'Then it's true?' Kate whispered in disbelief as the truth began to penetrate her numbed brain. 'Gavin, is it true?'
'Answer her, dammit!' Rhyno roared, shaking Gavin like a dog would shake a cat when it seemed that Gavin was not going to reply.
'Yes—yes, it's true,' Gavin admitted thickly, blood dripping from his chin on to his white shirt front.
'Were you going to do the same to me?' Kate questioned, unable to grasp the fact that someone she had liked and trusted could have contemplated anything so vile. 'Is that why you talked so often of your plans to start a computer business?'
'You don't need to doubt that he was planning to deplete your bank balance one way or another, but your marriage to me delayed his plans somewhat,' Rhyno answered for Gavin. 'Isn't that so, Page?'
'Yes,' Gavin admitted dully, then Rhyno thrust him aside.
'Get out of here, Page, and if I were you I'd get right out of this district before that friend of mine in the police department becomes suspicious of my interest in one of his files,' Rhyno warned harshly.
Straightening his jacket, Gavin turned to leave, but at the door he hesitated, and turned. 'Kate, I—'
'Get out before I throw you out!' Rhyno thundered, and Gavin obeyed, almost running from the house to where he had parked his car.
Kate felt her insides lurch sickeningly when she heard his car drive away and, dashing past Rhyno, she almost ran to her room. She felt nauseated at the thought that she could have been so gullible, and all she wanted was to be left alone, but Rhyno entered her room moments later and, venting her anger and disappointment on him, she snapped, 'What do you want? Can't you leave me alone?'
'I haven't finished with you yet, Kate,' he told her in that quite voice that sent shivers of apprehension racing up and down her spine. 'I've taken more from you than I've taken from anyone else in my life, but you've made your final mistake where I'm concerned.'
This is it, Kate thought, pulling herself together from the shock of discovering the truth about Gavin. This was her moment of retribution for breaking her word and confiding in someone she had considered a friend, but she was determined not to let Rhyno guess that she was shaking inwardly with nervousness and fear.
'What are you talking about?' she demanded with a deceptive calmness, meeting the full force of his blazing eyes.
'We made a pact that no one, other than my mother, your aunt, and Hubert Walton would know the true circumstances of our marriage. You broke that pact when you told Gavin Page the truth, and that gives me a free hand to deal with the situation as I see fit.'
'What do you intend to do, Rhyno?' she questioned in an attempt at defiance. 'Thrash me?'
'Nothing as simple as that.' His eyes raked her from head to foot, and left her feeling oddly naked. 'After tonight, Kate, you'll be lying through your teeth if you tell anyone that our marriage isn't real.'
Kate stared at him with something akin to horror in her eyes. She must have misunderstood him, she told herself, but fear snaked through her, leaving her whiter than before, and shaking. 'You—you can't mean—'
'Yes, I do,' he confirmed, his harsh voice grating along her sensitive nerves. 'When the time comes to end our marriage we shall be filing for a divorce, and not merely seeking an annulment, because we will have been well and truly married.'
'You're mad!' she cried, raising a trembling hand to her throat to ease the tightness.
'Yes, Kate,' he acknowledged sharply, his hands clenched at his sides as he lessened the distance between them. 'I was mad to have thought you would honour our agreement.'
Kate could not believe that he would carry out his threat, but she was taking no chances as she backed away from him. 'Stay away from me, or I'll scream!'
'Scream as much as you wish,' he laughed harshly. 'There's no one here to hear you.'
The crimson curtains were behind her and, white and trembling, she searched frantically for some sign that he was merely trying to frighten her, but his features could very easily have been chiselled out of granite at that moment. She had never seen him look so menacing before, nor so vitally masculine, and her temples were beginning to pound with terror, and something more. She knew herself too well. She would have no defence against an onslaught of this nature, and heaven only knew what he might discover once her treacherous emotions began to dictate her actions.
'If you touch me, Rhyno,' she warned unsteadily, shrinking inwardly from the blazing fury of his glance, 'if you touch me I shall hate you for as long as I live!'
'Then now's the time to start hating me,' he muttered through his teeth, and his hands, like steel traps, snapped about her arms and jerked her up against him.
'Let me go!' she cried, beating her fists against his chest, but he seemed not to notice, and merely laughed satanically at her efforts to avoid his descending lips. He grasped a fistful of hair at the back of her head, forcing her face out into the open, and her cry of agony was smothered beneath the crushing force of his mouth.
She felt dizzy, her senses swimming, and when that muscled body moved against hers she felt a terrifying weakness invade her limbs. She fought against it mentally and physically, but the zip of her dress gave way beneath the expertise of his hands, and it slid to the floor to lie in a silken heap at her feet.
'For God's sake, Rhyno, don't do this!' she begged at length when he freed her lips to plunder the satiny warmth of her bare shoulder where he had eased off the flimsy straps of her slip and bra. Her fingers bit into his shoulders through the towelling robe in an effort to push him away, but her efforts to escape made her more aware of hard muscles grinding into her slowly yielding flesh.
'Fight all you want, you little wildcat,' he warned throatily close to her ear, 'but tonight you're going to be tamed.'
'You can't do this to me!' she cried almost tearfully as he lifted her effortlessly out of her shoes and urged her towards the bed.
'I can do whatever I please,' he told her savagely, stripping her writhing body down to her skin. 'You're my wife and, God help me, tonight you're going to pay for all the insults I've had to endure!'
'Rhyno… don't… I beg of you,' she pleaded hoarsely, her colour coming and going as she gave way at last to her fears.
She tried to cover her nakedness with her hands, but Rhyno was merciless, and spared her nothing as he thrust her backwards on to the bed. He followed her down before she could escape him by rolling off the other side and, pinned down beneath that hard, muscled body, she begged, pleaded, and wept, but he was blind and deaf to everything except the desire for revenge. His mouth finally silenced hers, and forced her into submission.
Kate had never before felt so agonisingly helpless in all her life. His hands were hard on her body, invading her with an intimacy which was devoid of any sign of tenderness, and even though she found herself responding to his ruthless passion, she fought him determinedly to the bitter end. Her nails raked his flesh when she felt him remove his robe, but her breath locked in her throat when she found herself moulded to that lean, hard body. She was, eventually, aware of nothing else except the clean, tantalising scent of his body, the frightening width of his gleaming shoulders above her, and the naked desire in his dark eyes. She prayed that he would put out the light to spare her the final humiliation of having him observe her reactions, but Rhyno was determined to make her pay the supreme penalty, and he devoured her with his eyes and his body, not sparing her until a cry of mingled pain and pleasure burst from her parted, swollen lips.
Afterwards, lying dry-eyed in the darkness while Rhyno slept beside her, Kate felt peculiarly empty. She hated him in a way she had never thought possible for shattering her somewhat childish illusions, and that left her with only an aching dissatisfaction tearing away at her insides. What had occurred between them could not be termed as an act of making love. Love had not been involved at all—only a desire born of vengeance. Making love was surely a blending of mind, body and soul, but while her mind might have been conquered and her body ravag
ed, her soul had remained untouched. Rhyno had intended to punish her, and he had succeeded in the most diabolical way.
Humiliated and mentally beaten, she finally went to sleep, but it was an uneasy sleep from which she awoke in the night to find herself being caressed with a slow, tantalising intimacy that made her blush in the darkness. She remained perfectly still, too afraid to move or give any indication that she was aware of what was happening, but a soft moan of pleasure escaped her when Rhyno's mouth found the sensitive peak of her breast, and her fingers somehow became locked behind his head in the thick, crispness of his hair.
This time it was breathtakingly different. His lovemaking raised her out of herself into a realm where nothing existed beyond the waves of sensual pleasure buffeting her exquisitely, raising her higher and higher towards that unknown goal. She could swear eventually that she heard the music of the spheres as those sensations intensified, then she was thrust like helpless flotsam into that unfamiliar world where wave after wave of ecstatic pleasure washed over her until she knew the true meaning of fulfilment.
She emerged slowly from this alien world she had been plunged into, and as their bodies still clung in the aftermath of shared enjoyment, she knew, at last, that she was a woman in the fullest sense. In the silent darkness Rhyno's lips sought hers, and with her arms locked unashamedly about his neck, she returned his kisses with an eagerness she could not hide.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rhyno was not in the room when Kate woke up the following morning, and she assumed that he had gone out into the vineyards. She did not want to think of what had happened between them, the mere thought of it made her go hot with humiliation and shame, and she dreaded having to face Rhyno in the cold light of day knowing that there was not a part of her body he had not acquainted himself with during the night.
She felt herself blush from the roots of her hair down to her toes and, groaning inwardly, she stepped into the shower, deliberately opening the cold water tap so that the icy spray could cool her heated body. There were bruises on her arms and legs which she had acquired in her efforts to fight him off, but it was nothing compared to the mental bruises which made her wince inwardly.
After a quick breakfast she locked herself up in the study, and kept herself reasonably busy with the large amount of paperwork involved in the management of a wine estate. She desperately needed those few hours to prepare herself mentally for having to face Rhyno again, and when she finally joined him for lunch in the small dining-room which they had begun to use more frequently since her father's death, she complimented herself silently on managing to look outwardly cool and composed.
In khaki pants and thick brown sweater, his shoulders somehow looked broader, and his hips leaner. Despite her efforts, the memory of that hard, muscular body against her own leapt to the surface of her mind, and her heartbeats quickened, sending the flow of blood more rapidly through her veins. 'Damn him!' she thought furiously. He had made her aware of herself as a woman, and of desires she had never known existed. She did not know whether to thank him or to hate him for it, but at the moment she was more inclined to do the latter.
She felt his eyes on her while she toyed with her food, and a mouthful of salad went down like a boulder. At that moment she envied him his ability to behave as though nothing had happened between them and, furious with herself for not being able to do the same, she pushed aside her plate and helped herself to a cup of coffee.
'Are you never going to look at me or speak to me again?' Rhyno's mocking voice quivered along her nerve ends, and the eyes she finally raised to his were twin sapphires of heated fury.
'I wish I didn't have to see you or speak to you again for the rest of my life!'
'It wasn't that bad the second time, was it?'
His reference to the intimacy they had shared made her colour rise sharply, and she lowered her gaze. 'I don't want to talk about it.'
'You enjoyed it as much as I did,' he taunted her.
'Shut up!'
'Do you deny it?'
'No, I don't,' she snapped after a momentary pause, her face rigid with anger and despair. 'But then you're an expert at that sort of thing, and you had had recent practice as well!'
Her arrow hit its mark, and his face darkened ominously. 'Leave Barbara out of this.'
'No, I will not!' she persisted with angry cynicism. 'What will she think when she discovers that you don't only go to bed with her, but with me as well?'
'Unlike you, Kate, I never told Barbara the truth about our marriage.'
'You mean she doesn't object to being your mistress?' she questioned, ignoring his stab. 'Even though you're married and sleeping with your wife?'
The only reply she received was a faint smile, and his apparent calmness simply infuriated her more.
'I knew there had to be a flaw somewhere,' she said icily. 'She was too good to be true.'
'I told you to leave Barbara out of this,' he said with a quiet savagery she could not ignore. 'My relationship with her is something your twisted little mind would never understand.'
That stung, and she winced inwardly. 'The only one around here with a twisted mind is you, Rhyno. And while we're on the subject of twisted minds, how did you find out about Gavin?'
His expression hardened considerably. 'Barbara thought she recognised him as the chap who'd once taken advantage of an old acquaintance of hers, and I took the investigation a little further.'
'Was that why you went to Cape Town?'
'It was one of the reasons,' he replied noncommittally, and hurt and anger seemed to combine inside Kate.
'The other reasons concern only Barbara and yourself, I take it?'
'That's right.'
Being excluded was one thing, but the feeling of having a door slammed in your face was another, and Kate rose from the table abruptly. 'If you'll excuse me, I have work to do.'
Rhyno pushed back his chair and got to his feet. 'I'll give you a lift down to the cellars.'
'I'll walk, thank you,' Kate declined coldly, turning on her heel and marching out of the room.
It was good to feel the breeze in her hair, and the sun on her face, she decided as she stepped out of the house, and she needed to walk off that gnawing ache in her heart.
The vineyards looked sad in winter. Nature had stripped the vines naked of their foliage, but expert, caring hands had pruned them back in readiness for the following year's growth. The soil had been tilled, the fertiliser stock had been checked, and soon the bench grafting of the vines would begin. It was a never-ending cycle, and in the vats and fermentation tanks the new wines were maturing until they were ready to be marketed. When the bottled wines reached maturity they were sold privately, or through the Stellenbosch winery, and that involved a great deal of work.
Kate supervised the labelling of the bottles, and checked the orders due to be dispatched. At the loading base the estate truck was preparing to leave for the station, and when it finally drove away, its enormous tyres churning up the dust, everyone sighed with relief. That was it, but only until the following day.
Tiredness drove Kate to bed earlier than usual that night. Her head barely touched the pillow when she was asleep, but she awoke with a start some time later to see Rhyno approaching the bed.
'What do you think you're doing?' she demanded in a croaky voice when she saw his hands untying the belt of his robe.
'I'm coming to bed, what else?'
His robe slid from his shoulders, and her breath locked in her throat at the sight of his nakedness. Muscles bulged and rippled beneath his evenly-tanned skin with every movement he made, and she felt her pulse drumming in her ears as she dragged her eyes away from all that male vitality encased in his body.
'For God's sake, Rhyno, haven't you punished me enough?' she choked out the words as she felt the bed give way beneath his weight. 'Must you prolong it?'
'Your sentence will last until the day we file for a divorce,' he replied harshly, and his hands reached for her bef
ore she could leap out of bed. He turned her on to her back, and forced her to meet his eyes. 'Didn't I tell you?' he asked mockingly.
Her body went rigid when she felt the heat of his thighs against her own through the flimsy material of her nightdress, and her jaw seemed to ache with the effort to control her rioting emotions as she hissed, 'You're an insufferable, disgusting beast, and I hate you!'
His eyes darkened, and the arms that held her tightened like a vice. 'You've insulted me enough times, Kate, and you're going to pay for every one of them separately.'
'You're the most sadistic and revolting man it's ever been my misfortune to meet!' she almost shouted at him, trying desperately to ignore the fact that the clean male smell of him was stirring her senses wildly. 'Don't you know that your touch nauseates me?' she could not prevent herself from adding fuel to the fire of his anger.
'Just for that I'll make you beg, Kate.'
'Never!'
'You will, you know,' he said against her lips. 'Before this night has ended you will beg me to make love to you.'
'I'd rather die first!' she cried, straining away from him physically and mentally as she felt her treacherous body respond to the sensual caress of his hands.
'We'll see about that,' he laughed shortly and, as if to illustrate the power he had over her, he slid the strap of her nightdress off her shoulder, and cupped her breast in his hand.
'Take your hands off me!' she snapped, struggling against him, but those probing, caressing fingers sent a shudder of emotion surging through her, and a moan of pleasure burst from her lips moments before his searing kiss drove all thought of resistance from her mind.
Her nightdress, the only barrier between them, was swiftly removed, and his hands, warm and rough against her smooth skin, aroused a fire deep within her that flowed and pounded through her until every nerve and sinew seemed to quiver with an aching need. She felt his heart beating heavily against her breasts; beating almost in unison with hers, but for some reason she suspected that he was holding back even while he seemed intent upon driving her mad with desire and the most exquisite torment.
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