Page 36 of Bonepetal
We kiss, hungry, rough, until my name is only breath.
He crowds closer, one palm at the small of my back, the other guiding my knees around his hips as he settles between them, owning the space and the heat. His free hand drags his fly down; he frees himself, thick and hot, and drags the head through my slick, once, twice, lazy and cruel, tapping my clit before sliding lower to wet himself.
“Say it. My name. Again. Louder. I don’t want the living to hear you, Salem, I want the dead clawing in their graves for what’s mine.”
“Finn,” I choke, and he laughs, pleased, mean, and pushes into me with a roughness that makes the world go white.
There was a time he kissed me like I was the only thing keeping him alive.
Now he fucks me like I’m the one who killed him.
The crows go silent, choir at rest, as roots pull taut under the skin of the earth. He sets a pace that’s punishment and promise at once, one hand braced at my shoulder to bend me deeper, the other a brand on my hip.
He speaks in low, filthy benedictions against my ear, and I answer with every sound I’ve strangled for a year.
“Scream for me, bonepetal. I want every corpse in this dirt to know who owns you.”
“Go to hell,” I manage, which comes out likemore.
“I brought it with me.”
The wrongness in the air hums; the grave groans under us, a deep, old sound. I can feel the world listening.
The tether thrums behind my breastbone, quieter than earlier, but still there. Still unavoidable.
He drags his mouth along my jaw and bites the place he marked when we were too young to know better. His hands lock on my hips and he drives into me, hard, unkind in the exact way I’m begging for without saying it, until my fingers claw for purchase on cold stone.
“Feel that?” His voice is a rasp at my ear, hot and awful and perfect. “That’s what you were made for. No one puts you here but me.”
“Shut up,” I pant, even as my body tips back to meet him.
He laughs against my throat, pace brutal and sure. “You can talk all you want. Your body doesn’t lie.” A sharper thrust, my vision flares white. “Itneverlied to me.”
I try to spit something mean; it melts on a moan.
“Eyes on me.” His hand grips my jaw and angles my face so he can watch. “Watch how you take me. Look at what I make you do.”
“I hate you,” I breathe, wrecked.
“You love how I ruin you.” His thumb slides down, catches where I’m slick and desperate, circling hard. “No one else gets you open like this. No one else knows where to touch.” He presses in deeper, crowding me higher on the stone. “Say it.”
“Fuck you,” I manage, shaking.
His mouth finds my shoulder—bite, suck, claim—while his hand works me ruthless and exact. “Admit it, Salem. Tell me I’m the only one who can do this to you.”
I hold out for one more heartbeat, two. He snaps his hips just so and the ground tilts. “You,” I gasp, breaking. “Only you.”
“That’s right.” Satisfaction rakes his voice raw. “Mine. You’ll always be mine.”
He doesn’t slow; he bears me through it, fucking me right into the quake. “Come on,” he growls, thumb merciless, rhythm punishing. “Take it. Milk my cock with that tight cunt. Give it to me.”
The seam of the grave complains under us; the yews rattle without wind; the tether behind my breastbone pulls hot and tight like a cord and a lullaby both.
I shatter.
Loud, shameless, clinging to stone and him and nothing.
He follows on a rough curse, buried deep, holding me exactly where he wants me while he slams inside me one last time, voice breaking on my name like it’s a sin he’s proud to commit.
