The rain was majestic, awesome. Deafening. But Serena was only aware of her hand in Luca’s. He was leading them through the trees, off the path to a small clearing. The ground was slightly higher here. He let her go and she saw him unrolling a tarpaulin. Catching on quickly, she took one end and tied it off to a nearby sapling while Luca did the same on the other side, creating a shelter a few feet off the ground.
He laid out another piece of tarpaulin under the one they’d tied off and shouted over the roar of the rain, ‘Get underneath!’
Serena slipped off her pack and did so. Luca joined her seconds later. They were drenched. Steam was rising off their clothes. But they were out of the worst of the downpour. Serena was still taken aback at how quickly it had come down.
They sat like that, their breaths evening out, for long minutes. Eventually she asked, ‘How long will it last?’
Luca craned his neck to look out, his arms around his knees. He shrugged one wide shoulder. ‘Could be minutes—could be hours. Either way, we’ll have to camp out again tonight. The village is only a couple of hours away, but it’ll be getting dark soon—too risky.’
At the thought of another night in the tent with Luca, flutters gripped Serena’s abdomen. He was pulling something out of a pocket and handed her another protein bar. Serena reached for it with her palm facing up, but before she could take it Luca had grabbed her wrist and was frowning.
She was distracted by his touch for a moment—all she felt was heat—and then he was saying, ‘What are those marks? Did you get them here?’
He was inspecting her palm and pulling her other hand towards him to look at that, too. Far too belatedly Serena panicked, and tried to pull them back, but he wouldn’t let her, clearly concerned that it had happened recently.
She saw what he saw: the tiny criss-cross of old, silvery scars that laced her palms.
As if coming to that realisation, he said, ‘They’re old.’ He looked at her, stern. ‘How old?’
Serena tried to jerk her hands away but he held them fast. Her breath was choppy now, with a surge of emotion. And with anger that he was quizzing her as if she’d done something wrong.
She said reluctantly, ‘They’re twenty-two years old.’
Luca looked at her, turning towards her. ‘Deus, what are they?’
Serena was caught by his eyes. They blazed into hers, seeking out some kind of truth and justice—which she was coming to realise was integral to this man’s nature. It made him see the world in black and white, good and bad. And she was firmly in the bad category as far as he was concerned.
But just for once, Serena didn’t want to be. She felt tired. Her throat ached with repressed emotions, with all the horrific images she held within her head, known only to her and her father. And he’d done his best to eradicate them.
A very weak and rogue part of her wanted to tell Luca the truth—much like last night—in some bid to make him see that perhaps things weren’t so black and white. And even though an inner voice told her to protect herself from his derision, she heard the words spill out.
‘They’re the marks of a bamboo switch. My father favoured physical punishment.’
Luca’s hands tightened around hers and she held back a wince. His voice was low. ‘How old were you?’
Serena swallowed. ‘Five—nearly six.’
‘What the hell....?’
Luca’s eyes burned so fiercely for a moment that Serena quivered inwardly. She took advantage of the moment to pull her hands back, clasping them together, hiding the permanent stain of her father’s vindictiveness.
Serena could understand Luca’s shock. Her therapist had been shocked when she’d told her.
She shrugged. ‘He was a violent man. If I stepped out of line, or if Siena misbehaved, I’d be punished.’
‘You were a child.’
Serena looked at Luca and felt acutely exposed, recalling just how her childhood had been so spectacularly snatched away from her, by far worse than a few scars on her palms.
She noticed something then, and seized on it weakly. ‘The rain—it’s stopped.’
Luca just looked at her for a long moment, as if he hadn’t ever seen her before. It made Serena nervous and jittery.
Eventually he said, ‘We’ll make camp here. Let’s set it up.’
Serena scrambled inelegantly out from under their makeshift shelter. The jungle around them was steaming from the onslaught of precipitation. It was unbearably humid...and uncomfortably sultry.
As she watched, Luca uncoiled himself, and for a moment Serena was mesmerised by his sheer masculine grace. He looked at her too quickly for her to look away.
He frowned. ‘What is it?’
Serena swallowed as heat climbed up her chest. She blurted out the first thing she could think of. ‘Thirsty—I’m just thirsty.’
Luca glanced around them and then strode to a nearby tree and tested the leaves. ‘Come here.’
Not sure what to expect, Serena walked over. Luca put a hand on her arm and it seemed to burn right through the material.
He manoeuvred her under the leaf and said, ‘Tip your head back—open your mouth.’
Serena looked at him and something dark lit his eyes, making her belly contract.
‘Come on. It won’t bite.’
So she did, and Luca tipped the leaf so that a cascade of water fell into her mouth, cold and more refreshing than anything she’d ever tasted in her life. She coughed slightly when it went down the wrong way, but couldn’t stop her mouth opening for more. The water trickled over her face, cooling the heat that had nothing to do with the humid temperature.
When there were only a few drops left, she straightened up again. Luca was watching her. They were close—close enough that all Serena would have to do would be to step forward and they’d be touching.
And then, as if reading her mind and rejecting her line of thought, Luca stepped back, letting her arm go. ‘We need to change into dry clothes.’
He walked away and Serena felt ridiculously exposed and shaky. What was wrong with her?
Luca was taking clothes out of his pack. He straightened up and his hands went to his shirt, undoing the buttons with long fingers. A sliver of dark muscled chest was revealed, the shadow of chest hair. And Serena was welded to the spot. She couldn’t breathe.
Finally sense returned. Her face hot with embarrassment, she hurried to her own bag and concentrated on digging out her own change of clothes. The last thing she needed was to let Luca Fonseca into the deepest recesses of her psyche. But, much to her irritation, she couldn’t forget the way he’d looked when he’d held her hands out for inspection, or the look in his eyes just now, when she fancied she’d seen something carnal in their depths, only for him to mock her for her fanciful imagination.
* * *
Luca was feeling more and more disorientated as he pulled on fresh clothes with rough hands. Deus. He’d almost backed Serena into the tree just now and covered her open mouth with his, jealous of the rainwater trickling between those plump lips.
And what about those scars on her hands? The silvery marks criss-crossing the delicate pale skin? He hadn’t been prepared for the surge of panic when he’d seen them—afraid she’d been marked