Love Me Again by Wendy M. Burge

tried to push away. His breath rasping in her ear, he repeated slowly, viciously, knowing that his vulgar language was intolerable to her gentle sensibilities. His satisfaction was immense as he continued to distress her. “Every time I fucked her I thought of you. And I fucked her as often as I could, Christina, morning, noon and night. The day she was declared pregnant I never touched her again. I couldn't bear to touch any woman. All I wanted was you. Just to have heard your voice alone would have soothed me. But, instead, like the coward I never knew you to be, you ran when it became too difficult for you. Well, what about me, Christina? Where was I supposed to run when the nights were so bleak I wanted nothing more than to put a gun to my head and end my misery? Where were you then? Fucking Sergei? Fucking this stranger you now mistakenly call husband? If you had only trusted me! If you had only loved me enough to know that our love is forever, then all these wasted years would never have been. We would be together again. Married and complete in each other as we had always wanted. But you didn't trust me, did you, Christina? If only...” His voice cracked and faded away into a hostile silence.
    Christina's whole body turned to ice. If only. But it could never be, not only because of this new life she had single-mindedly patched together for herself and the husband she was now sworn to, but because never would she trust Varek again. Their love had been too deep, too obsessive at times. He had owned her body and soul. And God help her but she secretly wanted it all back again! Held close in Varek's powerful arms, she could no longer fool herself, and it only made her angrier.
    For the first time she looked him square in the eye and hissed, “No, I can't trust you, Varek! You say you had no choice in what you were forced to do. Very well, I understand this, and still I can hate you for it. Yes and yes again, I understand it! Is that what you want? Do you want my forgiveness, too? That, you will never have. Do you know why, Varek? Because I was given no choice in the matter! It was my life you were debating. Did it never occur to you that perhaps I would have preferred to take my chances and stay by your side? It should have been my choice, too, Varek. But I was just a piece of property to you that you didn't want damaged. Well, you got what you wanted. I am alive and I am whole and I am happy with my life. You can't have everything, Varek, no matter how powerful you think you are.”
    His eyes were a blaze of conflicting emotion: rage, confusion, and fear. “So my failing is that I loved you too much? Is that what you are saying, Christina? That I should have told them all to go to hell and continue on in our own little fantasy world? And then what? When you were dead in my arms, I was just supposed to shrug and say, ‘Bring on the next bride!'” He gave a harsh, dry laugh. “God, how I wish to hell I had. It seems I should have been the selfish bastard and just cared about how much longer I could take you to my bed before the choice was taken out of my hands completely!” His fingers dug painfully into her side as he bent his face to within a mere breath's distance. His chilling glare stripped her soul bare. “And it probably matters not a whit to you, that when you were no longer sharing this world with me, I would have had no choice but to follow you? Is that where our selfishness should have taken us, Christina? Instead of the hope of a future together someday, we would have had nothing left to share but a grave?”
    Christina just stared at him, her mouth open in horror. “You wouldn't have!” she gasped.
    He looked down on her impassively. “As you just said, we all have choices. If anything had happened to you, I would have first tracked down the animal who had killed you, then I would have joined you, Christina. In life or death, we belong together.”
    Christina found herself drowning again. She couldn't