Crime of Passion

'I was so much of a disappointment, you came to me and you begged me to take you back,' Rafael slotted in, hooded eyes showing a mere glimmer of gleaming gold below the inky black luxuriance of his lashes. 'You wept and you pleaded and you lied...'

Georgie turned white, stared down into her untouched glass, slaughtered utterly by the reminder of her lowest hour. 'And it was like taking the cure,' she whispered between clenched teeth. 'So much for love. It died there and then and I'm happy to tell you that I've never fancied myself in love since.'

'Love has nothing to do with what is between us.'

Her knuckles showed white as she tightened her grip on her glass. 'There is nothing between us.'

'Look at me and tell me that—show the courage of your conviction,' Rafael derided.

Georgie felt as though she was being torn apart. Just minutes earlier she had been playing games with him but that false bravado had now deserted her. She felt cor­nered, intimidated, suddenly knew that she had been very naive indeed to allow him to bring her to the estancia, even more naive to imagine that he would play the polite host to her role of guest.

'I said... look at me.'

The command, given by a male accustomed to ab­solute authority, sent her tension climbing to meteoric heights. A lean hand removed the glass from her con-vulsed grip. Powerful fingers closed round her forearm, literally forcing her upright, and instantly she attempted to pull away.

'Stop it,' Rafael commanded rawly, scanning her drawn face with scorchingly angry dark eyes. 'Do you think I enjoy wanting you? Do you think I am proud of the desire you arouse in me? But this time I will not walk away. Why should I? Why shouldn't I take what I want? You owe me...'

Georgie was trembling, shaken by the force of anger she had unleashed. 'I owe you nothing, not even the time of day!'

'But you'll still give me everything,' he assured her.

'Never!' Georgie vowed. 'And stop threatening me!'

'Do you feel threatened when I make love to you?' With a husky sound of very male amusement, Rafael drew her closer and ran an insolently expert hand down over the full curve of her breasts and she shuddered helplessly.

'Don't touch me!' On the edge of panic, Georgie sought to break free of his hold as a blunt forefinger circled the erect bud of a nipple, visibly thrusting through the thin fabric of her dress. A quivering, hateful ex­citement leapt into being inside her but she fought it to the last ditch.

'Do all your lovers turn you on this hard and this fast?' Rafael lowered his dark head and allowed the tip of his tongue to slide erotically between her lips, just once, in a darting foray that sent heat coursing through her in a debilitating wave.

'Every one of them!' she slammed back in a breathless rush.

'But I'll be the one you remember long after I'm gone,' Rafael completed with predatory assurance, quite un­touched by her attempt to repel him, a strong hand splaying across her hips to jerk her into even closer contact, and she stopped breathing altogether as he moved fluidly against her, bringing her into unashamed contact with the hard thrust of his arousal.

Her treacherous body was on fire and she closed her eyes, struggling to think, struggling not to react. 'No,' she whispered shakily.

He lifted her with ease and one of her shoes fell off. She opened startled eyes a split-second before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers. She stopped thinking, she started simply feeling. The effect was that im­mediate. Her hands bit into his broad shoulders as she strained against the hard heat of his muscular length. Her fingers drifted into his hair and she was lost, con­trolled by an intolerable need that sent the blood pounding at an insane rate through her veins. Slowly, very slowly, he slid her down the length of his body on to her feet again and lifted his head.

'You go to pieces when I touch you. I like that... I love that,' Rafael muttered with a ragged groan of sat­isfaction. 'It gives me an incredible sexual high no other woman has ever matched. I saw you lying asleep in that cell and every decent thought, every piece of self-restraint fled instantaneously. I'd have killed to get you out of there and into my bed.'

Finding herself lop-sided, minus one shoe, Georgie crouched down in a dazed and trembling search to locate the missing item. That she couldn't think straight didn't help. But then, Rafael was proving a whole lot harder to handle than she could ever have imagined. She didn't know Rafael as a lover. In that field, she didn't know Rafael at all. And in this mood, Rafael was a revelation, a distinctly intimidating revelation. Nothing she had read, nothing she had ever heard, could save her from feeling gruesomely out of her own limited depth.

'What are you doing?' Rafael enquired huskily.

He pressed her back on a nearby sofa, produced her shoe and proceeded to slide it back on, but he didn't get back up again. He smoothed his lean hands slowly up over her slender calves to her knees, watching her in­tently from beneath indolently lowered black lashes that a woman would have killed to possess.

'Dinner,' Georgie said jerkily, every muscle tightening in stricken response.

'Dinner is served when I ring,' Rafael leant forward and brushed his mouth very softly across hers, his breath fanning her cheek as long fingers pushed her knees gently apart. 'Dios mio..." he murmured softly, letting his tongue probe smoothly between her lips and making her shake like leaf in a high wind, a tiny whisper of shaken protest escaping her throat. 'Food to die for, clothes to die for... your expression. This has to be sex to die for.'

'No,' she mumbled, but she opened her mouth for his exploration, shivering as the intrusion became less playful.

'Why are you so tense?' Caressing fingers slid below the hem of her dress, stroking along the tender skin of her inner thigh, forcing a stifled gasp to erupt from her.

T-Tense?'

'Surely it has not been that long since a man made love to you?'

Her hands were in his hair, and she didn't honestly know how they had got there. One half of her was petrified, the other half of her was mesmerised by what he was doing to her. 'Forever.' Her voice was a thin thread of barely recognisable sound.

She clashed with devouring golden eyes, drowned as though time had stopped, leaving her in limbo. Never in the twenty-three years of her existence had she ex­perienced anything even approaching what she was feeling now. He was barely touching her and her entire body was in meltdown. The intensity of her own arousal devastated her every attempt to regain her hold on a situation which had moved with incredible rapidity out of her control.

'Por Dios... I want you so badly it hurts,' he mut­tered fiercely, raking a single fingertip across the tautly stretched scrap of lace covering the very heart of her, jolting every bone in her body with an intolerable rush of erotic sensation.

Somebody banged on the door. In fact, somebody banged on the door so loudly that Georgie very nearly hit the ceiling in shock. Far less susceptible to the dis­turbance, Rafael dragged shimmering golden eyes from her and sprang fluidly upright. Georgie swallowed hard and rearranged her hemline with trembling hands.

'We will eat,' Rafael murmured flatly.

Hectically flushed, and barely able to stand on legs that were wobbling with shock, Georgie espied Teresa in the doorway and, if possible, felt her blush spread down to encompass every other part of her exposed body. A dark, deep hole to hide in would have been extra­ordinarily welcome. Saved in the very nick of time by the housekeeper, she thought, on the quivering edge of hysteria.

She made it into the palatial dining-room and down onto a chair. Inside her head pounded a relentless re­frain. How could you be so stupid... how could you be so weak? What was she, some sort of brainless puppet? Was she so over-sexed that she couldn't say no like any other decent woman? What did it say about her that after all the insults, all the cruelty, she had still allowed Rafael to touch her?

Rafael said something sharp in Spanish, ice dripping off every syllable. Teresa retreated at speed.

'You don't seem to get on very well with your housekeeper.'

&

nbsp; 'She does not approve of your presence here. But what I do in my own home is entirely my affair.' Rafael shook out a white linen napkin with an air of magnificent un­concern. 'Teresa does not know whether to save you or condemn you. The taxing question of whether you are a virtuous woman being wickedly seduced, or a shameless hussy, will no doubt keep her awake all night. But by tomorrow the truth will out. She will decide that you are beyond saving and that I am no better and no worse than any other man in giving way to temptation. Then peace will be restored to my household!'