Lingerie Shop 8 - One of a Kind (The Lingerie Shop)

Book 8 of The Lingerie Shop series of short stories
A dark, romantic fantasy
copyright © 2013 Trisha Miller.

Katya tries to explain her dark past to Peter but he is far too much in love to listen.

One of a Kind
They found a room in a little market town that looked out over the town square. Exhausted from the hunt, Peter climbed into bed next to Katya. He felt her soft, warm skin against him as she fell asleep, but he needed to think it all out before he could sleep. Eventually the drunks in the town square stopped their shouting and wandered off home. He fell into a fitful sleep. The town had fallen utterly quiet when he woke, in that black, still time before the dawn. He rose on one elbow. She was awake too and snuggled into his arms as he held her to him.
“I need to tell you something,” Katya murmured.
“Ok,” he whispered.
“I used to be like you… A long time ago… Before… It’s difficult to tell you: I’ve tried lots of times to tell you, but you don’t ever seem to want to know. You say you love me. It touches me that you do, but sometimes I feel that you don’t know me at all but if I told you it would ruin everything. I like being loved and some part of me; the part I used to be a long time ago, is that wonderful person who you see in me and I feel that someday I can be that person with you. But what I was, what that man made me into, was like those things we killed last night: murderous, bloody, full of blame.”
He held her to him. She seemed to be getting way too emotional and overdramatic, ever since they had stayed at the camp with Bill, and now she was quoting Shakespeare at him. He loved her wildness, her unpredictability, even her penchant for kinky sex: he had never tied a woman down before. But the sheer force of her emotions worried him: he didn’t want to go there, although another part of him quite liked it that she was vulnerable: it made him feel like a man; like he was needed to protect her.
“I don’t care what you were,” he said, “but I know what you are and I love you for who you are. You made a mistake falling in love with Jurek: some men can be pretty violent and abusive and in the end I guess you needed to protect yourself from that. Getting out of that sort of relationship is never easy and you can’t be nice about it. I don’t blame you for it: you needed that man like a hole in the head: no matter how much you love someone you can’t change what they are. I think it just shows how loving a person you are that you stayed with him so long.”
“I do love you Peter, and I wish I could be the sort of person you think I am.”