Status Updates From And Gold Was Ours (Aguilar'...

It's about time they confess their feelings. Though, the H's jealousy was very amusing

Yay! The MC have finally meet!

While this story is captivating, are the MC ever going to meet?

Annnd we have us a bodice ripper!

Now, three hundred years later, in this year of 1848, the great house still stands, desolate, a faded ruin of glory. Yet the spirit of the manor remains unconquered, for Esplendor heeds not the ravages wrought by time. Born of love and legend, it looks out knowingly, secretively, over the savage jungle, as though it is only sleeping, waiting breathlessly, expectantly, to be wakened.

None mourned the manor's sad demise, for he who would have wept at its destruction was long dead, and she in whose memory he had built it was colder still.

But man's greed for the riches that legend held the lost city of El Dorado contained was even greater than his fear of death; and so he dared to brave the jungle, in search of the Gilded One, ignoring the warnings of the bleached bones that marked the paths of those who had gone before him.

Don Santiago Roque y Avilés was such a man; but, unlike the others, his quest for gold was born of love, not greed.

Giant, deceptively coloured snakes slithered from the overhanging branches of the trees to strangle the unsuspecting, the unwary. The caimans lay ominously still, like fallen trunks in the dark, murky depths of the rivers and swamps, waiting to tear a man to shreds, should he stumble and rouse the sleeping reptiles.

The Jungle, Peru, 1548

Legend called it El Dorado - the Gilded One - a lost city where the forgotten streets were paved with gold, and riches beyond a man's wildest dreams lay waiting to be plundered. Whether or not it truly existed no one knew. Many sought to find it, & many died in the attempt: for life in the dense, steaming jungle of South America was a hard & torturous one, even for those long accustomed to it

-----, the last to die, had been buried up to his neck in sand, and honey had been poured over his head. Red ants had eaten him alive.

The baddies are dropping left and right.

Death by snake. One evil baddie down.

Great. When he finally says the magic three words you don't believe him. Argh.

Salvador, get over the jealous bit. It is so unattractive.

Army ants approaching.

"You mean-you mean I married you for nothing?"

The visconde smiled slowly, his eyes raking her intimately.

"Oh, not for nothing, querida. Never for nothing, I assure you."

Bring on the wedding night :p

Like a snake, the nun's tongue darted out to lick her lips; her clawlike fingers caressed suggestively, almost lewdly, the unusually large wooden crucifix that hung about her neck. Aurora watched, mesmerized, swallowing hard as she recalled what Fatima had said had been done to Blanca's body.

Still more terrifying was the fact that Sor Patrocinio's hot, covetous eyes, filled with unnatural lust, followed Aurora's every move. The girl was afraid that Sor Patrocinio's vulterous designs on her were behind the nun's sly, subtle attempts to discredit her with Isabella.

Oh boy, an ebil nun lusting after our virginal heroine.

I stood here, she thought, in another time. Here I swore to my beloved that I would wait for him-if it took a hundred lifetimes...Oh, my love, my love, I am still waiting...

It is a time of new beginning in a new world, a world far different from any you have ever known. It is dark and twisted, a savage place, a jungle!...I see a tomb-no. It is a house...a strange white manor like none your eyes have ever beheld. There is a man-

Hopefully this will be the book to end the slump. Books have been flying the last two days.