in the dressing room, staring at myself in the vintage mirror.
My lips were blood red, my lashes spiked and bordered in kohl, and I’d painted a Romanov teardrop beneath one eye as a fuck-you to the man watching from the other side of the glass.
I ran a finger along the inside of the collar, pressing until it pinched, and wondered if Arrow would be hard the first time he saw me broken, or if he’d prefer to do it himself.
Zephyr met me in the corridor, already stripped to the waist and gleaming with oil, a black silk mask over the top half of his face. He watched the way my hips moved, the little shake in my knees, and put a hand on my bare shoulder.
“You ready?” he asked.
“For you, for this, always. But for the asshole in the audience, absolutely fucking never,” I said.
Anyone who knew me understood that the closer I got to danger, the more I craved it.
The hallway to the mirror-glass room was lined with security, but tonight, there were eyes in the walls, an extra layer of protection that felt less like safety and more like a coffin lined in velvet.
Zephyr opened the door, and we walked onto the black vinyl stage. Somewhere, behind the black glass, Arrow Romanov was watching, and I tasted the gravity of his attention.
The scene started slowly—a silent negotiation in gestures and glances.
Zephyr took the lead, as always, coiling a length of rope around his fist, then brushing my jaw with the back of his knuckles.
There was a violence to his gentleness. He pushed me to my knees, pressed the crown of my head down until my cheek skimmed the cold vinyl, and wound the rope around my wrists behind my back.
He yanked me back hard, and I tasted blood where my teeth caught my tongue.
Zephyr was methodical, never performative.
He didn’t play to the crowd, only to me.
He tested the knots, tugged upward, and the pain sang up my nerves like a lit fuse.
The sudden pressure unmoored me, bent my spine in a perfect curve, and I waited for the first strike the way a wolf waits for the knife.
He swung the cat-o’-nine-tails gently through the air—a warning. Then lower, across my thighs, hot and precise. The heads were leather-wrapped, wetted before the show. Each impact stuck, then peeled away, leaving a line of fire.
I didn’t make a sound, not until the second volley came, laid crosswise over the first. The pain was measured, growing only as quickly as I could match it, and I exhaled through clenched teeth, refusing to break for Arrow or anyone.
Zephyr’s hand tightened in my hair, yanking my head back to force me to face the glass.
I stared at my own reflection, olive skin, mouth painted crimson, with a bruise ghosting the angle of my throat where the collar pressed.
I didn’t see Arrow, but I felt the heat of his gaze everywhere, omnipresent and suffocating.
His voice was low, so only I could hear. “He’s here.”
“I know,” I said, the syllables trembling between triumph and terror.
Zephyr let me hang, the tension in my shoulders exquisite—every nerve screaming for release or destruction, whichever came first.
“Are you ready for the next part?” His mouth brushed the shell of my ear.
“Do it,” I hissed. And so he did.
He untied the knots with brutal efficiency, then spun me around to face the darkness of the window, splaying my palms against it.
He pressed against me from behind, so I could feel the slick heat of his sweat through the latex of my corset, his breathing echoing in my ragged panting.
I caught my reflection, and for the briefest moment, the pale glint of something colder behind the glass—Arrow’s face—a god behind a confessional screen.
Zephyr’s hands were on my hips, hard enough to bruise, and his mouth found my neck just above the collar.
I bared my teeth, more animal than human, and let my head fall back onto his shoulder, arching for the pain that followed.
He bent my elbow behind my back and drove my cheek against the glass, pressing me so tight I could taste the chemical tang of window cleaner on my tongue.