Chapter 4
FINN
T he fire escape groans under my weight as I climb, iron teeth biting into my palms, rust flakes clinging to my boots.
I know this route already, I’ve taken it in my head a hundred times watching her lights flicker out at night.
At the top, the window is stubborn, swollen with paint, but it gives when I wedge my knife under the latch and lever it.
A soft metal cough, and I’m in.
I slip through, boots hitting the worn wood with barely a sound. Her place is small, just a few steps and I’ve crossed half of it. I move slow, silent.
It smells like her. Not the cheap vanilla candle shit she burns, or the detergent she drowns her sheets in. Underneath all that? The truth. The part no amount of store-bought cover can fucking hide.
Her .
Nightshade and warm skin. Ghosts of charcoal and ash from her sketches. The sharp tang of old ink, wilted petals crumbling in a jar by the window.
The air is thick with her—decay made pretty, death made soft. Everything in here whispers the same thing I already know —she was never meant to smell clean. She was meant to smell like me.
I pass the couch, thrifted, stuffing bleeding out like a wound.
The coffee table, crooked, scarred with scratches and cigarette burns that aren’t hers.
Candles everywhere, glass crusted over with wax drips pooling thick at the base.
I run my hand along a shelf as I move, fingertips brushing sketchbooks sprawled open, the margins full of charcoal crows, twisted trees, my eyes and fucking jawline.
In the corner on a small bookcase sits a vase of dead flowers.
Brown, brittle, stems snapped but still standing like skeletons.
Next to them, a dish of bones—sparrow, or rabbit maybe, threaded neat with dried petals, some of them strung into chokers and bracelets, her little habit of making the ugly holy.
It all feels like a shrine no one admits is a shrine. Like she’s been waiting for me even while she tries to convince herself she hasn’t been.
And then—Her.
Curled under my hoodie, chest rising slowly, the tooth I gave her years ago still strung around her neck.
She’s never taken it off. Not once. It hangs there now, resting just above the hem of my hoodie where it rises and falls with her.
A relic of the vow she broke, the one she thought would bury me, but only dragged me back to her.
The sight hits me low and vicious. My cock twitches hard against denim, sharp enough to ache.
She doesn’t even fucking know what she’s doing to me—lying there drowned in me, dreaming in me.
Wearing the vow she broke like it isn’t choking her every breath.
Thinking death erased me. Thinking moving on made her free.
The skull strapped to my face fogs with every breath.
Hollow sockets drink her in, greedy, like they’ve been starving for this, and they have.
Hell was nothing but hunger and silence, walls of fire that didn’t speak back.
I watched her there, through cracks in the dark, through the eyes of crows that didn’t even know they were mine.
I saw her sketch me. Saw her sob into her pillow like her grief could drown me twice, then crawl into my hoodie like she belonged there, spreading her thighs and touching herself while my face stared back at her in charcoal.
My jaw.
My hands.
My shadow.
She thought it was mourning. Cute . It was worship, and she didn’t even fucking know it.
Even in hell, I heard it. Her soft little gasps.
The way she moaned my name like it was still stitched under her tongue, like no one else would ever taste it right.
I stroked myself raw to that sound, laughing, because she really thought she’d buried me.
But nothing she did—not the tears, not the sketches, not her hand between her legs—was ever enough without me.
Only I can make her come like she’s supposed to.
I fucked myself raw to the memory of her more times than I can count.
Shackled in chains. Burning in fire. Alone in a kind of silence that etched its teeth into my ribs.
But even that never touched the edge of this.
Never close enough. Stroking my cock to the sound of her laugh echoing in my skull, to the ghost of her nails carved into my shoulders, to the promise of her mouth, it was survival rations. Kept me breathing, but never sated me.
Because it was never her breath ghosting my throat. Never her thighs tightening around my hips. Never that shudder that rips through her when I sink inside and she forgets how to deny me.
Now, her lips part on a soft sound. A sigh. A whimper. Maybe a dream. Maybe my name. Doesn’t matter. It’s mine.
Always was.
Always fucking will be.
I move closer, step by step, boots whisper-quiet on her floor. My pulse steady. My cock straining. My hands aching with everything I’m holding back, every filthy thing I want to do to her while she sleeps wearing me.
God, she looks like a sin I clawed my way out of the dirt for.
I crouch at the edge of her mattress, lean close, close enough to drink the heat off her skin.
Her lashes twitch, caught between worlds, but she doesn’t wake.
She never does. She’s always been a heavy sleeper—unless it was my mouth at her throat, my hand buried between her thighs, forcing her body to confess what her lips wouldn’t.
Memory hits like a blade to the gut. Her back to the tree line, moonlight painting her throat.
My hand over her mouth to keep the cult from hearing while I shoved her dress up and split her open for the first time.
Her nails carving trenches down my shoulders, blood warm and slick in the grooves.
Her body quaking, begging for ruin, and me giving it without mercy.
That noise she made into my palm—the one that wasn’t pain, wasn’t fear, but the rawest edge of want she tried to bury.
Now I look down at her, lashes dark against her cheeks, and I see the ghost of that sound trembling in her full lips. The hoodie’s hem rides high, exposing a strip of pale stomach begging to be marked. My teeth grind. My cock jerks. My hand aches with the urge to touch.
So I do.
First, her lips. One finger dragging slow across, feeling the heat of her. She sighs, lips parting under the pressure. My fingertip smears across her bottom lip, just enough to pull a wet sound from her throat, soft and broken. My dick twitches hard, vision going white at the edges.
I almost spill right there, just from that.
Fuck, I want to taste her. I want to split her lips open on my tongue until she’s crying into my mouth. But not yet. Not until I’ve taken my fill of watching her like this.
My hand drifts lower, cupping her cheek, brushing the drawstring of the hoodie, sliding slow down her throat.
Her pulse thrums hard under my palm, frantic even in sleep, like her body knows before her mind does that I’m here.
She shifts, thighs pressing together, hoodie riding higher, and fuck, my teeth grind.
I want to rip it off, crawl inside her, hollow her out until nothing is left but me.
Patience. That’s the only religion I still keep.
My other hand goes to my belt.
The buckle clicks sharp in the quiet. Leather hisses through loops.
Zipper slides. My cock springs free, heavy, veined, already weeping for her.
I wrap my fist around it, stroke once—tight, slow—then again, knuckles white with restraint.
Precum slicks my grip, drags over the head as my thumb circles, pressing until I hiss through my teeth.
“Salem,” I rasp, voice shredded raw from the grave, from hell, from wanting her every second I was gone.
She stirs. A little noise slips out. Could be my name. Could be nothing. Doesn’t matter. I’ll make it truth.
I jerk my cock again, slower but meaner, twisting at the tip until slick dribbles down my shaft. My hips twitch up into my fist, desperate, my breath harsh enough to echo inside the skull strapped to my face. Each sound is hunger amplified, a predator’s pant.
She moves in her sleep, thighs rubbing together, hoodie stretching across her tits until I can see her nipples pressing faint under the fabric.
My cock jerks hard in my hand, veins thick and straining.
I squeeze tighter, stroke faster, obscene wet sounds filling the room.
My gaze never leaves her—her lips parted, chest rising like she’s gasping for me even in dreams.
I whisper to her like she’s awake, like she’s listening. “You’re mine. Always were. Always fucking will be.”
She whimpers. Rolls half onto her back, hoodie riding high. Stomach bare. Skin begging.
I lose it.
“Mine,” I growl, deep, guttural, and I let go.
Hot ropes spurt across her stomach, striping pale skin, streaking the hem of my hoodie. I pump through it, groaning low, every vein standing out on my cock, cum spilling over her navel, dripping down her hip.
Again. Again.
Thick and white and obscene.
I don’t stop until I’ve emptied everything I am onto her. Until she’s painted in me.
Until she smells like me.
I drag my hand through it, smear it across her stomach, streak her hoodie, paint her like scripture. She shifts in her sleep, lashes fluttering, lips parting, but she doesn’t wake. She just breathes harder, chest trembling like some part of her recognizes the truth.
I lean close, so close my breath stirs her hair, and lick the tear slipping from her eye.
Salt. Mine.
My cock twitches one last time, soft now but aching, the skin sticky with her name. I drag my fist over it, milk out the last drops onto her sheets, then shove myself back into my jeans. Zipper up. Belt buckled. Like I was never here, except I was.
And she’ll wake soaked in proof.
I stand, adjust the blanket higher, tucking it over her like a lie. She stirs, sighs, but doesn’t wake. Perfect .
I head for the window, boots whispering across the warped floorboards, and that’s when I see it. Sitting on the dresser glinting in the moonlight.
The cologne bottle. Empty now, dust on the glass, but it still fucking reeks of me.
I remember the day she found it—going back to where she swore she wouldn’t, breaking her promise with shaking hands just to claw out some piece of me.
She wanted something to keep close, something to fill the hole I left in her chest. She thought it would help.
All it did was prove she couldn’t let me go.
Even after the amber liquid dried up, she kept it. Just like she kept the tooth I gave her. Just like she kept the vow—until she fucked up and broke it.
I pick it up, turn it in my hand, thumb dragging over the glass like I’m touching her skin, and I smirk.
She never really let me go. She never will.
I set it back down—careful, deliberate. Not an object anymore. A fucking promise.
The window gives like it did before, metal groaning softly. I climb through, boots hitting the fire escape with a dull scrape, and pull it shut behind me.
Back into the night.
Back into the dark where I belong.
I scale up to the tree line, my crow waiting, feathers glossy, eyes too fucking knowing. It croaks once, sharp, and I crouch on the branch, skull still tight on my face, watching her through the glass.
My cum drying on her stomach. My hoodie clinging to her skin. Her tear still salt on my tongue.
When morning comes, she’ll wake. She’ll find the sheets damp, her body sticky. She’ll stumble to the shower, confused, thinking she can scrub it off. Scrub me off.
But she can’t.
Because I’m back. And I’m not leaving until she pays for breaking the vow. She might not have loved the boy I killed, but she let him touch her. Let him kiss the places that were mine first. Mine only.
Never again.
I’ll make sure no one lays a hand on her body but me. Not a soul. Not in this life. Not in the next.
My bonepetal is mine. Always .