Muddled Thoughts
Lady Saille
More of Christine's confused thoughts

A shiver passed down my spine, there was something electric in the air, a kind of heaviness that made the hair on my arm stand on end. I turned slowly, my head slightly hazy, I had sung well, I had no doubt of it, but I had only one desire to hear his voice tell me it was so. I longed for my dressing room, longed for not even the fragile glass of a mirror to separate us. I moved down the passage pleased to be at least away from prying eyes.

I longed for only one pair of eyes, mismatched eyes. Eyes that could reduce me to a babbling fool with their intensity inspire fear, and passion alike. His eyes. Eyes that held endless sadness and limitless love. There were moments when I think I could have torn out his heart and still he would have loved me, bad enough I betrayed him in the worse possible way. Allowed my foolish fear to almost destroy what could have been.

Almost destroyed, I did destroy it, I thought I could walk through the shadows unscathed, that I could enter Erik's dark world, and leave it unchanged. How wrong I was, he changed me, slowly, little things at first, until I didn't know the woman looking back at me. A woman I had become somewhere between the horrific fear and desire that he inspired in word and deed I had grown.

I was not a child any longer, no more was I bound by a memory I could not escape. It was him I could not get away from. Him I did not wish to get away from. The door closed easily behind me, and I knew he was already there. I could feel it, the hair on the back of my neck rising. A tingling moved along my spine, my breath suddenly going ragged.

His presence like a physical caress against my skin, skimming over my arms, my breast, leaving my skin afire, my nipples tight at attention. I sighed, shifting, achingly aware of him, it was unfair, unfair that he could do this to me without so much as touching or a word, just the inexorable knowledge that he was near.

Moments like those convinced me that when he finally took from me what he so clearly desired, we would burn like a roman candle, so bright and hot that there might be nothing left when the flames finally died away.

It terrified me even as I hungered for it. My mind would dwell on it, tiny whisperings that warn, and beckoned, calling me closer even as I cowered. His touch left me breathless, sometimes the mere promise of his hands on my skin was enough to make me quiver.

He is so careful of me, my choice to stay with him had not gained me the lover I craved but a man afraid that if he made the wrong move I would leave him. A man who believed I stayed out of pity or lingering fear. Sometimes it was hard to tell what he thought, he seldom revealed to me his inner thoughts.

He was on the other side of the mirror I was almost sure of it. I glanced toward the glass, a small smile forming on my lips. Could I be so brazen, would he realize that the only fear I felt was that he would never again look at me the way he used to. That I would be forced to be forever contented with the memory of his passion. Never tasting again the reality of it.