Silence Is Golden (Storm and Silence 3)

What number came after three again?

‘It’s not the buttons I’m concerned about,’ I bit out. ‘It’s-’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Oh, well, if that’s the case…’

She let the last button pop open, and slid the waistcoat completely off. Dangling like bait from the hook of her finger, she let it swing while striding through the jungle with the confidence of a tigress. I tried to start counting gold nuggets again - but found that I had forgotten math altogether.

By all that was valuable and pricey! This had to stop! I had to rid myself of this illogical fixation. I was losing the one thing I could not afford to lose. My most precious possession and most dangerous weapon - my mind.

*~*~**~*~*

Something was tickling my nose.

It was not a sensation I was accustomed to. Blisters on my hands - yes. Knives at my throat - certainly. But something tickling my nose? That wasn’t something the people I had associated with over the years normally did. Except perhaps for…

No. She had better not be doing this.

I opened my eyes.

It wasn’t her. She was nowhere in sight. Something was hanging from a branch above my hammock. Something white and, and thin and…

I stiffened.

She didn’t. She wouldn’t dare.

Half a second after the thought crossed my mind, I realised how ridiculous it was. This was her we were talking about. Was there anything she wouldn’t dare?

‘Mr Linton?’

‘Yes, Sir?’ came her voice from somewhere behind me.

‘Remove this item at once!’

‘Item? What item, Sir?’

Fixedly I gazed up at the shirt dangling above my head.

‘You know exactly what item I am referring to, Mr Linton. Remove it, and get dressed. We’re leaving.’

‘Certainly, Sir. There’s just one tiny little problem with that…’

‘Yes?’

‘I am already dressed.’

‘What?’

Ripping the shirt from the branch above me, I sat up abruptly and slid out of the hammock.

Don’t turn around, I told myself. Don’t turn around. You know what you’ll see if you turn around.

I knew my own limits. Giving credit at less than twenty percent interest was one of them. This was another.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ I enquired, keeping my voice as cold and controlled as possible, ‘that you intend to skip through the jungle with nothing more to cover you than a piece of skimpy lingerie?’