Crime of Passion

'Si... it is what I want,' Rafael said softly.

'But not what I want!' Georgie suddenly gasped, the ability to think returning by degrees in dangerous little warning spurts.

'All you want is me.' Rafael evaded her attempt to drag herself free of his intimate hold and flattened her back to the mattress with his vastly superior strength. He subjected her to a wolfish appraisal, golden hawk eyes scanning her shocked and confused face with a dev-astatingly cruel amusement. 'Your one virtue. All you ever wanted was me from the very first moment. It wasn't the limo, it wasn't the accent and it wasn't any schoolgirl fantasy either,' he asserted. 'It was far more basic. An intense sexual desire to possess and be possessed.'

'No.' Georgie sucked in air and shook her head back and forth in urgent negative.

His thumb pried apart her lips, brushed against her teeth. 'And you can't control it... unnerving, isn't it?

The tip of her tongue brushed of its own volition against his thumb and then withdrew sharply as he laughed. 'Is it?' she whispered.

'You tell me... Here, now, you're mine to do with exactly as I please.' To illustrate that raw assurance, Rafael bent his head and circled a distended pink nipple with his tongue and then his teeth, and the entire con­versation was, for Georgie, plunged into some dark limbo as her swollen sensitive flesh screamed with sensation and craved more.

He took her mouth with carnal expertise, slowly, tormentingly, denying her the greater force that her every skin-cell demanded, until her hands rose and speared into his hair and she held him to her, quivering with unabated need, surrendering to the incredibly powerful urges of her own body.

His fingers roamed over her flat, taut stomach and into the damp tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs and suddenly she couldn't be still any more, suddenly she was burning alive. He explored the moist tender flesh with a knowing eroticism that made her breath sob in her throat. Nothing could have prepared her for the in­tensity of the pleasure or the electrifying throb of primal excitement making her hips rise in supplication. There was an ache now, an intolerable ache, building down deep inside her.

Cristo... you're so tight.'

She heard him groan, but no words could connect now. Her brain had shut down. Every response she gave was instinctive and out of control. She writhed as he cupped her hips and came down on her, was suddenly stilled by forceful hands, and then she felt him, the hot thrusting hardness of his masculinity alien against her. Her eyes flew wide with an intuitive fear of the unknown and she met the pagan stamp of intense desire on his dark fea­tures above hers. Another kind of ache stirred inside her, tugging violently at her heartstrings, making her lie back in helpless submission, trembling with the force of her own need.

'Dios... you feel like a virgin.'

His hand pushed her thighs wider, higher, drawing her up to receive him. He entered her with one sure thrust and the piercing pain of his intrusion took her com­pletely by surprise.

'Georgie...' Golden eyes abruptly swept hers, a frown of incomprehension drawing his arrow-straight ebony brows together. 'No...imposible,' he groaned, black lashes dropping low on his damp, driven features as he moved again in an instinctive surge to deepen his possession.

Her teeth sank stoically into the soft underside of her lower lip, for beyond the pain was the most extra­ordinary pleasure at the feel of him inside her. Intimate beyond belief. Heat flooded her in a blinding wave. She could feel the force of the control he was exerting as he thrust slowly, carefully into the very heart of her. His breathing was ragged, his sweat-slicked body sliding against her supersensitive flesh, and she threw her head back, moaning his name as the pressure began to build again unbearably.

Every new sensation was torturously intense. Her heart slammed madly against her ribcage as he began to drive into her faster, harder, with shredding control and fierce, masculine domination. The pleasure took her over, rising to a shattering crescendo that plunged her entire body into quivering, indescribable ecstasy. Above her, she felt him reach the same plateau and shudder and groan as he sank deep into her one last time.

Afterwards she was in a state of prolonged shock, still lost in the intensity of extraordinary physical response.

He lay in the circle of her arms and she liked that so much, the weight of him, the feel of him, the so familiar sceiit of him that when he shifted away she felt disturb­ingly bereft as he flopped down on the pillows beside her in the thrumming silence. Her fingers curled into fists by her sides until she conquered the terrible urge to reach back for him, for that closeness her every sense craved.

Was she crazy? a little voice asked. They were not lovers in any sense of the word. There was no re­lationship, no tenderness, no love. Suddenly she felt empty and cold. But everyone had the right to sin at least once in a lifetime, didn't they? And Rafael was her sin. Just this one time and never again. They had made love—no, they had had sex, she adjusted, her troubled face tightening as she fought off a dismaying sense of vulnerability. He had-not used her any more than she had used him, she told herself fiercely. She had always wanted Rafael Rodriguez Berganza...

'I'll buy you an apartment in Paris,' Rafael mur­mured smoothly into the silence. "There will be times you will be able to travel with me... if you can be dis­creet, but you will never be able to come here again and you will have to break off your correspondence with my sister. You will live like a princess. I will give you every­thing but my name.'

It was like having a knife driven into her heart. Her stomach twisted sickly. He was so unemotional. Was this what she had waited for all these years? An invitation to be his mistress? A shudder of revulsion assailed her. So he didn't use you any more than you used him? Who are you kidding, Georgie? You are not up to this, you are way out of your depth.

'Say something... anything.' Rafael leant over her without warning and skimmed a surprisingly unsteady hand over the damp tendrils of hair clinging to her brow.

The nagging ache between her thighs felt like the greatest act of treachery she could ever have committed against herself. She clashed one fleeting tim

e with bril­liant dark eyes scanning her with probing intent, and hurriedly looked away again, hating herself.

lMadre de Dios!' The interruption to her frantic

thoughts of shame and self-reproach was explosive.

'Georgie ?'

'I need a bath,' she mumbled, not listening, still glued to the edge of the bed and struggling for the act of courage it was going to take to walk across the room naked as a jaybird. But escape was definitely a necessity.

A hand like an iron vice closed round her forearm and turned her back abruptly to face him. Rafael stared at her with fierce demand in his eyes. His rigid facial cast and the pallor below his naturally golden skin betrayed his state of shock.

'What's wrong?' she questioned.

'Tell me that doesn't mean what I think it does...' Rafael urged in a ragged undertone.

Her brow furrowed, Georgie followed the direction of his gaze and saw the bloodstain on the sheet. She was appalled. She wanted to cover it again. But it was too late. He had seen it. She just couldn't believe that her body could have let her down like that. A keen athlete from an early age, it had never occurred to her that there could possibly be any physical evidence of her lost innocence.

'You were untouched,' Rafael breathed, driving a set of long brown fingers roughly through his tousled hair.

'Don't be ridiculous!' Georgie scoffed, lifting a pillow to hug.

'Look at me.'

Her sultry mouth set in a positively vicious line of mutiny. His shaken voice told her he was on the edge of extinction by severe shock.

'You were a virgin '

'Nonsense! Now, if you don't mind, I'd like this bed back to myself.'

Abruptly, he snatched the pillow off her and flattened her back to the mattress with two very forceful and de­termined hands. 'I mind... I mind very much.'

Shattered, Georgie's eyes collided with tormented dark ones that devoured her every fleeting expression. 'Will you stop looking at me like that?'