Reckless Passion (12 page)

"I'll admit the price you're setting on yourself tonight is a bit steep," he hedged, his mouth traveling down to the curve of her shoulder.

"And I'm going to stick to it. I won't sell myself as cheaply as you seem to think I did last night!" she cried wretchedly.

"If that's the way you want it," he said slowly, and she thought she felt him tense. He was going to leave. She knew it. Knew it and wanted insanely to call back her words.

But it was too late. She had made her decision and she would force herself to abide by it. There was the future to think about tonight, not just a few tempting hours of ecstasy with a man who considered love a business transaction!

"As long as we understand each other," he whispered thickly, "we might as well get on with the transaction."

He moved, sweeping her into his arms with a smooth power that took away her breath.

"Yale! What are you doing?" she gasped as he started down the short hall to her bedroom. "Put me down!"

"Why? You set the terms. Don't tell me you're going to try to back out of them now."

"That's right!" she rasped furiously. "I set the terms. And I'm going to make you stick to them! I swear it!'

"Okay," he said simply, using a large foot to open the door to her darkened bedroom.

"What do you mean, 'okay'?" she yelped, the combination of passion and anger heating her veins until she felt liquid fire running through her body.

"I accept the terms," he explained evenly, dropping her lightly onto the old-fashioned country-patterned quilt that covered the four-poster bed.

She stared up at him, trying to make out his expression in the dimly lit room. She was curled in a shaft of fight which fell onto the bed from the hall and she felt extraordinarily vulnerable. Everything was going wrong. She had been so sure her demand would send him fleeing into the night!

"You can't be serious!" she tried, her eyes fastened on him in utter fascination. "Do you know what you're saying?"

Even though he stood in the shadows,
Dara
couldn't miss the flash of gold in his slow, sardonic grin. "Don't worry about me," he advised, stripping off his shirt and letting it fall, unheeded, to the carpet. "You should be asking yourself that question. Between last night and tonight you're going to find yourself with both me and my account to handle. And we're both going to take a lot of time and attention."

Dara
scrambled to her knees on the bed, not knowing whether to lash out at him or open her arms to receive him. Was he mad? She wasn't the sort of woman who drove men to rash extremes! She hadn't even been able to seduce her ex-husband away from thoughts of his former fiancée!

Dara
put out a hand in uncertain appeal as Yale began efficient work on his belt buckle.

"Yale, listen to me. You're not talking about a...a short fling with a woman you happened to meet at a party! You're standing there, telling me you're going to marry me! In the morning you're going to have all sorts of regrets, call yourself a fool! Don't you understand?"

"After what we found between us last night, I don't see any reason why I should have regrets," he count-
ered
, stepping out of the rest of his clothes as if he were accustomed to undressing in her bedroom. Or as if he expected to become accustomed to it.

"Well, what about me?" she tried, unable to keep her longing gaze away from the tanned and powerful male body standing in front of her. "Think about what you're doing to me!"

"I don't have to think about that. You've already done your own thinking and set your own price. I'm willing to pay it. What could be simpler?"

He put one knee on the bed and reached for her. Panicked,
Dara
wriggled backward, getting shakily to her feet
¹
on the opposite side. She retreated
swiftly,
convinced he would pounce at her.

But he didn't move. Instead, Yale sat patiently on the edge of the bed and watched her with persuasive, gleaming eyes. His voice was unbelievably dark and silky on her nerves.

"Don't run from me, my darling
Dara
. Haven't I agreed to give you everything you've asked for? What more can a man do? I want you.
Badly enough to pay your price.
And you know you want me. Come here and let me show you...."

She felt her senses reeling at the seductive tendrils curling around her and she knew she was going to be caught up in the spell of him as she had been last night. How could a woman deny the man she loved? It was like denying
her own
breath. It went against all her natural instincts.
And he was going to marry her!

"Come here, little tabby cat," he coaxed with electrifying tenderness. "Come and warm me with your passion and your need. I want to feel the curve of your hips and the swell of your breasts. I want to know that moment when you lose control and give yourself completely. I want to feel you take me inside and make me a part of you...."

"Oh, Yale,"
Dara
whispered weakly, knowing her resistance was rapidly collapsing and helpless to stop it.

He held out his hand invitingly, and in spite of herself,
Dara
took a tentative step forward toward the bed. He was drawing her close with invisible bonds that had been forged last night and could never be unmade. She knew that in the deepest recesses of her mind. As long as Yale chose to chain her she was caught.

"I meant it, Yale," she tried valiantly as she stopped at the edge of the bed. His hand was still extended in silent demand. "I really meant it. If...if you go through with this I will expect nothing less than marriage!"

He moved then with unexpected swiftness, snagging her wrist and pulling her down beside him. He rolled heavily onto her, crushing her into the quilt and gazing down into her startled eyes with masculine triumph.

"I never supposed you didn't," he assured her with a low groan of desire.

And then he was covering her mouth with his own, plundering the warmth he found there as if the previous night had only whetted his appetite. She was held fettered beneath his heavy strength while he mastered her senses once more.

"Yale, why do I let you do this to me?"
Dara
said huskily, coming alive under his touch.

"When you know the answer to that, tell me," he ordered gruffly.

Confident now of her willing compliance, Yale shifted, moving onto his back and pulling her into an abandoned sprawl across his chest. He slid the dress from her shoulders, past her waist, leaving her to kick free of the confining folds.

"You fill my hands so perfectly," he marveled, deftly unsnapping the front clasp of her bra and letting her soft femininity spill into his waiting hands.

Dara
moaned deeply with mounting anticipation as her nipples rose to the touch of his thumb and forefinger. Unconsciously she arched her lower body against the pulsating maleness of him.

"Show me how an Oregon woman treats the man she's going to marry," Yale growled roughly, his hands moving down to her waist and over the curve of her hips, urging her closer.

Dara
closed her eyes and gave herself over to the need they shared. Throwing any remaining caution to the winds, she allowed her love full rein.

Her lips sought his willingly, enticing a response that was granted immediately. She felt him groan as her breasts brushed teasingly against his chest, and his undisguised response encouraged her as nothing else could have done.

Her excitement scaling ever upward,
Dara
probed against the challenge of his tongue, defeating it utterly, and then she withdrew to explore the tips of his ears.

"You'll pay for that," he rasped in tantalizing menace as she carefully closed her teeth around one lobe. His fingertips sank sharply into her buttocks and scored a flickering pattern of excruciating, exhilarating
stimu-lation
which coursed down to her toes.

"Oh!"
Dara's
cry was one of feminine need and desire, and it seemed to act on him just as her hands and lips had acted.

But it also unleashed a totally unfamiliar aggression in her. A fantasy of power and seduction which
Dara
would never have dreamed she had. This man was hers. She had pushed him into a promise of marriage, a promise which she fully intended he should keep. He thought he was merely paying the price she had set, but there was more to it, much more. He was going to learn that he belonged to her, she decided exuberantly.

"My tabby cat is secretly a wildcat," Yale muttered in astonished wonder as
Dara
began a feverish
explorat
-ion of his body.
"My God, little one.
You drive me crazy!'

She trailed kisses of damp passion down his throat, into the hollow of his shoulder and out to the sensitive inside of his elbow. His hands wrapped themselves in the heavy tangle of her hair as she kissed the warm skin of his stomach. His legs shifted heavily, restlessly, around her as she moved down to his thighs.

Once again she used her teeth, nipping with playful passion at the muscled tautness of him. She felt the rising desire that threatened to put an end to her bold
loveplay
and swiftly captured his wrists.

Dara
was too caught up in the excitement and wonder of her newfound arrogance and aggression to realize she wasn't exactly mastering his strength with her own. The fact that he was submissive before her onslaught was enough. She would make him remember this
night,
she told herself as she moved upward again, straddling his hips and pinning his wrists beside his head.

"A wildcat," he grated hoarsely, no fighting the restraint of her hands as she leaned over to kiss him deeply, hungrily, persuasively. His body lifted, seeking hers, but she resisted, teasing him with a wantonness that amazed a small corner of her mind. This couldn't be her, that corner protested, quite shocked.

But it was, and
Dara
thrilled to the knowledge. She had known this man was crucial to her future
happi-ness
, but she had never dreamed he would open this door to her physical responses.

"Come and claim your man, woman!" Yale's soft command came tightly as she nibbled on his shoulder. She felt him arch upward again, urging her to complete the union.

But the wildness of her mood was not to be so easily coaxed back to the yielding Yale's body wanted. She would show this man he was at her mercy, make him acknowledge his desire for her. He would discover what it meant to be the one who submitted.

She lifted her head from his throat long enough to laugh a siren's laugh, gazing down into his gleaming hazel eyes.

"Do you want me, Yale?" she breathed.

"Want you, need you, desire you..." His head moved once on the pillow in silent disgust with the lack of sufficient words. Then he groaned with deep insistence. “Finish your seduction, tabby cat. Put me out of this misery. I can't stand your teasing much longer!"

"Misery?"
She pouted, her fingertips toying with the masculine nipples. "I'm not sure I like that description. I wouldn't want to make you miserable, Yale...."

"Call it what you want," he breathed huskily, "but finish it before I go out of my head!"

"I would like to see that."
Dara
laughed throatily, bending to touch her lips lightly to his throat. "I would like to see you driven a little crazy by me...."

"You're enjoying your power?" he murmured, drawing in his breath sharply as she touched her tongue to the edge of his mouth and then his chin.

"Enormously."

"Have you ever played with fire before?" he demanded tightly.

"Not like this," she admitted.

"And now that you've chained a man in your spell, you're determined to extract all the pleasure from torturing him that you can, is that it?"

"I want to hear you beg," she agreed delightedly.

"I'm begging," he whispered.

"Not loudly enough." Still holding his wrists firmly to the bed, she scattered fleeting, alluring little kisses across his chest.

"You're a harsh mistress," he groaned.

"Not a mistress," she denied at once, angered slightly. "I'm going to be your wife!"