25. Twenty-Five #3
“That’s because I’m bigger.” His grip tightened on my neck. “And I like reminding you.”
I shivered, but let him hold me there, the tension a relief compared to the collapse of the night that just passed.
The words were right there, crowding my throat.
You’re burrowing into me. I can feel you under my skin, in my chest, rewiring something I can’t name.
I wanted to tell him something true—that I was losing my grip on myself, that every time he touched me I became less certain where I ended and he began.
That terrified me more than anything he’d done with his hands, or his mouth, or the chain around my neck.
But saying it out loud would make it real. Would give him ammunition I couldn’t take back.
Arrow didn’t do vulnerability, he consumed it, weaponized it, and turned it into another way to own you. And I wasn’t ready to hand him that kind of power. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
So I swallowed the confession and reached for something safer. Something that wouldn’t crack me open in his kitchen.
“What if I said I wanted to see Frank?”
Something flickered behind his eyes. “You can, if you want.” He let go of my hand, but not my neck. “He’ll come if you call him. He’s under your orders now.”
It was a line drawn in something less than blood but more than law, and I watched him flare with pride at how well I understood the leverage.
Toying with the pendant, I asked, “I thought you owned him now?”
“He owns his loyalty. That’s the kind that matters.” Arrow’s expression softened, for the briefest flash. “That’s why you can trust him.”
I let the chain settle. “Maybe I should try the same strategy on you.”
Arrow seemed to consider it. “You want me loyal, Harlowe? Own my hunger. That’s how you keep an animal.”
Watching his throat move as he swallowed, I said, “I’ve heard all about the insatiable Arrow Romanov with an appetite as big as his cruelty.”
He grinned, running his finger along the line where my clavicle vanished under the soft fabric. “Insatiable, eh? What else did you hear?”
“Arrow Romanov never makes love.” Licking my lips, I watched his eyes track the movement hungrily. “He fucks like the devil.”
“Devil?” he echoed, voice dropping a full octave. “Who told you that? One of the girls from Sacred Heart, or a bored wife with more time than sense?”
“I heard it from your enemies,” I said, leaning in. “Which means it’s probably undersold.”
He shook his head, but the grin stayed. “You want a counter-narrative? Ask me again after I put you on your knees and make you beg for the next round.”
Whether it was a threat or a challenge didn’t matter. The heat climbing my neck said I’d let him, and then brag about it to anyone who’d listen.
Arrow’s hand relaxed off my throat, fingers curling under my jaw until I was forced to hold his gaze. The violence of the grip had faded, replaced by a weightless sense of inevitability.
Around us, the blue city pressed its ribs to the glass, and in the reflection, I caught the two of us as we really were, as animals, impossible to tell who was predator or prey.
“You want to be known for more than this, don’t you?” he murmured. “You want the city to see you as something other than a pawn in someone else’s endgame.”
“I don’t give a fuck what the city thinks. I care what you think when you’re balls-deep inside me and begging to come.”
Arrow laughed and pushed his hand past the waistband of my leggings, his fingers parting me.
I was already soaked, already swollen from hours of his hands and mouth and cock. The heel of his palm pressed into me while his thumb worked slow, measured circles. My pulse thrummed, and his touch matched it perfectly—like he knew exactly how fast my heart was racing.
Exactly how badly I needed him.
“Maybe I like being a pawn. As long as the viper on top knows what to do with the king when she takes him.”
He drew his mouth up my jaw, lips barely grazing the skin, and his hand worked me until my vision dithered at the edges, blood weaving a white-noise fog behind my eyes.
Baring my teeth as my orgasm tightened my spine, I was distantly aware of how undignified I must look, sprawled over the granite with Arrow’s hand between my legs, braced against the rush of my own need. But he only smiled darkly, hand fisting in my sweater to keep me upright through the waves.
“Is that all?” I panted.
“For now.”
His thumb continued its slow drag through the mess between my thighs, drawing out every last tremor before he pulled his hand away completely. The loss of contact was sudden and absolute.
“Go take a nap. I have to go.”
The urge to argue was there, but detachment made a puppeteer of my body, so I nodded, holding the chain as if it alone could keep me sewn together.
Walking from the kitchen to the bedroom, swaying on fucked-out legs, the ache between my thighs took on a life of its own with every step.
I collapsed, face down, across the bed, my nostrils filling with the scent of Arrow—the faintly sweet trace of smoke and coffee the sheets hadn’t quite purged from their last laundering.
Sleep didn’t come immediately. Fifty stories down, Manhattan hummed, and I thought about every life I’d had to kill to get here, every part of myself I’d shed.
Sore and satisfied, I rolled onto my back.
If I’d been any softer, I might have found a way to regret the last twenty-four hours, but instead, I pressed the chain against my breastbone.
It had become my anchor, the one thing tethering me to him when he wasn’t here.
Arrow didn’t return right away. I half-dozed with the TV on mute, watching local news sets flip from footage of our party to crash reports, weather, and a shooting in a public park that, from the grainy footage, looked like it had occurred just one or two blocks from my favorite bodega.
This was New York—always one hand carving your name into stone, the other flipping the stone over your grave before you blinked.
I drifted into sleep with my hand at my throat, gripping the chain like it was a thread connecting my pulse to his, wherever he’d gone.
* Princess