Bonepetal

Chapter 7

SALEM

T he hill feels different going down than it did going up.

Maybe it’s the wax cooling in constellations on my skin, the ghost-heat of his hands where he steadied me before I ripped myself away from him, or the metal taste the night leaves on my tongue.

Whatever it is, the world sits an inch to the left of where it used to be, and something under my sternum feels lighter. Burned clean. Wrong, too, like shadows have learned my veins, and are practicing how to move inside them.

I breathe, and the breath goes all the way in.

The graveyard opens its rusting mouth.

Wet grass, slick as a tongue. Names slouching on their stones like they’re tired of being remembered. The crows keep pace along the fence, black shapes hop post to post, punctuating a sentence I’m not ready to read.

Left at the yews.

Habit.

The little stone with the too-close dates waits where it always does, moss suturing its corners like a mercy that came late. My palm finds the chilled top without asking.

Memory rolls whether I invite it or not—red thread looped around a thin wrist while the elders breathed bride like a benediction sharpened to a knife; chalk circles; salt lines; my mother combing my hair with careful fingers while she smiled at the word sacrifice as if it meant daughter .

She made me feel chosen. She knew I was marked. She loved me with a leash already tied to the altar ring.

Spit lands wet and decisive on the granite. “Hope the devil you praised is treating you real good in hell,” I say, and my voice doesn’t even shake.

The wind lifts the hair at my nape.

The crows click their beaks like omen drums.

Footsteps push out of the shadows behind me, bare, certain, and unhurried. The kind of stride that belongs to people who already know you’ll turn.

I look.

Finn steps out of the yews. The bone-handled knife sits at his hip like it lives there. Tattoos sleeve his arms and climb one side of his ribs in thorns and script.

No sign of Nathan’s skull turned mask.

Just some dirt along his jaw; buzz cut neat and streaks of melted wax down his hands. His eyes are hot in a way that isn’t candlelight. And his mouth, same as ever—the one that learned me, reverent when he wants, ruthless when he doesn’t.

He glances once at my mother’s stone, then at me.

“She’s suffering,” he says, voice smooth as a blade.

“They all are. I made sure of it.” His chin tips toward the elders’ row, toward the patch where Nathan’s name sits new and raw.

“I don’t regret killing them. Any of them.

I’d do it again if it meant protecting you—keeping you.

” His mouth slants. “Though, their deaths weren’t as enjoyable as Nathan’s. ”

The slap of that name cracks something behind my ribs. “Shut up,” I say, too fast.

He laughs low, cruel, and entertained. “You’re really going to defend him?

To me?” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

“He was cheating on you, Salem. Couldn’t keep it in his pants, and you want to stand here and argue his case to the man who died so you could breathe?

” He steps closer, voice dropping to a blade.

“I felt it. Every time you shut your eyes and let him touch you, I felt it in hell. Now I’m back and I’ll cut every wrong touch out of your skin until only mine remain. ”

“God, you’re unbelievable."

“God had his chance.” He steps closer. Possession isn’t in his hands yet, it’s in the way his gaze lands and stays. “And he fucking failed you. But I didn’t. Did I, bonepetal?”

“Stay away.” I brace the words with my body, chin tipped up, hands in fists I haven’t earned.

He grins like I just threw him a ball. “Go ahead and run,” he says, coy as sin. “I’ve got another chase in me. Do you?”

I hate that my heart answers yes by slamming itself against my ribs. “You don’t own me.”

His eyes warm like a storm catching. “Say that again,” he murmurs. “Make it sound like you believe it.”

I turn and bolt.

It’s not pretty.

Wet grass grabs at my boots; stones lurch; a crow explodes from a low branch with a harsh croak that clips my ear. I tear past a weeping angel with a broken hand, juke left at a cedar, breath burning. Behind me, his footfalls never hurry.

He doesn’t sprint. He closes.

“Where are you going to run, Salem? Hmm? The fence is left,” he calls easily, like we’re discussing the weather. “Barbed. Bleed pretty if you like.”

“Go back to hell!” I throw over my shoulder. It costs me air he takes anyway.

“You always did run better angry,” he laughs, closer now. “Keep going, bonepetal. I like watching you try. Watching you lie.”

“Don’t call me—” A crow dives low, a shadow slap, and instinct tugs my head down. My toe hooks the lip of torn earth.

I pitch forward, palms stinging. Loam breathes rot and old wood right in my face.

The split in his headstone grinds my shoulder when I slam back to catch myself. It’s his grave I’ve tripped on, furrowed by finger-rakes, and coffin board peeking through like a broken tooth. The mouth he crawled out of that won’t close.

Before I can push myself up, his hand clamps my elbow and hauls me to my feet, gentle enough to infuriate. I wrench away, finding my balance.

“Let go.”

He does. My back hits stone. He steps into the space I leave, shadow swallowing mine, heat muscling the cold aside.

“Say stop,” he murmurs. No mockery. No mercy. The line he’s always given me, even when he meant to break me over it. “Say no, Salem. Tell me you don’t want me.”

I want to spit it out. I want to shove him off, spit fuck you , swear I don’t want him—that I don’t ache for him after everything he’s done.

I want to mean it.

But the closer he crowds me against the stone, the more my body betrays me—thighs tightening, breath shortening, pussy clenching around nothing like it knows the shape of him. Rage recites its list; hunger drowns it out.

I tell myself I don’t crave ruin—then crave exactly the ruin only he can give.

“I hate you,” I grind out. “You ruin everything you touch.”

He leans until his breath is a heat at my mouth. “I ruin what’s already mine, and we both fucking know you like it. But by all means, tell me to stop. Lie to me again.”

His thumb skims my jaw, then taps my bottom lip. I gasp before I can help it, mouth opening on reflex. He presses his thumb in and I take it, tongue flicking, lips sealing around him.

“Thought so,” he says, voice gone dark.

He drops to his knees in the torn, damp soil of his own grave. Dirt smears his jeans; gravel ticks under him. His hands slide up the backs of my thighs, greedy and sure, bunching my skirt at my hips because it’s in his way—which it is.

He hooks his thumbs under my waistband and shoves fabric aside without ceremony.

A quick kiss to the inside of my knee, another higher, more teeth than manners.

Cold stone bites my spine; his breath heats the hinge of my thigh. He shoulders me wider, looks up once to clock my face, then drags his tongue up in one slow, stubborn stripe that takes the strength right out of my legs.

“Fuck—” I gasp, palm slapping the headstone. “God, Finn?—”

He hums into me like he likes how I taste and seals his mouth over my clit, sucking hard enough to throw sparks behind my eyes. I hold his head, thumbs braced at his temples, fingers hooked behind his ears, guiding, keeping him exactly where I need him.

My hips chase his mouth on instinct.

“That’s it,” he murmurs against me, the words hot and filthy against slick skin. “Ride it. Use me. Take what you want.”

“Shut up,” I moan, already rolling my hips anyway. “Don’t—oh, fuck—don’t stop.”

He laughs into me, wrecked and pleased. “Sit on it,” he says, mouth moving as he licks. “Grind on my tongue. C’mon, bonepetal.”

Two fingers slide inside, slow, thick, and curl until they find the spot he taught my body to save for him.

My knees shake. I hold his head tighter and rock down, chasing pressure, riding his face and fingers like I’m mad at him and starving for him in the same breath.

He anchors me with a forearm across my hip and keeps talking between suck and stroke—“There,” and “Harder,” and “Take it”—until the curses tumble out of me raw and helpless.

I break loud enough the crows shut up and the grave under us lets out a long, uneasy groan. He doesn’t rush me out of it, just rides it down, gentles the edges, licks me through the aftershocks until my grip loosens and my heartbeat climbs back into my chest.

Then he looks up, mouth slick, eyes black with hunger, and drags his thumb over my swollen lip again. I take him in without thinking, sucking on autopilot, already opening my knees wider because I know what comes next and I want it.

His mouth crashes into mine, stealing the insult I’d primed and pulling a sound out of me I’ll lie about later.

He scoops me under the thighs and lifts, setting me on the split lip of his stone so I’m facing him.

My skirt’s bunched; his hands bracket my hips and pulls me flush, the world narrowing to the hard line of his body and the bite of granite under me.

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 like more .

“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. “It never lied 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.

For a breath, all I can hear is our breathing and the small, unsettled groan of the earth.

He eases out slowly, and the loss is a drop that leaves my legs useless.

He catches me before I slide, lifting me off the stone like I weigh nothing, and carries me three steps into the dark under a yew.

Cool grass, forgiving ground. He lowers me with care that contradicts everything that came before, brushes a knuckle down my neck, then rests his palm over my sternum like he can feel the tether thrumming there.

“Sleep,” he says, voice rough velvet, possessive even in softness. “I’ve got you.”

The last thing I register is the feathered hush above us and the warmth of his shadow at my side as my eyes fall shut.