10. Ten #3
She spat at me, but I loved her more for it, so I forced another two fingers into her to make her voice shatter in a mewling, involuntary whimper. “You’re going to come like this, in front of them.”
I buried my face into her cunt, running my tongue through her wet, hot slit, groaning at the sweet taste of her.
She bucked hard, a shockwave rippling up her torso into my mouth.
I opened her with one hand, thumb grinding hot against the ruined red of my initial while I devoured her in long, cruel licks.
She tasted of blood and the hollow ache of a girl who’d burned up every softer part of herself to make room for pain.
I made it rough, dragging my nose across her clit, the point of my tongue flattening her to the altar, letting just enough air in that every flick brought her closer to rupture.
The audience was nearly silent. The cathedral was so entranced by the clarity of her suffering that time itself felt snared in the stretch between her breaths.
Truth be told, I’d never tasted pussy so fucking good.
It was addictive. I wanted her to sob, to scream, but Harlowe made herself mute except for a ragged, warbling gasp as I worked a third finger alongside the others, spreading her wide, brutal in my pace.
I held her eyes the whole time. I wanted the room to see her come apart and be unable to look anywhere but me.
Her wrists wrenched against the cuffs, the tendons in her pretty neck threatening to pop, her jaw unhinged as she let go.
When she came, it was with a compressed wail that rolled up from somewhere deeper than the gut.
Her whole body locked, shuddered, and then oscillated in these tight, tiny increments, like she was turning inside out in the attempt not to break.
She didn’t beg, not for mercy, not for an end.
She just stared at the crowd, and dared every face there to say they’d never seen violence this beautiful.
Sucking her clit until she wept, I licked tears from her cheeks, all in a deliberate, showman’s rhythm.
The cuffs rattled against the bolts. I could have left her splayed in the aftermath for hours, but the audience was the kind that required closure.
So I drew the knife again, toyed with it just shy of her collarbone, and threatened as if I’d bring the blade to her throat.
Harlowe bucked, arching high as I pressed the blade against her skin, and for the span of several heartbeats, she truly didn’t know if I’d kill her or marry her in blood.
I traced the knife down her front, dancing over the swell of her belly, the blade flat, just enough to force cold into the heat of her twitching skin.
Down it went, over bare skin and her glistening pussy, the crowd losing composure as I made sure the audience never forgot what they’d witnessed.
I left her open, ruined, and gorgeous, arms wrenched overhead and legs trembling with the phantom of pain, her cunt still leaking down the altar and onto my wrists.
I palmed her face, my thumb in her mouth, and felt her bite, even then—bloody, desperate, and never yielding.
When I finally released the cuffs, her hands fell limp, powerless from the strain, and I caught her body against mine before she could collapse off the platform.
The applause broke over us like a tide. Some in the front row were weeping. All eyes were on her.
Wrapping my jacket around her, I gathered her up, not cradling but carrying her as one does a precious relic.
The white slip was stained crimson, and clear fluid was plastered to her hips, her throat striped from both Zephyr’s belt and my name.
She blinked at the ceiling, eyelashes spidering with tears, but offered no sound to the world.
In the corner, Zephyr stood, hands tight, and jaw set. If he felt jealousy, it was the kind reserved for holy wars.
I wanted the audience to see my tongue in her ruined mouth, my hand cupping her face with a reverence. She relaxed into my grip, even as I cinched her tighter, a weightless defiance in her limp limbs that told me she was planning—always one step ahead in her riotous head.
Then, I carried her through the crowd. Nobody stood in my way. Not the doms, not the voyeurs, not the peacocking hedge-fund wolves, because they sensed that for once in their lives, they had seen a real fucking thing.
Halfway to the door, Harlowe lifted her head from my shoulder and shot Zephyr a look, mingled gratitude and violence, then let her eyes roll closed, trusting me not to drop her.
We exited into the alley behind La Lune Noire, the noise of the club fading to nothing against the cold concrete.
I set her down against the wall, keeping one arm under her until I was sure her knees would hold.
She pressed her head back, staring up at the halo of streetlight, hair matted to her jaw, mouth split and wet, and pulled my jacket tighter around her tiny frame.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
We stood like that for a long minute. The only sound was the slow trickle of rain falling from the drainage pipe above us, peppering the crown of her head with cold.
I watched her pulse flicker, watched the unsteady clutch of her hands on my jacket, and tried to decide whether this was victory or rescue or just the cleanest defeat of my life.
For the first time in my life, I felt something akin to awe, the sacred kind that seeps in when you realize you could touch a God and still lose to her every time.
Harlowe said nothing, not for a full minute, as she inventoried her aftermath. She blinked rain from her eyelids, mouth open, then drew a shuddering breath through her teeth. When she finally looked at me, her laugh slid out in a single breath.
“Fuck you, Romanov,” she whispered.
“Not yet,” I replied. “But soon.”
“Did you come to reclaim me, or just to watch me eviscerate myself?” she asked, voice raw, edged with hysteria.
“Both,” I said honestly, for once.
She gripped the brick behind her, and I saw the mirror of my own childhood etched in her posture—stripped to the bone, nowhere left to run, so you brace and make your stand in whatever gutter the city gives you.
“Are you proud of yourself?”
I smiled. “Yes. You made the city hold its breath.”
Harlowe didn’t smile, not exactly. But her chin ticked up, the smallest flex of arrogance. No matter how shot her body was, her will refused to stand down.
There was this residual hunger in my hands; the urge to shake her until the cockiness fell away and she was pliant or, better yet, desperate enough to let me see what waited beneath her skin.
I wanted to drag her home at once, but I remembered Atlas and Orion, warning me I’d catch a mouthful of fangs if I tried to domesticate a Virelli.
Except, it wasn’t domestication, not anymore.
I only wanted to see what kind of creature she’d become after enough miles and enough damage had stripped away the pretense.
* My little viper
* My little viper