The Forbidden Professor

Chapter 7

The email from the freshman activities committee described a mandatory faculty-student flag football game on the south lawn as a "cornerstone of the Harwick University welcome experience," which was a lot of words for what was essentially:

Come outside, you don't have a choice.

Lia read it over my shoulder and made a sound like she'd been personally wronged.

"Flag football," she said.

"That's what it says."

"In August." She put her coffee down. "Outside. In August." She looked at me. "Do they know about UV radiation? Has anyone told them?"

"I think it's in the afternoon."

"Peak hours, Sienna." She picked her coffee back up. "That's peak hours."

She showed up outside our dorm in a wide-brimmed sun hat that was genuinely enormous and an expression of someone who had decided that if she was going to suffer she was going to do it right.

I looked at the sneakers.

She was going to participate after all.

"I thought you were worried about peak hours,” I teased her.

"I can be worried about UV radiation and still be competitive." She pulled the hat down slightly in front. "Those aren't mutually exclusive."

~0~

The south lawn was already full when we got there.

Students everywhere. A few faculty members standing at the edges looking like they'd just been informed of this mandatory event.

Someone with a clipboard was dividing people into teams with the enthusiasm of someone who didn’t have to play themselves.

Nolan soon materialized beside me.

"Flag football," he said. "I haven't played since I was twelve."

"I’ve never played," I admitted.

He looked at me. "At all?"

I shook my head. "Not once."

He thought about this for a second, then straightened up. "Okay. So the basic idea is you're trying to move the ball down the field to score. Instead of tackling someone you pull the flags off their belt. Both flags gone and you're down."

He glanced at the belts being handed out. "Make sure the flags are even or they’ll be easy to pull off." He paused. “You get a few plays to move the ball ten yards before you turn it over.”

"That's it?" I said.

"There's more but you'll figure it out as you go." He glanced at me. "Stay in the middle of the field. Don't overthink it."

"I never overthink things," I said.

He gave me a look that was polite enough not to say anything directly.

Across the field, Lia spotted us. She'd already been assigned to the opposing team, which she had apparently decided was the correct outcome.

She pointed at me and Nolan.

Mouthed: no mercy.

I looked at Nolan. Nolan looked at me.

"Should we be concerned?"

I smiled. "Definitely.”

~0~

Our team gathered on the near side of the field. I found a spot toward the middle, getting a feel for where everyone was, where the space was.

I clipped the flag belt around my hips and adjusted it, trying to get the flags to sit level the way Nolan had said.

That was when I felt it.

The specific shift in the air that I had apparently learned to recognize without meaning to.

I didn't turn around.

I knew.

He was somewhere behind me. On my team.

I kept my eyes on the field and told myself to breathe normally which was excellent advice that I immediately failed to follow.

Then a sound was made. A sharp, appreciative sound, followed by another, and another and soon a ripple moved through the crowd around me and I turned instinctively toward it.

I blinked in shock.

Professor Blackwell had taken his shirt off.

I couldn’t stop myself from staring.

The tattoos ran across both arms and onto his chest. Dark ink, geometric, intricate. And the rest of him was — not what the lecture hall prepared you for. The lecture hall gave you Professor Blackwell with his rolled cuffs and his precise sentences..

This was something else entirely. This was what was underneath and it turned out to be considerably more than anyone could take.

The hard lines.

The defined muscles.

Every woman on the lawn went quiet.

The faculty members to my left stopped mid-sentence and forgot to start again.

He didn't notice. Or it simply wasn't worth noticing to him. I looked away and stared at the grass in front of me and told myself to get it together.

I got it together.

Mostly.

~0~

I was still fidgeting with my flags trying to make sure they were even when I felt him again.

Quite literally this time.

His hands were on my hips.

I went completely still.

He adjusted the flags, one and then the other, straightening them to sit level on either side of the belt. His hands were steady and purposeful and when there was nothing left to fix…his hands lingered.

Just a second. Just long enough for me to forget how to breathe.

Then they were gone.

He stepped away.

Then the game started.

~0~

I played. I focused. I was a functional person doing a normal activity and I was actually decent at it, quicker than I'd expected, good at reading where the space was, which Nolan seemed genuinely pleased about.

"See," he said after I made a decent run in the first few minutes. "Natural."

"Don't jinx it," I shoved him playfully.

He grinned.

And then I felt him watching me even more…

I had been aware of where he was the whole time.

A solid, unyielding presence.

Once the play shifted and everyone repositioned, I turned to find him two feet away, maybe less. He was looking at the field.

Then he glanced at me.

Not quickly. Not the half-second he usually did.

But longer. Much longer.

My pulse thudded in my ears.

Then the play started.

~0~

Lia tagged me out near the end of the first half with visible satisfaction.

"Nothing personal," she said, in a way that made absolutely clear it was entirely personal.

I shook my head, laughing. "It's just flag football, Lia."

“Exactly. How could I lose at flag football, Sienna," she grinned, already spinning back toward the action.

I stood on the sideline.

Breathed.

Let the hyperawareness of the past hour slowly loosen its grip.

Nolan jogged over a few minutes later, also tagged out by Lia, dropping onto the grass beside me.

"She's been planning that," he said.

"Since birth," I agreed and he laughed.

We watched Lia across the field, fully in it, competitive and alive. She was completely in her element in a way that was honestly kind of wonderful especially when it wasn’t being directed at you.

I smiled, feeling a type of lightness in me that I wasn’t used to.

I also felt everything underneath it…the hour I'd just spent acutely, helplessly aware of someone who paid no real attention to me during a lecture and somehow managed to be the only thing I'd been aware of the entire game. The two seconds his hands were on my hips that had felt longer than that, and that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since.

I kept my attention on the grass, on anywhere, but him.

I’d made it almost a full minute.

Then I looked.

He was at the far edge of the lawn pulling his shirt back on, unhurried, already mid-conversation with another faculty member. The tattoos disappeared. Professor Blackwell came back.

He didn't look at me again.

I told myself I didn’t care.