Bane's knot holds us together for a long time. Nobody moves to break it. We shift—slowly, carefully, until Bane is on his back against the pillows and I'm lying on his chest with him still inside me, his hand stroking the back of my neck in slowcircles. Atlas is stretched out on my right, his head propped on his hand, his fingers tracing absent patterns on my hip. Zero is on my left, flat on his stomach, his chin on my shoulder blade, one arm draped across the small of my back like he's afraid I'll float away if he doesn't pin me down.
The room smells like us. All of us. The sheets are destroyed.
"Someone," Bane says, his voice hoarse and wrecked, "is going to have to explain these sheets to Margot."
"Burn them," Zero says. Into my spine.
"We're not burning Atlas's sheets."
"They're a crime scene, Bane. There's no saving them."
Atlas hums. His fingers are still tracing my hip. "I have another set in the closet."
"Oh, he has another set." Zero lifts his head. "The man has a contingency plan for his bedding. Of course he does. Atlas Graves, prepared for every emergency including the one where his brother fucks his omega through the mattress."
A beat of silence. Then Atlas laughs. Short, quiet. It shakes through his chest and I feel it in the mattress and the sound of it loosens something in the room that's been tight all night.
"Fuck you," Atlas says. Without heat.
"You'd have to get in line." Zero's chin drops back to my shoulder blade. His arm stays draped across me, heavy and warm.
We lie like that for a while. The four of us breathing. The knot pulsing slow between Bane and me, each wave smaller than the last, the stretch easing by degrees until finally—gently, a long slow slide—Bane slips free of me. The loss makes me whimper against his chest. He presses his mouth to my forehead.
"I know. I'm right here."
He turns onto his side, pulling me with him, tucking me into the curve of his body. My back settles against Zero's chest—warm, solid, his arm shifting to wrap around my waist. I'm sandwiched between them. Bane in front, his hand still on the back of my neck. Zero behind, his mouth finding the knob of my spine.
Atlas hasn't moved. He's still on his side, propped on his hand, watching the three of us rearrange around each other like it’s a scene he never wants to forget.
Zero's hand slides from my waist. Down over my hip. Down between my thighs, where I'm still swollen and slick and tender from all three of them. His fingers trace through the mess—lazy, unhurried, not trying to start anything. Just touching.
Then one finger slips inside me.
I inhale against Bane's chest. My hips twitch. Bane's hand tightens on my neck. "Zero..." I say. Half warning, half not.
"Shh. I'm not doing anything." His finger crooks. Slow. Dragging against the spot that's been hit so many times tonight it's almost too sensitive to touch.Almost. "Just... feeling you. You're so soft in here right now, baby. So open. Full of Bane's come."
"Zero, he's exhausted," Bane says. But his voice is low and his hand hasn't stopped stroking my neck and he hasn't told Zero to move.
"I know he's exhausted. I'm not trying to make him come again. I just want to feel him." A second finger joins the first. Slow. Gentle. Just stretching me open enough to feel the slick heat of what's inside me. "Is that okay, baby? Can I just have this?"
I press my face into Bane's chest. Nod. My body is so far past the point of orgasm that what Zero is doing doesn't register as building toward anything. It's just sensation. Warm. Full. His fingers moving inside me in slow idle strokes, the way someoneplays with a lock of hair or rubs a thumb across a knuckle. Absent. Possessive. Comfort.
"You're obscene," Atlas tells Zero. Fond.
"I'm thorough."
"You're fingering him in my bed while our brother is holding him."
"And?"
Atlas doesn't answer. His hand slides around Bane to my hair and he cards through it, slow, and the combination of Atlas's hand in my hair and Bane's hand on my neck and Zero's fingers inside me is a kind ofheldI didn't know existed. I am surrounded. I am touched in every place I can be touched. I am so full of them I don't know where my body ends and theirs begins and I don't want to know.
"When do Richard and Margot get back?" Zero asks. Casual. His fingers still moving.
"Day after tomorrow," Bane says. "Late afternoon. Richard texted the itinerary."
"Of course he did."
