After the Storm

22. Flashbacks

SORRY FOR THE LATE UPDATE. School has just started and I only have like 2 lectures a day yet I feel so busy now. Maybe it's because I had so much free time during the holidays and can't adjust to school now sigh.

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Inguinal: Groin area

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"Mr Ambrose!" I rapped noisily on his door.

Silence.

Unsurprised, I continued knocking furiously. "Mr Ambrose, sir!"

I waited for a while. Upon receiving no response, I tried again.

"Dick! I have information you bloody knobhead!"

A maid who was scurrying past jumped as I yelled.

"Sorry. I wasn't talking to you."

Shooting me a terrified look, like a mouse that had spotted a cat, she scuttled off as if her life depended on it.

I sighed. I found myself a perfectly normal and friendly person. Sadly, not everyone thought so.

I brought my knuckles up to bang against the door again. "Hey you with the stuffed ears! I--"

The door was flung open with so much force that I stumbled forward...straight into a very hard chest. A very hard and bare chest.

"What, pray, are you doing, Mr Linton?"

I couldn't respond. My brain didn't even register his words because it was too busy flashing warning signs and screaming.

The warning voice in my head bellowed: Danger, danger! Naked man alert!, while another side of it screamed in part horror, part exhileration.

He was not wearing a shirt, you hear me? No shirt! Nada. Nought. And I was pressed against his skin, his warmth seeping through the thin linen of my shirt.

Pull away! Be a strong feminist!

Against all my morals, I ended up pressing myself closer to him. He felt so good. As I sank into his strong frame, bubbles of warmth billowed in my chest.

Are you mad?

"What are you doing, Mr Linton?" His voice sounded strangled. Maybe I had heard him wrong. After all, he sounded so far away all of a sudden. "Stop this nonsense at once!"

"Mmhmm." My head felt fuzzy. He smelled rather nice. He smelled of money and a whole lot of mannish manliness. Was that even how you described a masculine man? I wasn't thinking straight at all.

Wake up!

"Mr Linton!"

His sharp voice chased away the fog in my brain. I jerked back. "What?"

"You were violating my personal space."

I didn't think you'd feel that way. Quite the contrary really.

Instead of apologising -- which I would only do when the grass becomes blue and sky green -- I snapped back. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt? Don't you know how indecent that is?"

"Indeed?" He cocked his head, making the rigid muscles on his torso move in a way that made my heartbeat quicken.

"Yes! So put a shirt on!" So that I can concentrate more on your face than elsewhere.

"You didn't seem to mind that much before that."

Hot blood rushed to my cheeks. Just as I was about to fire a retort, he turned and walked to the middle of his room, leaving me at the doorway. "If you have nothing to tell me then leave."