繋げ

"I need a distraction, yes," she admitted. And then, "But more than that--I want you. Even though I shouldn't. You make me feel..." She could feel the planes of his body tense behind her as he cautiously prompted, "I make you feel..." "Good. Safe." Her locket warmed, its pulse becoming more erratic with every word she confessed. "Not so alone. I want you." " Then you'll have me," he told her.

"Ophelia." His tone was firm now. "You don't need to fix yourself. You're not broken. But it's okay to get outside help if it gets too loud."

"A part of her was darkly fascinated. What would it be like to have someone so enraptured with you that they forgot everything else around them? Not to be embarrassed to speak every unfiltered thought with reckless abandon?"

""Ophelia," he repeated, tasting every syllable. Her name on his tongue sounded like a wicked prayer."

"Ophelia didn't know why, but she wanted to answer them, to tell her name to someone--or maybe something--new. Someone paying attention to her, making her heart race as she liked to fantasize about."

"Death she was familiar with. Living would be the real challenge."

"And maybe danger shouldn't be as appealing to Ophelia as it was, but most of her life had been spent sequestered within the dusty walls of Grimm Manor and she craved something to make her heart race."

"Probably because, unlike her own reality, there was the possibility of something fantastical promised with a place like Hell. Handsome Devils, and Wraiths and Demons, that might sweep you into their magical, dangerous world."

"More than the hours and hours of lectures about how to reanimate corpses to do your bidding, how to talk to the dead, and how to avoid being possessed... the tales of the territories of Hell had always been Ophelia's macabre fascination of choice."