Crime of Passion

Rafael leant down and extracted a devastatingly erotic kiss that turned her bones to liquid honey. 'Did you think I would ask you to?'

She linked her arms round his brown neck, weak with longing. Golden eyes merged with violet in the smouldering silence.

'Te quiero, enamorada,' he muttered feverishly, and drew her close. For a long time afterwards there was nothing but the heated rise of their breathing and her long, gasping sighs of pleasure. Satiated, they lay wrapped tightly together in an intimate tangle of limbs.

'I'm glad you didn't have to get rid of the jet. This bed is very convenient,' Georgie sighed.

Rafael tautened. 'I have a confession to make.'

'Anything bar murder, you're forgiven,' Georgie mused dizzily, running a worshipping hand over his smooth golden back.

'I lied about the financial reverses...'

'You lied?' Forcing him back from her, Georgie sat up and surveyed him in horror and bewilderment. 'But how could you have been lying? I saw a bank statement lying on the floor that night, and it must have belonged to you, and the account was in the red to the tune of six figures.'

'A bank statement?' Rafael frowned. 'In the red... Ah, those statements I was studying that night belonged to a bankrupt company I was thinking of buying.'

'Really?' Feeling decidedly foolish, Georgie went very pink and dropped that angle. 'You were saying that you lied to me, which I consider quite unforgivable!'

Rafael started talking fast. 'But you

wanned to me as never before when you thought I was having business problems,' he protested.

'You rat, you utter rat!' Georgie screeched at him, reflecting on her painful enactment of the stand-by-your-man routine.

'Think of our children... you would not want them to be poor, surely?' .Rafael reasoned in desperation.

'You must have been laughing your socks off at me that night!'

'No, for the first time I was encouraged to hope that

I could win you back,' Rafael asserted. 'So I thought

maybe I would be a loser for a little while and see what

happened '

'You played on my sympathy, you sneaky, conniving rat,' Georgie condemned afresh. 'What was all that guff about you having nothing left?'

'Without your love, I had nothing. That was why I was drowning my sorrows and feeling sorry for myself. You had told me you wanted me only for the life I could give you, and that cut deep...'

'You deserved it—all that posturing about love being messy and complicating things. That was your pride talking.'

'Si..:

'Without your love, I had nothing.' And he really meant it. 'Maybe I can forgive you this once,' she sniffed, not surrendering too easily and keeping her distance. 'On the other hand, I could walk out...'

'We are sixty thousand feet above the ground.' As he made the reminder his striking features were slashed with helpless amusement. 'Not that I would expect a small consideration like that to stop you!'

'If you don't stop laughing at me, you're ' She

was silenced as he jerked her back down on top of him and claimed her mouth hungrily again.

'Oh, yes...' she moaned several minutes later, the previous conversation having vanished from her mind. 'Thank God the alligator didn't get me,' she murmured, with heartfelt gratitude that she had been spared for a future of such unsurpassed ecstasy.

'Clearly he wasn't half as sneaky and conniving as me...' Rafael drawled, with rich self-satisfaction.