Created By

irwinwe

Rate this Story

Embed

Okay...before reading...things to know:

1. This is not written "chapter-wise", but rather "segment-wise".

2. The segments are being submitted out of order.  This segment obviously isn't happening right after the orginal "Professor Kane".  

3. I love being descriptive about nature lol...you'll see that a bit here.

************

My breath matched my strides as I ran down the narrow road.  I love running in the morning, right as everything is awakening.  As I ran I noticed the opening to a small meadow.  Always letting my curiousity get the better of me, I followed.  I ran through the meadow and into a wooded area.  When I emerged from the woods my heart skipped, and I stopped running.  The vision I beheld was mesmerizing - blue and purple mountains in the distance, some lighted with sun streaks and others hiding in colder shadows, surrounded the valley.  A stone building, or more like a ruin, lay in abandonment on a hill just ahead, and all way mirrored in a still loch, covered ever so slightly with silver mist.  I felt as if i had just entered a world of ancient lore.  "No trespassing" a little bent sign informed on a rotting fence.  But I paid it no head.  I never did learn to follow rules.  Why would I start now?

Ever since I came to Scotland, I had always wanted to swim in one of the lochs.  They were so cryptic and strangely unruly, mirroring the moody skies and the rugged peaks in ubiquity, that my restless soul was drawn to them, wanting to be a part of them.

I was still slightly out of breath from my run, and I could feel the emerging sun beating down steadily on my forehead, encouraging sweat to mist my body.  I wanted to jump into that loch.  It was late spring, so the water would still be cold, but since it was warm outside perhaps it wouldn't be so unbearably cold.  Grinning to myself, caught in a fervent and frivolous whim, and raising my eyebrow at the "no trespassing" sign, I pulled off my tennis shoes, delivered myself from my black underarmour running attire, and tore the rubberband from my hair.  And then there I stood in matching lacy white boy-shorts and sports-bra.  I felt overexposed and scandalous, but I didn't care.  Scotland made me feel wild, and i lived for the revelry.  

I tipped my head back as i breathed in the untamed gale, and then with sudden passion I ran forward, jumped into the air, and soared above the silver water, arms spread like an eagle when he surveys his arial world.  When I hit the water, the coldness that surrounded me was so oddly pleasurable that i exhaled on an audible gasp.  I cleared my hair from my face, then turned in all directions, absorbing the power of nature that surrounded me, making me feel like a focal point of a postcard, and the very omphalos of God's great spectrum.

I was treading water when I heard a stick break by the bank.  The sound made my head turn, and the sight I beheld made me start for a moment.

It was Kane.

He had been out running too, by the looks of it.  I saw him often when i was out running on the lesser travelled roads.  He had probably seen me stray from the road a few moments ago.  I stared at him for a moment, as if I knew I was a naughty child and i'd been caught in the middle of a trivial yet shameful indulgence.  But when I saw the expression on his face, one of humor, or possible affection, and furthermore, if I dared say, desire, I did not feel so shameful anymore.

"If I were a stranger i would ask you wha' on earth you are doing..." he started, "but since I amna' a stranger, i must say i am entirely not surprised by you."

I laughed.  Then i began to wonder about the nature of his expression towards me.  The humor...well that was obvious given my current situation.  The affection...well since he had been my professor for two years it was likely that he was fully aware of my personality and my many idiosyncracies.  But why the desire?

Maybe it stemmed form the fact that I had just acted upon a whim that every person, at some point in their lives, had wished to act upon - not necessarily jumping whole-heartedly and without reserve into a forbidden loch, but moreso just jumping whole-heartedly and without reserve into a wild unknown of any sort.  Everyone has intrinsic inclination to long, even if it is paradoxical longing, to be possessed by something wild, something that soars above this world's materialism and false promise, something that is never captured.  It's what keeps us reaching.  His look of desire must have come from what he had just seen in me.  I had just witnessed the wild, and in this moment it was a part of me.  It's very attractive, that side of a person.  

Then i stopped my wondering, and I smiled at him.  "Come in!  It feels like magic...do I look like a ghost to you?"  I laughed and waved my arms amidst the white steam hanging low over the water, "I am wrapped in a white cloak of mist!" 

I felt like my voice became an echoing song in the mist, like the characters of all the old scottish folktales were still alive and surrounding me, amplifying my expression tenfold.  Was there anything...unusual...living beneath this loch?  No wonder the people here believed in the Loch Ness monster.  

He smiled back at me, shrugged, and then began to undress himself, right down to his briefs.  The size of my eyes doubled.  In the two year I had known him, I had never seen so much of his body before.  I knew that he was built right, big-boned and lean, with good proportions, but I hadn't been aware of the muscular curve of his biceps, the serrated abs, and the thigh muscles that twitched at his slightest movement.  And the black hair that spread moderately over his chest and extremities was more appealing to me than i ever remember hair being on a man.  I remember that all my friends at home were attracted to men who had waxed chests, "well-cultured" men.  But not me, apparently.  I liked Kane's raw masculinity.  I brought my gaze back to his eyes, and was scandalized to see that he was staring deeply into mine.  He had often stared at me, and I had often felt as if Kane and I had a connection that went deeper than mere friendship, but the boldness in his eyes now made something flutter deep within me.  I felt utterly bewitched, the power over my soul equally shared, partially by the ancient loch, and partially by his green eyes.  

I didn't realize that I'd been swimming backwards until I abruptly backed into something.  I inhaled with surprise, and turned to look at my obstruction.  It was a large piece of rock jutting out of the water, which had, now that I thought on it, obstructed me in perfect time, as my heart was drumming and making me short of breathe.  It is funny, what certain pheramonial attraction can do to people.  I had been surrounded by many men before, but never one like him.

I watched him as he jumped into the loch.  He re-appeared to the surface, his eyes found mine again, and they stayed the course the whole time he waded towards me.  I grasped the slippery rock behind me with both hands, caught in between panic and excitement.  This is wrong, I thought to myself, this is wrong, but so damned right too.

Then his face was a foot from mine.  We were still for a moment, looking at each other, ventilation increased, water dripping from our lashes.  Then his eyes flashed with some sort of unnamed feeling, and he raised his arms to the rock behind me, and came within an inch of my face.

"Two years," he began on a fervent whisper that shook my core, "two years I have suffered in silence."

Then for the first time, he lost eye contact, and stared down at the lonely water between us.  I raised a hand instinctively to his chiseled face in solace, and at once I was slightly taken aback by my actions.  We were only 5 years apart in age, so our attraction had always been legitimate, but nevertheless, he was still my professor, and by university law it wasn't right for us to feel this way towards each other.  there had always been a sexual tension between us, and more important than that, an emotional connection, but before now we had never acted upon it. Thus, i was slightly scandalized at my movement to touch him.  However, i didn't take my hand away like people would have said I should do.  I somehow justified my misbehavior, as all humans do, soothing the wild child inside of me rather than the civilized school girl, and instead of withdrawing my hand I moved it to the nape of his neck and arched my body ever so slightly towards him, so that the water between us now was not so lonely.  He exhaled sharply.  I glorified in my ability to be so brazen when I wanted to.  Does every female have that quality intrinsically?

"What has caused you to suffer in silence, then?" I asked him in a whisper, knowing full well what the answer was, because his suffering mirrored my own.  

He hesitated, head still bent, but breath coming faster.  "Ever since I saw you, two years ago," he began, "i 'ave yearned to touch you.  Ellen, I", and then he stopped and looked into my eyes again, removing one of his hands from the rock and placing it behind my head, "Ellen I 'ave wanted you for as long as I've known you.  But the longer i've known you, the more I've grown to want you for the woman tha' you are.  You are like no woman I 'ave ever met, student or no, and I...I canna put my finger on it the way I want to but...God help me I canna stop these feelings..."

Then in a sudden movement his hand brought me closer to him, and his lips pressed against mine with a hard passion that sent a tingle running from my lips directly to my toes.  His stubble was rough against my skin, but it excited me only further, and I wrapped my arms around him to entrap his body to mine.  He backed me into the rock, and kissed me so deeply that a fire blossomed within me.  I gasped, then my fingers curled, my nails dug into his flesh, and before I could stop myself I arched my back and wrapped my legs around him, trying to bring him even closer than he already was.  I leaned my head back as he tasted my neck, and the loch's magic water that dripped down the curve of my jaw.  My breathing was hard, and so was his, and he broke the kiss to look into my eyes again.

"I canna hid it anymore" he told me in a voice that rasped, "I just canna."

"Neither one of us was ever able to hide it" I told him, a little breathless.

He raised an eyebrow and huffed slightly with laughter, understanding my meaning, "Then I canna deny it anymore."

I stared into his green eyes, searching him, seeing nothing but genuine feeling behind them.  "If following your heart meant that the world would punish you, would you do it?" i asked him.

His hand cupped my cheek, and his jaw did a quiver-dance before he opened his mouth to speak.  "I would do anything for you, Ellen" he answered.

After two years of judging his character, I knew that he was not a man to say something he didn't mean.  So his words, words that from any othere man would have made me suspicious as to what his intentions were, made my eyes blur, and a tear blended in with the loch's water that rolled down my cheeks.  He saw it, of course.  Then he brought my face to his chest, and rested his head atop mine.

"I would do anything for you" he whispered again, gripping me for emphasis, and then held me there against him as I cried silently.  I cry when I am moved.  He understood.  So did the loch.  By afternoon the steam on the water would be gone.  But now, now in this beautiful moment, the steam was like a veil, shielding us from the world outside.  By afternoon it would be gone, so what we did