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“I don’t know much about my family or their history, just bits and pieces,” Ty confessed with a heavy sigh. “My parents were separated until I was fifteen. I lived with my mother in California all that time, so I never grew up knowing details about my father’s side of the family the way my little sister will. It wasn’t easy for me at the ranch in the beginning. I tried so hard to belong.” He laughed shortly as he realized it. “I guess, in my own way, I still am.”
“It really means a lot for you to belong, doesn’t it?” She eyed him with a curious and probing look. “Maybe that’s what makes you different from the others. You seem more serious about your studies . . . and everything else.”
“You make me sound very boring.” There was a dazzling effect to his slow smile that snatched at her breath. It was recklessly sexy and challenging.
“Not boring,” Tara corrected, trying to match his smile with a provocative look. “Just dangerous.”
An eyebrow lifted in response. “Dangerous how?”
“I don’t know if I can explain it.” She shrugged. “Most of the guys at college, they want an education, but they’re more interested in a good time. The priority is reversed with you. You party and go on beer-drinking sprees with them, but you’re basically not here to have fun. Yet it’s more than that. I guess I have the feeling that you pursue something until you get it.”
“Like you, for instance.” His gaze darkened on her with disturbing intensity.
“I didn’t say that,” Tara demurred as he seemed to come closer even though he hadn’t moved an inch.
“But you know I want you.” It was a calmly issued statement as he inspected her face and form as if he were already taking possession of her.
“People don’t always get what they want,” she countered smoothly.
“What is it that you want, Tara?”
“To have fun and enjoy my life.” It was a stock answer, the properly feminine kind. Deep in her heart, she knew what she truly desired. She was the daughter of E. J. Dyson, so she had grown up surrounded by power. It carried a sense of exhilaration that was addictive. With her beauty, she possessed her own kind of power, and she knew it. At college, she had begun to exercise it and test it on those who weren’t under her father’s influence so she could discover the potential force of it.
“What about a home and family?” he prompted.
“In time.” At the moment, her plans for the future were nebulous. There was a vague dream in her mind to become the ruling matriarch of a powerful family. “But I’m going to finish college first. After that, Daddy has promised me a year in Europe.”
“Are you going?”
“Of course I’m going.” She laughed, a merry, musical sound. “The alternatives are certainly not appealing. I just can’t see myself getting a job and working five days a week. It would get boring very quickly.”
“You could always get married and honeymoon in Europe for a month,” Ty suggested.
“I could.” Her red lips came together in an inviting line. “I have the feeling my daddy is hoping that I’ll make an advantageous marriage someday so there would ultimately be a merger of two important families.”
“Your father doesn’t strike me as being that calculating.” E. J. Dyson had always seemed to be a very indulgent father, willing to give in to her every whim and never pushing her one way or another. Ty had never gotten the impression that E.J., unlike his own father, expected his daughter to fulfill a particular role.
“Every father wants his daughter to make a perfect marriage, and have a husband who is worthy of her. There isn’t anything wrong—or even calculating—in that.” But she knew her father well enough to know it wasn’t that casual with him. He was simply wise enough not to dictate choices to her. She strongly suspected that her father knew her desires would ultimately mesh with his.
All this talk of marriage pushed at him. “You’d make a beautiful bride, Thra,” Ty murmured and reached out with his hand to stroke the dark silk of her hair. “I can see you in a white satin gown, studded with pearls, and a lace veil.”
He lifted her left hand. There was a large topaz birthstone on her ring finger, flanked by diamonds. He covered the ring so he could picture the diamond he would give her. When Ty looked at her, the thoughts of wedding bands immediately brought him images of the wedding night.
“You’re going to be mine, Tara,” he declared rawly. “Sooner or later, you’re going to be mine.”
She started to laugh away his assertion, but he had no intention of allowing her to make light of it. His arms hooked her slender shape to his body white his mouth covered her smile. The driving force of his kiss bent her backwards, arching her spine and molding her small hips to his rigid thighs.
The rawness of wanting and being prevented for so long from taking what he wanted made him indifferent to the resisting push of her hands. There was only the soft sensation of her breasts, their round outline being drawn on his chest. Her warm body excited him, and the honeyed sweetness of her lips made up for the reluctance of the response he forced from her.
Ty knew he was taking her further than she wanted to go, but his confidence was such that he felt he would ultimately convince her she wanted what he did. He set about to do it with his hands coercing and urging a closer intimacy as they felt the roundness of her taut bottom and closed on the uplifting swell of her breasts. He lipped at the lobe of her ear and nibbled on the sensitive skin of her throat and neck. All the while he was conscious of the disturbed, shallow breaths she gasped and the little sounds of protest she made in her throat.
When her hand suddenly cupped his mouth, staying his kisses, Ty reached up impatiently to pull it away. As his fingers closed around her slender wrist and dragged ii down, he looked at her aroused and flushed face tilted up to him. Her eyes glowed darkly with a hard light of determination.
“If you care for me at all, Ty, you’ll stop this right now before it goes any further,” she insisted, taking advantage of that crazy code of honor she had long ago discovered in him. She had no qualms about exploiting what she saw as a weakness.
“Care for you?” His low-pitched voice threw back the puny description of the passionate furies she unleashed in him. “My God, Tara. I love you,” Ty avowed, almost angrily.
She didn’t relent. “I didn’t come with you this afternoon to be seduced in a cemetery.” Her hands pushed at his chest, demanding distance between them.
