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irwinwe

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"So, did Iain pull 'is window stunt on ye this eve?" Kane asked, his mouth curled in a dry smile of omniscience.  

I looked into his eyes quickly, guardedly, "How did you know?"

He chuckled to himself a bit, "Ach, it's a tradition of 'is.  He tries to get me to join 'im every year.  And every year I instead spend 25lbs on a ticket.  I probably should resort to 'is methods.  He's never been caught." 

He took a drink of whiskey.  

"Except for tonight" he added.  His stare was plain to read,  and I panicked.  Had it been him that had made the sound outside the room with the window?  Had that been why Iain had grinned, because he knew that Kane was there watching over us?  Had Iain wanted Kane to see me being relatively intimate with him?  Kane was always so cryptic with his expression that it took an abnormally profound person, or a very similarly acting person, to read him accurately.  I felt that he and I understood each other so well on unspoken levels because we were so much alike, and for that reason I understood perfectly the implied meanings behind the scant or elusive phrases he actually verbalized.

I narrowed my eyes as I calculated his intent, "Do you think Iain was caught by a knight, mayhap?"  I asked him, just as cryptically, "a knight who hid in dark shadows, but had come to watch over the lady he held in his arms?  And did the knight, mayhap, feel just as did the lady, in that she could not trust the intent of the man that held her?"

Kane smiled and raised his brows, surprised and pleased, no doubt, that I had not only read him so quickly, but that I had also admitted my distrust for Iain.  Then he took a sobering sip of his whiskey.

"Iain is a good man but unpredictable and reckless" he started, and then he proceeded subtly, "plus I...I had to see tha' you were well, tha' is all" he ended, this time hardly more than a whisper, and with a wistful expression in his eyes as he poured a fragment of his own heart into me.  My breath caught.  He was not angry with me for Iain's kiss, I concluded with relief.  

"Well, then thank you, defender of my innocence" I spoke the facetious words, but with a very sincere expression.  Then I smiled warmly up at him. 

"You're welcome" he replied quietly, and we were momentarily lost in our own reverie, in our own subtle but powerful soul-speak.

His gaze fell to my lips, and then abruptly his eyes averted mine as his jaw clenched, muscles doing their proverbial quivering.  I sensed the distance in them creeping back, as was their habit immediately after he gave too much of his heart, and I reached out to stop him before I could think otherwise.  

"Don't" I beseeched as I reached out to touch his arm.  His entire body froze with my small touch, and I immediately retracted my hand, stunned at my own forward impulses.  It had been such a small action, but given that we were already fighting forbidden sexual attraction, and given that this unspoken desire had never before been encouraged with touch by either of our personas until just now, the action did not seem small at all.  HIs eyes returned to mine, and they were anything but distant.  I had crossed over the boundary line and now I could feel him burning, maybe because I was burning too and we were one and the same conflagration.  He took a step closer to me, and lifted his arm as if he was going to touch my face, but then he realized the potential peril of his actions with paramount timing, and as his fingers curled into a  reluctant fist, he moved to face the throngs of people around us. 

"I graded your research paper" he attempted to change the subject, still standing close, but not so close that those around us would think we were illegally trysting.

"And?" I urged, trying to douse the firefly lights inside of me by following his new direction of conversation.

He smiled slightly.  "Excellent use of creativity.  Ye listened to my advice."  He swirled his whiskey and then took a swig.  How he managed to look so calm, to control his emotions, or hide so elusively behind them, amazed me.  It gave me some semblance of power to know that I had unnerved him.  I wondered if I could do it again.

"You listend to my advice too" I said to him, quietly but boldly.  He stared down at me then, very intimately despite the fact that we were standing nearly three feet apart now.  "Your eyes aren't so distant or cold."

"Nor should they 'ave ever been towards ye, Ellen.  I was denying what we both know exists between us."  I raised my brows in immediate surprise, and my mind was a sudden whirlpool.  Did he just admit that he liked me, that we had something?

"What...do you think exists between us?" I asked him, my eyes focused intently on the red rose in his lapel, until I had finished asking my question, and then they rose to his and penetrated, inquiring. 

He said nothing initially, just stared at me with that dark, deep, longing expression.  "Didna ye say" he started after the moment's pause, "tha' it is a woman's instinct to look into a man's eyes and sense wha' he feels?"  

My lips parted, and I understood his signal.  He wanted me to look into his eyes and read his admission, to know by unspoken expression that he liked me and that he knew I liked him, the one thing that neither of us could admit verbally without getting into trouble.  My eyes fell lackadaisically to his lips.  They were surrounded by dark stubble, and I ached to feel the scratchiness of it on my face as he devoured my mouth.  My head tilted back slightly, as if to prepare myself for the devouring that unfortunately would not come.

"I didn't want him to kiss me, you know" I said to him on a whisper of halway desperate admission.

He looked down at me with a slight smile on his lips.  "I know" was all he said.  His eyes were clear and honest.  He trusted me.  He was offering himself for possible heart-shredding, yet again.  

My own heart was moved to distraction.  "If you weren't my professor I would..." I started on an impulsive and broken whisper, stopping instantanously when I felt Iain's hands come to claim my waist from behind.  Kane raised his brow and smiled slightly, not acknowledging Iain's arrival, merely ignoring him and willing me to continue.

"If I werena your professor you would do wha'?" He questioned.  I felt Iain's body stiffen against my back, as if he suspected chicanery, and I decided to alter my verbal plans. 

I fought a smile, and while looking very pointedly at his lips, I said on a contrived note of harshness, "If you weren't my professor I'd slap the fuck out of you."  No, I immediately corrected in my mind after I had spoken, if you weren't my professor I'd KISS the fuck out of you.  

Iain relaxed.

Kane grinned widely, eyes hungry and burning green.  "Would ye, now?" he more stated than questioned, as if he had ignored my earlier statement and heard my later thoughts,

"Am I interrupting?" Iain asked somewhat tersely as he bored his eyes into Kane.