The Professor. Charlotte Stein

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       Chapter Five

      The first thing he does when we get to his office is light a little gas stove – both for the heat and for the kettle he sits atop it. No electric for him, of course, and instead of teabags he has tea leaves and strainers and other items I’ve only ever read about. I watch him go about the business of making it with the same fascination heroines probably experience over wizards doing magic. Wide-eyed and unable to move from the corner I’ve chosen, half-wondering what mystical thing will happen next.

      The jacket was weird enough.

      The conversation was worse.

      The tea makes my teeth chatter. And then there is the seat I notice – not the same thing from before but a real soft-backed and inviting-looking chair. He went out and got something better for me, I think, then immediately try to dismiss the idea. He probably just realised it was inadequate for any student. Perhaps he gives Earl Grey to everyone. Most likely he uses his handkerchief to dry everyone’s hair for them.

      It just doesn’t feel that way, when he does it.

      It feels like the air grows thick and close, the moment he tells me to turn around. He barely has to do anything for me to sense him – the crackle between us reveals everything. It sizzles as he reaches for the rope of my hair, and louder when he lifts it.

      The way he squeezes the water out of it is best though.

      Tightly, so tightly my scalp will be tender later. It will remember his hands on me, long after this moment has dwindled down to nothing. It might be the only contact I ever get, after all. Just this one hint of how strong he really is and how big his hands are, followed by the strongest wave yet of his deep, heavy scent. Oh, God, that deep, heavy scent. I suppose the rain has made it more pronounced. Or it could be the lack of jacket. Without it he seems almost bare, despite the waistcoat he keeps on.

      I can still see so much more, regardless. I can see how oddly narrow his waist is, how broad his chest. It strains against the material whenever he moves, and he moves a lot. He stretches up to dry his own hair, and fusses with his cuffs, and bends to buff his shoes, all the time twisting and turning and bending in a way that seems far too flexible for someone like him. It feels too flexible for someone like me.

      Though I promise I do my best not to look. At the very least I try to look in a manner that doesn’t convey outright hunger. I keep my mouth tightly closed and my eyes a normal size, hands clenched tightly inside the sleeves of his jacket. And when I manage to breathe, I do it in a slow and steady and normal sort of fashion.

      Even though smell is now devouring what little air there is in here.

      And the way he looks at me after, as though he knows what I’m thinking. He knows how he looks, and what it does to me. He must – nothing else could explain his expression. If he could set me on fire with his eyes I think he would. Contempt is probably on the tip of his tongue right now, to the point where I cringe when he goes to speak.

      But that only makes it more shocking when he tells me this:

      ‘You should take off the T-shirt you have on, before you catch your death.’

      He makes it sound like advice. Like he’s talking about a word I misspelled or a concept I didn’t grasp. My brain even tries to turn it into that at first. I feel sure I must have misheard or misunderstood, and consider asking him to explain.

      Not that it helps when he does.

      ‘Fasten the jacket up and remove your wet clothes,’ he says, and all I can think is that now I will have to sit in his office with nothing on under this overflowing tweed. More than that: I will have to do it while he sits across from me in a state that seems even more naked than that. Every second that goes by brings new details: he wears those bands around his arms to keep his shirt in place, shiny and constrictive-seeming. He has no belt, and no belt loops, and there is something in his pocket – something that makes a strange heavy outline in trousers that now seem too tight.

      Though I doubt I will ever know what it is. I have more pressing matters to deal with – like taking off my T-shirt while he watches. Because he does, without a single hint of evasion or interest. Almost like he’s proving something to himself, or proving something to me. I don’t care if you strip, his flat gaze seems to say. It doesn’t matter to me if your breasts are bare beneath that jacket.

      The slight parting of his lips is probably just a coincidence.

      As is the heaviness of his eyelids, and the sound of his voice when I finally slide the wet material out from underneath the jacket. ‘Hang it on the door,’ he says, so faint СКАЧАТЬ