Balancing her box of belongings on her knee, Professor Rylee Cantrell unlocked the door to the office lab of the infamous "Gone Prof" — a thoughtless moniker the students used to refer to Professor Ethan Norwood, who had gone missing nearly six months ago.
The police had investigated, briefly, but with no wife or relatives asking after him and no evidence of foul play, they dropped the case without a search. People walk away from their lives all the time, they said. Not their concern.
Norwood gave no professional notice or any sign of plans to leave. He had taken the train in to the university as usual six months ago, and then by the end of the day he was just ... gone. No word to anyone. Not even the woman he had made love to for the first time just the day before.
It had been a milestone in their relationship, and though it happened in a rather spur-of-the-moment time and place, it had felt right after two months of getting to know each other and growing closer. First as colleagues, then as friends, then as romantic interests, and finally as a couple, Rylee had truly fallen for this quirky but kind man.
The hum of desire had reached its crescendo for her, which led to their first, and ultimately only, evening of lovemaking. They had agreed to keep their relationship secret in its early state, to avoid professional complications, and Rylee had never told anyone about it. In the end, it turned out there was nothing to tell.
Standing in the doorway, Rylee scanned the room. The golden rays of the morning sun drew her attention to the burgundy faux-suede sofa tucked against the wall across from the windows, and an unbidden flush of heat sparked in her chest and flooded her neck and cheeks.
Seeing that sofa again for the first time since that evening triggered the memory of so many sensations. Her back pressed into the soft cushions. His cock pressed into her soft flesh. Her explosive orgasm that had her body quivering beneath him while he gazed at her raptly ...
Rylee shook her head to dislodge the memory. Kicking the door closed, she strode to the desk and dropped her box on the solid wood surface with a resolute thud. If this space was to be her temporary home base for the next few weeks, she couldn't be hindered by the ghosts that lingered here.
The biology building that housed Rylee's own office was undergoing renovations, so the dean had to temporarily stick her in the physics building. Of course, this particular office lab was free. And, of course, since the dean had no knowledge of the budding relationship of two of his young professors — or their erotic sofa session — he couldn't have known that being in here would be difficult on Rylee.
Looking around the lab now, she realized just how difficult it was going to be.
It had taken a long time to push down the hurt that Ethan's disappearance had caused her. He ran off the day after they had sex, no further contact and no responses to any of her calls or texts. Had he run off because of her? That shitty little voice in her head kept telling her that, until she finally silenced it by refusing to think about him anymore.
But how could she not think about him now, here in his workspace where he obsessed over his special project ...
Where he came all over her naked body.
She remembered how they lay together long after, talking freely and openly, and how he kept looking at her with admiring eyes the whole time. She noticed how much he seemed to like seeing his come streaked across her abdomen and pooled in her bellybutton, and when she called him on it he showed no embarrassment or shame.
"You should know that I'm strongly voyeuristic," he confessed to her.
"So, it's lights on during sex?" she quipped.
He smiled his agreement as he ran his gaze over her body.
He had been completely open with her, sharing his belief that sex was beautiful to witness, as well as take part in. She loved his candour and how he listened non-judgementally to a freely shared confession or two of her own.
Far from prudish herself, she found it fun to share vices. She had even felt comfortable enough after that very first sexual encounter to titillate him with the suggestion that she might be open to making a private video one day, to indulge his voyeuristic desires. His eyes lit up at that idea.
So then why did he leave the very next day without a word? It had been an intense evening, not only physically but in how deeply they connected. Was that the problem? Ethan normally kept to himself, focusing on his work. Had the intensity of their connection been too much for him?
Enough! she scolded herself. Reopening the pain wasn't going get her anywhere. If she was going to succeed in getting on with her life, Gone Prof had to stay gone from her mind.
Regaining control of her thoughts, she unpacked her belongings and took over the desk, making it her own. Or at least, she tried to. The bottom side drawer was locked with a four-digit combination dial. The rest of the drawers had been emptied, the contents confiscated by the university, but they hadn't bothered to pry open the locked drawer.
Rylee wondered what Ethan might keep in a locked drawer, then once again pushed thoughts of him from her mind. No time for distractions, despite the environment.
* * * * * * *
She gave two lectures that day, but otherwise made herself available to her students in her new office space. A major mid-term bio project was underway and several students had questions or concerns they wanted to run by her. She didn't mind. She liked to connect with the students, but it could be exhausting. Today was one of those days.
As the outside dimmed to twilight, Rylee locked the lab door behind the last student to leave and shut off the overhead lights, preferring the relaxing glow coming through the windows. Stretching, she sauntered around the room to stretch her legs and get the blood circulating again.
Since it also served as a lab, the space was rather large for an office. Aside from the desk and sofa, the rest of the room was taken up by shelving along one wall, strewn with tools and physics equipment, and a few work tables of varying sizes. And there, at the back corner of the lab, stood the focus of Ethan's obsessive hours of work — his special project.
The most visually attracting aspect of the apparatus was the pair of round towers that stood about five feet away from the wall and four feet apart from each other, connected at floor level by a flat base. The six-foot-tall parallel pillars made Rylee think of shiny, silver goal posts.
Wires from the base ran into a rectangular metal structure next to the towers, a cube about three and a half feet per side, that Rylee knew housed a highly specialized, super-powerful CPU. She recalled how advanced Ethan insisted it was, a cutting-edge system. Now the structure sat idle as a table, topped with a keyboard coated in a layer of dust and a monitor sitting blank and lifeless.
He had explained his special project to her briefly once, but only in terms of general physics concepts, not the specifics of the machine's purpose, a secret he guarded with almost paranoid caution. She didn't follow anyway. Quantum physics wasn't a biologist's strong suit and, she had to admit, it wasn't his work she was interested in. But she enjoyed seeing the excitement dancing in his eyes as he spoke. Whatever he was working toward, he felt certain about his theory and determined to prove it.
Remembering his enthusiasm made her miss him all over again.
