Page 54 of The Ripper

He’d undressed me again, but this time he hadn’t bothered to dress me. He’d also wiped away the blood stains that splattered on my thighs when I worked on his brother.

I bit my lip as I stood up, vividly remembering everything he did and said to me before I fell asleep in his arms. His kisses, his touches, his deviant words, those deliciously long fingers entering me, taking me to heights my vibrator never could.

I felt my skin heating up all over again when I remembered how the orgasm took over my body, how it ripped out of me, how different it felt, how decadent and how good.

I still couldn’t believe that I allowed him to intrude so deeply into my life and body, but I couldn’t get his desperate phone call out of my head, how panicked he’d been over his brother’s life. I couldn’t remove the expression on his face from when I entered the warehouse either, that mixture of agony, fury and worry that dissolved into relief when he saw me.

I could see how grateful he was that I came to help him, because somehow, Grimm looked at me like I was his safety vest, like I was the only source of his peace, like I held the power to calm every storm in his life with something as simple as a touch.

I weighed all the pros and cons of allowing him into my life, and though the cons were extensive - murderer, lack of moral compass, inability to feel remorse, and so many more - I couldn’t deny how his presence made me feel, how safe and appreciated, how beautiful and, against all odds, how loved. I wanted all the cons. I wanted him and everything he brought along. So what if it was wrong? So what if it was dangerous and outrageous? Deep down, I knew I had been waiting for this moment, for this man, for nine long fucking years.

Now he was here.

He wasn’t the knight in shining armor I used to read about in fairytales, but much, much better than that. He was the villain. The one everybody else saw as a monster, but whom I saw as the most beautiful fallen angel, whose wings had been clipped off and replaced with thorns, and I wanted to bleed light onto his darkness. And so, in the moment he decided to let me choose, my subconscious chose to return to him. My brain just had to get with the program, because Grimm had one advantage that outweighed all the disadvantages.

He had my heart.

Somehow, somewhere inside my head, I knew that she chose him as her keeper from the first moment we met and knowing that the men I had been obsessing over were one and the same, sent the little bitch into overdrive. With that knowledge, I couldn’t not touch him, not feel him, not want him.

My heart was his to protect, to own, to cherish, or to tear to pieces if he wanted to. It had belonged to the mysterious man for so long, all the while still beating inside my chest, and now it was time to serve it back to him.

And although I wanted to let him stew for a while longer, seeing him on his knees next to his brother’s unconscious body pushed me to make my intentions known sooner than anticipated, because my instinct pushed me to help him without question, because I believed he deserved something good among all the bad in his life. And because he reminded me of who I used to be, and somehow, the memory didn’t bother me so much anymore.

I shook my head and sighed, then looked around the room to find something to wear.

A small desk was pushed against the wall, right next to the mattress I slept on, filled with monitors displaying various images from all over the warehouse, which made me think that I was in one of the guards’ rooms.

I picked up my phone from the improvised nightstand, namely a wooden crate, and was surprised to find a note stuck to it.

“Now you can have coffee.

G.”

Arrogant asshole!

I found a clean T-shirt folded at the foot of the mattress, and quickly put it on, then slipped my feet into the dirty slippers I came with last night and walked out the door in search of the big asshole with incredibly beautiful eyes.

Was I crazy for wanting to see where a relationship with a criminal would take me?

Probably, but I also couldn’t help but taste more of the thrill he so willingly offered, and whatever consequences would come my way, I would face them when the time came, one by one, because right now, all I wanted was to see him again.

We had one more day together before my next shift at the hospital, and I didn’t want to be away from him for another second, even if red flags waved at me from every direction and thousands of alarms sounded in my head.

For the first time in the last nine years, I was doing something solely for myself.

I walked down the dimly lit corridor, passing a few heavily armed men on my way. Surprisingly, they all lowered their heads when they saw me, and I frowned in confusion, stopping next to one of them.

“Where is he?” I asked, and he just pointed to a door, then walked in the other direction without looking at me.

Ok, that was a little odd. What did he say to them?

I shook my head, opened said door and walked into what appeared to be an impromptu kitchen.

Klaus was sitting in a chair at a table, his eyes settled on his phone as he sipped on what I hoped was water, while Grimm had his bare, tattooed back to me, focused on something next to the stove, too lost in what he was doing to notice me.

Klaus gave me a nod in acknowledgement, displaying another one of those mischievous grins as he raised his cup to me.

“Good morning,” I broke the silence.

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