Violinist (CENTURIES series: Book #4)

15

• This is going to be the last chapter for a while (it's a bit unedited, couldn't be bothered). Taking a small break from writing to enjoy the summer while it's actually here. Cheers, guys! •

He stared at me for eternities. Blue eyes. He saw blue eyes when his lips salvaged mine. Blue. Not brown.

There was a feeling inside me. Pain? No. Hurt? No, not that either. It was much crueler. Much colder. Jealousy?

His fingers suddenly trailed across my cheek. His eyes deepened and flickered, someone ticking inside them. He felt something. His fingertips trailed along my cheekbone like it was a string on his violin. Soft, but electrifying.

I stayed wooden, peering into his eyes. I could read them. For the first time, I could see his thoughts in them.

He was touching me, but he wasn't touching... me. He was feeling me, but he wasn't feeling me. When he kissed me, it wasn't my lips he was kissing. It was someone else's. She was there in his mind, waiting for him.

Blue.

His eyes were caught in the past. His body was. He was drowning in the present, out of time; trapped between his past and his present and me. Looking at me, he knew my lips weren't the ones that were supposed to be on his. Blue was in there, showing herself every time he kissed me, each brush of my lips painting her a little clearer. I was awakening these things, stirring them up to the surface. My lips... they brought fourth whoever she was.

I didn't know who he had been in the past, but I had to assume he had had lovers. The way he had kissed me... his lips were kissing as if they were used to cherishing a pair of lips with love; Used to dosing someone, molding a mouth into doing what he liked it to do. Biting. Moaning. Maybe even smiling.

But not my lips. His kisses belonged to another set of lips. And I was stealing them.

"I see glimpses..." He suddenly whispered. My eyes snapped to his again, seeing they had slid shut, his brows furrowed deeply—the same way they usually furrowed when he was playing. When he felt. "I see a woman.... I can't..."

Can't. He couldn't reach her.

"Blue eyes," He repeated and now opened his own deep oceans of blue. "I see blue eyes in my mind."

Blue eyes. The woman from his past life had had blue eyes that had glinted at him whenever he had kissed her. Made love to her. When he had told her that he loved her.

Because he had. Though war, pain, memory loss and living on the street, he still remembered those blue eyes. When he played, he saw those blue eyes. When he touched me and kissed me, he saw blue eyes. He saw the woman that he loved. I was but a vessel for him to channel his past through, a vessel to awaken them.

Awaken him.

He touched my cheek one last time, but then drew back. The shutters went down in his eyes and he was gone again. Closed.

He fell back and I felt my body clench at his withdrawal. Like the violin, I felt naked after he had played me. I wanted to cover myself, but it was a state of mind, incurable with even the thickest sweater. He had stripped my soul bare and left me cold and exposed.

And yet... I craved more of the sensation that had left me like this.

I watched him take a heavy seat on my coffee table. Head hung, he moved his hand over his eyes, letting his world fall dark. He had seen a glimmer of light and it had blinded him. Too much, too little. Years of fumbling in the dark, the light made him lightheaded.