“Mud. Slide,” she said again, slowly and loudly. “Sorry, I don’t know the Spanish for…well, anything, really,” she admitted.
He said nothing.
“I think I may be your only visitor today.”
Again, he gave no discernible reaction, and Kayla felt compelled to fill the silence. “I should have been here with some friends, but their bus got stuck on the wrong side of the mudslide. They stayed at the beach yesterday, but I came on ahead and slept in the village last night because I didn’t want to miss this.” Her wide gesture took in the pyramid, the jungle, and possibly the whole of Mexico. “Wasn’t that lucky? I’m on a tight schedule, you see. Tomorrow we head back to Cancun, and this temple is the whole reason for my Mexican trip. If I’d missed seeing it, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
She stopped and gulped in a breath, telling herself to shut up. Why would a total stranger care that seeing an ancient ruin was the highlight of her life? “Anyway,” she finished lamely, “what I’m trying to say is that the road is blocked both ways and no coaches are getting through to the river, so chances are, you’re going to have a very quiet day.”
He regarded her for a further wordless moment, then pulled his hat back down over his eyes, effectively dismissing her.
Hmm
. At least he wouldn’t disturb her with endless chat to ease his boredom. And she should be pleased her skimpy clothes hadn’t driven him to a show of uncontrollable lust. Talking of uncontrollable lust, Kayla sneaked another look at the golden tan revealed by his open shirt. What a truly glorious body. It suggested a man who looked after himself, a suggestion contradicted by the scruffy outer layers. Maybe he was having a bad day? Actually, his appearance suggested he’d had a series of bad days and some even worse nights. But he definitely had something about him…so many hard edges…that flat belly, his square jaw. If she wasn’t so pressed for time, she might have been tempted to sketch him.
Who was she kidding? Even after two minutes’ acquaintance she knew she could draw him from memory every day for the rest of her life.
“Well, it was nice meeting you,” she said. “I’m going over there to look at—” Suddenly she remembered exactly what she intended to look at, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Er, stuff. See you later.”
See you later? Seriously?
Her blush deepened. They were the only two people on top of a pyramid on an island in a river in the middle of the Mexican jungle. The chances of them seeing each other again were pretty good.
Shaking her head at her own stupidity, Kayla turned to face the fresco winding around the walls of the temple, and just like that, everything else was forgotten.
Chapter Two
The artwork was magnificent. Stupendous. Unbelievable. Forgetting her companion, the heat, everything, Kayla slowly began to circle the stone building. The murals were over eight hundred years old, but the paint, though chipped in places, jumped out at her, bold and vibrant, the painted stucco stunningly lifelike. She was in complete awe by the time she’d walked a full, slow circle and come back to her starting point.
Most artwork in this part of the world depicted war and sacrifice, the images bloody, violent, and graphic. The Ma’ K’âaba murals were graphic too, but not bloody. And not violent. Every single mural and fresco depicted sex—lots and lots of people having lots and lots of sex. The shamelessly explicit images were the main reason the remote, hard-to-get-to ruins attracted such a huge number of visitors each year.
These were no stylized images, either. The couples writhing around the walls were so lifelike they could have been real people, dipped in wet plaster and left to set, then painted over while they were too busy enjoying themselves to notice. And not only couples. From where she stood, Kayla could see plenty of threesomes and foursomes too.
There were penises everywhere, either painted or in 3-D, jutting hard and proud in plaster and stone. One in particular caught her eye—surely larger than life—on its way into a woman’s open mouth. Kayla stared until she realized her own mouth was hanging open. Snapping her jaw shut with an audible click of teeth, she sneaked an embarrassed peek at the guard, terrified he would be watching her and laughing. Thankfully she needn’t have worried. Hat still pulled over his eyes, the man could have been made of stone himself.
Satisfied, she turned once more to the mural. She could safely say the subject’s nine-inch cock was his most prominent feature, but the rest of him wasn’t bad either. Like the guard, he had serious abs, and she let her gaze travel over his body, from pecs to cock and up to his face again. As an artist, she knew how hard it could be to capture a single fleeting expression, but Ma’ K’âaba’s creator had managed exactly that. Lust, anticipation, and humor danced in the man’s eyes as if his partner had just made a lewd joke. Their faces were so distinctive Kayla suspected she would recognize the couple if she met them in the street.
She fumbled in her bag for her sketch pad and pencil, and began to draw, her hand moving fast and sure over the paper. She captured whatever caught her eye. A profile. A smile. The curve of a breast. A cock here, a cock there. A shamelessly displayed vagina. A man’s head drawn back at the point of orgasm. Hard male fingers digging into a soft buttock. Everywhere she looked, people were involved in some kind of sexual act, from simple masturbation to one man doing something controversial with a watermelon.
Of course Kayla had seen many of the images in textbooks, but reality was so much better. And so much more explicit. She could safely assume there had been no censorship in place during the creation of the pyramid.
Sketching could take her so far, but Kayla really wanted to run her hands over the carvings, touching eyes, lips, tracing a smile, a cheekbone. And yes, okay, feeling the rigidity of a rock-hard stone cock in her hand. She wanted to step over the threshold of the jaguar-mouth doorway and explore the dark interior of the temple, but a piece of rope fastened across the entrance and the presence of the sleeping guard held her back. Getting chucked off the island before she finished her sketches would be completely mortifying.
Her leg muscles had begun to ache from the climb up from the river. Hand still moving over her sketch pad, she crossed her ankles and dropped down, then leaped smartly back to her feet with a squeal when her thighs touched the sunbaked stone. Next, she tried folding her shirt and sitting on that. Not ideal, but it would do.
As she reached for her sketch pad, a shadow passed over her, and she glanced up to see the guard standing not a foot away. Shielding her eyes with the wide brim of her hat, she tipped her head back. She’d been right; he was tall. Unfortunately, with the sun behind him and his hat shading his face like a character in a spaghetti Western, she still couldn’t get a proper look at him.
Wordlessly, he placed the white plastic chair down beside her and turned away.
Kayla scrambled to her feet. “Thank you. That’s terribly kind. But I couldn’t possibly…”
He ignored her. Moving back into the shade, he flopped down on what could well be a priceless altar. With his hat once more over his face, arms folded over his chest, he sighed loudly.
“Thank you,” she called. “
Gracias
. That’s very kind of you.”
He flicked his fingers in dismissive acknowledgement.
When it became clear nothing more was forthcoming, Kayla perched on the edge of the chair and returned to her sketch of a woman being taken from behind as she knelt on quite possibly the exact same stone on which the guard now slept. To make things even more interesting, the woman sucked off a second man while masturbating a third. Kayla couldn’t tell which of the four seemed to be enjoying the action the most. She did know drawing them in minute detail brought her out in a flustered sweat.
She would have given her eyeteeth to meet the artist who had created this masterpiece. The more she studied the images, the more convinced she became that the models had been real people, and the sex had happened exactly as depicted. The same faces turned up time and time again with different, often multiple, partners. Kayla had never been this close to an orgy in her life, and to put not too fine a point on things, she was getting more turned on by the minute.
There was something intensely intimate about being this close to so many naked people all hell-bent on mutual pleasure. The more Kayla looked, the more she saw—secret smiles; intimate, affectionate touches. She couldn’t help wondering who these people had been, how they had known each other, and how they had come to be involved in an orgy.
Again she itched to reach out and touch the carvings, and again she kept her hands firmly occupied with pencil and sketch pad. Behind her, the guard snored gently, his presence oddly soothing. The fact that he didn’t speak English probably helped her feel at ease.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” she said. “I mean, I know you might get bored looking at them every day, but trust me, this is incredible. Really special.”
Kayla hadn’t expected any response, and she didn’t get one, other than that he stopped snoring.
“I bet you’re wondering why I don’t simply take photos?”
If he was indeed wondering that, he hid it well.
“I’m a sculptor, you see. Well, I used to be. I haven’t done much lately, but I’m hoping to pick it up again now I’ve got more time. My ex didn’t really encourage my art—”
She caught herself and sneaked a look at the guard, who thankfully seemed as disinterested as ever. “Sorry. I doubt you’re even remotely interested in my ex.”
Though I’m sure he would be very interested in you
. The unguarded thought brought a deep blush to her cheeks, and she hurried on. “I saw these murals in a book years ago, while I was still at art college, and I vowed that one day I’d come here and see them for myself. It took me a while, but here I am.”
Another quick glance at the guard revealed no visible response.
“Don’t you just love the idea that hundreds of years ago someone looked at this stone and saw these images come to life?” she continued. “To tell you the truth, if you weren’t here, I’d be all over these carvings like a rash.”
She meant it too; she wanted to touch the images so badly her hands were cramping. “It’s incredibly vibrant, don’t you think? So full of life. Whoever created this knew these people. The artist either made love to the women, or he watched someone else making love to them.”
She kept rabbiting on, but he seemed to be a good listener. And the language barrier meant she could say what she liked and not embarrass herself.
“I’ve always been very tactile,” she told him. “I need to explore new objects with my hands before I really get to know them.”
Actually not only with her hands. With her mouth too. Even her breasts might fit into some of those outstretched hands. In fact, given half a chance, she would be rubbing her entire body over the carvings, kissing some of those mouths. And the cocks. She might even strip naked to do it.
Which was freaky, crazy thinking, right? Language barrier or not, she had the sense to keep those particular thoughts to herself.
“The artist’s process and craft are all here in the stone. See there? That nipple? See where he worked it again and again to get it exactly right? Whereas there”—she indicated a rather magnificent penis—“his hand slipped, but he let the mistake go, which suggests to me he liked nipples more than he liked willies.”
Kayla’s oversize hat offered some protection to her face while she worked, but it was past time for more sunscreen. After carefully placing her sketch pad out of the way of spills, she rummaged in her bag for the bottle of lotion and squeezed some into her hand, the coconut scent nicely appropriate in her exotic surroundings. Even with sunscreen, though, she would have to move into the shade soon.
Looking up at the sky, she noticed that a few puffy clouds had begun to gather. Not a bad thing; a few more clouds meant less chance of burning. On the downside, clouds would change the light, which, right now, was perfect.
Finishing her arms and shoulders, she sneaked another glance at the guard. Still asleep, thank goodness, so she quickly smeared lotion over her chest and the tops of her breasts. Applying suntan lotion was something she had done countless times before in public and never given it a moment’s thought. But today, with a potential audience of one sleeping man and a horde of cavorting nudes, she felt ridiculously self-conscious.
Of course she knew why—being surrounded by so much in-your-face sex had left her so turned on her nipples were as hard as the stone ones she’d been drawing. And she suspected her dehydration had less to do with the heat and more to do with the fact that all the moisture in her body had drained south to dampen her shorts. Had she been alone, despite the sun, she might have stripped off her top and attempted to relieve the ache in her nipples with a quick rub of suntan lotion.
Suspecting that raging sexual arousal was not appropriate atop an ancient monument, Kayla tried to cool her hormones by fixating on an image of a woman combing her long black hair while the man behind her rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. The scene was a picture of innocence compared to what was going on around them. Or it would have been if not for the mischief in the couple’s eyes. In fact, Kayla suspected that a moment later the man’s hand had slid down to the woman’s breast—
Something touched Kayla’s shoulder, and she screamed.
The guard stood less than a foot away, and she hadn’t even heard him move. Now he raised both hands, palms up, in a “backing off” gesture.
“What do you think you are doing?” Kayla’s heart pounded.
He pointed at the sun, pointed at the bottle of suntan lotion, then made a twirling motion with his hand.
The international sign for “Let me do your back.”
“No, thank you. I’m fine,” she said primly.
He pushed his hat up, and for the first time she got a proper look at his face. Glory be, what a face! Strikingly handsome, strong, and very, very male. His five o’ clock shadow added to the air of masculinity but somehow also softened the overall effect. Clean-shaven, he would have been too good-looking, too perfect. The stubble made him sexy but approachable.