A chill seeped into her already trembling limbs. Each panicked breath spun her dark world and took her stomach along for the ride. She needed air. She needed light. She needed Rafe.
A cool drop of water brushed across her forehead right around the time she registered the soft coo of a voice. One painful centimeter at a time, Penny’s eyes opened. It took a few blinks and a minute or two for the blurry images surrounding her to come into focus. And when they did, she had no clue as to where she was.
Sheets of roughly cut timber formed four walls, and a thatched roof, inlaid with remnants of jungle brush, allowed for a few scarce rays of sunlight to slip through the gaps. A rotund woman dressed in dingy Western-style clothes stood in front of an open-flame fire pit, her back turned.
A soft giggle redirected Penny’s gaze to the source of the cool water and soft touch. No older than three, a curly-haired little girl holding a damp rag excitedly turned to the woman, the words they exchanged sounding similar to Spanish.
“Go, child.” The woman ushered the little girl from the hut. “Fetch him.”
Penny tried forcing her throat to work. “Where am—”
“Shh,” the older woman hushed, brushing the cool rag over her brow. “Sleep.”
She must’ve obeyed, because it felt like only a second had passed when her eyes flew open at the sound of a loud crash. Rafe’s broad shoulders filled the width of the doorway, his sapphire gaze locked on hers. He’d shed the clothes from the jungle but looked no less lethal in a basic dark shirt and frayed cargo pants. The circles beneath his eyes made him look haggard and tired, but he was still the best thing she’d seen in forever.
She didn’t register the soft sob as hers until in three long strides, Rafe was by her side, palming her face between his hands and drying her tears with his thumbs.
“What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” Concern weighted down his every word.
Penny cleared her throat and winced from the trail of fire that zipped down her leg. “I’m okay.”
And she was—now that he was here.
Rafe’s shoulders dropped their stiffness as he slowly scanned every inch of her face. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, making her eyes open again. A healthy dose of worried relief was etched in every line of his face. “Okay is right up there with fine. Jesus Christ, Red. You scared me shitless.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You sure you’re feeling—”
“Fine?” Penny teased weakly. Rafe didn’t smile. He looked a second away from giving her a gentle throttle with his bare hands. “I’m a little headachy and a whole lot sore, but I’ve felt worse when I had the flu.”
“Good. Because I’d hate to spank your ass if you were still feeling under the weather.” Rafe scrubbed his face and released a heavy sigh. “This has officially been the longest three days of my fucking life. I think I aged ten years.”
Engrossed by the way his thumb brushed over the curve of her chin, it took her a moment to register his words. “Three days?”
Rafe leaned until their faces were less than an inch apart, giving her an up-close view of the exhaustion lurking in his eyes. “Three. Agonizing. Days. And I think we both know how this could’ve been avoided. You should’ve told me you were hurt.”
“At first there wasn’t any time, and then I cleaned it as best as I could and even used the antibiotic ointment from the bug-out bag. I didn’t think it was anything serious. It was just a scratch.”
“In the jungle, there’s no such thing as just a scratch. We were lucky Rosita’s the medicine woman of the village. She took one look at your leg and sent the men back into the jungle for supplies.”
Both she and Rafe watched soberly as Rosita removed a layer of green leaf bandages from her upper thigh. Red and raw, the skin around the gash hurt like hell but looked marginally better to her own untrained eyes. Penny turned her attention to Rafe, his silence unnerving her more than the fierce tightening of his jaw.
He watched the older woman slather the wound with an ointment that stank more than an overused gym sock and rewrapped it with a fresh batch of leaves. When Rosita finished, she gave them both a smile and left them with an “I’ll leave you alone with your wife.”
It took a moment for Penny to translate the words. At her look of confusion, Rafe explained, “They made the assumption from the way they found us.”
“What do you mean the way they found us?”
“Both half-naked and just about to—”
“Oh. My. God.” A rush of memories made her cheeks go crimson.
Rafe chuckled, not looking the least bit flustered. “Yeah, you may have said that a few times already.”