Reckless Passion (13 page)

"In that case," he rapped suddenly, "you'd better start learning a
litde
something about wifely obedience!"

He seemed to erupt beneath her, his hands coming free of her grip as if she had never attempted to bind him. Before she could do more than gasp her startled surprise,
Dara
found herself flat on her back,
bis
broad shoulders looming over her.

Without warning she was thoroughly anchored to the bed, both her hands caught in one of his and drawn tautly over her head. His thigh moved over hers, pinning her writhing legs.

She felt the excitement flash through her in waves, as she reacted to the passionate capture with a thrilling awareness that was as strong as her previous sensation of power.

"Now, future wife," Yale gritted gently, his free hand beginning to move deliberately on her vulnerable midsection, "it's your turn to plead."

Dara
smiled with dazzling witchcraft, her body already lifting against the touch of his hand. "Please, Yale. Please show me what being your wife will be like!"

"When you look at me like that, how
can I
refuse you anything?" he breathed, sliding his leg between hers with purposefulness and deliberate slowness.

He was going to keep her waiting, she realized dimly as she coiled and uncoiled beneath him. He wanted her to know the powerful need in every fiber of her being. She wanted to cry out her love for him, knew it was much too soon and cried out her desire instead.

"I want you, Yale. I want you so desperately!"

"I'm yours, sweetheart. I think I have been from the beginning!" He was poised above her in the darkness and then he was taking her with finesse and strength. She knew every inch of him along her skin, and her body vibrated in resonance with his.

He swept her along with him in the dizzying path of their mutual desire.
Dara
surrendered willingly to the demands he made of her, issuing her own demands in retain. They were met with the same eagerness, and together they bounded toward the top of the cliff which overlooked the emerald valley.

Dara
felt the shuddering release she had first known last night, still unprepared for the sensation even though she knew what to expect this time. "Yale!"

Then he was leaping over the edge with her, a hoarse male shout caught in his throat as he slid a hand beneath her buttocks to hold her violently close. She felt him tremble, felt every muscle in his lean frame tauten. In that moment the taking and giving were so bound up together it was impossible to speak of mastery and surrender. Each gave and each took. Each mastered and each surrendered. It was a timeless cadence which required only love to make it complete. And that
Dara
gave with all her heart, even if it was in silence.

It was a long time later, deep in the heavy aftermath of their
passion, that
Yale stirred and spoke softly, compellingly into the quiet darkness.

"You see, little tabby cat?" he said wistfully. "It doesn't really matter."

"What doesn't matter?"
Dara
murmured, luxuriating in the feel of him. She stretched like a cat beneath the soothing stroke of his hand.

"Where we come together like this," he explained.
"A truck-stop motel or your bedroom or on a
moun-taintop
overlooking the world.
It's all the same. We're what counts, not the location."

She smiled against his damp skin and sighed blissfully. Secure in the knowledge that Yale couldn't have made love to her like this if he wasn't close to falling in love, she made her decision.

In the morning she would release him from his promise to marry her.

It was very simple, she told herself with catlike contentment. Yale would tell her he had no wish to be free of his promise and she would go to her wedding with the full knowledge that he wanted the marriage as much as she did.

How could it be otherwise after what they had shared?

Dara
made her decision with the perfect certainty and confidence she had known when she finally realized she had discovered her niche in life as a stockbroker. Made it with all the absolute sureness with which she had first known she wanted to belong to Yale Ransom.
Made it with a woman's sure instincts about herself and her man.

Yale would marry her because he wanted her, not because he was bound to a promise. And she would teach him to love her after the wedding.

Perhaps it was inevitable that such complacency should not go unpunished. But the inevitability did not lessen the heart-wrenching shock
Dara
experienced when Yale calmly accepted his freedom and grabbed it with both hands, making no effort to step back into the net.

Seven

"Okay."

That was his exact word the next morning when
Dara
, soft-eyed and full of love, told him she wouldn't hold him to the marriage promise. He was sliding out of bed, on his way to a shower in her eye-opening yellow and red bathroom.

"Okay!" she repeated to his disappearing back as the door closed. "Okay!" Dazed, she stared after him, unconsciously clutching the sheet over her full breasts. Only a short time ago he had awakened her with a kiss at the base of her spine, turned her over and made lazy, warm love to her.

And now he calmly shrugged and accepted his freedom as if he never had intended to marry her.

No!
she
told herself resolutely as she struggled free of the startled paralysis and got to her feet. Yale would have married her if she'd held him to his promise. She was sure of it. He was the sort of man who paid his debts!

But she'd blithely freed him of the obligation, and what male in his right mind wouldn't be willing enough to accept that freedom? What a fool she had been! For the second morning in a row!

In that moment it was hard to know which of them
was the more inviting target for her anger
: herself or Yale.

Grabbing a turquoise robe from the closet,
Dara
flung it on and stalked into the bathroom. It was already turning into a steam bath from the hot water Yale was using in such liberal quantities.

"What the hell do you mean 'okay'?" she demanded over the noise of the shower. She could see his shadowy movements behind the yellow curtain.

"Okay means okay," he called back laconically. "You set the price last night. If you don't want to collect full payment, that's your prerogative."

"The price!
Is that all you ever think about? Yesterday you were willing to pay the price by handing over your account! This morning you were willing to...to marry me! Don't you mind the cost?" she bit out.

There was an instant's pause, and then Yale pulled back the shower curtain far enough to smile at her. There was a knee-weakening tenderness in the smile. There was also the devilish flash of gold.

"The fact that I'm willing to pay it should tell you how much I want you," he pointed out gently. "But if you're too generous to collect..." He let the sentence trail off significantly.

She glared at him, vividly aware of the way the water streamed across his head and shoulders, plastering the honey hair to his head and making the smooth, strong contours of his chest and arms glisten. She loved him, she acknowledged again, glumly, and he was playing games with her. He had been from the beginning. She had no one to blame but herself.

And at last, two mornings too late, everything crystallized. She had fallen in love at first sight with a man who returned the physical attraction, but nothing deeper. It wasn't altogether his fault, either. She had allowed the situation to race out of control. She had succumbed so easily there had been no time for Yale to get to know her as a human being. On his demand during the past forty-eight hours she had handed over everything of herself with only token resistance. He was honest enough to be willing to pay her price, but he hadn't fallen in love.

With the cool, clear assessment of hindsight,
Dara
realized finally what she had done. At the age of thirty she should know enough about men to realize they didn't fall head over heels in love at first sight. A man's emotions were far more primitive. Men were quite capable of wanting a woman and wanting her badly after a short acquaintance, but falling in love was a much more complicated and lengthy business.

If there was to be any hope for her relationship with Yale Ransom,
Dara
told herself with chilling caution, she would have to go back to the beginning and start the relationship from scratch.

She drew a deep breath and smiled back at the man in her shower, a smile unlike any he'd had from her so far. A smile few people ever saw.

"It's not that I'm too generous," she began with icy sarcasm. He arched an eyebrow, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "But I am much too smart to let the emotions of a wild weekend lead me into making a major mistake. We've only known each other for two days, Yale. Marriage would be a horrendous mistake. I only said that last night to try to stop you from seducing me." She shrugged with deliberate self-mockery. "But you're good.
Very good."

Something moved in the depths of the hazel eyes, but the wicked smile still played about his hard mouth. "Thank you for the compliment. I shall do my best to continue to live up to the expectations I've created."

She'd struck some sort of nerve, but
Dara
couldn't begin to figure out what was going on in his mind now. He had
a certain
watchfulness about him. As if he were paying out rope and waiting to see how much she would take before she obligingly hanged herself.

"I'm sure you will," she acknowledged politely.
"With some other woman."

"I'm content with the one I've got," he drawled, ignoring the hot water which was being wasted by the gallon. He was deliberately challenging her, and
Dara
felt more than ready for the battle.

"How kind of you," she murmured. "My turn to accept the compliment, I suppose. But I'm afraid I have other plans for other weekends. This one has been...interesting, to say the least, but not something I intend to make a practice of repeating."

"No?" The single word was edged with humor and a masculine certainty that annoyed
Dara
.

"No," she replied very calmly. Then she glanced down the front of her fluffy robe, taking in her figure with an amused expression. "I'm aware of the fact that men sometimes get the notion I'm a little...soft..."

"And cuddly?" he added helpfully, following her glance with an assessing one of her own.

"And cuddly," she agreed with a rueful sigh. "I haven't given you much reason to think otherwise, either. But I'm afraid the body nature gave me doesn't totally reflect the whole woman."

"What's hidden?" he asked lightly. "What haven't I already seen?"

"Believe it or not, I can be extraordinarily stubborn." She chuckled.

"Are you trying to tell me in your own devious fashion that you're not going to sleep with me again?" he demanded, looking fascinated.

"For a country boy, you're quite sharp at times." She smiled.

He ignored that. "What makes you think I can't make last night and the night before happen again and again?"

"Once I've made a decision and know what I'm doing, I'm quite unswerving." That was nothing less than the truth.

"You said something like this yesterday morning, as I recall."

"No," she responded coolly. "Yesterday morning I was madder than hell. It was inevitable I should get over that. I never stay angry long." She smiled
rem-iniscently
. "And you were very pleasant last night."

"You're not trying to retaliate for some imagined slight this morning?"

"Nope.
I'm merely trying to tell you that the weekend is coming to an end."

"And if I said I wanted to go on seeing you?" he prodded, the smallest hint of impatience in his words.

"I'd tell you that you're welcome to call. Just don't expect to spend the night again."

"Why not?"

"Because, in spite of the impression I'm afraid you've gotten this weekend, I don't leap into casual affairs."

"The past forty-eight hours represent a temporary aberration, is that it?" he retorted broodingly.

"It happens to all of us on occasion." She sighed wryly. "But that doesn't mean one has to make a practice of it. If you want to continue seeing me, Yale, I'm willing. I enjoy your company. But I give you fair warning that I'm putting this weekend behind me, where it belongs, and returning to reality."

He watched her for a heartbeat and then he said very softly, "Come here,
Dara
."

She tilted her head, wary of his intentions. "Why?"

"I want to show you something."

"I can see all I need to see from here," she muttered, refusing to let her gaze slip farther than his chest. She wished he would close the curtain.

"Scared?"

"Of course not!"

"Then come a little closer, honey," he urged persuasively.

"Yale, I'd like you to hurry and get out of that shower so you can be on your way before my neighbors are all awake," she instructed him resolutely, turning on her heel and opening the bathroom door.

He closed in on her as her hand came down on the doorknob. Dripping wet, he pulled her around and whipped the fluffy robe off her shoulders.

"Yale! You're getting water all over the floor! What do you think you're doing?" Her protest was a startled squeak of alarm that didn't seem to faze him in the least.

"There are a few more things we need to discuss," he told her, forcing her now nude body into the shower ahead of him. "And something tells me we'll communicate better this way!"

"Stop it!" she snapped even as the hot water drenched her. "I'm in no mood for any of your games!"

"Speaking of games," he began easily, wrapping one arm around her breasts and holding her still while he industriously began to scrub her back, "just what sort do you think you're playing this morning?"

She felt his strong hands working steadily down her tapering back, moving slickly on her wet skin, and she wanted to give herself up to the sensuous moment. But that was impossible. Too much was riding on her willpower, and once the Bancroft will of iron
had
been invoked, nothing could bend it.

"What games?" she charged tightly. "I've told you not to assume from this weekend that I'm willing to engage in a full-scale affair with you. That's all!"

"You've also told me you're no longer interested in collecting the fee for last night's charming surrender. Funny, I could have sworn at the time you had every intention of doing so!"

He soaped the contour of her waist and then, tan-
talizingly
, began to make slippery forays over her hips. Helpless in the one-armed grip,
Dara
steeled herself against the onslaught.

"It was not a surrender, damn it," she grated, knowing her temper was beginning to fray under the pressure. "I don't know how things work back in the mountains, but out here on the Coast, women occasionally go to bed with men because they feel like it! It doesn't constitute
a surrender
in any sense of the word!"

. "Then why the insistence on marriage?" he retorted, his fingers gliding more slowly now as he shaped the resilient flesh of her buttocks. "If you were only going to bed with me because I took your fancy for the moment, why demand marriage?"

"I told you, I was trying to stop you from seducing me!"

"You didn't have the willpower to simply say no?" he taunted.

"Not then," she admitted grimly. "But I do now. The weekend, Yale, is over!"

"I've got news for you, sweetheart," he growled, turning her in his arms and staring down into her upturned face without smiling. "It's just beginning. I want you now. You've pushed your way into my life. Seduced me would be a better term, I suppose. You know more about me than anyone else has known for years. You've given me just enough of your lovely, soft body to make me want a lot more, and you've let me see what I can do to you. One weekend isn't going to satisfy me. I was willing to pay for what I want with marriage, but if you don't want that, there isn't any way I can force you into it. I'll take what's left, which is an affair."

"Not on your life!" she flared, eyes burning an emerald color as she defied him.

His hands were around her waist, moving upward until his thumbs found the rosy tips of her breasts. "You don't mean that," he whispered deeply, circling the sensitive nipples deliberately. "You've already said I could continue seeing you...."

"You can," she flung back icily. "But if you want to date me, Yale, you must understand that this relationship is going back to square one. You would have to forget about the weekend and pretend we had just met."