LOVE

Veronica
I pulled his belt apart and undid the top button of his jeans.
His hands covered mine, but he didn’t stop me.
“That’s what you want?”
He leaned down, his face an inch from mine.
“You want a good, hard fuck? You miss my cock inside you?”
He spun me around, bending me forward and slapping my hands hard on the altar.
“Keep them there. Don’t fucking move.”
I gasped as he undid my shorts and tore them and my panties down and off, then shoved my tank top up and pushed my bra beneath my breast, so that when he bent me all the way over, the cold stone of the altar made me shudder.
“Ra-”
But before I could even speak his name, he was inside me. He leaned over me and thrust in hard.
“You want to be fucked?”
His breath was hot against the side of my face.
“You want my cock in your pussy? You want me to make you come?”
I let out a groan as he thrust.
“Like a whore? Here? Before your God? Here, bent over his holy altar?”
It should have felt wrong. I thought it would. This sacred place, us doing this in this holy place.
But Stefan’s hands closed over the backs of mine, and he dragged my arms out to the sides and pinned me to the altar, and nothing had ever felt more right. He needed this. And I needed him close to me. I needed him inside me. It was the only way to reach him, to drag him out of his hell.
“You don’t even know the half of it, Veronica.”
His voice was hoarse against my ear, and my breath caught when his fingers pinched my clit.
“I don’t care,” I managed, closing my eyes. Taking him. Letting him take me. Own me. “I don’t care. I love you.”
He suddenly stilled, his cock buried deep inside me.
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to, because I could imagine his face. I could imagine his shock.
“I love you,” I said again, not caring.
Finally, I craned my neck to look back.
“You don’t know what I planned to do,” he said, pulling out. He stepped away from me. I turned. He pulled his jeans back up over his erection.
“Stefan?” But he’d gone back into his hell, and there wasn’t room for me there.
“Would you still say that if you knew? If you knew the amount of damage I intended to do to you?”
“Stop. Look at me. Just look at me. I’m here. Right here. You don’t need to do this.”
He stumbled backward. “When I made the deal with your grandfather to let your sister stay, he wanted five percent of what I’d take. I agreed, but maybe he thought it was too easy. That I didn’t suffer enough.”
He sat down again in the same pew, almost falling into it. I went to him and knelt before him, my hands on his lap, holding his hands. His eyes-even though he was physically here, he was so far away. Too far for me to reach.
“I already know that story,” I said quietly, my vision blurred from unshed tears.
“That’s when he asked for the sheets to prove we’d consummated. He knew already. He knew you’d become a weakness. My weakness.”
Watching him, watching his eyes, I knew there was more. And it wasn’t good.
“I didn’t do it, though. I burned them. He never saw the sheets.”
“You did?”
“I still wonder why he did that. Why he asked for that one thing. And all I could think of was that he didn’t believe I’d go through with it. Maybe he hoped you’d say no. Stop me. End this. I don’t know.” He paused. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll say the marriage wasn’t consummated. We can have it annulled.”
“What?” I asked, stunned.
“What matters is what I decided after that day.”
Could he even hear me? I shuddered, suddenly chilled, and hugged my arms around myself.
“My thirst for revenge, my hatred for him, it overrode all else.”
“What did you decide?” I asked, my voice small. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t.
He finally looked down at me, and with his thumb, he wiped away a tear. I closed my eyes and leaned into his palm, at least for a moment, missing this. Missing how tender he could be, so opposite his violence. His burning rage.
I opened my eyes when he next spoke.
“I wonder if after I tell you, you’ll still think you love me.”
“Tell me.”
He caressed my cheek for a moment more, then drew his hand away. He wouldn’t let me hold it again.
“I was going to burn down the Kingston estate. Turn it to ash.”
I froze, staring up at him, at this stranger who, day after day, while he made love to me, plotted this destruction? This betrayal? This wouldn’t just impact me. It meant my sister’s inheritance too. Her birthright. Her future.
“You have no right.”
“I considered driving the company into the ground, at least with my half of it. But then he made that deal, and he thought he had me. But I’d rather have destroyed you than allow him to win. His losing was more important to me than you.”
I shook my head. “You keep saying was. You’re talking like it’s past.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see?”
“Stefan, what you thought then, what you wanted to do then, it doesn’t matter. It’s all changed. Everything has. What that man did to your mother…” I shook my head. “That’s nothing like us. You’re not a monster. And I love you.”
—–
Stefan
She thought she loved me.
Moriarty’s rage was real. His hatred for me, it was because I was my father’s son. He didn’t care about the money he felt he was owed. That didn’t matter. What he wanted was the decimation of my family. Because that was the only way he could have his revenge. Revenge against my mother for not having chosen him. Revenge against my father for being the one she had loved. The one she had chosen.
He wanted the house, the land, to destroy it.
I knew now he would stop at nothing. My life, it was forfeit. But hers? I couldn’t let him destroy her because of me.
I watched Veronica’s sweet face, her trusting, innocent, hopeful eyes. She believed she loved me. The thing was, the moment she’d said it, I’d known it too. I’d loved her for a long time now.
And that was exactly why I had to let her go.
I hardened my face and stood.
She remained kneeling at my feet.
“There’s just one problem, Veronica. I don’t love you.” How my voice carried the power it did, I had no idea. And when I saw her face as she processed my words, I had to steel my heart not to reach down and wrap my arms around her, hold her to me, tell her I was lying. That I did love her. Give her that truth I’d promised her she’d always have with me.
Because right now, I was a liar on top of everything else.
“I don’t love you,” I repeated.
“I don’t believe you.”
She sat back on her heels, her fingers closing around the clothes still strewn on the chapel floor.
“Well, believe it. I enjoyed taking what I took. I liked playing with you-for a time.” I shoved her away with my knee, got up, and walked a few steps to where the pieces of the broken crucifix lay on the floor. Bending, I picked them up, holding the image of Christ in my hand.
“Raphael.”
I turned to find her on her feet, buttoning her shorts up.
“You don’t mean it. I know you,” she said.
I laughed this strange, ugly sound. “You keep saying that. You really think you can ever know someone? Know what’s in their head?”
“I don’t care what’s in your head. That’s the point. I know what’s in your stupid heart.” Her face was all scrunched up, and her hands fisted at her sides. “You promised me truth, Raphael.”
“And I’m giving it to you.” I set the cross on the pew I’d abandoned and touched my own ring of thorns. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll call the attorney and set things in motion for the annulment.” I dragged the ring off my finger, watching blood streak down it as I did so, wanting the pain, needing it. Once it was off, I walked over to the altar and set it on the corner.
“Raphael, please…”
Her eyes were watery as she looked at the bloodied iron band.
“You don’t want-”
“I want this done as soon as possible,” I said, my voice hard.
She looked at me, flinching, almost startled.
“I want you out as soon as possible. I’ll make arrangements.” I walked to the door. “Let’s go.”
“No.”
She stayed where she was. She reached out to touch the ring, then pulled her arm back, hugging herself.
I rolled my eyes and sighed as if irritated, even though it broke me a little to do it, to see her like this. To know I was the cause of her pain. Again.
But it was better this way. Better for her. Safer for her.
Maybe when this mess was finished…
No.
No maybes.
No future.
This was finished. It had to be, for her sake.
“Listen, I’ve got somewhere to be. You go back home. Eat dinner. Go to bed like a good little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl.”
“Well, you are, actually. And I’m a little tired of the virgin girl act, honestly.”
“You don’t mean that.”
No. I didn’t. But she had to think I did.
“It was fun for a while. But it’s time for me to move on. To put the past behind me. What was it you said? If I let the past go, maybe it will let me go? I think you were right.” I looked around, gesturing big with my hands. “All this is the past. You’re the past. I’m done with it. I want to live my life, and the only way I can do that is to walk away. Let it go, so it lets me go.”
She just stared at me.
“Let’s get out of here, Veronica.”
“You want this? You want to walk away?”
“Yes.” Something in my chest twisted. “And if you really do believe you love me, you’ll do as I say and let me go.” Fuck. I was a first-class asshole. I didn’t deserve to lick the ground she walked on, but I needed to drive the nail into the coffin. “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
She shook her head and sat down. “Go.”
“You can’t find your way back.”
“I can find my own way. I don’t need you.”
I watched the back of her head, saw her draw her knees up on the pew and hug herself.
“Come on.”
“Go, Raphael.”
“Veronica-”
“Just go! Pull the fucking Band-Aid off, right? Just go.”
“Fine. Suit yourself.”
I walked out of the chapel and toward the house, hating to leave her there alone, knowing I had to. Because if she hated me, this would be easier.