“Are you on the pill…” None of my questions sounded like a real question. My voice didn’t go up, and even if she said no, it wasn’t changing where I was going to come. I was too close for a change of heart now.
Heart.
Her hips bared down, and I buried my face in her neck, letting myself do something I had never done before: make an obvious mistake with no regard for the control I put on a pedestal.
Breathing heavily, my hips pushed every inch of me as deep as she would allow, until I came between Abigail’s legs inside the warmth of her pussy.
“Fuck, babe.”
That alone made her come again when I realized her legs were shaking and her head was tilted back in pure bliss. Abigail never did anything half-assed.
“Jesus…” After letting the orgasm wash over her, she finally spoke, while my lips planted kisses on her neck, still feeling my dick pulse inside her.
“I’m the opposite of that guy.” With a laugh, I pulled out and fell next to her, while she cuddled into my side and let her leg cross over mine. “Polar opposite. I’m death, and he was a savior.”
“Sometimes death can be a savior. He did die on the cross to save us all.”
Would she say the same thing once she met my monster?
I gave her pieces of myself I had never given away before, including me unhinged enough to make choices outside of the four walls of control. For the first time, I didn’t need pain in reaching pleasure. For the first time, sex felt personal.
The buzzing under my shoulder had me reaching around trying to find the source of the buzzing. Pulling my phone out from under me, I read Bowen’s name across the screen. He never texted me, and I preferred it that way.
BOWEN: Are you going to handle Seattle or not? Zeus is complaining to Vic. Not the person you wanna piss off after spitting in his face. Literally.
I didn’t respond. There was no response to type out. Instead, I locked my phone and let it fall to my chest, wrapping my arm around Abigail and pushing her into me closer.
Seattle was at the bottom of my list. Clave problems were at the bottom. Zeus problems were at the bottom of my priorities. The only thing at the top of my priorities was the man who hurt Abigail and making him hurt just as much.
Without any more holes in the story, I had all the justification I needed to do what I did best: Kill before it killed me. That's what being out of control, swept up in emotions, and anything related to Abigail felt like: a certain death. She was killing me slowly, because I knew better than anyone she wasn’t going to accept the monster in me. No one would.
After leaving her apartment, making sure Justice never saw me there, I sat in my car for a minute while I dialed the number of the shared private jet our four families used. I needed to feed my monster as soon as possible.
Khaos was the all-knowing, tech-savvy god that we all relied on to provide the information the Clave loved to leave out. Texting him while my phone was on speaker, I asked him for the details on the fucking priest I was determined to send to hell.
The Clave was a group of psychos overdosing on religion and expelling the unnecessary evil in the world; this was in their wheelhouse.
As far as I was concerned, I was doing their damn bidding.
ABIGAIL
Have you ever been so sleep deprived and ravenous for more of your boss that bad decisions seem like good ones?
I wasn’t delusional.
I knew my ritual pit stop before work to snag a green smoothie was a good decision.
I knew bending over in front of Grimm in these skirts and dresses were a bad decision.
Again, I wasn’t delusional.
Picking up the phone when my ex called, all to prove to myself I was still playing the field when really I called it quits the minute Grimm wouldn’t let me make him come in return? That wasn’t just a bad decision; it was downright dangerous.
I knew exactly what kind of scum Oscar was. Grimm was pretending to be scum, and I couldn’t figure out why.
We finally had sex after accepting parts of us we hid away, but we agreed to just being friends with him inside me. To say I was distracted was the understatement of a lifetime.
Everyone wants to be the reason someone takes action. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter, just to be noticed by someone.
My recently developed nightmares that shook me awake in the comfort of my own bed weren’t helping me make any good decisions. I felt like the walking dead, still functioning, but not exactly living. The bags under my eyes were proof.
I hadn’t had nightmares like this since the time I was wedged between the post kidnapping and our family’s priest trying to beat the disloyal out of me.
At least today was a day off; the weekend rolled in with the hope of sleep, when a new kind of nightmare didn’t let me wake up from its grasp.
It’s funny how your own brain hides your own dreams from you just to protect you. I woke up in a cold kind of sweat, soaking my oversized shirt, with drool drying at the edges of my lips and sand in my eyes, like I had slept so hard that even if I wanted to wake up, I wouldn’t have.
I only remembered pieces of my nightmares as I sat up in my bed with the light pouring through the curtains. A man grunting, my arms tight against me, and tears cascading down the side of my face into my hairline. His breath was hot against my skin, and I felt a kind of exhaustion that turned into adrenaline so I wouldn’t stop fighting back.
The kind of kisses you didn’t ask for.
The nightmares started a week ago, much simpler in construction then, like walking down familiar streets or doing mundane things, like getting coffee, and the goosebumps pricked my skin without warning.
Your intuition always knows before you do.
I didn’t know nightmares could escalate.
Mine sure did. The bags under my eyes wouldn’t conceal anymore and the amount of caffeine I dumped into my body wasn’t even giving me a jolt anymore.
Sitting up in my bed, I yanked my now dampened shirt off and tossed it to the end of the bed, still trying to shake off the dream. Being attacked in a dream often crossed over into reality, leaving fingerprints of discomfort crawling on the surface of your skin.
No work today meant no distraction either.
Why couldn’t I have a normal sex dream about my boss instead of whatever nightmares these were?
Let’s be real… I hadn’t stopped thinking about Grimm naked, with all those piercings and bad attitude still intact under me since it happened. My imagination was demanding a break from all the thinking.
Grimm had let me climb on top of him long enough to make sure we were both satisfied this time.
The rippling kind of insult had me insecure the last time we were naked together. Him saying he was “good” without coming had me paranoid and downright playing a seductive roll every time he was around me. I had never been so insulted. Now I found myself insulted in other ways, like how much sense he had to make sure I knew what it was.
The only reason I agreed to go out with Oscar was stupid. My ego needed feeding, plain and simple.
Oscar had a way of looking at me like he wanted to eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—all because he could.
He was ready and willing, unlike Grimm, who should win an award for control. He had skipped out on work entirely for a few days, now leaving me to my own devices. Work was easier with something like Grimm to look at.
My small sleep shorts were all I had on when I was twisting to lay on my stomach and distract myself with Instagram perfection. My scrolling was interrupted when Oscar’s contact came up over the screen. Not with his name but the words DO NOT ANSWER instead. Funny how a fit of anger while drunk turned into the best warning signs that I still didn’t listen to.