Page 38 of Rogue’s Mark

"Yeah, that’s what she said."

"I think she’s right."

Nobody asks me why I went to Alice before I came to them. They just absorb the news and move forward. But Rogue is looking at me differently than when I walked in.

"Good work," he says.

I exhale a long breath. I've been carrying this all afternoon, turning it over, wondering if it was real or if I was reaching, and the two words from Rogue settle it. It's real. I found something.

Armen gathers the documents. "We work on this tomorrow. But I think we're done for today."

He doesn't say anything else.

The Skylight Room is quiet when we get there, the glass panels above showing a dark sky with a couple maybe-stars visible through the grime. Who knows, though. Maybe they’re just pits in the glass that, from below, look like they might be stars. Either way, I’ll take it. They’re charming and I need some charm right now.

I sit on the edge of the platform, the guys moving around the room the way they do, finding their positions. I watch them and think about Armen’s story and the empty lot on Caldwell Street. Mara choosing me over her mother. Alice and what my dad called the ceiling. The law firm circled four times in my father's handwriting.

Rogue sits beside me. "You've been thinking all day," he says.

"You are right about that,” I laugh. “I think my brain hurts.”

"Well, give it a rest."

I throw him a fake stink eye. "Um, is that some kind of order?"

"More of a strong suggestion."

Armen steps in front of me, his hand tucking a strand of hair back from my face.

"Tomorrow, we’ll get back to work," he says. "Tonight is ours."

Works for me.

I look at the three guys. We’ve all had a full day of trying to figure shit out. It’s exhausting, it really is.

I reach for Armen first.

What follows is slow in a way the club wasn't. The club was heat and urgency and me needing to purge the thoughts in my aching brain. This is different, more like the end of a long day with people who saw it all and stuck with it anyway.

Armen takes his time, his hands deliberate and unhurried. Sting's mouth finds my throat. Rogue grabs my hair and tips my head back.

I’ve got all three of them. All night. All mine.

When I’m undressed, Sting places his tongue between my thighs, and in seconds, I stop thinking about the ceiling and the law firm and the damn question marks, and God, is it a relief. He pulls me to straddle him and Armen moves in behind me.

Each of them takes a turn and then they don't bother with turns anymore. Armen behind me, Sting in front, Rogue's hands everywhere else, and I come the first time with both of them inside me, the sounds I make bouncing off the Skylight Room's glass panels.

They don't stop.

I come again with Sting's mouth on me and Armen's hands holding me just where he wants me. And again when Rogue flips me onto my back and finishes, unhurried, watching my face the whole way through.

Each time, one of them pulls me back together before the next one winds me up.

It’s all good, though. They have nowhere else to be and neither do I.

Afterward, I'm on my back between Armen and Rogue, Sting stretched out somewhere to my left, and the Skylight Room is doing its nighttime thing around us, generators humming, building breathing.

"The ceiling," Rogue says to the glass panels above us.