Page 29 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Still, Colin wished he had the strength to lie to them. Spit false hope at their feet and smile. But he honored their silence and helped them re-fill the grave-pit. Both shovels crunched through the snowy dirt. Pebbles and ice smacked the closed casket and echoed into the night, dulling as the pit gradually shallowed. Colin fixed the rectangular mound-cover back into place, blanketing Lincoln’s grave with loose grass, and stopped to catch his breath, watching Bishop clip the extra waterproof tarp over the bed of their truck.
There, he thought.The easy part is done.
He swatted dirt off his hands and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Bishop shut the driver’s side door. They held the still-burning votive in both hands and inhaled, sucking the flame between their lips. Their throat glowed, as did their eyes and the seam of their mouth. When they exhaled, steam billowed into the cab, folding against the chilled windshield.What a beautiful thing,Colin thought.Taking in, letting go. He rested his cheek on the headrest and watched their swirling, flame-tinged breath dissipate.
“Are you still fine?” Colin tested.
Bishop fiddled with their keys, staring through the windshield.
“I don’t know,” they said, and it sounded like the truth.
The moon’s white smile hardly lit the sky and the slim sidewalk lamps skewering the trees only partially illuminated the cemetery, leaving gravesites and mausoleums bathed in darkness. In the distance, the on-site chapel glowed, flecked with memory candles and stationed by a lazy security guard. Everything else succumbed to the night. The two of them shared the silence together, flushed from exertion, sweat-dampened and carrying dust on their clothes.
“Do I really terrify you?” Bishop asked, their voice a weak thing in the confined space.
“Yes.” It was an easy truth to tell.
They furrowed their brows and let their lips peel apart, expression falling from confusion to abrupt sadness. “Why…?”
Colin inhaled deeply and sighed through his nose. “Because you’re extraordinary,” he said, and turned toward the passenger window. There was no use lying to them. No use attempting to dilute how he felt or skirt the edge of his intrigue. “I tend to appreciate distance, but somehow, I haven’t found the fortitude to stop wanting you. I think about you often: when I’m awake, when I’m asleep, when I’m alone. Do you know what that’s like?” He huffed out an annoyed breath and glanced at Bishop, blushing hot. “To find yourself trapped in an unexpected orbit? To know someone’s power, to understand their pain, to get a glimpse of their heart?” He met their wide, tense eyes. “Before I slept with you, I daydreamed about you. Now that I’ve been with you, I’m consumed by you. How I feel about you, what I want from you… it’s thrilling; it’s excruciating. So, yes, you terrify me, Bishop.”
Bishop stayed exceedingly still. They stared, expression unreadable, and let the silence grow.
I’m a damn fool,Colin thought. His pulse quickened and he shifted his gaze to the window again.Stupid, childish idiot—
The prayer candle landed in the cupholder, and Bishop surged across the middle seat. They gripped Colin’s cheek and turned his face toward them, seizing his mouth in a firm kiss. Colin remembered to breathe as he pawed at their waist, clumsy and eager in the cramped cab. For a moment, he couldn’t recall a damn thing he’d said. Onlydaydreamed, onlyconsumed, onlyterrify. The truth ached in his chest. How badly he’d craved them, how his desire for them had suffocated his lonely heart. Wanting and being wanted had been unimaginable, yet Bishop was there, crawling into his lap, sliding their thighs around his waist. They were there, prying at his lips, mouth still candle-hot and tinged with magic.There, surrounding him, holding onto him.
“Be scared of me,” they rasped, breathing hard against his chin. “But don’t be afraid to touch me.”
Colin palmed their denim-clad thighs, eased along the crease of their hips, and hauled them closer. Each kiss slowed and stretched, widening for damp, hot breath, and soft, warm tongues. Bishop moaned, a rough sound that curled intimately around Colin’s bones. They inched their fingers into his hair, pressed their thumbs into his temples, clutched his face and angled him where they wanted—closer, upward, into them. They touched the place where their lips met and sent a gusting breath into Colin’s depths. Magic pulsed inside him, fluttering restlessly, flavored like Bishop, like raw, holy power, like everything he’d left behind.
Colin eased away, detaching from the dizzying energy riding the back of Bishop’s breath. Bishop nosed at his cheek, tried to tug him into another kiss, but he ducked under their chin and set his teeth around their heartbeat, working a bruise onto their skin. They cradled the back of his skull. Sucked in shaky breath. Rolled sensually in his lap, pressing the taut fabric between their thighs against his hipbone. Colin felt their magic sting beneath his tattoos, settling in the arcs and grooves of mystic runes and angel-speak. Power recognized power. Like called unceremoniously to like.
Lincoln Stone’s corpse was strewn in the bed of the truck, wrapped and contained, hollow and silent, waiting to be occupied. Colin couldn’t fathom leaving the cemetery, though. Couldn’t bear to take his hands off of Bishop, couldn’t stand the idea of being anywhere else. Marchosias be damned, he would touch them until they babbled and begged, he would kiss them until their mouth knew nothing but the shape of his lips, he would hold them until they saidlet me go, and God, he hoped and prayed that those three words never surfaced.
When he fumbled with the button on their jeans, their spine bent and their chest stuttered, and when he slid his fingers into their mouth, they took his digits willingly, eyes half-lidded, cheeks blazing, sucking wetly on his knuckles. They were astonishingly beautiful. Carnal and haughty and undone.
“Look at me,” he said, and worked his hand between their legs.
Bishop did as they were told. They loosened their jaw and stared at Colin, reaching for his palm in jilting pulses. He wanted to touch them reverently, to worship at the altar of their hips and watch moonlight skate across their body, but they were crowded against him in a humid truck with their shirt bunched above their bellybutton, and he wasn’t about to complain. They strained against unforgiving denim and attempted to spread their legs, sighing contentedly as Colin pushed his fingers inside them. The night carried remnants of what they’d done. Broken frozen ground, turned soil and shoveled dirt, exhumed the body of someone Bishop had once loved—still loved. Despite their hunger, he tasted anguish on their lips, sorrow in the kisses they stole, and tried to slow, to gentle, to treat them tenderly.
“Don’t,” they snapped, breathlessly. Bishop kissed him hard. Took his bottom lip between their teeth and bit. “C’mon, please.Please.”
Colin knew what it was like to find safety in pain. He understood the narrow space people searched for when they needed to be hurt and held and outside themselves. And even if he wanted something different, something intimate and visceral, this was real enough. Deep enough. Even if he wanted to be more for Bishop, he would be an escape for them. Tonight, at least.Tonight.
Evening deepened, and the windshield fogged, and Colin touched them until they were whining and gasping, sank his teeth into their supple skin until they said his name and bucked against him, kept his hand between their quivering thighs until their cunt clenched and spasmed. He gave them what they wanted: pain and pleasure, obedience and release.
But he hopelessly, selfishly wanted more.
Chapter ten
“Youwardedthisroom,right?” Bishop asked. They braced their palms on their thighs and caught their breath, glancing from the basement staircase to where they’d propped Lincoln’s stiff corpse in the awful, floral recliner.
Colin nodded. He gestured loosely to a paper clipping perched on the banister, then another atop the washer, and another on stacked sheets stuffed in the linen shelf. Last night, when Colin had waded through bouts of lucidity, he’d sketched quarter-sized images of Saint Christopher, Michael the Archangel, and Saint Benedict in his notebook, flicked holy water onto the paper, then tore them from the page individually. The adapted Esszettel, faith-filled spells that typically chased ailments away, were charged with borrowed power. They acted like an invisibility cloak, filling the basement with protective energy. He swept his gaze from Bishop’s dusty boots to their crooked glasses. An hour ago, the cemetery had been a safe haven, their breath on his throat, convincing his mangled skin to finish healing, their hand crammed inside his jeans, their lips on his jaw, cheek, temple, but it’d ended, as all things end, and Bishop had driven back to the house on Staghorn Way.
“Once we begin, there will be no going back.” Colin said. He turned his attention to Lincoln, upright and rigid in the chair. Dirt clung to his dark hair and his eyelids had peeled apart, loosened by a cotton-ball soaked in isopropyl alcohol. “And I can’t guarantee swiftness. We could be done by sunrise. We could be done sometime next week. Next month, even. These things are unpredictable.”
Bishop righted themself. “I texted Tehlor. Asked her to stop by if we don’t touch base with her in a few hours.”
