Chapter 49
VI
The rest of the day disappears into getting ready to go.
Now that we have a city, and a name inside it, the plan stops being an idea and turns into a list of things that have to happen before we leave.
Who travels. What we carry. How you move on a firm in a place that belongs to them and not us, without tripping every wire the second we show up.
Armen runs the logistics. Sting works the route.
I stay buried in the documents, because the deeper I'm in them before we go, the sharper I'll be when we get there.
By the time the Rot goes quiet, it's set. We move at first light.
And I'm wired down to the bone. Too keyed up to sleep, and not willing to lie in the dark alone with what's coming.
So I don't. I go find them.
They're in Armen's room, the three of them, not doing much of anything, which tells me they're as wound up about tomorrow as I am.
Armen's in a chair. Rogue's sprawled on the bed like he owns it.
Sting's sitting on the floor. All three of them look up when I come through the door, and something in the room shifts the second they see my face.
"Couldn't sleep," I say.
"No," Armen agrees. "Neither could we."
I don't have to explain what I came for. That's the thing about these three. I never have to explain.
Rogue's the first to move. He sits up and reaches out and hooks a finger in the waistband of my sleep shorts and reels me in slow, between his knees, looking up at me with that half smile that's undone me since the first time I saw it.
"There she is," he says. "The woman who ran a room full of dangerous men this morning and made them all say yes."
"Jealous?"
"Proud." He drags my shirt up and off, easy, and tosses it somewhere I'll find tomorrow. "There's a difference."
Then his mouth is on my stomach, my ribs, the underside of my breast, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world, which we don't, which is maybe the point.
Behind me, I hear Armen get up from the chair.
I feel him before he touches me, the heat of him at my back a second before his hands settle on my hips.
"Look at you," he says against my ear. "Came and found us."
"You'd have come and found me."
"Yes." His hands slide up, slow, deliberate, learning me like he hasn't already got me memorized. "But you didn't make me. You decided." His teeth graze my throat. "I'll never get tired of watching you decide."
Rogue tugs my shorts down and I step out of them, leaving me bare.
Armen joins the party and between the two of them, Rogue's mouth works lower and Armen's hands work higher.
From his spot on the floor, Sting hasn't moved, hasn't said a word, and is just watching with that gaze I feel without him laying a finger on me.
"Sting," I manage, reaching for him.
"Yes?"
That's Sting. He'll move when he’s ready, on his own time. The waiting is its own kind of torture. That’s why he does it.
Rogue gets me onto the bed, onto my back, settling between my thighs, and the first slow drag of his tongue makes me arch right up off the mattress. Armen catches my wrists and draws them over my head, pinning them in one big hand, holding me still while Rogue takes his time.
"Easy," Armen murmurs. " You don't have to run this one. Not tonight."
And God, that's the thing, isn't it. All day, I've been the one deciding, directing, carrying the load. Here, now, with my hands pinned and Rogue's mouth on me and Armen's voice in my ear telling me to let go, I don't have to think. I just get to feel.
So I do.
Rogue works me with his mouth and two fingers, that curl he does that finds the spot every time, and I'm climbing fast, too fast. He picks up on that and backs off right at the edge. I make a sound that's almost a sob.
"Rogue—"
"I know, pretty girl." He does it again, takes me up and eases me back down, and I will kill him if he does it again.
The bed dips. Sting, finally. He's decided to join the party.
He doesn't say anything, just takes Armen's place at my wrists like he's keeping me in line.
They both make my pulse race.
"Please," I say to all of them, to any of them.
"There it is," Rogue says against me. "That's the word."
They give it to me then. Rogue takes me over the edge with his tongue, and I explode with my wrists in Sting's grip and Armen's hand stroking me. Before I've finished shaking, they're moving me where they want me, and I let them because tonight am all theirs.
Armen takes me first. He turns me how he wants me and pushes his cock inside me slow, watching my face the whole way, and the stretch of him pulls a noise out of me that he swallows with a kiss.
"Yes," he breathes.
It's not just sex, the way he says it, it’s everything he showed me with his control off, and I feel all of it even as he sets a pace that empties my head.
Rogue's beside us with his hand in my hair, his mouth at my ear, telling me how good I am, how good I take it, how he watched me run that room and thought about fucking me the whole time.
And Sting takes my hand and lets me work him while he watches Armen wreck me, his jaw tight, his control as ferocious as Armen's and twice as quiet.
They take their time with me. They trade me between them like they've got nowhere to be, like there's no firm and no ceiling and no dangerous morning waiting on the other side of the door.
Armen, then Rogue, then Sting goes last, the way it often goes, Sting driving into me hard and slow and relentless.
The other two hold me and touch me and tell me I'm theirs until I shatter one more time.
After, we end up tangled in Armen's bed, all four of us, too many limbs for the space and nobody willing to be the one who moves.
I'm in the middle, I'm always in the middle, my head on Armen's chest, Rogue's arm heavy over my waist, and Sting's hand flat on my hip as if even in sleep, he's keeping track of me.
Tomorrow, we go after the most dangerous people any of us has ever touched.
Tonight, I'm in a dead mall in a bed full of the men I chose, and there's nowhere safer in the world.
"Sleep," Armen says into my hair.
This time, I do.