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"Laszlo—"

"Quiet." I spread her open with my thumbs. She's soaked. Her thighs are wet with it already, and there's no way that started in the last two minutes. I lick her, one long stroke from her clit all the way back, and she jolts and swears into her arm. I do it again, then spit against her ass and work it in with two fingers, thinking about what it's going to feel like to push into her there. She's moaning already, begging me to fuck her, but I want to take my time. I push two fingers into her cunt instead, slow, all the way, until she moans louder.

"Say it," I tell her. "Out loud. Where anyone could hear."

"You know what I want."

"I want it in words."

"Fuck me with your fingers." Her voice is already wrecked. "God, like that. Don't stop."

I don't stop. Two fingers, then three, hooked the way she likes, and I spit again, higher, and work my thumb against her ass in slow circles until she's pushing back onto it herself, filthy and greedy and mine. When I press the tip inside she comes apart, screaming at the base of her own headstone, with dirt under her fingernails and my name in her mouth.

I push her head down into the grass, drop my pants, and take my cock in my hand.

Getting the jeans and panties the rest of the way off her, I throw them at the stone, then get an arm under her ribs and roll her onto her back. There is grass in her hair and dirt on her cheek. She blinks up at me, still shaking from the last orgasm as I settle between her thighs, a hand under her ass to tilt her up, and push my cock into her to the hilt. Her mouth opens. Her eyes go unfocused and then come back to mine. She moans my name, while I’m constantly checking if she's all right, that the ground isn't too cold under her.

I pull out almost all the way and push slowly back in, watching her face while I do it. Her chin lifts. Her eyebrows pull together, and her lips part on a moan. She's fine. She's better than fine.

She puts both hands on my face. They're cold from the ground. She holds me there, and I let her.

Then her heels come up and dig into the backs of my thighs, and I stop going slow. I fuck her hard enough that her shoulders slide on the grass and her hair catches on the base of the stone.

My hands get their fill of her. One under her, one along the side of her face. They’re steady, holding her, while this morning I couldn’t stop fidgeting. I straightened books, moved the candles, lined the mugs, gripped the counter until my knuckles went white. Nothing worked, but this is. Her face in my hand, her eyes not leaving mine on the cold ground. She's the only thing that has put me back inside my own body since I saw that ear on her nightstand. It’s neither the routine or the order.

It’s her. It’s always been her. It is always going to be her.

CHAPTER 28

Manon

This is filthy. It's dirty, and I can't breathe. I've already come at least four times on the patch of earth where I'm one day supposed to be buried, and I've never in my life wanted anything the way I want this. There's nothing hotter. Nothing. And the man doing it to me, Laszlo, my husband, is no longer the cold, unreachable thing he was a few hours ago.

I'm on my back now in the cold grass of my own grave with his sweater shoved up and his face over mine, close enough that I can't look anywhere else. He looks at me in this moment like I’m his entire world.

He pulls out slow and drives back in hard, then does it again, and again. He’s flush against me as I abandon myself to the feeling. I let it all out. I’m screaming. Screaming loud enough to wake the row of dead behind my head and the living on the far side of the fence, and I couldn't give a shit about any of them.

"Eyes on me, wifey," he rasps, his mouth an inch from mine. "You don't get to hide for this one. Look at your husband while he ruins you on this sacred ground."

So I look at him. His eyes are on me, unblinking. There's dirt on his cheekbone from my hand. Being seen like this is the part I can't stand, because I can't turn my head into my arm and hide from his scrutiny. He's watching me take him and I'm letting him. I'm coming again before I've decided to, wrung out around him, and the pleasure turns vicious enough that for a breath it isn't pleasure at all. It's closer to grief. A sound tears out of me. He swallows it and keeps his eyes on mine the whole time, which is utterly unbearable.

"Yes," I try to beg. "Laszlo, harder." My throat's stripped raw from screaming and it comes out as a broken whisper, right against his lips.

"Manon, I'm going to give myself a cardiac arrest at this pace," he pants, and I laugh at that, up into his face with my hands in his hair. He grins down at me. "You're a menace. A genuine menace."

"You'd survive it," I gasp. "Your family owns the funeral home. It’s a trade discount."

He half-groans and half-laughs, and I feel it go through his chest into mine because there's no space left between us now. None. He slides a hand under the small of my back and tilts me up into him as he drives in deeper, faster, breathing so raggedly the doctor in me starts running a mental checklist for chest compressions while the wife in me tells her to shut up.

"I'm coming, ma macabre," he grinds out against my jaw. "Fuck."

And he does. He empties into me with a hoarse grunt, his forehead dropping to mine, his whole body going rigid and then shaking over me. I hold his face there and don't let him hide it, because I want to watch that too. My eyes sting. I feel the flood of him, hot, in a body that's freezing everywhere the ground touches it. So obscene and so perfect. He kisses me once, off-center and barely coordinated, then folds down over me, his weight pressing me into the coat and the earth.

I stay there under him, thoroughly and comprehensively ruined, his cum sliding down the inside of my thigh, the back of me freezing and the front of me warm, and my husband breathing into my neck like he's the one who nearly died.

The morning's almost gone. The sky is flat and gray, and the wind is picking up off the fields, dragging cold fingers across my bare legs. Laszlo is still in his black shirt, mostly a mess but at least clothed, whereas I'm in nothing but his sweater and starting to feel every mark he's left on me. Around us the private graves sit in their neat rows, patient and unbothered. Not many. Just enough to feel watched.

"I want to ride you," I hear myself say.