secrets and a sense of guilt.
But when Luca had been touching her last night—watching her, making her respond to his touch—her sense of freedom had felt very flimsy. Because he’d also been touching a part of her that she hadn’t yet given room to really breathe. Her emotions. Her yearning for what her sister had: a life and happiness.
And the fact that Luca had brought that to the surface made her nervous and angry. All she was to him was a conquest. A woman he believed had betrayed him. A woman he wanted to slake his desire with.
A woman he didn’t like, even if he ever conceded that she might be innocent.
She’d known that the night they’d met first. He’d had a gleam of disdain in his eyes that he’d barely concealed even as she saw the burn of desire.
And yet, damn him, since she’d walked into his office the other day it was as if everything was brighter, sharper. More intense. Bastard.
Serena crashed into Luca’s back before she’d even realised she’d been so preoccupied she hadn’t noticed he’d stopped. She sprang back, scowling, and then noticed that they were on a kind of bluff, overlooking a huge cleared part of the forest.
To be out from under the slightly oppressive canopy was heady for a moment. Ignoring Luca, Serena studied the view. She could see that far away in the distance the land had been eviscerated. Literally. Huge chunks cut out. No trees. And what looked like huge machines were moving back and forth, sun glinting off steel.
Forgetting that she hated Luca for a moment, because unexpected emotion surged at seeing the forest plundered like this, she asked, a little redundantly, ‘That’s the mine?’
Luca nodded, his face stern when she sneaked an illicit glance.
‘Yes, that’s my family’s legacy.’
And then he pointed to a dark smudge much closer.
‘That’s the Iruwaya tribe’s village there.’
Serena shaded her eyes until she could make out what looked like a collection of dusty huts and a clearing. Just then something else caught her eye: a road leading into the village and a bus trundling along merrily, with bags and crates hanging precariously from its roof along with a few live chickens.
It took a few seconds for the scene to compute and for Serena’s brain to make sense of it. Slowly she said, ‘The village isn’t isolated.’
‘I never said it was totally isolated.’
The coolness of Luca’s tone made Serena step back and look up at him, her blood rapidly rising again. ‘So why the hell have we been trekking through a rainforest to get to it?’ She added, before he could answer, ‘You never said anything about it being optional.’
Luca crossed his arms. ‘I didn’t offer an option.’
‘My God,’ Serena breathed. ‘You really did do this in a bid to scare me off... I mean, I know you did, but I stupidly thought...’
She trailed off and backed away as the full significance sank in. Her stupid feeling of triumph for putting up the tent last night without help mocked her now. She’d known Luca hated her, that he wanted to punish her...but she hadn’t believed for a second that there had been any other way of getting to this village.
All this time he must have been 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