Crime Of Passion Read online

  'Then why when you woke up in that cell did you look at me with such hunger?' Rafael sliced back with in­dolent cool.

  'I did not look at you like that!' Georgie seethed in outrage.

  'And maybe you don't recall smirking and flexing those truly fabulous legs like offensive weapons on the drive back to La Paz either?”

  'I do not smirk... and if you can't keep your lousy libido under control, that is not my problem!' she prac­tically spat back.

  'You got exactly the effect you wanted. I was ignoring you and you didn't like it.'

  'How dare you say that?'

  'Four years ago, you were exactly the same. A natural-born tease '

  'You bastard!' Georgie was so outraged that she could hardly get the words out.

  'If I ended up with the wrong impression, ask yourself how much the act you put on for my benefit contrib­uted,' Rafael retorted drily. 'If any teenage daughter of mine tried to walk out of the door on a date in a plunge neckline with a pelmet-length skirt, suspenders and an ankle chain, I'd paddle her backside!'

  'I was trying to look sophisticated, you insensitive toad!' Her voice quivered with a mortification which merely increased her fury. 'I suppose you'd have found me more exciting if I'd been covered from throat to toe like a nun!'

  'You would certainly have been more presentable in public. And less confusing in private,' Rafael completed in a strained undertone, his starkly handsome features taut with an amalgam of emotions she was too angry to read.

  Georgie had worked herself up to such a pitch of un­governable fury that she was beyond speech. Snatching at her bag, throwing him a splintering purple glare of sheer loathing, she headed for the door.

  'Georgie...' Rafael murmured very softly to her rigid back, 'if you treat my aunt to a temperamental display, you will discover that my temper is far more dangerous than your own.'

  Her teeth actually ground together. The note of cool warning in that assurance nearly sent her into orbit.

  Without turning her head, she walked out of the room, across the hall and out of the house. Another minute, another single minute in contact with that hateful tongue of his and she would have been up for murder! Aflame with rage, she stalked across the beautiful gardens like a tigress on the prowl.

  He had no right to keep her here against her wishes! With flaring eyes, she shot a glance at the bare heli­copter landing-pad and stalked on. There had to be some other way off the estancia. Family and guests arrived by air. What about everybody else? On horseback... on foot...or on four wheels? Her attention fell on the four-wheel-drive parked over beside a couple of other toughly designed vehicles. Well, well, well, she thought, glancing around the vast deserted asphalt expanse surrounding her.

  Obviously there was somewhere to go out there on four wheels. Strolling over, Georgie glanced in and saw the keys in the ignition. It took her one split-second to make her decision. Her only other hope of escape was making a scene in the presence of Rafael's aunt, and she was very reluctant to subject that sweet little old lady to the shocking revelation that her nephew was virtually imprisoning his supposed novia on the estancia.

  Sliding into the driver's seat, Georgie wasted no more time. Rafael could send her clothes on after her, and if he didn't bother, escape would still be coming cheap at the price. She had her money and her passport and that was all she required. The engine fired and she checked the petrol-gauge. The tank was full and there was a bottle full of water lying on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She drove off down the asphalt lane with an almost crazed sense of release exploding inside her, her palms damply gripping the leather steering-wheel.

  The lane came to an end only a mile out, but the lie of the ground in all directions as far as the purple snowcapped Cordillera mountains in the distance was flat and would provide no problems for a four-wheel-drive. Even so, the lush grass of the savannah provided a less smooth surface than she had expected and, where it was broken up by scrubland, the going was even rougher, but Georgie was nothing if not persistent.

  The heat was intense, even with the air-conditioning running full blast. Perspiration ran down between her breasts and her lower body felt stifled in the jeans she was wearing. The very occasional tree was all that in­terrupted the monotony of the landscape. A sense of her own isolation began to creep over her. She stopped to moisten her dry mouth and only when she had tilted the bottle back did she discover that what she had gaily as­sumed to be water was, in fact, some form of tonsil-searing alcohol. Choking, tears springing to her eyes, she threw the bottle aside in disgust.

  So far, her assumption that there had to be some form of settlement within a couple of hours' drive of the estancia had yet to be fulfilled. She kept a careful eye on the petrol-gauge. If she didn't hit somewhere soon, she would be forced to turn back and the realisation galled her, flattening her foot down more heavily on the accelerator. Then, far to her left, she saw a clump of trees and something pink shimmering... a rooftop?

  Damn, damn, damn, she thought a little while later, watching the graceful flock of pink flamingos round the lagoon take flight in a gorgeous spray of heady colour against the deep blue sky. It was the most beautiful sight and, even in the mood Georgie was in, she responded to that beauty. Killing the engine, because she was in severe need of a break, she slid out into the enveloping heat, flexing her stiff muscles and tugging her shirt out of her jeans in a vain attempt to cool off.

  She was going to have to turn back. Rage had been dissipated by exertion. Another one up to you, Rafael, she reflected in raw frustration, strolling towards the shore of the lagoon. The water shimmered like a spun-glass enticement. She was so hot... Then something shifted in the corner of her eye.

  'Oh, my lord...' Georgie watched what she had dimly taken for a floating log metamorphose into a big, ugly alligator heading her way. Her stomach heaved with a kind of sick, terrified fascination and then instinct shifted her frozen limbs and she ran like a maniac back to the car.

  'You can keep the local wildlife, Rafael,' she mumbled, winding up the window as the creature was joined by another, their horrible little stumpy legs beginning to plough through the grass.

  Without any further ado, she turned the car and started back. She had been driving about an hour when the engine began to make unhealthy spluttering sounds. Within a mile the vehicle coughed to a final halt, and none of her efforts could get it going again. The heat built around her and she was forced to take another swig of the noxious brew in the bottle. Liquid was liquid, she reasoned.

  The emptiness of the savannah was surreal. It would have been terrifying had Georgie not had such immense faith in Rafael, who would find her if only out of a need to strangle her with his bare hands. She rested her head back, breathing shallowly, and waited miserably to be rescued. Another hour went by on leaden feet. Her op­timism took a sudden dip on the recollection that the helicopter hadn't been at the estancia and finding her without aerial reconnaissance might be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Better wed than dead, she thought, staggering out of the inferno-like heat of the car interior when she could bear it no longer. Severe sunburn as opposed to suffo­cation—not a lot of choice there. It was his fault. He had driven her to this. He had made her desperate. And yet what real effort had she made to escape before now?

  Had she lifted the phone beside her bed to call Steve, who was almost certainly home again by now? Had she contacted the British Embassy? Had she tried to bribe his helicopter pilot? Had she thrown herself on Father Garcia's mercy? No, she had rolled back to Rafael like a homing pigeon... and gone to bed with him. At no stage, she realised numbly, had she made a single re­alistic attempt to free herself. Until now, and then it had taken naked rage to push her to the attempt.

  In the shadow of the car, she sank down on the scrubby grass. When she first saw the speck on the shimmering horizon, she thought it was a bird, undoubtedly of the vulture variety, scenting a banquet. Then she realised it was a horse and rider. On
a slope, they briefly stilled, silhouetted against the skyline. It was Rafael. She knew it, felt it in her bones.

  Nobody else but Rafael could possibly look that good on a horse. A big black Arabian, which ploughed across the rolling plain with power, stamina and extraordinary natural beauty. Her heart rushed up into her torturously dry mouth. And I said no, she thought, delirously im­pressionable as sheer relief washed over her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Georgie rose shakily upright. The stallion thundered to a halt, reined back with powerful ease twenty feet from her. Incandescent golden eyes smouldered over her hot, crumpled length, patently checking out her physical condition. Rafael dug out a two-way radio and spoke into it in fast Spanish, but his compelling gaze didn't roam from her for a second. It was curiously like being handcuffed and tied up.

  Immobile, Georgie looked back at him in the sim­mering silence that was laden with menace. He was mad, of course he was mad. So he would say 'I told you so' in a variety of cutting, utterly unpleasant ways, because nobody said that phrase with greater satisfaction than Rafael. Rafael loved to be proved right. And, like it or not, she would take it all on the chin for once.

  Setting off on a whim into an unknown, hostile terrain as featureless as this one had been the behaviour of a total idiot and no doubt she deserved everything she had coming to her. But the main reason Georgie would let him shout at her was the intense and naked relief she had seen etched in those gorgeous eyes as he visibly re­assured himself that she was unharmed.

  Rafael had been worried sick about her safety, probably far more worried than she had been on her own behalf. That dark, brooding temperament of his did not have a shred of her own invariably sunny, op­timistic outlook. Rafael always expected the worst. A fat alligator snoozing beside a heap of picked-bare bones wouldn't have surprised him. That certainty sent a pained tenderness washing through her.

  He dismounted in one fluid movement and tossed a water bottle to her without even needing to be asked. It landed on the grass at her feet. Lifting it with an un­steady hand, Georgie swiftly took advantage of the ice-cold precious water within. Then, beginning to feel posi­tively intimidated by the continuing unnatural silence, she moistened her throat and her brow with the cool liquid.

  'Madre de Dios...' Rafael growled in a seething tone of savagery she had never heard from him before. 'You are the most stupid bitch it has ever been my misfortune to meet!'

  Gulping, Georgie nodded and wondered if it was too soon to test out a grateful smile.

  'What do you have to say for yourself?' He strode forward, a dark flush delineating his sculpted cheekbones.

  'My hero...?' Her voice emerged all squeaky and strange.

  And that was it. Rafael went rigid, and then his nar­rowed eyes bit into her like grappling hooks and he reached for her with one savage hand, roughly grasping the front of her shirt to propel her closer. 'You think this is funny?' he splintered down at her from his vastly superior height, in a surge of such undisciplined rage that his diction was destroyed. 'Every man available has been engaged on an all-out search for you! And what do you dare to say to me when I find you?'

  'Sorry... I am very sorry, but it's not my fault the blasted car broke down, is it?'

  'It was in for repair.'

  'Oh... Well, I didn't know that,' Georgie muttered weakly.

  'Where were you going?' he demanded with raw aggression.

  'I thought there'd be a village, another ranch... I didn't mean to cause anyone any inconvenience... I mean...' Sentenced to stillness, her stomach turning over, Georgie watched for some encouraging sign that his rage was levelling out, and failed to receive it.

  'Oops...gosh...I didn't think.' His smouldering eyes flashed fierily over her drawn face as she visibly winced at the slashing derision he revealed. 'There is nothing for hundreds of miles '

  'Hundreds of miles?' With difficulty, Georgie swallowed.

  'No drinkable water, no source of food, poisonous

  snakes '

  'I got chased by an alligator,' she told him, hoping that confirmation of his expectations would cool him down.

  'An alligator... You got as far as the lagoon?' Rafael roared at her a full octave higher. 'You stopped, ob­viously you got out of the car... for what?'

  'I was hot and '

  'You were going to swim with piranhas and electric eels?'

  'It never crossed my mind for a moment!' Georgie swore vehemently, shuddering with horror.

  He spat something at her in Spanish and shook her again. Two buttons flew off her shirt. 'You did,' Rafael condemned, in so much rage that he could scarcely vo­calise the contradiction. 'You did think of swimming! It's written all over you! In the name of God, do you have an IQ in single figures? You need a baby-sitter and a playpen, not a husband!'

  Trying with a trembling hand to hold the edges of her shirt together, Georgie went rigid under the onslaught of his abuse. Taking it on the chin as a policy of non-aggressive negotiation vanished.

  'Now, you listen here——' she began hotly.

  'Shut up!' Rafael seethed down at her, his golden fea­tures a mask of fury. 'You took off in a tantrum and I, Rafael Rodriguez Berganza, do not listen to a woman who behaves like a spoilt, reckless child!'

  'Get stuffed, you superior SOB!' Georgie hissed.

  'What did you call me?'

  'Gone deaf suddenly? Lost that wonderful English?' Georgie threw back wrathfully.

  Trembling, he stared down at her, the explosive tension in every line of his powerful body hitting her in waves of palpable heat. Burning eyes dug into her. 'If I had married you four years ago, you would have respect for me '

  'No doubt you would have beaten it in with a whip.. .just your style!' Georgie screeched back.

  'I have no need of a whip with you.' His seething gaze dropped to the heaving curves of her full breasts, visible between the parted edges of her shirt. And then he dealt her a dark explicit glance that sent her heartbeat racing up the scale.

  Georgie was not slow on the uptake. Instant awareness linked with disbelief assailed her. 'No...' she said thickly.

  He coiled a booted foot round the back of her legs and tipped her down on the grass with such fluid ease and speed that she didn't have a hope of evading the manoeuvre. A second later, he came down on top of her, one hand reaching instantly for the snap of her jeans. 'We'll save the Ferrari for some other time... but here, now, on Berganza soil... this is for me!'

  Georgie was so shocked that he had her halfway out of her jeans before she made even a partial recovery. 'Have you gone mad?' she shrieked.

  Her jeans were cast aside. He knelt astride her and slid down the zip on his riding breeches. Georgie stared up at him with a dropped jaw. He shed his polo shirt, flexing powerful muscles that rippled smoothly across his hair-roughened chest. She shivered in the heat, her nostrils flaring at the musky male scent of him.

  'Rafael...?'

  'You are mine... like the land.'

  The absolute possession in the statement was primitive in its intensity. Shimmering golden eyes flamed over her with devouring desire, and heat flooded her every skin-cell in a wanton burst of instant response. He might as well have lit a torch inside her. Her teeth gritted as what remained of sanity sought to be heard. 'No!' she pro­tested as he lowered his arrogant dark head.

  'You are my woman.' Lean but frighteningly strong hands cupped her cheekbones. His burnished gaze held hers fiercely. 'And by the time I have finished with you, you will know it too,' he swore with unapologetic savagery.

  'I don't like it when you get macho,' Georgie said in breathless defiance.

  'liar... I excite the hell out of you,' Rafael derided. 'I'm still waiting to qualify for a knee in the groin!'

  He very nearly did, but with a raw burst of laughter he evaded her furious attempt to make good that over­sight. He stilled her with all the power of his superior strength. And then he took her mouth with a ravishing passion that stole her soul. She was stunned into s
ub­mission by the white-hot hunger he unleashed on her. One hand fiercely knotted in her hair, he plundered her readily parted lips, every stab of his exploring tongue teaching her the depth of his need.

  With his other hand, he wrenched her bra out of his impatient path, curving hard fingers over the exposed mounds of her staining breasts. With an earthy groan, he touched and tantalised the distended pink nipples which betrayed the extent of her response to him. The raw intensity of what he was making her feel excited her beyond bearing. Her fingers drove into his raven hair in ecstasy as he suckled strongly at her sensitive breasts. Her whole body was a melting river of liquid flame.

  As his head lifted from her breasts, she drew him back to her, wild for the hot, hard possession of his mouth again. Her darkened eyes clung to his and her arms closed convulsively round him, adoring hands splaying across the long golden sweep of his satin-smooth back, and she knew it then—knew that whether it was madness or not he was everything to her, everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever needed, everything she had ever raved in her most secret thoughts.

  With a tormentingly light touch, he explored the moist silken heat of her, and tiny sounds she couldn't hold back began to escape her. Her fingers dug into his powerful shoulders, her entire body racked by an intol­erable pleasure that only made her cry out for more. He pulled free of her and parted her thighs and she shivered violently, desperate for the ache he had aroused to be satisfied by the hard thrust of his masculinity.

  Abruptly she tensed in shock as his silky hair brushed her taut stomach and she felt his mouth caress her in the most intimate way of all.

  'No!' she gasped, her eyes flying wide.

  His hands tightened inexorably on her slender thighs, preventing her withdrawal. 'Si...l want you out of your mind with pleasure,' he murmured softly.

  The experience fulfilled his every intention. One moment she was rigid with tension, the next lost in a world of physical sensation so intense that she was over­whelmed. She writhed and moaned, helpless in the grip of her own body's unbridled response. She gasped his name pleadingly at a peak of quivering urgency.