“Your hair …” I start, removing one of my hands from underneath his and reaching up to finger the silken black strands. He flinches, but just barely, putting his tattooed hand back over mine and pinning it against his skull in a way he never would’ve done before. “You dyed it again.”

The door opens at the far end of the room and Aaron appears, pausing when he realizes he’s just walked in on a moment steeped in intimacy and connection.

“You guys are okay?” he asks because, really, we’ve been in here a long time. We were supposed to walk in, pick out a coffin, and pay the bill for Stacey’s funeral with the money I dug up from Pam’s backyard. That’s it. Instead, here I am, sitting in a coffin and talking about Oscar’s blond-to-black dye job. Even as a child, when we met at age eight, he had black hair which means that somebody dyed it for him. Who? Why?

“We’ll be out in a minute,” I say, and Aaron withdraws, heading back outside to wait with the other boys. Pretty sure Vic sent Oscar and me in here on this errand on purpose. He does nothing in half-measures and, despite his jealousy and his need to possess me, he’s done everything in his power to try to get me and Oscar to get along with one another.

“Why is your hair black?” I ask, and Oscar shudders, but even when he drops his hand from mine, he lets me play with his hair. I have the strongest urge to kiss him right now. It’s so bad that my mouth literally aches as my gaze drops to that razor-thin line, a rapier sharpened and ready to spill blood. “Even as a kid, it was the color of ravens. Tell me.”

He stares at me and then turns away, glancing toward the door where the funeral director left from. If the guy is smart, he’ll leave us alone in here for as long as we need.

“My mother used to dye it,” Oscar explains, sounding reasonably tired. A gang war, a school shooting, a new relationship … that’s all hard enough. But admitting your trauma, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, that takes energy that comes from the very depths of a person’s soul. “She didn’t want my father to find out that I wasn’t his.”

I just stare at him, blinking through the surprise.

“You weren’t his?” I query back, and he shrugs one, perfect, genteel shoulder. A model or … something. He could’ve been a social media sensation. Shit, he still could be. He could open up an OnlyFans page, flash that pretty inked and pierced dick of his, and rake in a goddamn fortune.

“Apparently not,” he replies as the cool, green snake of jealousy twists and writhes inside my chest. I would never let him have an OnlyFans page. His cock is mine. The idea that no other woman has felt the glory of having it inside of her makes me almost giddy with feminine possession. My property, my male, mine and mine alone. “And no, I have no idea who my biological father is, and I don’t care to know.”

Oscar moves to stand up, but I grab his hand, keeping him there beside me. He looks down at our joined fingers and then back up at my face.

“You can talk to me,” I tell him, wondering if he can hear the thin crack in my voice that says I need him to open up to me. Pamela killed Penelope. That’s something I’m having a fuck of a lot of trouble digesting. Oscar isn’t the only one who needs to talk: I do, too. We all do, I think. As a group, we need more time to just … exist with one another. Everyday can’t be about violence and survival; we have to find space to live. “Is that why your dad snapped? Because he found out?”

“Maybe. Among other things. He’d squandered his family fortune, too. That was a big part of it, I think.” Oscar glances away for a brief moment before turning back to me. This time—for the first time ever, actually—I can see the faintest hint of blue in his eyes. “He murdered his financial advisor just a few months prior. Before that, my grandmother, his own mother. I didn’t find out about all of that until later. He was unhinged and I’ve manifested his trauma. I dye my hair; I get off on choking people. What can I say, other than that I’m a monster?”

We just keep staring at each other, until I get it in my head to grab him by his hair and kiss him.

He doesn’t seem surprised, but his mouth is firmly closed against the invasion of my tongue, almost like he’s afraid to let himself go. It takes a bit of prying, but I finally manage to get him to open up to me, my nails digging into the back of his scalp as his inked fingers clutch the side of the casket so tightly that his skin pales with the strain.

“Not here,” he finally growls out, pulling away from me with a monumental amount of effort.

“Here.” That one word from me is a fucking order. “As your queen, I’m telling you to get your ass the fuck over here.” I sit up on my knees and throw my arms around his neck, pulling him close even as he shudders from the overwhelming experience of a Bernadette Blackbird hug. See, I’m really, really fucking good at hugs now because I keep recalling all the ones that Penelope gave me that I shirked off like they were nothing.

Because you never know how important a hug is until you realize you can never have another from the person you miss the most.

“Bernadette,” Oscar says, a warning clearly evident in his voice. He won’t hurt me though. Shit, he said it himself, that the only reason he gave into sex with me is because he knew that, out of all the people in the world, that I was the one person he would be able to keep safe, even in the aura of his own violent monstrosity.

“What?” I whisper, the word a challenge against his tempestuous mouth. “Too afraid to fuck me in a casket, Montauk?”

“Afraid?” he asks, a mocking laugh in his tone. But then his face darkens, and he shakes his head sharply. “Never.”

I let out a small gasp as Oscar takes me by the hair and punishes my mouth with the force of his, shoving his tongue between my lips and bringing these soft little sounds to my lips that I wasn’t even sure I was capable of. He kneads the back of my head with his fingers, tasting me, diving deeper. His body lords over the casket, trapping me inside of it as he kisses me in a way I imagine he’s been waiting to do for a long time.

Completely unfettered.

He might be a master of knots, but thus far, the only person he’s truly managed to truss up is himself, trapped in a web of emotional rope. It sloughs off as he kisses me, urging me back until he’s fully crouched over the casket, a uniquely beautiful monster.

“Fuck,” he growls, pulling back slightly and looking up at the ceiling, like he’s checking for security cameras. There’s a chance that some are hidden in the room, but unlikely. That sort of tech costs money and, like I said, Prescott. We use paper and pencils and textbooks from 1999. “Get on your hands and knees.”

“Hands and knees?” I query with a quirked brow, but Oscar ignores me, reaching out and grabbing me by the hips. He flips me over as I let out a small sound of surprise. Holy fuck. One of those deft, inked hands of his sneaks around and unbuttons my jeans before he yanks them over my hips and ass, leaving them to bunch around my thighs.

There isn’t a ton of room inside the casket, but there doesn’t have to be. Just enough for him to kneel behind me, flicking the button on his slacks open as he grabs me by the hair and pulls my head back.

There’s no lead-up to the violent thrusting of his hips, just a brief pressure as my body stretches to accommodate his. Oscar’s pelvis slams into my ass, his cock hitting the end of me as I curl my hand over the edge of the casket, digging my pretty new nails into the side of it.