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 advantge of the icecold 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 nonaggressive 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 east 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 submission 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 craved 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. ‘St…I 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 over whelmed. 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.
‘Ahora… now.’
He lifted himself and plunged inside her in one devastating thrust of possession. Her every sense was screaming for the release that only he could give. Her nails dug into his back and then he was moving on her, inside her, with every powerful stroke of his hips reinforcing his dominance. As the heat of passion spiralled out of control, she cried out in ecstasy as he drove her to a shattering climax.
Still in a satiated daze, Georgie lifted her heavy eyelids. He reminded her of a primitive golden god, surveying a pagan sacrifice spread out before him. An aching vulnerability swept her as she collided with tawny tiger eyes that revealed nothing of his thoughts.
‘Rafael?’ Involuntarily her hand reached up to smooth one hard cheekbone.