alternating between laughing his head off at her and cursing her for being so determined to stick it out. And then amusing himself by demonstrating how badly she wanted him.
Luca sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Serena, this is how I’d planned to come to the village, but I’ll admit that I thought you would have given up and gone home long before now.’
His words fell on deaf ears. Serena felt exposed, humiliated. She shook her head. ‘You’re a bastard, Luca Fonseca.’
Terrified of the emotion rising in her chest, she turned and blindly walked away, not taking care to look where she was going.
She’d landed on her hands and knees, the breath knocked out of her, before she realised she’d tripped over something. It also took a moment for her to register that the black ground under her hands was moving.
She sprang back with a small scared yelp just as Luca reached her and hauled her up, turning her to face him.
‘Are you okay?’
Still angry with him, Serena broke free. And then she registered a stinging sensation on her arm, and on her thigh. She looked down stupidly, to see her trousers ripped apart from her fall, and vaguely heard Luca curse out loud.
He was pulling her away from where she’d tripped and ripping off her shirt, but Serena was still trying to figure out what had happened—and that was when the pain hit in two places: her arm and her leg.
She cried out in surprise at the shock of how excruciating it was.
Luca was asking urgently, ‘Where is it? Where’s the pain?’
Struggling, because it was more intense than anything she’d ever experienced, Serena got out thickly, ‘My arm...my leg.’
She was barely aware of Luca inspecting her arm, her hands, and then undoing her trousers to pull them down roughly, inspecting her thigh where it was burning. He was brushing something off her and cursing again.
She struggled to recall what she’d seen. Ants. They’d just been ants. It wasn’t a snake or a spider.
Luca was doing a thorough inspection of both legs and then moving back up to her arms. In spite of the pain she struggled to get out, ‘I’m fine—it’s nothing, really.’
But she was feeling nauseous now, with a white-hot sensation blooming outwards from both limbs. She was also starting to shake. Luca pulled her trousers back up. She wasn’t even registering embarrassment that he’d all but stripped her.
She tried to take a step, but the pain when she moved almost blinded her. And suddenly she was being lifted into the air against a hard surface. She wanted to tell Luca to put her down but she couldn’t seem to formulate the words.
And then the pain took over. There was a sense of time being suspended, loud voices. And then it all went black.
* * *
‘Serena?’
The voice penetrated the thick warm blanket of darkness that surrounded her. And there was something about the voice that irritated her. She tried to burrow away from it.
‘Serena.’
‘What?’ She struggled to open her eyes and winced at the light. Her surroundings registered slowly. A rudimentary hut of some kind. She was lying down on something deliciously soft. And one other thing registered: mercifully...the awful, excruciating pain was gone.
‘Welcome back.’
That voice. Deep and infinitely memorable. And not in a good way.
It all came back.
She turned her head to see Luca looking at her with a small smile on his face. A smile. He was sitting down near the bed she lay on.
She croaked out, ‘What happened?’
His smile faded, and it must have been a trick of the light but she could have sworn he paled slightly. ‘You got stung. Badly.’
Serena recalled the ground moving under her hands and shuddered delicately. ‘But they were just ants. How could ants do that?’
Luca’s mouth twisted. ‘They were bullet ants.’
Serena frowned. ‘Should that mean anything to me?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really, but they deliver a sting that is widely believed to be the most painful on record of any biting insect—like the pain of a bullet. I’ve been bitten once or twice; I know exactly what it’s like.’
Serena felt embarrassed. ‘But I passed out like some kind of wimp.’
Luca had a funny look on his face.
‘The fact that you were semi-conscious till we reached the village and kept fighting to walk was a testament to your obviously high pain threshold.’
She lifted her arm and looked at it. There was only a very faint redness where she’d been bitten. All that pain and not even a scratch left behind? She almost felt cheated. And then she thought of what he’d said and her arm dropped.
‘Wait a second—you carried me all the way here?’
He nodded. There was a scuffling sound from nearby and thankfully Luca’s intense focus moved off her. She looked past him to see some small curious faces peeping around the door. He said something to them and they disappeared, giggling and chattering.
Luca turned back. ‘They’re fascinated by the golden-haired gringa who arrived unconscious into their village a few hours ago.’
Serena was very disorientated by this far less antagonistic Luca. Feeling self-conscious, she struggled to sit up, moving back the covers on the bed.
But Luca rapped out, ‘Stay there! You’re weak and dehydrated. You’re not going anywhere today, or this evening. The women have prepared some food and you need to drink lots of water.’
Luca stood up, and his sheer size made Serena feel dizzy enough to lie down again. As if by magic some smiling women appeared in the doorway, holding various things. Luca ushered them in and said to Serena over their heads, ‘I have to go to the mines. I’ll be back later. You’ll be looked after.’
Weakly, Serena protested, ‘But I’m supposed to be taking notes...’
Something flashed in Luca’s eyes but he just said, ‘Don’t worry about that. There’ll be time tomorrow, before we have to leave.’
‘Before we have to leave.’ She felt a lurch in her belly and an awful betraying tingle of anticipation as to what might happen once they did leave this place.
* * *
The following morning, early, Luca was trying not to keep staring at Serena, who sat at the end of a long table in the communal eating hut. She was wearing a traditional smock dress, presumably given to her by one of the women to replace her own clothes, and the simple design might have been haute couture, the way she wore it with such effortless grace.
A
