Her throat closed.
She could see Harline over his shoulder — the professor folded over the edge of the table, skirt around her waist, the fat bald man's pale belly pressing into her from behind, his stubby hands gripping her hips with the proprietary ease of someone who'd been waiting for this for a very long time. Two more men jockeyed beside him. Three had gathered around Yinna where she'd been laid across the adjacent section of table, her champagne dress shoved upward, her limbs arranged with the practiced casualness of men who were no longer performing restraint.
Marla turned her face away from all of it.
Her forehead found Raven's chest, just for a second — involuntary, she told herself, just vertigo — and she felt his hand at her back, large and still, neither pressing nor retreating.
"Except him," she whispered. Not to him. Just out loud. The quiet clarification her mind made despite everything. "Every man in this room is garbage. Except—"
She stopped herself.
