started his lecture.
I took a moment to evaluate my emotional state. I was still a little shaky but otherwise okay. I didn’t seem in any immediate danger of blacking out again as far as I could tell, and the violent pull I had once again experienced felt different.
Different … but not gone!
Why hadn’t the feeling gone up in smoke like the last time it had happened? Yesterday, actually … had it really only been yesterday? It seemed much longer ago than that!
I took another moment trying to pin down the sensation. It did feel different from before. What had started out as a sudden and violent attack on my body, now felt like a powerful steadily flowing stream, winding its way from my consciousness to another’s, which I felt but couldn’t quite locate.
Though I didn’t have the slightest idea how I knew what I sensed, I recognized without a doubt the pattern of someone else’s consciousness. The feeling, although quite strong, didn’t come with an instruction manual, though, and having never dealt with anything out of the ordinary my entire life, I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell to whom this consciousness belonged. I was certain of only one thing: the person in question was in the auditorium this very moment.
My gaze roamed the room and ultimately came to rest upon the figure standing behind the professor’s desk, leisurely extracting papers from the depths of a black leather suitcase and arranging them on the large empty desk.
My initial reaction was that Aaron Chambers did not look like a professor at all ― weren’t professors, by hazard of occupation, supposed to be stuffy, tweed-wearing, in short, boring members of society? Aaron Chambers was none of the above!
He was tall, with thick and dark, almost charcoal-black hair that fell in soft waves, partly covering his brow and leisurely resting against the sides of his face which was unlike any I had ever seen.
I had seen a great deal of good-looking men, celebrated models and movie stars. But none of them could hold a candle to this beautiful man.
He was breathtaking and charismatic, the faintest stubble covering his strong, finely chiseled jaw.
He was wearing tight-fitted jeans over running shoes and a white shirt, the topmost buttons casually left open. The layer of clothing, though hiding the exact shape of his body from view, was ineffective at concealing the small bulges that formed on his sleeves and pant legs whenever his strong, muscled body was in motion.
His powerful appearance, as well as the confident manner in which he handled himself, immediately commanded admiration and respect; and probably had half the student body ― mostly female ― fancy itself in love with him within minutes of first laying eyes on him.
Constituting no exception to this phenomenon, I at once felt the overwhelming power of the attraction slamming into me with the force of a raging bull.
OH MY GOD! I thought, completely ignoring ― in light of my current state of mind ― the misgivings I usually had about using this particular phrase, as I wasn’t sure if I believed in God. Not that I begrudged anyone else the solace in belief. I, myself, just wasn’t certain.
Although, if there were a God , I thought, it would explain such gorgeous creations as the one before me!
My heart skipped several beats, my stomach feeling as though a million tiny butterflies were frantically beating their beautiful colorful wings against the inside of my belly, desperate to escape their confinement.
While the fluttering slowly subsided, I kept my head down, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze while trying to assess how long it would take my glowing cheeks to return to their natural pale color.
How embarrassing!
I felt like a common teenager. Face as red as the lipstick my mom never let me buy, and a fit of swooning on the way! Granted, some people would say I was still a teenager, being only eighteen years old, but that’s not how I would define the word. How could
Lisa Mondello, L. A. Mondello