Page 19 of Rogue’s Mark

It absolutely works.

When he finally gives me what I've been asking for, I raise my ass as best I can and his hand reaches for my clit. I explode so hard, I have to bite down on my own arm to keep the noise down.

On the other hand, this is the Rot. Who gives a shit what people hear or think?

His explosion follows mine by moments. He does it quietly, with a series of grunts, holding the back of my neck so tight, I figure I’ll have bruises tomorrow.

Ask me if I care. He’s still hard inside me and I’m already thinking what I wouldn’t give to be fucked like this again, right now.

For a minute, we stay like that. His forehead drops to the back of my neck. My hands are flat on the table. The room is the same as it was an hour ago except totally different.

He straightens first. Fixes himself by tucking his wet cock back in his jeans. Not that I can see, my face still smashed against the table and all. I just hear his zipper, followed by his belt buckle clanging.

I finally push myself up and turn around to lean back against the table. I don’t trust my legs, at least not yet. I’m naked from the waist down, cum dripping out of me, and I’m too weak to even pull my legs together like a goddamn lady.

Armen looks at me for a long moment. His expression is back to controlled. Almost. There's something in his eyes that wasn't there before, something he hasn't locked back down yet, and I keep my mouth shut because I do not want to be the reason he closes it off.

He picks up the scattered papers from the floor and sets them on the table without a word.

"You need to sleep, Vi," he says.

Not tender. Not cold. Just Armen.

He leaves and I stay against the table for another minute, the room quiet around me, the papers in a neat pile. I end up using my panties to mop up a bit and I could swear, it takes all I have just to get my damn jeans and sneakers back on.

For the first time since Fischer said is, my brain goes quiet. Not because the problem disappeared but because Armen did what he always does. He gave me something solid to hold onto while everything else tilts sideways.

11

ROGUE

I don't sleep well at the best of times.

Never have. My father used to say I came out of the womb looking suspicious, which was his way of explaining why I spent most of my childhood taking things apart to see how they worked and most of my adolescence figuring out how to put them back together. The Rot suits me in that way. It's a building that rewards the kind of attention most people don't bother paying, and on nights when my brain won't settle, I walk it. All of it. The east corridors and the west ones, the service passages, the dead ends that used to lead somewhere and don’t anymore.

By six this morning, I'd done two full circuits and ended up in a stairwell with a coffee that was already cold, staring out the window at the loading area below. There's a gap in the perimeter fence on the east side that somebody patched badly months ago, and I've been meaning to fix it ever since and just haven't.

I’ve been thinking about that gap. About the south dock. About all the places in this building that a person could get in if they knew where to look, and how many people outside these walls might have that kind of knowledge.

The answer is more than I'd like.

That's where Dex finds me. Seven in the morning, appearing on the landing below with an expression that tells me it’s urgent.

"How bad?" I ask before he opens his mouth.

He considers. "Medium bad."

"Tell me."

"He went deeper last night. One of my guys found him in the service corridor behind the old food court." He pauses. "Not the main service passage. The secondary one."

I set my coffee down on a dusty windowsill and with my hands on my hips, looked down at the floor below me so I could think.

The secondary corridor behind the food court isn't on any map that still exists. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was never on any map since it was added during a renovation in the early nineties. I’d say it runs about forty feet, connecting two utility spaces that don’t lead anywhere in particular. The only people who know about it are those who’ve spent serious time inside this building. It's the kind of thing you stumble across only if you're specifically looking, not casually wandering.

Our visitor was not wandering.

"What did he say when your guy found him?"