“Never say never, Princess.”
“Um, no, I won’t. I’m with Nate…sorta.” I wasn’t exactly sure what my status was with Nathaniel Slater.
“You’re fucking Nate because I allowed it—he belongs to me, Penelope. You want me, sweetheart, I’m just not so sure that I’m interested yet.”
I stopped walking—my feet refused to move as I absorbed his words. “You arrogant prick,” I hissed at his back.
“Watch out for snakes, Princess,” he shot back over his shoulder, his pace never slowing.
I stood still as the distance between us grew. No one had ever spoken to me that way—and yet, deep down I knew he was right. I wanted him more than I wanted air.
My resolve was quickly tested when an unnaturally-neon green lizard no bigger than my hand scurried across my stubborn foot. “Shit!”
Rex never looked back. “Nate would have been my knight in shining armor if he were here!” I screamed at his back before breaking into a run to catch up with him.
When I finally made it to within feet of him, he stopped and turned. Huffing and puffing, my hands fell to my thighs as I struggled for air. I was in decent shape, but between the dehydration and the lack of food, I was hurting.
He ducked down to look me straight in the eye. “You don’t need a knight, Penny, or any man to save you. What you need is a good spanking—and then you need to grow the fuck up and start acting like the badass woman that you are. I have work to do, and once again, you’re a monkey wrench in my life. Danger or not, I’m shipping you back to the States the second we get back to the compound—are we clear?”
I nodded, sniffling and fighting back the tears that threatened to fall. As twisted as it may sound, Rex’s words were the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Not that I was pretty, not that I knew where the best parties were, and not that I gave good head. But, a man like him could see something badass in me. I was blown away—and I didn’t want to go home.
“I-I’m sorry,” I blubbered as he turned to leave me behind.
I caught up—he slowed down to cut me a little slack.
After a few more minutes of harsh silence, I could see the small band of men milling around a fallen log at the entrance to a dense section of jungle.
The younger guy, Joe, waved to Rex. “Here? Or go in further?” he shouted to Rex across the distance.
Rex silently gave the man a thumbs up gesture as we approached.
“Okay, guys, let’s catch some lunch. We don’t catch anything, you don’t eat. In that section over there,” he pointed, “spread out. You need to find trails where animals are running through these low vines. Your backpacks have snare wire—I’m going to quickly give you a demo, then it’s all you. Set as many snares as you can, then grab your knife and try to stab something. Don’t forget to load up on that DEET insect junk before you start. And,” he warned, looking directly at me, “I want absolute silence during the hunt.”
After his demonstration to the group on how to set a snare, as well as the proper way to humanely dispose of the catch, he set the group loose to hunt.
With the men off hunting, he turned his attention to me. “Well, sis, I don’t have an extra kit for you, but I have an extra knife you can use. The snare thing is useless anyway—it would take multiple snares for days to nab enough meat to make it worth the energy expenditure. I just want them to learn various ways of obtaining food.” I stood speechless as he handed me a large knife in a leather scabbard. “You’re joking—I’m not going to kill anything! I can’t. Rex, please.”
“Of course you can. That rainforest,” he pointed his own knife toward the overgrown jungle, “is so full of food only an idiot would starve here. Surviving off the land in Colombia is child’s play. Go stab something, and because you look so hot in those snug jeans, I’ll be a gentleman and show you how to clean it.”
Without another word, he walked into the lush jungle and left me standing there alone—alone and freaked out.
I sat in the grass for half an hour as my stomach howled. His words rang out in my head: “You need to grow the fuck up and start acting like the badass woman that you are.” He was right—I’d been floundering for years. My mother’s long, grueling illness had leveled me. After college, I did nothing but shop during the day and cruise exclusive clubs at night collecting men. Most of them, all of them, looked like Nate. Rich, pretty, and coveted by the less-connected, less-spoiled women who, unlike me, were able to maintain a size two. A man like Rex would never be attracted to the shallow, trivial Penelope Sedgewick that lived in a Las Vegas casino penthouse. But, I knew damn well he was attracted to the captured Penny who was in Colombia. I liked myself here a lot more than I did at home, I decided, as I stood up and rubbed the insect repellent into my skin.
With knife in hand and head held high, I ventured into the moist jungle.
Rex was right—the place was teeming with life. Hunting would never be my thing, but I could see the value of being able to survive if I had to. My mind raced through the list of small mammals that Rex instructed the group to be on the lookout for—I mentally kicked myself for not paying better attention to his lesson.
It took me an hour to happen upon what resembled a large rat sitting in the heavy foliage under a canopy of trees. With the quietest footsteps I could manage, I crept up behind it, and in a flash stabbed it with my knife. Well, tried to stab it, anyway. The minute my arm lunged toward it, the tiny creature was gone. My knife sunk into the marshy earth as my body crashed into the muddy jungle floor.
Before I could think, a massive, fat snake fell from above and landed several feet in front of me. I was frozen in place, the snake and I in a catatonic stand-off. My worst nightmare sat there, its beady eyes staring into mine. A voice began to scream, to howl—a voice I recognized from my out-of-body state as my own. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed—the snake never moving.
The demon was brown with marbled markings, his pink forked tongue occasionally darting out at me like a threat. I was sure he was the devil incarnate, there to drag me to hell. The snake was bigger around than my thigh and longer than I was tall. I continued to howl, slowly trying to free myself from the quicksand-like mud I was immersed in. The villainous snake continued its evil stare.
Footsteps—I heard footsteps!
“Penny, I mean Joanie, very nice work. Now kill it.” Rex stood nearby, the small group of men babbling to each other in nervous excitement before Rex shushed them.
“Please, Rex, please—it’s going to kill me! I have a phobia—I’m terrified of snakes!”
“Nonsense. Sophocles said ‘To him who is in fear, everything rustles.’ That’s the case here, sweetheart. Get up and kill that fucking snake—we’re all hungry, and that plump bastard is a feast!”
“I can’t.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“Fight or run, Princess. Those are your options.”
I clawed my way out of the mud while they watched, Rex forbidding anyone to help me. As I stood, he walked toward me and handed me the machete they’d been using to fight their way through the jungle. I took the machete and approached the docile reptile.
“Will he bite me?” I asked calmly.
“No,” Rex answered confidently. “Chop off the head.”
My arm swung at the snake with every bit of power I possessed. I didn’t want to miss again and be bitten. In one stroke, the head of the snake was separated from its meaty body.
“Well done,” Rex praised, walking toward the snake. “Kick the head to the side.” I did as I was told numbly, my fear of the snake dissipating like a vapor.
Rex pulled me into him, the clay-like mud I was covered in soiling his clothes. “See? You are a badass,” he whispered in my ear. Suddenly my lips were on his, kissing him without thought of the group watching us. His tongue stroked against mine as someone whispered, “I thought that was his sister?”
“Step,” I heard Joe answer. “Barely related,” he tried to assure the shocked group.
Rex pulled back and looked at the gaping group of men. “Takes a woman to kill something worth skinning, I see. Well done, sis.” He patted me on the back and reached toward the snake. “I’ll cook ‘er up if you’ll share?” I nodded, still in shock at the last hour.
I chased after him as he carried the still moving corpse of the snake toward the clearing. The hungry men followed, and he yelled to one of them to start a fire and find a roasting stick.
“You knew I had it in me,” I mused as he peeled the skin from the fatty body of the serpent. The fire was going, and Rex cleaned the snake as I sat on a log across from him.
“Well, not really. I hoped, but that boa wasn’t going to hurt you, sweetheart. They bite a little, but aren’t venomous. A five-foot long boa constrictor wasn’t going to take you on, baby. You’re too big for her to eat, and on top of it,” he said as he bit his lip to pull at a particularly stubborn section of skin, “she was digesting a recent kill, that’s why she wasn’t moving.”
“It’s female?”