12. Twelve
TWELVE
HARLOWE
After the walk-through, Frank stayed close, always in the background, fading into paneling or woodwork but never further than a shout. If he caught me eyeing him, or the gun at his belt, he did the same barest twitch of a smile.
“Today’s not the day,” I said. “But maybe tomorrow.”
I tried to ignore the texts—Arrow’s, Mrs. Montalto’s, the endless roll call of family friends, relatives, and lawyers who’d begun to circle like vultures now that my future had been signed away. Arrow was indisposed, handling some mob business, which kept him far away from me.
Romanov men started turning up at my parties, my gym, even the bakery where my mother used to buy impossible lemon brioche on Sundays. I caught one, Yuri, at the Starbucks on East Houston, reading Dostoevsky in the slowest, most unaffected way possible.
I sent him a double espresso on my father’s card, just to let him know I’d clocked him.
“Don’t get lost in the translation,” I called out as I left.
He smiled without ever looking up.
The city felt different now. Leaner, and hungrier, as if the air itself had contracted around a singularity of violence. Even the weather seemed locked in, unable to shed the weight of thunder that hovered above the skyline for hours, daring anyone foolish enough to expect sun.
If I caught glimpses of Arrow, they were always in passing.
Sometimes, it was a silhouette in a private suite across from the Met, or the brutal snatch of his profile in newsprint, or a headline spun for the benefit of shareholders and state prosecutors.
He was everywhere and yet, like a ghost layered atop real space, nowhere at all, which only seemed to make the ache between my thighs worsen, for reasons I couldn’t yet put into words.
Arrow had demanded I stay away from La Lune Noir, but I’d be damned if I let that man tell me what to do. After some begging—no, threatening—Madame Isadora agreed to let me perform.
At the end of the day, money talked more than mobsters. It was the last bit of rebellion in my world, where every window of freedom was closing on me. I didn’t want any extra layers hindering my submission. And she knew I was her highest-paying act.
She introduced us, and I followed Zephyr onto the stage.
Tonight, I wore a sheer white robe with nothing underneath.
The place was more crowded than usual. He untied the sash to my robe, and I shimmied out of it, letting it fall to my feet.
Zephyr ran his hand across my shoulder, down between my breasts, and ended at the top of my belly button, gently guiding me to the wooden X behind me.
He bound my wrists with red silk, tying it in a knot only he could release.
I let his hands explore my body, pinching my hard nipples then drifting down to my bare pussy. He slipped his hand between my thighs, deliberate and unhurried, and found me slick with anticipation.
Zephyr liked to play with expectation as his fingers moved with the confidence of someone who knew how to suspend suffering and pleasure at the exact boiling point, winding me up until I was breathless and frantic.
He circled my clit with a single knuckle, then leaned in and bit my shoulder—not hard enough to bruise, but enough to keep me present. I shivered and arched into the restraints.
Behind him, the audience pressed forward, their shadows writhing across the cracked mosaics of the cathedral walls.
He flicked the cane against my thigh, once, twice, the sharp crack echoing in the old nave. Laughter and low moans rose from the balconies, and my pulse surged with the raw chemistry of being completely, beautifully seen—humiliation as currency.
I needed him to break me, his hand so tight around my core and shame that I’d have nothing left to give Arrow.
But Zephyr never took the easy route. He slid the cane between my legs, pressed it flush to my cunt, and let it rest there, cool and vibrating with the last tremor of impact.
The shock made me gasp, my knees shaking against the X.
Like all the times before, he brought me to the brink and pulled back.
He unhooked my wrists, spun me, and pushed me down to my knees on the velvet-draped altar. He knelt behind, wrapped his fist in my hair, and forced my face to the floor with the gentle gravity of someone who saw right through me. The crowd leaned in, hunger and envy licking the air.
“You’re not worshipping,” Zephyr whispered in my ear.
“I don’t believe in God,” I hissed.
He pressed two fingers into my mouth, and I sucked until they hit the back of my throat. He didn’t flinch, didn’t soften. “Then worship pain.”
I bit him. He yanked my head back, and for a moment, I almost felt it, the dizzy let go, the whiteout people wrote poems about. But I clung to the ledge, letting the humiliation twist inside me until it almost made me warm.
Zephyr’s palm cracked across my ass cheek, heat flaring bright, and all of La Lune Noire was just breath and flesh and the wet sound of couples touching themselves as they watched him fuck me with his fingers and his tongue. He knew just how far to push me before letting me come all over his hand.
When it was time to grant me my release, he thrust his fingers inside me so deep I had to bite my arm to stifle my screams.
At the end, Zephyr wrapped me in the white robe again, cupped my jaw in his tattooed hand, and met my eyes with a single, wordless nod of permission. The house lights flared back to their dim haze, the crowd in the nave and balconies already hunting for their next fix.
My heartbeat thudded, ragged and wild, as Zephyr led me offstage and through the velvet-curtained back hallway.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped and pressed a hand to my sternum, halting me.
His other hand, still sticky from me, reached for a towel and wiped away the sweat and spit with careful, almost tender swipes.
In the dressing room, the high collapsed into a low, sweet, spinning drop that left me shivering and giddy. I wanted vodka, a shower, another round—anything to erase the memory of Arrow’s voice.
I stared at myself in the smeared gilt mirror, the mascara streaks and the bite marks flaring fresh across my shoulder. I watched the aftershocks sweep through my body and realized that when I was married to Arrow, I’d never get to choose this—my ruin—again.
A soft knock. Isadora, because she always knew when to appear. She glided in with her cane and her plum silk kimono.
“You’re wanted in the cathedral, darling,” she cooed, but even I could hear the tremor in her voice.
“Why?”
“You have a visitor.”
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Romanov is waiting.”
His name vibrated under my ribs.
Fuck.
I peeled off the robe and shrugged into a see-through white T-shirt and black skirt, still braless.
Raking eyeliner across my lids, I smeared gloss over my mouth, and stared at my reflection until it became something that could pass for unbothered.
I contemplated running out the back door, but decided I’d rather stand toe-to-toe with my betrothed.
Arrow stood just past the confessionals, beneath a chandelier that looked like an exploded beehive. His hands were in his coat pockets, but he wasn’t trying to camouflage the weapon outline at his waist.
No tie tonight.
Just the same storm-gray suit, unbuttoned to show the sharp lines of his throat and a flash of black tattoo at his sternum, crawling up his neck.
The crowd instinctively parted around him. Even the kink veterans recognized a predator in its purest form.
Instead of approaching, he waited—eyes on me and nothing else.
Matching his lethality stride for stride, I cut through the thickets of gazes and the haze of cigarette smoke.
He sized up my approach and, for one poisonous moment, I thought he might devour me right there—tattooed hands, perfect teeth, and every longing that lived inside my hate pressed flat against a velvet altar.
But the sadist offered me his arm—the oldest trick in the book—a noose disguised as gallantry.
I ignored him and brushed past.
He caught my wrist, fingers curling like handcuffs around my pulse.
“Nice show, Echo.”
The way he said my stage name was an insult and a benediction. I felt heat rising to my cheeks and hated myself for the reaction.
“Thank you,” I smiled with all my teeth, and his grip tightened. “Fuck off,” I snapped, yanking my arm back.
“Suits you,” he said. “All that noise, and nothing real behind it.”
I wanted to claw his eyes out. “Then why the fuck are you here, if you hate noise? Why don’t you go find some other poor girl to bug, you limp dick douche.”
Arrow grinned. “Limp dick,” he repeated, then grabbed my wrist again and steered me into one of the confessional booths.
The booth door banged behind us. From the other side of the screen, the world became muffled, reduced to the scent of perfume, heat, and the residue of cigarette ash.
The velvet seat pressed against my back as he knelt so abruptly I almost kicked him. I tensed, but he only came closer, leaning in so his jaw brushed my bare thigh as both hands settled on the cushion beside my knees.
A pulse of panic, or anticipation, bloomed in my chest. His inhale came slow and greedy through his nose, and for the slightest second, his composure flickered. The predator was hungry, but was something else, too—something wounded, or maybe just obsessed.
“I thought I was clear about staying away from here.”
“You were. I didn’t listen.” I tilted my chin up, refusing to be cowed even as his proximity made my skin prickle with awareness.
Arrow’s eyes darkened, pupils expanding until only a thin ring of ice blue remained. “You never do. That’s becoming a problem.”
“Your problem, not mine.” I tried to shift away, but the confessional was too small, my back already pressed against the wooden panel.