Silence is Golden

39. Sightseeing

For a moment, standing there motionless, his fist raised into the air, he looked like some hero of old, triumphing over an ancient enemy. Then he lowered his arm again and once more looked like what he was: an arrogant, miserly son of a bachelor with a heart of stone and a body of even harder stone, perfectly sculpted to the last detail. He raised his other arm to stretch, and water droplets flew everywhere, surrounding the king of miserdom with a glowing halo of diamond.

Go on! Reach out! Touch him!

I just stood there, staring, behind the rock. Even if I'd had the willpower, I wouldn't have dared to move a muscle.

God! Get a grip, Lilly! Preferably on him, below the waistline!

A shiver ran down my spine – a shiver of need, and want, and must-have-right-now-or-else! This truly was better than the first time I had tasted solid chocolate. The chocolate had melted like heaven on my tongue. But if I were to taste him, take him, I knew it would be like heaven, and still he wouldn't melt. He would be there for another trip to cloud nine, and another, and another. My eyes bored into his back, devouring him with my hungry gaze.

I had to stop this. This was wrong. Profoundly wrong, and unfeminist. But I was like an addict sucking on an opium pipe, desperate for more. What to do? Damnit, what to do?

Stay!

No. I had to go, I had to...

Stay!

I had to...I...had...to...

Taking up handfuls of water, Mr Ambrose began stroking his body. Well, I guess he was rubbing the dirt off, but it looked like stroking to my over-heated, overactive mind. The voice of my conscience gave a desperate squeak and then went silent forever. I stayed in hiding, my eyes pinned to the delicious sight in front of me, my hands clutching the rock for support.

I was staying to watch.

I was staying in hiding, and I was going to watch until Mr Rikkard Ambrose had cleaned every last morsel of dirt from his smooth granite skin. What was the harm? I was safely hidden behind the rock, right? He would never know.

I should have known better. This was Rikkard Ambrose – the man who could smell money a mile away, the man who walked through the jungle as if he owned it, and had more eyes and ears than I had ambitions.

'Why don't you come out from behind that rock?'

I sucked in a breath. His voice was as cold as midnight moonlight in the arctic. My fingers dug into the rock painfully hard.

Calm down! He can't know it's you! He's just guessing!

'Well, Mr Linton? What are you waiting for?'

Damn and blast!

I didn't move.

But he did.

Slowly, so slowly I thought I could almost hear the stone of his bones grating against each other, he turned around, his shirt still clutched in one powerful fist.

I felt my knees go weak.

Mr Rikkard Ambrose from behind was a sight you could never forget. But Mr Rikkard Ambrose from the front? He was more than unforgettable. He was unforgivable. The moment you clapped eyes on him, you would feel honour-bound to your fellow females to hunt down and kill any deity who had dared create anything that male, perfect and irresistible. It was simply not fair! It was inexcusable, a mortal sin no woman could forgive, unless...

...unless, of course, this man could be hers, and hers alone.

Now you're talking!

For the first time in a very long time, my inner voice and me were in complete agreement. Both she and I were speechless from awe as my eyes raked the perfect, chiselled statue that was Rikkard Ambrose. His broad, hard chest, the valleys and ridges of his abdomen – all was as smooth and hard as diamond, and just as impenetrable and unmoving. The only sign that there was life underneath the shell of smooth stone was a light trail of hair, rising up to his navel from underneath his trousers, from the place where...