'Come on, Dona Consuelo,' he said. 'Let's see you move. You look as if you've got a decent pair of legs on you.'

She was shocked to hear him use her name. Terror slashed through her insides, tugging something strangely exciting behind it. Muscles quivered in the backs of her thighs. Disparate thoughts barged into each other in her mind. Why the hell had she put herself in such a position? She wondered how rough his hands would be. He looked strong-potentially violent.

The sheer perversity of these thoughts jolted her back to the reality. She had to get away from him. She veered off down a side street, walking as fast as her kitten heels would permit on the cobbles. He was behind her, steel tips leisurely clicking.

'Fucking hell, Dona Consuelo, I only asked you for a dance,' he shouted after her, a mocking inflexion on her title. 'Now you're leading me astray down this dark alley. For God's sake, have some self-respect, woman. Don't go showing your eagerness so early on. We've barely met, we haven't even danced.'

Consuelo kept going, breathing fast. All she had to do was get to the end of the street, turn left and she'd be at the gates of the old city and there would be traffic and people…a taxi back to her real life at home in Santa Clara. An alley appeared on her left, she saw the lights of the main road through the buildings leaning into each other. She darted down it. Shit, the cobbles were wet and all over the place. It was too dark and her heels were slipping. She wanted to scream when his hand finally landed on her shoulder, but it was like in those dreams where the need to yell the neighbourhood awake produced only a strangled whimper. He pushed her towards the wall, whose whitewash hung off in brittle flakes, and crackled as her cheek made contact. Her heart thundered in her chest.