Each of them has a room. I have mine—the nest, the east-facing window, the desk where I write. They come in on my terms. Knock first, always. Even Zero, who knocks the way he does everything—once, hard, not really a question though.
Bane comes in most often. He shows up in the doorway around nine at night, every night, and waits until I look up from whatever I'm writing.
"You coming to bed?"
"In a minute."
"You said that an hour ago."
"I mean it this time."
He crosses the room. Stands behind my chair. His hands come down on my shoulders and his thumbs dig into the knots at the base of my neck and my head drops back against his stomach.
"You work too hard," he says. Low. His hands sliding forward, down my chest, his mouth at my ear.
"You're distracting me."
"That's the idea."
Some nights I let him distract me. Some nights the notebook can wait. Bane lifts me out of the chair like I weigh nothing—I don't, to him—and carries me to his room, where the sheets smell like cedar and clean laundry, and he takes his time. Bane always takes his time. Slow hands. Slow mouth. Every part of me cataloged and accounted for like an inventory he's memorized but still checks every night because Bane doesn't trust the world not to take things from him.
Afterward he holds me with one arm across my chest and his nose in my hair and says nothing. He doesn't need to. The bond says it for him—steady, warm, certain. The Bane thread. The one that never wavers.
And if his brothers get to me first, Bane makes a habit of needling his way into whoever’s bed I happen to be in for the night.
Zero can’t stand it.
I love it.
∞∞∞
Once I’ve finished Atlas’ coffee, I start getting ready for class. Zero finds me in the shower .
I don't hear the bathroom door open over the water. I don't hear him undress. I just feel the cold air when the glass door swings wide and then he's behind me, hands on my hips, mouth on the back of my neck.
"Jesus—Zero—"
"You left the door unlocked."
"That's not an invitation."
"Everything about you is an invitation." His teeth graze the bond mark on my neck—the one he put there, the one that makes my knees buckle every single time he touches it, and he knows that, and he does it anyway because Zero has never once in his life played fair.
I brace one hand against the tile. The water runs between us. His hands move from my hips to my stomach, pulling me back against him.
"I have class in an hour," I manage.
"You'll make it."
"Zero—"
"Forty-five minutes." His mouth at my ear. "I only need twenty."
He doesn't need twenty. He needs the whole forty-five and I'm late to class and I walk into the lecture hall with wet hair and a bite mark below my collar that I spend the entire session trying to cover with my hand.
Wren sees it at the coffee shop after. She doesn't say anything. She just looks at my neck and then looks at me and raises one eyebrow.
"Don't," I say.
