"Dara, my darling Dara, I have a confession to make," he drawled, slowly, meaningfully.
"What...what are you talking about?" she whispered, opening her eyes wide to stare up at him.
His hands locked firmly around her shoulders as if to hold her still. But she was incapable of movement anyhow. The weight of his body covered her softness with undeniable authority.
The hazel eyes glittered and the lines around his mouth tightened.
"I tricked you," he said intendy. "You're not here with your Southern gendeman tonight. You're here with the other Yale. The one who makes you so wary. The one you found when you opened Pandora's box."
"Stop it, Yale! Don't tease me!" she hissed, her fingers clenching into his shoulders.
"I'm not teasing you. The time for that is past. And what's more, I'm not going to let you tease me any longer, either. I'm going to make love to you tonight, sweetheart, the way I did last weekend. I can't wait any longer. Not when you refuse to give me some sort of time limit!"
"Time limit! You want me to put a date on it? Tell you I'll sleep with you on a certain day? That's ridiculous! You know that!"
"This afternoon you were talking months. Honey, I can't wait that long for you! Don't you understand? This past week has been hell, and this afternoon when you started talking about endless weeks ahead I knew I had to do something."
"There's nothing you can do! I've made up my mind, Yale," she retorted gamely, a breathless feeling washing through her. He was serious!
"And I've made up mine," he flung back, a dangerous smile playing about the edges of his hard mouth. “Tonight both hunters are going to close in on you at the same time. I don't think you can resist them both at once!"
Appalled and feeling more helpless than she ever had in her life, Dara knew he was right. His heaviness beat on her senses, mastering her body in a way it seemed to crave.
Without further argument, Yale cut off her moan of protest, sealing her mouth with a kiss that first punished and then soothed. His legs sprawled across hers, anchoring them against the cushions, and Dara felt his hands moving on her body, stripping her clothing from her in long, sweeping gestures.
"Undress me," he ordered gratingly, his lips buried in the hollow of her shoulder. "Touch me with your sweet, loving hands. Touch me, Dara!"
"Please, Yale! This isn't what I want...!"
"It will be," he swore. "I'll make it what you want!"
His passion rolled across her like a wave. Soon she lay naked and trembling beneath him. When she refused to undress him, he ripped impatiently at the buttons of his shirt and flung it aside, coming back on top of her at once.
"I've wanted you so badly this week, Dara. I've ached for you. Every time you sent me away I wanted to ignore you. I wanted to tear off your clothes, pull you down on the floor and make love to you until you were no longer capable of speaking the words that would send me away!"
The feel of him was eating into her bones. Dara's senses swam as he talked to her of his need and desire. The passionate phrases were accompanied by an unrelenting assault on her body. His hands explored, caressed and enveloped until her breath came in quick panting gasps.
Through it all she realized dimly that he wasn't even aware of his strongest weapon. He couldn't know how her own sense of Tightness was hammering at her, urging her to surrender to the power of the moment. How could a woman deny her man when his need of her was so obvious and so great?
It was impossible. She knew it was going to be impossible long before the first trembling, shuddering response seeped through her defenses.
He was aware of it immediately. When her hands began to slide lovingly over the skin of his back and down to the narrow waist he groaned in satisfaction.
"I knew it,'' he grated fiercely.
In exultation he strung kisses down her arms to the vulnerable, exquisitely sensitive areas of her elbows and wrists. His hands locked under her buttocks, reveling in the feel of her as he transferred his lips to her curving stomach.
Restlessly, Dara shifted her legs, hugging him between them with feminine strength that served to excite him all the more. Her nails danced on his neck and shoulders as she felt his tongue probing every square inch of her thigh and the soft warm heart of her.
"Oh, Yale, I do want you so..." The words were a ribbon of desire that wafted toward him on the wind of passion. He seized the end at once and tugged, drawing her closer and closer.
"Thank God," he cried softly. "Because I couldn't let you go. Not tonight. Not ever. I told you that you were mine!"
"Yes." It was the truth. It had been from the first moment. How could she fight it?
Abruptly he was moving, raising himself from the couch. Before she could ask him why, he reached down and lifted her high into his arms. She closed her eyes again, her hair falling across his shoulder as he carried her wordlessly into the bedroom.
She was gently deposited on the dark down quilt and a moment later, as he shed the last of his clothes and joined her on the bed, Dara knew beyond any doubt that both Yales were united tonight. He was right. She couldn't fight them both, and she no longer wanted to try.
Her arms opened to receive him and he moved against her soft, full curves, crooning like a man in a desert who has found an oasis. The tension between them mounted steadily to dizzying heights as Dara abandoned all attempt at defense. The need to satisfy this most important man in her life was too strong to deny any longer. She would worry about the morning when it came
"I've dreamed about this every night for the past week. The way you open yourself to me, gather me into you. The silk of your thighs, the responsiveness in you when I touch you like this..."
She moaned involuntarily as he claimed the intimate core of her with fingers that sent electricity flying along her veins.
He curled a tongue around one taut nipple and then bit gently, delighting in her reaction.
"Please, Yale. Please..." The muttered plea came from the heart of her as she pulled him close.
He obeyed the timeless feminine summons. In the darkness she saw him rise, knew he was going to complete the union and thrilled to the anticipation and need in herself.
And then, like a shattering mirror, everything seemed to fall apart.
"No!"
The cry was torn hoarsely from him as Yale suddenly threw himself to the side, his arm across his eyes in a gesture of abject denial.
"I won't, damn it! I won't do it this way!"
"Yale, what's wrong? What are you saying?"
Trembling, Dara turned her head to look at his rigid length, her eyes full of incomprehension and the still-flaming warmth of the passion he had aroused.
"Get dressed, Dara. For God's sake, get out of here and get dressed!" he rapped bleakly.
Slowly, confusion and fear driving her, Dara sat up beside him. He still refused to uncover his eyes and she could see the tautness in every muscle of his body.
"Yale, I don't understand...."
"Don't be a fool! I'm going to take you home. Exactly as you wanted me to do."
"Why?" The single word was stark and hollow-sounding.
"Because I don't feel like waking up beside you again and going through what I went through last weekend!"
"I...I see," she whispered, finally comprehending. Pain washed through her, replacing the love and longing in one fell swoop. She shut her eyes against incipient tears.
"No," he shot back harshly. "I don't think you do."
"Yes, I do," she breathed sadly. "You're afraid that I'll demand another price for the evening and that this time I won't let you escape payment. In the heat of passion you'll offer to pay it, but you suddenly realize that you may not get off the hook tomorrow morning as easily as you did last weekend."
"What the hell...!" he began angrily.
"Yale, what if I told you that this time there won't be any price?"
"I'd beat you. With a horsewhip, I think."
"Yale!"
<
br /> He removed his arm from his eyes and even in the darkness she could see the fire burning in the hazel depths.
"I've had it with you backing out of our arrangements," he snapped, the fury in him unmistakable. "Do you understand? I've had it! You'll let me make love to you and then, in the morning, withdraw yourself from me again. I can't go through that."
"Will you listen to me?" she interrupted, a wild hope warming the cold which had settled on her when he'd broken off the lovemaking.
"No, you'll listen to me! We'll do this your way, Dara, because there doesn't seem to be any alternative, but so help me, when it's finally over I'm going to make you so thoroughly mine that you won't ever again think of that other man. The one with whom everything seemed to click for you!"
"Yale, there is no other man!"
"I know you got rid of him because I made you do it. I don't know why you couldn't overcome the 'complications' in that relationship. You certainly seem strong-willed enough where I'm concerned. But I'll have to be grateful for small favors, I suppose. But eventually you won't ever think of him. What we have between us will be right. You'll hear that magic click, Dara, if you'll listen. I'll make everything right, you'll see!"
"What an idiot you are, Yale Ransom," Dara whispered with deep love. "You were the other man. Everything clicked into place for me the night of the party. Why on earth do you think I left with you after only having known you a couple of hours? Why do you think I pushed so hard to discover the real you? And why do you think I let you make love to me in that sleazy motel room?"
"Dara!"
He sat up beside her, reaching out to grasp her arms and hold her still for his searching gaze. "Dara, are you telling me the truth?"
"I love you, Yale. I have from the first."
"Then why the hell have you put both of us through this?" he demanded violently, giving her a small shake. But she could feel the dawning wonder in him and smiled tremulously.
"Because I wanted you to fall in love with me. Is that so hard to understand? The time I was trying to buy was for you, Yale, not me."
He swore softly, bluntly, and then he pulled her close.
"Dara, you're the idiot. I think I fell in love with you when you gave me your hand to shake so politely at that party and then had the nerve to laugh at me! I knew it for certain the next morning when you woke up in my arms...."
"No," she objected, her face pressed against the tantalizing hair of his chest. "The next morning you talked of fulfilling our arrangement You were trading your stock account for a night in bed!"
"Sweetheart, it never occurred to me then that you might have fallen in love! The stock account seemed like a perfectly logical way to tie us together. There's nothing like a business arrangement to bring two people into constant contact. And then, the next night when you demanded marriage, I thought I had it made!"
"Only to wake up the next morning and have me tell you that you were free?"
He growled a response, his hands tightening around her. "How could you say that if you love me?"
"I was so crushed that morning when I handed you back your freedom and you took it." Dara sighed. "I thought that if you really cared you would insist on the marriage. Instead you just said okay and walked off into the shower. I could have killed you!"
"I felt the same way about you! I thought you had told me the truth when you claimed to have used the marriage demand only as a means of trying to stop me from making love. When you withdrew the demand, I figured it was because it hadn't worked. The next thing I knew, you were kicking me out of the house!'
"I fed you breakfast first!"
"Lucky me," he drawled, responding unwillingly to her small resurgence of humor. "I decided then and there that you were going to find out exactly what you'd done when you'd pushed past my carefully concocted image. As far as I was concerned, you had uncovered the truth and you were stuck with it!"
"I've always believed in being responsible for one's own actions," she teased warmly, trailing her fingers lovingly along the muscle of his arm.
"I almost flipped when you started talking about this mysterious other man," he grated. "The one with whom you claimed everything had 'clicked.'"
"I know." She smiled shakily, remembering his threatening lovemaking.
"Sweetheart, was it really me? The one you were so sure about?"
"I was sure about my feelings for you. I wasn't at all sure about yours for me! That was the complication I spoke of."
She felt the thankful sigh as he exhaled and held her more tightly than ever. "No other woman has ever been interested in knowing all of me," he said softly. "No one has ever guessed there was more than what showed on the surface. You took one look at me and started pressing for all the answers. I was stunned. By the time I had you in bed at that motel I knew I was going to have to make you mine. I couldn't let you go. You knew too much about me!"
"Well, I wasn't prepared for the split personality!"
"I was desperate and determined," he confided. "I had to find some way of throwing you off balance. You were so controlled, so cool about it all. I told myself I'd wear you down with a two-pronged attack."
"The old hunting knowledge from the hills?" She smiled, inhaling the musky scent of him.
"I was prepared to keep it up for quite a while, but today, when you started talking in terms of months, I decided I'd had it!"
"So tonight I was dating the devil in disguise?"
"Umm. Let's just say you had the whole me."
"An unnerving thought."
"You can handle it," he promised, pulling aside the dark sweep of her hair and pressing a hungry kiss to the back of her neck.
"This time you really will have to marry me, Yale," she vowed, sliding her hands down to his hips and sinking her nails ever so gently into him.
"Oh, no, you don't. I'm not taking any chances on your proposals. I will do the proposing this time. And you can bet your sweet life I won't renege like some folks do! Will you marry me, Dara? I warn you that if you say no, it won't make any difference. You're going to come and live with me regardless of your answer!"
"What can I say? You've closed all the avenues of escape! I'll marry you." She pulled her head back for a moment and smiled up at him dreamily. "I wouldn't want your reputation to suffer. Not after you've spent so many years building it!"
"I love you, Dara," he growled softly, the humor in him fading before the force of renewed passion.
"I love you, my gentleman devil. I always will."
He pushed her back into the thickness of the quilt, his hands running over her with a new possessiveness from ankle to thigh.
She felt the sudden urgency in him and knew it was echoed in herself. For both of them the need to consummate the private vows they had just taken was fierce and strong. The slow, leisurely lovemaking would come later, Dara knew. Now the urgency of committing themselves to each other was too great to allow for the languid, luxurious kind of love.
Within moments, Yale had restoked her level of excitement to what it had been before he had broken off so abruptly. She knew he felt the heat in her and the welcoming between her thighs.
With a groan of need and aching desire he covered her, surrendering to her ferruriinity even as she surrendered to the bold, uncompromising maleness in him.
"Dara, my darling Dara," he husked, uniting with her in thrilling mastery.
She sang his name into his throat as he closed with her and pulled her into the surging rhythm of his body. Deliriously she gave herself up to the joy of the lovemaking, knowing even as she did so that he was demanding everything of her this time.
Together they sought the heights of the mountains above the verdant valley and together they sailed off into the currents of air that wafted them gently to the green fields below.
Dara was aware of the strength of Yale's hold and knew she was clinging just as tightly to him. This time neither would let go. Ever. This time everything really was right. It all clicke
d.
Much later, Dara roused sufficiently from the comforting power of Yale's arms to smile lovingly down into his relaxed features.
"And why are you sitting up there, looking like the cat that got the canary?" He grinned, ruffling her hair with deep love.
"I was just thinking," she murmured on a thread of laughter, "that when the chips were down tonight, the Southern gentleman resurfaced at the last moment."
He grinned back lazily, the gold in his teeth taunting her. "You think so?"
"Of course," she mocked. "Why else would you have stopped at such a crucial point earlier?"
"I've told you before, I'm a very good hunter," he drawled.
She blinked uncertainly. "Are you telling me you planned that?"
"Now that you've reunited both sides of my personality, you're going to have that problem a lot, I'm afraid," he told her with patently false sympathy.
"What problem?"
"Not knowing for sure which Yale you're dealing with."
"Hah! I know you, Yale Ransom," she declared with serene confidence. "You won't be able to fool me that easily!"
"Whatever you say, ma'am," he agreed politely.
Dara leaned down to kiss the Southern gentleman and surrendered in delight to the devil who reached out to pull her into his arms.
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