As friends, we should be more worried about the fact that she completely vanished from sight.
But as friends, we also know that there’s something between her and him. Something crazy and volatile and well, epic.
And then there are her nightly outings, which only she and I know about, but still.
So we’re not as worried as we should be.
But anyway, my no-dancing-tonight rule breaks when Callie’s bartender friend, who I’ve come to know by sitting close to him for the past hour is a great Lana Del Rey lover like me, asks me to dance while on a break.
He doesn’t even give me the time to refuse him but picks me up and spins me around to the tune of one of the most depressing songs, which I happen to love, “Pretty When You Cry” by Lana.
Surprisingly, I laugh.
It’s the first time I’ve laughed all week, I think. I can’t believe I’m doing it to the song that I’ve most cried to while pining over the guy I love.
That’s how he finds me a few minutes later.
The guy I love, I mean.
Out of nowhere he’s here and he finds me laughing and dancing, swaying in the arms of another man.
For a moment, I think I’m imagining him, which can’t be so far-fetched because while I was dancing with Will, who’s burly and bearded, I was picturing him. My Arrow.
But then I get a good look at him.
He’s wearing a suit jacket – a wrinkled thing now, something that I know he only wears during his events with the team. Plus his hair looks messy too, messier than I’ve ever seen before. All the sun-struck strands have fallen into disarray.
Not to mention, he doesn’t have his baseball cap on, the one he usually wears to public places.
He looks so different than the usual and yet so familiar at the same time that I know he’s here.
He’s back from LA and somehow, he knew to find me at the bar. Well, it’s Friday and I have a habit of sneaking out. So it’s not really far-fetched.
But still.
He’s here.
I stop dancing as soon as the knowledge sinks in and the heaviness and chill of the past week lift from my body.
I’m warm now. And happy and…
I realize something is very wrong when he begins to move toward me.
Because while my lips are stretched into a wonder-filled smile and my eyes are wide with happiness, Arrow looks the exact opposite.
He appears tight and unforgiving.
His lips are pinched and his eyes are slitted. And instead of them being pinned on me, they’re glued on Will as he marches toward us with lunging, violent steps.
Holy fuck, I understand why.
Because I was dancing with him, with another man and because Arrow told me not to.
He told me to never let another man put his hands on me and I broke his rule, and now he looks like he’s going to kill that man.
Oh God.
I’m an idiot. He’s an idiot too because nothing was happening anyway and I have to go stop him before he does something crazy.
I break apart from Will, who looks at me with astonishment. But I don’t have the time to explain. I have to stop the bulldozer of a guy who’s very quickly coming upon us and who’s sitting out the season because he did something similar. And if his words from the night he took my virginity hold any truth to them, no one will be able to pull him off Will until Arrow actually murders him.
So I rush over to intercept him and we meet a few feet away from the bar counter.
I put both my hands on his stomach, palms wide open, and I swear it’s like stopping a giant boulder.
“Arrow, stop. No,” I tell him, hoping and praying he listens to me before anyone else gets wind of the fact that The Blond Arrow is among them and he’s very angry.
His jaw tics at my voice but he hasn’t looked away from Will.
I fist the gray-colored dress shirt he’s wearing. “Arrow. Please. He’s just a friend.”
At this, finally, he looks at me.
It feels like he does it in slow motion. His eyes shifting away from Will, his spiky eyelashes flicking down and his gaze, so dark and intense, coming to rest on me.
“Friend.”
He says that word in a low growl and I flinch.
Oh shit.
That’s the worst thing that I could’ve said.
I shake my head and dig my knuckles into his body. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I didn’t. Arrow, he was just –”
My words get cut off when he steps away from me.
It happens so suddenly that I can’t quite believe it. Wasn’t I holding him tightly? Weren’t my fingers fisting his shirt?
How did he break that hold so easily?
Like it meant nothing, me holding onto him.
Like I meant nothing.
And then he takes one last look at me before spinning around and leaving.
He’s leaving.
He’s just… walking away. He just came back from LA and somehow appeared at the bar and now he’s leaving.
Because I was stupidly dancing with a guy who meant nothing.
Oh God.
I rush after him when I see him stepping out the front door. I come into the night and frantically, look around.
He’s walking around the bar, probably headed to the alley that connects to the parking lot in the back.
“Arrow. Stop,” I call out.
But he doesn’t.
I didn’t expect him to, honestly. So I pump my legs harder. He’s taught me a lot about running in the past couple of weeks and I use that to my advantage now and reach him just as he gets past the row of big black dumpsters.
I go around him and put my hands on his stomach again.
“Arrow, please. I didn’t… I didn’t do anything,” I tell him, getting close to him, fisting his shirt once more even though I know it won’t make a difference.
But that’s all the more reason to do something because he’s just so harsh and sharp right now.
“You let him put his hands on you,” he says, roughly, tightly.
The light in the alley is questionable.
There’s a little bulb somewhere a few feet away from him, though his shoulders that seem to have grown overnight are hiding it.
And the moon is reddish as always in his presence but it’s so far away tonight that it leaves Arrow in shadows and mystery.
Which I totally hate.
“Arrow, listen, okay? Listen.” I pull at his shirt, looking up at him. “I was just sitting there at the bar and this song came on. And Will, the guy you saw me dancing with, he told me he was a Lana Del Rey fan and he just pulled me up for a dance, okay? You know how much I love her and –”
He leans over me then, sort of coming out of the shadows where I can see him clearly.
I can see the tight peaks of his cheekbones. They jut out of his face, of his angular, stunning face, like pieces of cut glass.
“Did you like his hands on you?” he asks, his eyes alive and bright with darkness.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Did you like it when he spun you around and pulled you against his body?”
“No, Arrow. I didn’t.”
“No? So why the fuck were you laughing?”
“Because I was imagining you, you idiot.” I shake his shirt. “Because I was picturing you in my head.”
A mystery of an emotion passes over his face, quick and short-lived and I get closer to him.
The tip of my soccer cleats crashes with the tip of his polished boots and I blurt out the very first thing that comes into my head, “I will never do that to you. I will never ever do something like that to you, okay? I’m not…”
Her.
I’m not Sarah.
I don’t say it but he hears it.
Because the mysterious emotion that passed over his face washes over his body too. His tight, hard body that sort of jerks
slightly before he takes a step.
Toward me.
Or more like, pushes me back with those tips of his boots while he advances forward.
“Picturing me,” he says, his voice gravelly, referring to my earlier statement about imagining him while dancing and ignoring what I said to him just now.
Ignoring my sort-of declaration about loyalty.
“Yeah.” I nod, still clutching onto his shirt, almost tearing off the buttons with my forceful hold. “I was imagining it was you. That you were the one spinning me in circles and dancing with me.”
“You were.”
“Yes. And then you came in and I couldn’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Because my wish came true.”
“What wish?”
“You,” I whisper with all the love in my eyes, while his are turbulent.
“I’m not anybody’s wish.”
You’re mine. You’re my wish.
You’re my Arrow.
“I waited for you this whole week.” I swallow, telling him the truth, letting it shine in my voice, on my face. “And I was… I missed you so much.”
“You missed me,” he repeats in a strange tone, as he keeps advancing on me, as he keeps pushing me back.
I whisper, “Yes. A-and I was worried.”
“Worried about what?”
I was worried that you’d get back together with her.
That you’d become the old Arrow and that I’d lose you.
“I was worried that you…” The new Arrow. “Wouldn’t come back.”
“I told you I would,” he growls. “I said I’d come back in a week.”
I swallow and give him a tremulous smile that only manages to agitate him further, I think, if his big step toward me is any indication like he’s restless to push me somewhere.
To a place I don’t know about.
“But you came back early,” I whisper.
“I did, didn’t I?”
These words are clenched, forced out of him, and I open my fists and stroke his stomach. I let my hands roam and circle over the cotton of his dress shirt as I soothe him.
“Why?” I lick my lips and his eyes drop to my gesture.
It stays there, his gaze, over my lips for a few seconds before he flicks his eyes up.
They’re burning. Blazing.
“Because of you,” he rasps almost accusingly, and a breath jars out of me.
I blink.
And I stop moving.
Because at that very moment, we’ve reached our destination. Or rather his destination, the wall against which he can pin me.
He can cage me between his hard body and the bricks.
“You came back early for me?” I repeat, disbelieving, shocked, flabbergasted… happy.
He puts both his hands on either side of my head and I can’t help it. I arch my back. I push my ass into the heated bricks and thrust my chest out.
“I came back early because you’ve got something I need.”
“What?”
As soon as I ask the question, I understand what he means.
I understand what he needs from me.
The awareness hits me in the stomach, somewhere behind my navel before it tugs and pulls, making the thing he needs clench.
My pussy.
And God, my pussy needs him too.
Yes, it’s not the most heartfelt declaration but it’s something, isn’t it? It’s something – he was thinking about me while he was there, while he was maybe even with… her – and I bite my lip with both love and lust for him.
“You know what I mean, don’t you?”
I nod. “Yes.”
His eyes bore into mine then. “Tell me what I came back for.”
I shiver at his command.
At his usual familiar command, and it makes my channel ripple. It somehow also squeezes my heart, expanding my love for him as I whisper, “My Arrow came back for my pussy.”
His eyes flash when I obey him and maybe I’m pathetic but it makes my toes curl with pleasure.
“Yeah, that’s right. I came back for your bad girl pussy,” he rumbles, looming over my lips. “That’s why I changed my flights, dealt with the most incompetent crew in the history of all airlines all day and flew out twenty four hours early. Because I haven’t had her in a week.”
He pushes his palm against the wall, his fingers flexing. “And because my fist is no good. My fist isn’t tight enough, no matter how much I clench it. And my fist isn’t wet enough, no matter how much I spit on my palm and grease up my cock, do you understand? So I’m going to need her.”
The tendons on his neck vibrate, the silver chain glittering even more as he continues, “I’m going to need your pouty little snatch. I’m going to need your snatch to run like a river for me because I’ve missed that. I’ve missed you polishing my cock up, making it shine with your juices like it’s some kind of a trophy. Some kind of a coveted prize that you want to buff and rub down between your legs. That’s why I came back early. That’s what I need from you.”
By the time he finishes, he’s rubbing our lips together. He’s half kissing me and I’m half delirious with lust.
I’m half delirious with his heat and his scent and the way he’s breathing in great gusts.
“I missed –”
“Shh, don’t talk.” He slowly shakes his head. “I’ve had a shitty fucking week, okay? And then I come to you for relief and find you dancing with someone else. It’s a miracle that I haven’t lost my shit yet. So don’t say a word. Just let me fuck that pussy.”
I grab his face then.
Somehow, in the midst of all the lust and love inside of me, I manage to break my hands away from his chest and put them on his harsh, ticking cheeks.
“Arrow, what happened? What are you –”
“Just let me feel good,” he says and destroys all my words with his raspy ones.
With his guttural, needy ones.
So I slide my hands away from his face and into his thick, sun-struck, messy hair. Because all my questions and words can wait. They are inconsequential anyway. In the face of his need.
“Okay. Fuck me. Make yourself feel good,” I whisper.
His chest expands on a long breath and I swear his eyelids become so heavy that his eyes are almost shut before he envelops my mouth in a kiss.
A hot and wet and desperate kiss.
The kind of a kiss that you give to someone when you see them after a year.
A decade, a century. A lifetime maybe.
This isn’t the way you kiss someone when you’ve only been away for a week. You don’t bite at each other’s lips and you don’t fill their mouths with needy noises and craving tongues.
You don’t even pull at each other’s clothes like this.
Like we’re doing.
My hands pull at his suit jacket and his fingers fumble with the buttons of my cargo pants. I rip open his shirt, to try to get to his bare chest, his bare heat and he tugs at my chunky sweater, trying to get to my naked waist, my soft tits.
You definitely don’t get so horny and needy, and almost naked in under ten seconds, in the back alley of a bar, hidden only partially by the dumpsters.
But maybe you do all of that, if you’re me and him.
Arrow and Salem.
Arrow and his fuck doll; and Salem and the love of her life.
That’s what we are, aren’t we?
He fucks me and I love him.
But whatever we are, whoever we are to each other, in this moment, I know he needs me and I need him.
So when he breaks his kiss, I whine. I literally whine and pull at his hair, trying to bring him back.
But he doesn’t listen.
He steps away from me, breaking my hold, and I stand there, panting. I stand there in only my thong and my t-shirt as I take in the damage that I’ve done to him.
I take in his half-open,
wrinkled shirt, his dress pants unbuttoned and his belt dangling open, the silver buckle shining like the sun.
He is shining like the sun, his mouth glistening and swollen with my kisses, his eyes blazing as he does the same to me, takes me in, maybe to check the damage he’s done to me.
“Arrow?” I whisper, my tits heaving, pouty nipples poking through the shirt.
He lifts his gaze, his expression hard and unfathomable before he grabs my waist and spins me around.
My hands stumble and slap on the wall while he grabs my hips and pulls me back. My spine arches on its own and my nails dig into the brick wall.
I turn around to catch him squatting down and I shiver.
But it’s not from the chill of the night.
It’s from the fact that as soon as Arrow goes down, his large hands grab the cheeks of my ass and pull.
He parts them.
He plucks the string of my thong from between my cheeks and snaps it aside. The elastic digs into the meat of my butt and I clench my eyes shut.
I rest my cheek on the brick wall as my body burns with arousal and embarrassment that he can see everything.
My pussy and my asshole.
But then, he goes in and smells it all.
He digs his nose in the crease of my ass and runs it up and down, taking in my musky, horny scent and groaning with it, and I forget about all the shame and embarrassment and push my hips back.
I push it into his mouth and he licks it.
He licks my pussy and I go up on tiptoes, parting my mouth so I can breathe.
But I don’t think I can. Breathe, I mean.
Because he doesn’t give me the time to do it.
Digging his fingers into my ass and keeping my cheeks apart and holes stretched, he goes in for another lick. This one covering the lips of my pussy, all the way back to my ass.
And he keeps doing that.
He keeps giving me licks all over, on both my holes and Jesus Christ, I’ve never felt hotter in my life.
Hotter and wetter and more turned on.
I even go so far as to pull at my t-shirt. I try to take it off because I’m sweating and shaking like crazy, all because he’s eating not only my peach-like pussy, he’s also tasting my ass.
My Darling Arrow Page 28
