Page 63 of Hollow

His hands are rough as he shoves them under my sweater, fingers digging into my skin hard enough to bruise. I hiss at the pain but press closer, some dark part of me wanting it to hurt, needing the sharp edges of this to cut through everything else.

“There’s a dead man by us,” I breathe against his mouth, even as I’m yanking at his jacket.

“Yes.” He bites my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, the metallic taste spreading between us. “Fucking face what you did. Maybe if you do, you’ll stop being so fucking careless.”

“Stop,” I say, testing him, testing myself.

“Make me.” His eyes challenge mine in the darkness, daring me to push him away, knowing I won’t.

I answer by digging my nails into the back of his neck, dragging him closer, turning the kiss violent.

In the back of my mind, I can’t escape the sickness of what we’re doing—rutting like animals on top of Liam’s decomposing corpse, the man I killed, whose blood is probably still crusted under my fingernails despite how hard I scrubbed. His body rotting beneath our feet while we use his grave as a stage for our fucked-up desires.

It’s depraved.

Sacrilegious.

The kind of thing that marks your soul. Yet instead of making me stop, the wrongness of it drives me further, like I’m already damned so why not embrace it? There’s something broken in me now, something that craves this destruction, and I can tell by the hunger in Flint’s eyes that he’s just as damaged.

He pushes me backward until I’m standing directly over the freshly turned earth. Then he forces me down onto my knees, right on top of the grave, before following me down. The damp soil soaks through my jeans immediately. He grips my thighs, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks ashe positions himself between my legs. I should be revolted—we’re literally about to fuck on top of a dead man—but all I feel is desperate need.

“This is what you want?” he growls. “Right here on your victim?”

I twist my fingers in his hair, yanking his head back painfully. “Shut up and do it.”

The weight of us both presses me deeper into the loose soil covering Liam’s body.

What follows is nothing like the careful, almost reverent way Damiano touched me. Flint takes what he wants, and I give just as fiercely. Clothes are pushed aside rather than removed. His fingers find me wet and ready, and I don’t even try to muffle my moan when he pushes them inside me.

“You need this,” he says in a low growl in my ear. “Need someone who doesn’t treat you like you’ll break.”

I should be insulted. Instead, I’m arching against him, guiding his touch where I want it most.

“Shut up and fuck me.”

His eyes darken at my words. In one swift movement, he’s unfastening his jeans and positioning himself between my legs.

He takes me in one brutal thrust, knocking the breath from my lungs. I gasp at the force of it, at the delicious intrusion that sends shock waves through my body. Pain and pleasure bleed into each other until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. He covers my mouth with his hand as I cry out,stifling the sound, but the more he muffles me, the louder I get, until he’s the one gritting his teeth and groaning with the effort of it.

He sets a punishing rhythm, driving into me with no regard for anything but his own savage need—and mine. I rake my nails down his back, desperate for him to go harder, deeper, to make me feel every inch of him. The earth beneath us shifts with our movement, the soil caving in as I dig my fingers into it, as if to claw my way down to the corpse below.

I shouldn’t want this.

I should be sickened, horrified.

Instead, I’m rising to meet Flint’s every brutal stroke, mouth open in something between a moan and a scream. This is punishment, pleasure; this is being claimed, devoured. It’s a savage, frenzied act, and we’re both lost to it.

The grave and the horror of it surrounds us. It makes me wilder, more frantic, wanting it to hurt so it’s real—wanting him to tear me open so the guilt and fear spill out along with everything else.

“Don’t stop,” I gasp, my breath coming in ragged pants. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

He doesn’t slow, doesn’t hold back. He moves his hand from my mouth to my throat, a silent threat that only makes my body respond more urgently. I arch into his grip, daring him to tighten his hold, to take me right to the edge of danger. He squeezes, just enough to send my pulse racing, then releases, sliding his fingers back down to wherewe’re joined. He circles his thumb, pressing against me in time with his thrusts.

It’s too much. Not enough.

My vision blurs, the world narrowing to the pressure building inside me, to the raw, violent pleasure that has me thrashing beneath him until it finally shatters, taking me with it.

I come with a cry, every muscle tightening, the darkness around me exploding into brilliant white. He follows an instant later, his mouth crashing against mine in a feral, bruising kiss that tastes like sweat and salt and leftover blood from his bite. Even then, he doesn’t stop moving, driving into me again and again until there’s nothing left but the ragged sound of our breathing, the dirt streaked across my skin, and the terrible satisfaction of what we’ve done.

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