Bone Island: Book of Danvers (Tales of Weeping Hollow, #2)

by Nicole Fiorina

My first love always kissed me as if another year hadn’t gone by since we’d last seen each other. He always kissed me as if there was no one else because they were just temporary to ease the pain and we were forever.

Each time that song comes on, I remember what it feels like to be whole-heartedly in love with a boy who lives over a thousand gut-wrenching miles away, and how we never made it.

Every kiss tasting like the alcohol we snuck onto the beach. Every kiss too dangerous for a girl who felt everything and too passionate for a boy who knew nothing about love.

The song that will remind me of the deep ache of wanting something so badly that can never be mine. At least, not this time around.

“It seems I’ve broken the curse trapped inside us and, in the process, let all our monsters out.”

“You have a fight within you, but a paper heart. This will be your downfall,”

Be stone, not paper. It’s the only way you will survive in a world full of people who will only disappoint you.”

Mother’s only motive was to cure me. She had never been able to accept me for what I was, this creature she had birthed.

The sea was a collector of things. It took things we cherished—most things we’d forgotten—and I still found myself drawn to her, unable to resist her call, needing to step into the graveyard of the lost, wild, and treasured.

There was pleasure in pain for someone like me—someone who was a pretty shell holding in an ocean of rage.

My love for the sea was an unrequited, toxic sort of love. She took and took, I gave and gave, and my love for her remained. But I still held on to the day she stopped taking, or until the day she’d take me completely.

Perhaps here was where hope was born, a dreamt-up reason to go on when all the real reasons were gone.

And once my heart was gone, I was nothing more than the monster they claimed me to be.

surface. The cold rain came down on my flesh, my face, my lips, and I closed my eyes, imagining them to be fingers. Delicate, adoring, and everywhere, this was how I believed it should feel to be touched by a woman.

Even death cannot keep them apart.

words. “If you coddle the pain, it’ll never heal.”

Inside, she was screaming. Though, on the surface, her misery had stunned her into submission. And her heart wept, too—a horrific heaving of her chest. Like six brittle bones inside were trying to crack open so her soul could flee her, too.

He was coffee, books, and lonely nights.

He longed for sleepless nights inside the gentle warmth of a woman and someone to whisper carnal-soaked words in his ear. He longed for a wild soul with an even wilder heart and delicate fingers to touch him for just a day.

Adventure tangled in her voice. She was a rare and wild thing, with ferocity wrapping her bones but as delicate as a snow flurry as it drifted upon the beach.

“You can’t find love when you’re consumed with hate.”

Because … he saw me, and I let him.

I shrugged, but the truth was, I wanted to hide him, to hang on to him for a bit longer. Bone Island seemed the perfect place to keep him, just to prove I could. The sea had returned a piece of me I’d lost so long ago—an adventure in the shape of a man. It made me feel alive during desolate times, and I wanted to see what would become of it.

“A person only welcomes pain to either feel, distract, or suffocate something that hurts more.”

Somehow, I’d found a hidden passage into the tomb he’d built around himself. Inside, Stone had a heart that wasn’t as black and cold as his eyes. He just didn’t know how to use it.

Stone’s eyes shifted between mine. “No one has ever kissed me before.”

Kissing him was much like kissing the cold rain in the fall, with my head underwater and dewdrops skipping in my ribcage.

He hadn’t fucked me, but I was still tattooed by him.

Because despite the lies wrapped around us, this secret was the most honest thing I’d ever had. I could see the despair in his eyes and hear the crying out for me in his touch. Stone’s starvation called upon mine.

“I fear if not now, then nevermore.” Those words chained themselves to me. They tossed an anchor to the bottom of my heart, and I wondered what it would have been like if things were different.

I’d never had sex with someone and felt so cracked open that emotion slipped out. And yet, I was crying in front of a man for the very first time. Stone’s hand came over my cheek and he wiped my tears with his thumb. Our noses brushed. “We’re perfect,” he whispered. I

I wanted this. Terribly. I wanted to be destroyed by him.

The ugly that possessed us floated away, and all that was left were two deprived souls who ached for closeness, who, within each other, found comfort.

There was an ache inside me that had never been filled, pleasure from a man. An orgasm from a man. I wanted it so badly but was terrified of what would come after, so I tried to pull away without physically pulling away.

Another cruel grind and I was ripped apart by an orgasm so severe I thought I would die from it. One that made my mouth fall open, my body jerk, and my cells pulse, stripping air from my lungs. I could have sworn that, at that moment, my soul had left me. I saw stars. All of them. I saw planets and moons and constellations. I saw another life, another world outside of my own.

Kane had fucked me many times but never looked at my face. Stone was fucking looking into my eyes, and my heart was screaming.

“Are you all right?” “No,” I whispered. A sad sigh escaped me, and my fists clenched, my nails piercing my palm again. “After you, I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.”

“You know how to cut me open.” He lifted his chin, eyes settling upon me. “It may not be with a knife, but you carve your initials inside me one way or the other, I see. It’s a miracle anything survives you.”

This is what happens when a woman has a mind she can’t use, a loyalty she's forced to refuse. This is what happens when a woman is oppressed, silenced, ridden of purpose. This is what happens, I want to scream. My rage has turned into crazy. My secret is so heavy, the things that would happen to me if I ever said it aloud.

“This style was crafted to provide comfort for long periods while performing a pelvic massage. Or, in our case, thrusting my fingers inside you and pulling the crazy out like an orgasmic exorcism.”

We’d become two desperate souls stripped of control with the cruel desire to tangle artfully together, sort of like a punishing kiss.

I branded him. Tattooed him. I did something that would stay with him for all eternity,

pole. “Never had a woman dare me to abandon all morals and logic and leave me with the desire to force my wretched cock inside her and tear her apart.”

“I want you,” he said slowly. “As in at all times, I’m afraid.”

“So, I must warn you. If we both surrender, this tremor between us will only lead to carnage. And we’ll both end up dead.”

“We sinful villains don’t have hearts or happy endings.”

How could she be the same girl who wrote the letters in the bottles? Equally brutal and bewitching. Deadly and divine. This was her secret. There was a half of her she wanted no one to have—a slice of midnight.

“Words cut us both open.”

“I’ve seen your rush, Circe. I saw it in your eyes when you struck my face and when I fucked you. That night you recognized something in me, too, that you have within yourself, and in truth, that is why you let me have you. That’s also why you returned to me. This rush can be both a thrill and a blinding rage. You’re ashamed of it, but you’re not afraid of it. So, when it comes, you’d rather pierce your skin so no one else sees you.”

“Better to be a filthy monster than a bloodthirsty fool.”