by Elena Monroe
I squeezed myself through my pants, only making it worse. I was turned on by the whole situation, but the word vibrating inside my skull had me pulsing: mine.
Turning her face to one side, she avoided kissing me, just like she avoided me for a week. Pushing down my pants, I sprang out, and I could see her stealing peeks, even if she was acting uninterested. Wrapping my fist around myself, I pumped my length, while I looked down between us at how wet she was.
She wanted to hate me and play tough, but her body betrayed her, not a great stance.
“It makes us even.” Pushing my tip against her opening, I felt her hold her breath and accept my half-ass confession. I had her distracted, angry, and probably not pregnant, but if I wanted her to be mine no matter what, this was the kind of distraction I wanted her to fall under.
Brushing my fingers against her bare clit, I sucked off her taste, savoring her in my mouth. I used to be pretty confident this would be the death rattle of our love story.
No one fucks the Clave over without being scathed.
“Is that your way of saying I love you?” Her lips found the shell of my ear, while I thrusted inside of her, hands on her legs, keeping her on the edge of the table.
“When I say those words, you’ll know, Abigail. It’s not going to be because of a pregnancy scare or boner. It’s gonna be exactly when you need to hear it.”
Even the firm grasp of her tightness couldn’t choke those words out of me. We were playing a game of who would break first, and she lost. That loss was all I needed to want to admit how much I love her.
Now it was about timing. I wanted to control even that moment, having learned nothing about the best parts of my life being born out of my control.
I didn’t want anything tainting her ability to hear me when I finally chose to say those three words. The words she was hungry for were on a loop in my head this whole time. Too bad she couldn’t hear them.
“Grimm…” she panted my name, pulling my shirt down to expose more of the top of my shoulder for her to plant kisses on. It was that action alone that made me realize I didn’t bother to take it off.
“Abigail, I—” The fragile sentence broke off in my hand when my thumb found her clit between our bodies and I massaged it while I found my pace. Her legs pinned at my hips dropped, twisting around the back of my own, making her knees fall further apart.
I wanted to say something equally as powerful. I wanted to make her feel special in a different way. I just didn’t know how.
Her lips attacked mine, keeping me silent purposely. Holding my name on her lips, she tried not to moan too much. She never did let me have the upper hand too easily.
“I can be okay with this…” I didn’t prompt myself to speak between the shallow fucking breaths I was taking, but I did.
“This?” My hands were holding her to me, and my hips were meeting hers, knocking around what little control we had left. It was hard to see that was the wrong thing to say when my mouth found the sensitive spot on her neck.
“If you're pregnant… I can be okay with it. I’ll protect you both, give you a good life, this. I don’t want to go back to before… without you.” I never spoke so much at the wrong time, but between my feelings for Abigail and the fact that she might be pregnant with my kid gave me word vomit at the wrong time…while inside her.
Her delicate hand wrapped around my mouth as her sharp inhales got more frantic. “Grimm...”
It was a plead, prayer, a hail fucking Mary… as I pushed her over the edge. She just agreed with my crazy ass in a peculiar position, with a vice grip on my dick and heart.
Breathing heavily, I gave into the fog and blur of ecstasy only Abigail let me reach. My body tensed against hers, and I bit down on her shoulder, listening to her breathing try to steady, even though I was pretty sure this act of making her mine was going to send her off the edge again.
Neither of us made a move, still flush against each other and settling into the only other thing I could say if I wasn’t going to say those three words I knew she wanted: “I want you.”
I watched her chest rise and fall still out of control when my lips fumbled between hers. Neither of us wanted to leave this moment. Vulnerable yet safe, but the real world had a way of reminding us no matter who you trust you are always slightly alone.
I was going to toss my damn phone in the fireplace that I was turning on with the remote. It never stopped buzzing or grating my senses.
666-6: Abigail Duffy. #8 Rialto Avenue, Venice, CA.
Feeling powerless felt exactly like this moment. I was powerless against a fucking text message telling me my next job for the cult I pledged my life too. Even though I marked the invitation “not attending,” I was still deep in the trenches of their laws.
Abigail brought over a plate of Oreos with a tall glass of milk as I tucked my phone away, trying to hide the overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. I didn’t need to scare her into overthinking or assuming powerlessness looked like regret… because it did.
Her name just showed up as my next kill, without them knowing she was right in front of me.
No travel time.
No prep needed.
I was breaking all the rules, and I didn’t even consider the fall out.
GRIMM
My mother, Jacqueline Troy-Rothschild, was the kind of extra that came off presentable, eccentric, and an all-around perfectionist, instead of what she truly was: calculated and cold.
The Illuminati Ball was a staple event for every member, not just of the Clave but the Cloth and all the other branches of enforcement doing the work for us. The Clave truly was the last line of defense.
My mother was so calculated that the Ball seemed bigger than the Oscars, and we lived in LA. Nothing was bigger than the Oscars. Not in a town full of try hard actors, wanna-be directors, and producers convincing girls to take just one more article of clothing off.
Every flower arrangement, every cocktail, every employee there to entertain was a piece on her gameboard.
I didn’t know I was the same kind of game piece she was moving around. I was blinded by how much she seemed overbearing, when it was really just to cover her up the abhorrence masked as love.
My birth was a means of survival, a claim to power. My birth was a way to keep being in control.
Both my parents knew exactly what kind of monster I would turn out to be. They made sure I was perfectly constructed to destroy everything around me, even myself.
Now I had to pretend none of that was disposable information. None of it was open for discussion.
As far as my parents were concerned, I wasn’t supposed to know any of this. All I was supposed to be was present, accessible, and glorified.
Khaos was the only one who knew about our parent’s motives. None of his knowledge was surprising. He always seemed privy to information he shouldn’t have. I only found out by accident, not a happy one either.
Now feeling like an orphan was a perfect time to break every rule I only ever bent.
Abigail’s black, long-sleeve, form-fitting dress seemed pretty simple, but on her chestnut skin kissed with random freckles, it looked anything but average. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a bun with her baby hairs framing her features.
I was sitting on my bed toying with the Xanax pill bottle distracted by her trying to balance while strapping her heels to her ankles with the split in the dress showing off her thigh.
Distracting was an understatement.
Abigail was exotic in every way. Freckles didn’t match her almond eyes or even her hair color. Every part of her was mismatched and puzzled together. I couldn’t be the only man who found her stunning, but her letting me worship her made her feel put together just for me.
“You look…” My words got tangled up in my thoughts, and my heart picked up the pace.
“Horrible? Hideous? Grotesque?”
Strutting over to me like the model she really should have been, her long legs crossed over the oth
er effortlessly, like walking so elegantly was natural. Stopping in front of me, my hands found the slit on either side, pulling her closer to me, skin to skin.
“Beautiful, Abigail.”
“You can’t look at me like that. We don’t have time.”
She tugged the band holding her bun up on the crown of her head, and I watched her crimped hair fall down slightly past her shoulders. She was right; we didn’t have time if we wanted to be remotely on time to my parents’ house in Malibu. The drive alone was painful, never mind what the night held.
“It’s a long drive, toots.” Standing up, our chests touched, and I looked down at her in the painted-on skull makeup sprayed down with hairspray by one of the waitresses who worked at Sins and Forgiveness. Apparently, it was her day job doing stage and special effects makeup, so she handled making paint work as a mask.
My parents wanted me to be the good little Clave member, so I was going to give them as much death as possible.
I could tell she wanted to say something, but nothing snuck out of the gap between her open lips. Her chest was raging the same way mine was, and I could tell by the smallest amount of pink sitting on her cheeks that she was turned on just being this close.
I wanted to tell her she had the same effect on me, but that meant relinquishing some of the only power I still held, which wasn’t much compared to Abigail’s grasp on my balls.
That came in second to what we were both thinking about, the results, pregnant or not.
Relinquishing power to Abigail was something I could get right with. Relinquishing power to my parents or the Clave who shot down any idea of her being on my arm tonight? Wasn’t going to happen.
Originally I was supposed to be Jessica’s date tonight. Also not happening. Abigail was still waiting on test results from her doctor, but it didn’t take a genius to know there was a tossup chance it was coming back positive.
She wasn’t just Abigail, the woman I’m secretly loving. She’s Abigail, the woman who is going to be mine forever for a reason other than I love her. This was so much bigger than control either of us possessed at this point.
The Surreal Ball was hosted at my parents’ house, their place in the Hills. Instead of the Estate that was a good couple hours’ drive out of the city, this was a stone’s throw away instead. I didn’t give Abigail any hints to what she was walking into either. It was easier to take it all in and just draw your own conclusions. Each room was a different adventure and all of them were made for each sense: taste, touch, auditory, visual, and smell.
Taste was better known at tripping, even though I took so many pills the dull chalk taste didn’t actually taste like anything anymore.
Touch was where things got sexual, naturally.
Auditory was a room with a projector playing mind bending Illuminati 101 videos meant to work in conjunction with the drugs.
Visual was the dancers, which, if we’re being honest, all the senses blur into each other.
Smell was the blindfolded dinner.
Now you try explaining that to the woman you love, who is possibly pregnant with your kid, who has zero ties to this fucked up world. She greeted my monster with open arms, but a whole cult of fucked up people? That’s testing boundaries when I knew they wouldn't accept her in return.
She would accept any part of me, and I knew that now.
That L-word vibrated in my mind again.
The house I grew up in was plenty big with a cast of darkness over it, like it was once haunted or subject to a whole bunch of murders. Ryan Murphy would probably pay the big bucks to shoot some fucked-up show here. The American Dream, privilege, and all the dead bodies piled up that led whoever lived here to stand on to look so tall.
Lanterns lined the long driveway, and the mood shifted even from safely from inside the car. Abigail noticed it, and her fingers dug into the inside of my thigh even more.
“It’s not that bad.” I tried to reassure her, when I needed someone to reassure me too. This shit was a grenade waiting to go off with the pin in my hand, and I was standing way too close.
“I’ll be the judge of that. This is where you grew up?”
“Yeah, it is what it is... I basically grew up at boarding school with the guys. It's tradition.”
Abigail’s eyes frowned. “That must have been hard for you guys growing up away from your families.”
Just when I thought you couldn’t surprise me… Leave it to Abigail to feel sorry for us.
There was a man standing with a clipboard next to the valet stand, customary. He was the gatekeeper of the ball. We were all given the clues to decipher the code word to use tonight. If you got it wrong, they would assume you weren’t Clave and be disposed of… I’m sure it was more drastic than just being asked to leave.
Khaos was the one only excited to solve the riddle:
What is easy to get into but hard to get out of?
Trouble.
Getting out of the car, the guy opened Abigail’s door, probably the only nice gesture she would see come her way tonight. I spoke the word to the man, and his white glove shook my hand. These could have been the gates of Hell.
Abigail’s arm looped around mine, staying close, while we walked up the staircase to the ball. I was already dreading it and ready to turn around to leave.
“Just don’t leave my sight,” I whispered into her before we truly entered this ninth ring of Hell.
My parents were front and center, both wearing the traditional masks they always wore: stag and doe masks, dripping in decadence. The masks we wore were supposed to conceal who we were, but still allude to the status in the Clave we truly were. It was clear they were the top of the pyramid.
I could feel my mother’s bad intentions through her mask, boring into me and full of disappointment that I disobeyed her again.
I watched Abigail’s eyes dart around, trying to take in the theatrics of this ball and all the outlandish masks people wore to hide who they truly were—the ones pulling the strings on society, like politicians, entertainers, engineers, writers, high-ranking religious deities and anyone with the ability to create change. We had all of those people in our back pockets.
My mother practically floated over to us on her high fucking horse clearing her throat like she might blend into the masses. No, I saw her, hard to miss.
“Jason, a word.”
Gauging her tone was easier after seeing Jessica standing in the distance with a scowl on her face in a short red dress and black knee high boots with a mask made of crystals. Her anger emanated off of her, and it was pretty obvious her eyes were glued to Abigail, who stole everyone’s attention.
Khaos being exactly who he was oohed and aahed from behind what looked like wire rimmed glasses and fucking 3D eyeballs tapped to the back.
Fucking lunatic.
Leaning into Abigail, I whispered, “I’ll be back. Don’t leave Khaos’s side.” Following my mom down a hallway branching off the main room, I felt like a kid in trouble. At least when I was younger, the trouble was kicked away with a smile and seemingly innocent virtue I used to have.
Slapping Khaos with the back of my hand, I told him without stopping, “Watch her.”
Now trouble was considered stepping out of line, disobeying, and the punishment? Punishable by death.
I didn’t expect my father to come in behind me and slam the door closed when he shouted, “You’re a fucking disgrace!”
His voice made a tingle crawl up my back, creating a wave of goosebumps. I wasn’t scared of anything, but if you filed down my father’s teeth, I’m sure that would be the one thing closest to me experiencing fear. My father wasn’t easy, kind, or even decent. He got to the top by not giving any fucks.
Those got passed down to me, not nearly as much, but the gene still there.
“Spit the rest out, old man.” Folding my arms, I waited for the assault on my choices to rain down on me.
My mother was the one to make the next move, out of character, considering she h
ad perfected the role as the silent but deadly wife. Her open hand collided with my cheek, and the sting of the collision felt like I accidentally bit my own lip on the inside. “You’re going to respect your father, the rules, and the Clave’s desires for you. Jessica was waiting for you to arrive for you to only arrive with her, your assistant.”
I took her slap with a callous expression, not giving away anything, even though her heavy rings were basically turned around brass knuckles against my skin.
“You were loud and clear last time. Now I’m doing what I want to do.”
“What you want to do?” She laughed, like it was actually funny, genuine and full sounding. “Who told you what you want matters at all, Jason? Is that the idea she gives you? She isn’t Clave. She doesn’t know what happens to the exiled; you do. Do you want to be exiled?”
“She doesn’t give me any ideas, mother. I’m done following these fucked up rules and letting you convince me I’m powerless.”
She raised her hand, like slapping me again was going to knock literal sense into me. I caught her wrist, holding it in my grasp and staring her down with intent.
“None of us get a choice, Jason. We are all slaves to the Clave. We are powerless,” she barked into me, and I dropped her wrist.
I didn’t expect my father to round the desk, pushing his way into my line of sight, with his features looked to be made of stone. “After tonight, I don’t want to see or hear about her again. Your marriage with Jessica is pending, and that is an alliance we can’t afford to lose.”
I was too angry to speak. They were blaming Abigail's presence in my life for my insubordination when I had shed that skin so long ago it was hard to remember ever being like Vic.
“One of the other guys will take her. I’m not interested,” I insulted.
The tension in the room was at an all-time high, suffocating, burning my lungs. My father’s hand slammed down on the desk in the room that no one used except for his private meetings.
“You will choose Jessica. It’s not up for debate.”
