Chapter 6

For all his reluctance to allow her to go undercover, Oliver had made sure to prepare Kara in every way that he had known how. The concern that had taken him more than the others had been how she would be able to contact him. From both Mia and Helena, Oliver knew that it was more than a little difficult to try and get a message out of a compound run by an organised crime syndicate. The Triad were more paranoid than most, and from the beginning Oliver had known that Kara would find it hard to get a message to him. That meant patience. Patience that Oliver, for all his control, knew he couldn't hold onto.

When that control finally gave in to need, finding her had been almost effortless.

Briefly, Oliver had contended with the idea of calling in another favour with Anatoly. After all, The Triad had a number of brothels in Star City, and finding the one that Kara was in posed a challenge. Something in Oliver had told him to hold, had told him that he would need more from Anatoly than cashing in a cheap favour to find Kara. Credibility with The Bratva was difficult to maintain, the brotherhood operated on the idea of trading favours for one another. Oliver had spent a lot of his credit with Anatoly in organising a distraction to get Kara into The Triad. He could find her on his own, he would have to.

There were, after all, a limited number of places for Kara to be.

He had found her on his second attempt.

It had taken very little deduction for Oliver to conclude that Kara would have been in one of the brothels near the city centre. After all, that was where it made the most sense to locate the American women that The Triad had working for them. Of those three, Oliver had gone to random chance, and picked the locations at will. It was by luck alone that the location Kara had been working was the second he chose to investigate.

She was iridescent, and the sight of her compounded a maelstrom of feelings and ideas in his gut.

Laying eyes on her, for the first time in over a week, was almost indescribable. A sensation of relief and longing, desire and release. It curled through Oliver's body, burnt him from the inside like a lungful of cigar smoke taken in too deep. A flicker went through his body, arousal and…something darker, in equal measure, both clawing for a place at the forefront of his mind. Oliver kept his eyes locked onto her for almost a little too long.

Images cascaded through his mind. Memories of the two of them in The Quiver. Of Kara writhing under him with strung together Kryptonese curses spilling from her lips. Of the gratification he had felt in drawing out escalating cries from her lips. Of the raw, carnal pleasure Oliver had felt at the sensation of her touch, her lips, the warmth of her whole body working in tandem with his.

As he took in her new visage, of Kara presented to him in a way that even he had never seen before, the flashes of memory cascaded into fantasy. For all the intimacy that they had shared in the two months that Oliver had trained her, he had never seen her in the way she held herself there. Clad in only in a set of rich blue lingerie and black high heels.

There was nothing of the timid, frightened young woman whom Oliver had taken in two months prior.

Even in that atmosphere, in a place unlike any she had ever experienced, and with the ever visceral knowledge of what would happen to her if she was discovered, Kara Zor-El stood tall. If anyone could sense unease in her, it would have been Oliver. In all their time training together, in the moments he had shown to Kara the fullest extent of human depravity, he had seen into her soul. He knew the truth of her. In that moment, looking on her for the first time in over a week, he saw nothing. Only the conviction, true conviction, that came with the mission.

That thought alone summoned up something deep within him. Something beyond the physical pull of arousal that had flooded through him at the first sight of her. Something more than the hormonal rush at her state of artistic undress. It was a feeling that had spread its wings on the first winds of intuition he'd had about Kara. The voice that had scratched and clawed, had dug razor-sharp talons into the walls of his mind and asked; what if? The same thing that had laughed when Oliver had insisted to himself that his reasons didn't matter.

It coiled inside him when he looked at her. Because he knew.

The woman who stood across the space from him. A woman who could stand in a room filled with people…filled with monsters, just like Oliver. A woman who could be surrounded by monsters, all of which wanted to fuck her, and half of them willing to kill her as easily as they would look as her.

Two months ago, she couldn't have done it, not with the same conviction.

Two months ago, she would have attempted, and failed.

Two months ago, she might have gotten herself killed.

Two months ago, Oliver had sworn to himself that he only wanted to teach her. Not mould her. Not manipulate her. Not control her. And yet, the Kara he saw, the Kara he looked upon and felt waves of conflicting emotions for, she was different.

Kara had seen him. That he knew. At first, she had been too preoccupied with the tray of drinks she'd had balanced on one hand to notice him. Kara had been midway through placing a glass down on a table when her attention had snapped around to him in full. With admirable reflex, she had continued her actions, the whole time her eyes fixed on him.

That woman, that Kara Zor-El, was worlds away from the Kara Kent that Oliver had taken in.

From the very beginning he had known that he had to unpick the influence of The League, of Clark Kent, to be able to teach her the only way he knew how. Part of him, the part of himself that Oliver was willing to be aware of, hadn't wanted to acknowledge how much she would change. Step by step Oliver had watched her youthful optimism burn away. Fractured and shattering day after day as Oliver had shown her just how far humanity could sink. Just how broken her adopted home was.

The woman he had found, the woman he hadn't seen for over a week. There was no going back for her.

She could pretend, she could deny, but Oliver could see it. There was something fundamental in it. A shift in who she was that radiated from her very essence. Even with a clear ten metres of space between them, Oliver could see it. He could feel it.

He could feel her.

The knowledge coursed sickly through him.

The thought, the idea, the foreknowledge on the winds of intuition operating beyond levels of human consciousness had seen it the moment that he had offered to train her. Oliver had known it, for all his denial, for all his reluctance. He had known, in that moment as he made the offer, exactly where it would lead.

Or, perhaps more accurately, had hoped where it would lead.

That same voice was with him as he stepped across the floor of the brothel in which he had found Kara. That same voice that had known, that had pushed, that had clawed at Oliver to admit to all that which he refused to so much as acknowledge. It was there, clutching at him with a fresh grasp.

For the first time in a long time, Oliver could feel his darkness.

After Russia, after Anatoly had warned him of the danger of trying to live two lives, Oliver had done everything in his control to repress that voice. To press down the part of himself that thrilled at the feeling of pressing the sharp metallic tip of an arrow through the warm, breakable flesh of human skin. Save for a few rare occasions, Oliver had been able to keep it supressed. The voice had been no more than that, a voice. Whispering in the back of his mind, pressing him, encouraging him. But it hadn't controlled him. It had never had form.

At least, that had been what Oliver had told himself.

Those thoughts that flooded his mind gave way to something different. Willing or not, Oliver couldn't deny it. He had changed Kara, irreparably. More so than he had ever intended. That knowledge alone gave a platform, a perch, for everything that he had fought to keep pressed down. Seeing, knowing, what had become of Kara, what Oliver had made her into. Something in him splintered.

For the first time in a long time, Oliver could feel his darkness. It was there with him. Brought to life once again on the strung out self-loathing and regret that welled up in Oliver. As he looked at Kara, drunk her in again, Oliver couldn't deny the third presence in the room. The thing that he felt swimming beside him. The ghostly apparition of what he kept buried. Oliver kept his eyes focused on Kara, and didn't look around for fear of what he might have seen, what might have been hunched there, offering him it's taloned hand.

it was almost a relief when Oliver's attention was snapped elsewhere. He had expected it, of course, even after selling Queen Industries and all-but abandoning a public life, Oliver knew his name carried weight in Star City. From the very beginning, he had known that he stood no chance of setting foot inside a Triad run brothel without being recognised as a client of significant importance. Yet, even with that knowledge, the intrusion could not have felt mote interruptive.

There was a voice beckoning for his attention, welcoming him to a brothel that Oliver had never wanted to set foot it without a bow in his hand.

Oliver turned his gaze from Kara, to find himself looking at a weasel of a man. A scrawny, Asian figure stood in front of him, hardly filling out the padding of his off-the-rack black suit, and the suspicious eyes that framed his face spoke volumes. Forcing himself not to resort into his more basic nature, Oliver pressed a smile onto his lips, and held out a hand.

The man reciprocated the gesture, and Oliver found himself fighting instincts that he didn't know he had. His own hand clasped all too firmly in that of the man he presumed was the proprietor of the brothel he was in, Oliver had to compress the urge to use his free hand to rip out the other man's throat.

For a few long moments, Oliver visualised it. The image swirled around in this mind. The undeniably familiar warmth of fresh blood spilling over his hand, the satisfaction bordering on euphoric that could come with draining the life from a parasite like the pathetic human stood before him.

With volumes of control, Oliver offered the other man a placatory thanks in perfect Cantonese.

It was a move that might have come across as suspect from almost any other American. Though he was, after all, Oliver Queen. There was no doubt in Oliver's mind that the man he spoke to would put Oliver's knowledge of the language down to his dealings while he still owned Queen Industries. All he needed to do was provide a shell of trust, a sense of familiarity, and it would give Oliver the room he needed to operate.

And he had been right. With hardly a pause the proprietor tossed an arm around Oliver shoulders with assurances that they could provide anything he desired. Forcing himself not to recoil at the implications, Oliver had gone along willingly as the man led him to a grandiose bar that occupied the vast majority of the main space of the brothel.

The bartender was there immediately as Oliver approached, expectantly waiting for his order with the diligence of a man whose life hung in the balance. Curtly, and with just enough lack of acknowledgment to sell his billionaire playboy façade, Oliver ordered a glass of scotch for himself, and two shots of Baijiu for himself and the man he was with.

The drinks were provided with a swiftness that Oliver couldn't help but to admire. With very little thought to the action, Oliver drew a sheaf of notes from the breast pocket of his blazer and handed them over to the bartender. The money amounted to several times what he owed for the drinks, but Oliver knew that the scene he had in mind would cost him.

Wordlessly, his companion plucked up the measure of Baijiu at the same time Oliver did, they clinked the glasses together, and threw them back.

For all his conditioning, the wash of alcohol hit Oliver almost instantly. He felt the almost alien coil of the drink wrap around the nerves down his gullet and into his stomach, and moments later the feeling spread outward as he took down a gulp of whisky to wash down the taste of the Baijiu.

There, the conversation idled, and Oliver found himself answering inane questions about his plans following his sale of Queen Industries, his various foundations. The urge to violence that he had felt on first grasping hands with the Triad frontman only grew as they talked. Minute by minute Oliver found himself biting down on the desire to do harm. It took hardly any time at all before Oliver was clenching his free hand to the point that he could feel the crescent moon shapes of his finger nails digging into his palm with almost enough pressure to draw blood.

Until, finally, over an hour later, after Oliver's third glass of top shelf scotch whisky was started, did his companion ask him the question Oliver had been wating for.

"So, Mr Queen, which of my girls interests you?" The man intoned in Cantonese.

Oliver took a moment to look around the room. Almost all of the women were draped over the laps of men, most of whom Oliver recognised as politicians, judges, and police officers. The few who weren't walked back and forth between the bar and the occupants of the room, baring trays of drinks.

"Her." It took more than Oliver expected to keep his voice neutral, the particular inflections of the accent a conscious effort, and he pointed the hand not holding a whisky glass toward Kara.

"Mr Queen, she is new, a floor-girl, not yet trained," The man spoke, managing to retain an almost casual air in his tone. "I'm sure you would be more satisfied with—"

But Oliver cut him off.

"I want her," Oliver switched back into English, a harsh edge cutting through his tone, unabashedly clear. More than conscious of the way he had acted, Oliver reverted to Cantonese, and relaxed his speech. "I understand your hesitance, she is very beautiful, and I am sure the price I must pay for her will be worthwhile," Oliver felt an unfamiliar twisting in his gut and forced the rest of the words out. "And if she is indeed new as you say, I will gladly pay double for the privilege."

The implication in his words must have been beyond clear. Any reservation that Oliver had sensed in his drinking companion fizzled away, replaced instead by a predatory grin.

It took less than three minutes for Kara to arrive. Beyond his own internal clock, running at maximum overdrive in a hostile environment of The Triad brothel, Oliver had hardly managed two gulps of the third overfull glass of whisky he had been provided with.

There was something in her nature, something that extended beyond what Oliver had taught her. It was evident in ways that defined explanation as she approached. Kara draped herself into the barstool beside Oliver, wordlessly curling a hand around the drink that the bartender had provided her.

In the short week that she had been there, Kara had clearly cultivated a relationship with those who worked at the brothel. That didn't surprise Oliver much. In his own, admittedly limited, experience with her, Kara had carved a place in Oliver's routine whether he had wanted it or not. That she had been able to do the same with the people who worked in the brothel alongside her was no surprise to him. The second Oliver had requested Kara, the bartender had prepared the drink for her. It had been a reflexive action for Oliver, to follow the movements of the bartender as he had prepared Kara's drink. To his rusty eye, it looked to be a Singapore Sling that was left on the bar top for her.

"I hear you've asked for me, Mr Queen." Kara said, pausing to take a sip from the cocktail glass in her hand then placing it back down on the bar top. Without waiting for him to reply, she continued. "Perhaps you'd care to continue this somewhere more…private."

For a long moment, Oliver said nothing, raking his eyes up and down Kara's body with a desire that was in no way feigned. If anyone was watching them, it would appear perfectly normal, and if there was no one – Oliver still allowed himself to take the time to appreciate the woman across from him anyway. The reaction he had to seeing her dressed as she was, despite the discomfort of their surroundings, was more visceral than Oliver had expected.

The need to have her alone washed over him and Oliver rose to his feet, wordlessly indicating with one hand for Kara to lead on.

Drinks left abandoned on the bar top, Kara walked him through the lounge and down into a short strip of a corridor that housed eight private rooms. The conditioned reflex of his training was pushed down as Oliver followed her, numbed by both the alcohol he had consumed and an abrupt awareness that he was swinging a hard-on like a filled fire hose, and he found his eyes fixed on the body in front of him. The walk to the room couldn't have taken more than thirty seconds but it had felt magnitudes longer to Oliver as his eyes traced every visible inch of flesh on Kara's body, detailed the way the contours of her hips and legs moved and flexed as she walked.

The arousal stirred in his gut, and something else coiled with it.

Then, they were through the threshold into the room, Kara indicating to a chair that sat facing the foot of a king sized bed and pushing the door shut behind them. Stoned on his own arousal, Oliver followed the unspoken instruction and sat himself in the plush armchair. Kara followed him, hips swaying gratuitously. Then she swung herself into the chair, straddling his lap, golden hair spilling down to frame her face in luscious curls. Kara dipped her head, teasingly bit at the pulse point just above his collar bone, then further up. His reaction to her was obvious and Oliver felt, more than saw, Kara grinning with satisfaction at it.

"They're watching," Kara whispered into his ear, and playfully bit at the lobe as she did. "Above the door."

Conditioned recall brought it to him without need to look. He had caught it as he'd taken his seat, gaze still largely fixated on Kara, but it had been there in the peripheral. A slight darkening in the pattern on the wall, one that indicated glass, the kind of a camera lens. The knowledge slugged through his body like a combat call, the adrenaline usually summoned only when his bow was in hand forcing Oliver's body into a state of readiness. It pressed at every nerve ending in his body, and Oliver had to fight his own conditioning to not leap up from the chair. Still, the rush forced the blood away from Oliver's throbbing penis and back into his muscles.

Kara mouth moved to the other side of his face, dipped back to his throat, and worked her way up again. The reaction he had to her actions that time around was less pronounced, but still it wasn't long before Oliver felt himself hardening again. Ready for it that time, Oliver pushed the feeling down and focused on the mission. They were both there for a reason. When she reached his ear again, Kara whispered to him what she had learnt, hiding the movements of her mouth with her own flowing hair and by teasingly nibbling on his skin.

What she had learnt confirmed what Oliver suspected. Thirteen girls, not including Kara herself. Six of which were younger than eighteen. All but two forced to be there against their own will. Forced to be there with thin threats about the girls needing to work off their debt for being smuggled into America, and false promises about allowing their families to follow if they worked hard enough.

Oliver could hear how it affected her, how the pain of the other girls rang like a tolling bell in Kara's own mind. Yet, even as she told it, Oliver felt nothing but anger. Hearing it first hand, knowing the truth that he had suspected, that he had known of, he had expected to feel more. Sympathy for the girls forced into a life they deserved better than, sadness for their situation. There was nothing there, only a flicker through his mind of a platitude given to him years ago – "in war, the dead have no names". In Oliver, there was only an anger, a blood-curdling need to do harm, to slit throats and make those responsible pay.

Against his own will, an image tore through his mind. An image of him and Kara. Of them storming out into the main lounge and ripping out the hearts of every sick bastard in the building. Making an example of the patrons before one by one bleeding The Triad enforcers dry. It was an act of desperate violence. Soundless fury. It would signify nothing. But the satisfaction it brought to him was undeniable. Against his will, Oliver felt a surge of adrenaline go through him. That thought, that desire, welling in the same way that any other combat plan would do.

Yet, on top of the image of violence, there was another image. An image of Kara, of himself. Stained with the blood of the corpses they had created, and then tearing into each other. Shredding clothing, grabbing at one another with a beautiful anger. Oliver could see it in that moment. Kara's blood-flecked cheeks. Oliver's own hands smearing that blood as he gripped her face. And the almost intoxicating image of fucking one another to a climax just short of unbearable.

The sadism in the image, the will for harm. Oliver hadn't felt the call for it in strength like that since Russia. The picture of it though, of Kara as his equal, in every way. Of her embracing the world that he saw and becoming like him, truly. That brought him back to the hardness he had felt before the knowledge that they were being watched.

He had considered it before. The extent it might have taken Kara to break the one rule that her cousin, that Clark Kent, instilled above all others. The wonder, the desire, it had crossed his mind the very moment that Oliver had extended the offer to Kara to train her. Then, he had wondered what it might take to push Kara all the way, to convince her to kill. That had been before. Before they had slept together, before Oliver had started to allow those fantasies to creep into his conscious mind.

Yet, being aware of it wasn't enough. The thought had already raged through him. Even as Oliver caught at it and did his best to crush it down, to bury it alongside the rest of his darkness. It was too late.

Kara had sensed it, and without his realising Oliver's hands had begun to work on her too. One hand cupped the soft flesh of her left breast, still nestled in the fabric of the bra, the other firmly grasped her ass and pulled her down onto him further, his now fully erect cock straining against the fabric of his slacks. When Oliver refocused, putting the image of violence and bliss to as far a corner of his mind as he could muster, he saw the dilation in Kara's eyes, could feel the heat of her body. For all of the reasons they knew they shouldn't, it made little difference.

Kara stood, hardly moving, only inches away from Oliver's grasp. One hand brushed with apparent casualness at the straps of her lingerie, thumb hooking in the bra straps and slipping the fabric away to reveal the breasts beneath. She looked down at herself, as if entranced by her own body. Then she bought her fingers back to brush one nipple. Flicking back and forth at it until it had stiffened.

It got frantic after that when she looked back down at Oliver. He surged up from the chair and they closed, and her thigh slid between his, warm and hard through the soft cloth of his suit pants. Oliver pushed her hand away from her breast and replaced it with his own. The closure became a clinch, both of them looking down at the exposed nipple squeezed between them, and what Oliver's fingers were doing to it. Oliver could hear her breath starting to scrape as her own hands unclasped his belt and slid inside. Kara cupped the end of his cock and kneaded at it with thumb and palm.

They fell sideways onto the bed in a tangle of clothing and limbs. Once they settled, Kara lowered one breast towards the head of Oliver's cock and began to rub slow circles around the nipple with his glans.

"You liking this, Mr Queen?" She was keeping up the act.

Oliver groaned.

Kara giggled in response.

It should have done something to him. Should have forced another combat call through his burnt in conditioning. Talia had taught him better. Had taught him to master hormonal response and how to control it when the need arose. Some part of him, strangled by desire and buried under the twisted form that swam at Oliver's shoulder, knew that he could. If he had truly wanted to. But he didn't. And it was easier to give in.

Kara had working against her, the alcohol and his own concerns about getting off in a Triad owned brothel – still she had him there in little under ten minutes with a combination of hard strokes and soft brushstrokes against across her breasts. And when she got him there, she pulled Oliver back from the brink three times, with pleased, excited sounds in her throat. Finally, she stroked him rapidly, almost violently, to a climax that spattered them both with semen.

The release was like something being unplugged in his head. The Triad and the mission. Kara and The League. Blown out of Oliver's skull through his eyes with the force of the orgasm. Oliver went limp in the narrow space of the room.

When he felt something again, it was as Kara tightened her hand around his still semi-erect cock. She knew from experience he would be ready to go again.

She slid back and arched over him. In the faint glow from the lamp in one corner of the room, Oliver fixed his gaze on the juncture of her thighs with a kind of desperation and Kara fed Oliver into herself with the confidence of a career-solider chambering a round.

The heat and pressure of the long, tensed body riding him were the fragments that Oliver used to keep going, the sensation drawing him back to a full hardness. It wasn't great sex like the two of them had enjoyed in the privacy of The Quiver, but it was still tactile enough for them both. Then, Oliver pushed a thumb into her mouth, let her moisten it and used it to find her clitoris in the crux of her spread legs. Kara took his other hand and pressed it to her breast, and not long after she found an orgasm.

Not far behind her, Oliver felt the tension in his cock gathering there all the way back to the root. He could feel the rub of her insides over him.

That image was back in his head. All red, and hot, and causing a sense of unadulterated pleasure to rise in him that might have made him sick if Oliver gave himself time to think on it. Oliver lost whatever control he'd had left, grabbed hard at her ass, and rammed Kara harder onto him. He held her there, buried to the hilt and feeling as Kara came for the second time. Oliver followed the instant after, his stomach a pit of sparking wires as he emptied himself into her.

In the moments of clarity that followed, Oliver knew it had been a mistake, to lose control like that.

Yet, it had been what they had needed.

And that had to be enough.