Autumn Lover (12 page)

Reflexively Hunter froze, merging his outline into that of a big apple tree. Dark clothes, dark hair, dark beard stubble, sun-darkened skin…Hunter was invisible.

Then he turned his head. A bar of moonlight fell between apple branches and touched his face. His eyes gleamed like hammered silver.

This time she hasn’t gone to her lover
, Hunter thought with harsh satisfaction.

This time.

But that didn’t explain away all the other times whose only evidence was the ghostly web of trails knitting together the two ranches.

Hunter watched as Elyssa slowly worked her way down a row of herbs, caressing a leaf here, a tiny flower there. Her fingers were like pale, delicate flames moving among the plants.

The stillness of the autumn night was so complete that Hunter could hear the glide of Elyssa’s silk skirts over leaves and stems, the liquid sighs of the creek, and the musical whisper of a waltz breathed into the moonlight.

Pausing, Elyssa bent over one of the rosemary bushes that grew at the end of every row of herbs. Speaking words Hunter couldn’t make out, she traced the bush’s tallest branches with her fingertips.

When Elyssa moved away and walked down another row, her steps brought her within a few feet of the motionless Hunter. Her whimsical words slowly became understandable to him.

“Ah, Viscount Oregano,” Elyssa murmured. “How well you look tonight in your green waistcoat.”

Bending low, she cupped a stem of oregano in her
hand. When she released the stem, it swayed gently, as though dancing.

“Were it not for your gently rooted condition,” she whispered, “I would gather you up in my arms and waltz away the night. Think of the scandal…”

Smiling, Elyssa moved on to another group of plants.

“Duchess Peppermint, I did not expect you to be here tonight,” Elyssa murmured. “I am honored.”

She curtsied deeply, rose, and cocked her head as though listening to someone speak. Then she smiled sadly and gently stroked the edges of the peppermint leaves. Plucking one, she tucked it into her mouth and chewed lazily.

“Such a tasty fringe you have on your dress,” Elyssa said. “I must have the name of your seamstress. The same as Countess Spearmint’s? Ah, I should have guessed.”

Elyssa bent down to brush her cheek against the waist-high peppermint plant. Then she straightened and moved on once more.

From time to time she stopped and inhaled complex herbal fragrances as though they were costly French perfumes. Then she continued on, touching, tasting, immersing herself in the scented welcome of her garden.

She didn’t notice Hunter in the dense moon shadow of the apple tree. Slowly she waltzed by him. Humming to herself, her eyes closed, she went down the garden row by touch alone, calling each plant by a common name and a fanciful title.

Snippets of conversation came back to Hunter, wounding him in ways he didn’t understand.

Then he did understand, and wished he hadn’t.

Little Em was like that. There were no playmates for her at home, so she named every rock and tree and bird
.

And she sang to them
.

Grief for his dead child raked Hunter with hooked
claws, bringing pain like black blood welling in the moonlight. Motionless, Hunter let the pain drench him as he had so many times before.

Slowly, heartbeat by heartbeat, agony drained away into the darkness of night.

At the end of the row, Elyssa turned and began walking back toward Hunter. Eyes still closed, she came up the outer row of the garden, keeping herself oriented by touching herbs on one side and the trunks of fruit trees on the other.

“Baronet Parsley, you grow more robust every day. Your seeds will overflow my hands this fall, and your children will overflow my garden next year.”

The fluid murmuring of the creek was Elyssa’s only answer. She needed none other.

“Ah, Princess Rosemary. What an unparalleled honor. Your presence graces my humble garden.”

Elyssa stopped by the plant whose branches lifted like a hundred-armed candelabra toward the moon. The pale undersides of the narrow leaves glowed with ghostly radiance. It was as though tiny, spectral tongues of fire licked over the plant.

“What a magnificent dress,” Elyssa murmured. “There is none to equal it. And your fragrance would make roses weep with envy.”

Skillfully Elyssa picked a sprig of rosemary and rolled it between her palms, inhaling deeply of its scent. When she bent her head over her hands, her hair burned and shimmered as though silver flames were concealed within.

Hunter burned, too, consumed by the wildfire that had ignited when he rode up to the Ladder S and found Elyssa standing on the porch, bathed in lantern light.

He had never felt a hunger so deep, even when Belinda had teased and tormented him into marriage.

I should have turned around and ridden out
, Hunter
thought.
Just like I should turn around and go back to the house
.

But he hadn’t.

And he didn’t.

Elyssa stole another sprig of rosemary, unbuttoned the center of her bodice, and tucked the rosemary between her breasts.

Hunter forgot to breathe.

He wondered if Elyssa had seen him and was teasing him with a glimpse of her pale, perfect breasts. The sight of her gliding across the kitchen, her arms held out to him, was burned into his memory. Watching her fingers gliding over supple, scented leaves made him want to howl his frustration like a wolf.

Elyssa was a silver wildfire consuming him.

Distantly Hunter realized why Elyssa’s scent was always so pleasing to him. She wore rosemary and thyme rather than the heavy magnolia perfume favored by Belinda.

Without meaning to, Hunter took a step toward Elyssa, then another, like a wild animal lured unwillingly by a fire burning in the center of night.

On the third step a twig snapped beneath Hunter’s boot.

W
ith a startled sound, Elyssa spun around. In the moonlight her eyes were wide, dark, as unreadable as the night itself.

When Elyssa realized that Hunter was near, she quickly turned her back. Her normally deft fingers fumbled with the tiny buttons on her bodice as she tried to fasten it up once more.

“What are you doing out here?” Elyssa asked, her back still turned to Hunter. “I thought you’d be waltzing with Penny.”

“I wanted to see who you were meeting.”

“Meeting? In the garden? At night?”

“Yes,” Hunter said.

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“For a little…
conversation
.”

The last stubborn button finally allowed itself to be pushed back through its hole.

Elyssa took a swift breath to collect herself. Then she turned and confronted the very man who had driven her to the solace of her garden in the first place.

“Clever of you to guess,” she said.

Hunter’s mouth flattened.

“A little civilized conversation is so hard to find
lately,” Elyssa continued, her voice low and artificially sweet.

“Hoping to meet Mickey?” Hunter asked with false calm. “Or is it Bill you’re pining for?”

“I was ‘pining for’ a bit of peace and quiet. People can be so trying.”

“Women in particular,” Hunter retorted.

“I was thinking of one man in particular. A man who is rude without reason. Abrupt. Impossible.
And dead wrong
. Surely you, of all people, understand my need?”

“Conversation,” he said.

“Words,” she agreed. “One after another. Pleasantries. Gallantries. Foreign to you, I’m certain, but not to my garden.”

“You talk to your plants.”

“Kindly.”

Hunter struggled not to smile. He almost succeeded.

“I also weed, prune, mulch, fertilize, water, and generally pamper them to the best of my abilities,” Elyssa said.

“I noticed.”

“Remarkable.”

Hunter ignored the barb.

“Whenever things upset you,” he said slowly, “you come to the herb garden, don’t you?”

“It’s a habit I picked up in England. I spent so much time in the garden they called me a peasant, among other things.”

Silence gathered while Hunter tried not to stare at the five buttons that had been undone so that a sprig of rosemary could lie in the velvet shadow between Elyssa’s breasts.

When he spoke, it was without thinking.

“Who is Bill Moreland to you?” Hunter demanded.

“My father’s stepbrother.”

“No relationship?”

“As I said, my father’s—”

“Stepbrother,” Hunter finished curtly. “No
blood
relationship.”

“In a word, none. I used to call Bill an uncle, but it was a courtesy title.”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed as he thought about the reasons why a girl might no longer call a man her uncle. Sex came to mind first.

“So Bill is a courtesy uncle?” Hunter asked.

“Yes.”

“Too bad. With the Culpepper gang, you need something with more grit than a ‘courtesy uncle’ has to offer.”

“Something such as you?” Elyssa asked acidly.

The corner of Hunter’s mouth lifted in a smile as narrow as his eyes.

“No, Sassy. I’m a gentleman.”

Elyssa laughed.

“A gentleman,” she repeated sardonically. “How kind of you to point it out. Somehow I had managed to overlook it entirely.”

The cool dismissal in Elyssa’s tone rubbed Hunter’s already raw nerves.

“Leash that tongue of yours,” Hunter said, “or I’ll take what you’ve been promising me.”

“I never promised you anything but wages.”

“Didn’t you?” he taunted. “What about when you waltzed up to me in the kitchen and stood so close I couldn’t breathe without taking your own breath inside me?”

“Do forgive me,” she said recklessly. “I’ll be certain never to ask you to dance again!”

“If I weren’t a gentleman,” Hunter said bluntly, “I would have taken the invitation in your smile and kissed you breathless.”

“No man has ever made me breathless.”

Hunter smiled.

Abruptly Elyssa realized that baiting Hunter was not like baiting her English cousins. They hadn’t sent an elemental female awareness through her nerves.

Hunter did.

Especially when he stood as he was standing now, so close that his heat radiated through her clothing, sinking into her very flesh.

“Dance with me,” he said softly.

“I thought you had lost the ability.”

“So did I.”

With that Hunter bowed and held out his hand as though they were on a polished dance floor with silken ladies and well-dressed men all around.

Automatically Elyssa put her hand in Hunter’s. Without speaking he led her toward the stream, where cottonwood leaves whispered and trembled with each breath of wind. Beneath one huge old tree the ground was clear of everything but fallen leaves. They made a hushed carpet underfoot.

“I’ll stumble,” Elyssa said shakily.

“I’ll catch you.”

Hunter turned and faced her. Deliberately he took Elyssa’s left hand and put it against his chest. Only then did he slide his right hand from the curve of her waist to the small of her back.

The intimacy of the act made Elyssa’s mouth go dry. Other men had held her like this and she had been unmoved. Some had tried to hold her closer, which had only annoyed her.

None of those men had made her pulse race. None of them had made her dizzy with a touch, a glance. None of them had made her feel lighter than fire, more delicate, more mysterious.

Hunter did.

For Elyssa it was like being in one of her restless
dreams—darkness and moonlight, the scent of rosemary and the rippling murmur of water, Hunter’s eyes watching her with a hunger that made her heart turn over.

“Sing for us,” he whispered.

At first Elyssa’s throat refused to cooperate. She swallowed and tried again.

The husky, hesitant strains of a waltz lifted into the night.

Hunter gathered Elyssa into his arms and began to dance as though in a ballroom suffused with laughter and lamplight. Gracefully she followed his lead, despite the uneven ground.

When Elyssa stumbled, she felt the power of Hunter’s lean body. He lifted her without effort, breathed a word over her hair, and set her back on her feet once more in a swirl of silk.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“Nothing.”

“But you did.”

Without warning Hunter turned in a full circle, then another, then a third, spinning Elyssa with him until she was breathless. She smiled, watching him with yearning in her eyes and a song on her lips.

“I dreamed of this,” Elyssa said huskily.

“Of dancing?”

“Dancing. Moonlight. You.”

She felt the subtle tightening of Hunter’s body.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My cousins berated me for not being coy.”

Hunter didn’t want to talk about how Elyssa’s loose conduct had shocked her proper English cousins. He didn’t even want to think about it.

He just wanted to enjoy a bit of it himself before he called a halt and taught Elyssa that all men couldn’t be controlled by the sleek, hot promise of a woman’s body.

With an eagerness Hunter barely concealed, he al
lowed his arms to do what they had been wanting to do for a long time. Slowly he pulled Elyssa close, then closer still.

A subtle stiffening overtook her body as his thighs pressed against hers though layers of cloth.

“Why fight me?” Hunter whispered. “You sense the wildfire waiting for us as clearly as I do.”

“What?”

“This.”

Very carefully, Hunter fitted his mouth to Elyssa’s.

The first smooth touch of her lips burned him so fiercely that it was all he could do not to groan aloud. The depth of his hunger shocked him.

Hunter wanted to thrust his tongue between Elyssa’s lips and demand entrance to her mouth, but only a fool revealed the extent of his hunger to a flirt. Hunter wasn’t a fool.

All he permitted himself was a chaste kiss…and a sweet nibbling along the line of Elyssa’s mouth that was just short of a plea.

The catch and sigh of her minty breath over Hunter’s lips was as heady as whiskey to his heightened senses. His arms tightened just a bit more, pulling Elyssa closer to the hungry contours of his body.

When she stiffened again, Hunter forced the coiled muscles in his arms to relax while his mouth sipped teasingly at hers. Elyssa shifted slightly in his embrace, finding a new balance.

Each brush of her body against his was fuel heaped on the sensual fire burning inside Hunter. His teeth closed with fierce restraint on the curve of Elyssa’s lower lip. Holding the flesh gently captive, he traced it with the tip of his tongue. Passion and the taste of mint made him almost light-headed.

Hunter felt the trembling that went through Elyssa at the caress. He stroked her again with his tongue, hungry
for another intimate taste of mint. Then he released her lower lip, tasting its warmth and satin underside as he did.

The mint-scented sigh that rushed over Hunter was an invitation he couldn’t refuse. His tongue followed Elyssa’s indrawn breath between her teeth, caressing her with an intimacy that drew a husky sound from the back of her throat.

Triumph and desire leaped equally in Hunter when he felt the telltale softening of Elyssa in his arms. Though he wanted to thrust into her, filling her with his heat and savor, he forced himself to continue the slow seduction of her mouth as though he were only casually involved in their mutual sensuality.

A civilized gentleman playing with elemental fire.

Hunter’s teasing, restrained caresses both intrigued Elyssa and made her impatient for something she couldn’t name. She knew it existed, though.

She had just discovered its fiery forerunners in the discreet, repeated glide of Hunter’s tongue over hers.

Instinctively Elyssa knew she must get closer to Hunter. Where before she had stiffened when he pulled her against him, now it was her arms tightening, her body urging intimacy with his. Her hands shifted, her arms wound around his neck, and she leaned against his strength.

The luxurious, unexpected pleasure of matching her body with Hunter’s drew another husky sound from Elyssa’s throat. In the space of a hushed breath his arms hardened, shifted, tightened, dragging her so close that she couldn’t breathe.

Elyssa didn’t care. The taste of Hunter was more potent than wine, more complex, utterly untamed. She yielded her mouth to him and took his in turn. Her tongue returned the intimacy she had just learned from him, rubbing over his in a sensuous dance that took the world from beneath her feet.

The intensity of the kiss was like nothing Elyssa had ever experienced. Hunter was heat and lightning and hot caresses consuming her.

And she was fire.

Hunter said something dark against Elyssa’s lips and was answered by the white flash of her teeth. Recklessly she caught his lower lip between her teeth. The exquisite, raking caress she gave Hunter drew a thick sound from his chest.

Instantly Elyssa released his lip.

“I didn’t mean to—” she began.

She got no further. Hunter’s mouth came down hard over hers, his tongue shot deep within, and he held her as though he wanted to sink through her flesh into her very bones.

At first Elyssa simply yielded to the hard luxury of Hunter’s body. Then she fought for the embrace, struggling to get closer to him, closer, needing that closeness with an intensity that would have shaken her had she realized it.

Yet no matter how Elyssa twisted, no matter how she dragged her body over Hunter’s, she couldn’t get close enough to him to satisfy the passionate demands of her own flesh.

It was the same for Hunter. He was rigid with desire, his whole body flexed and hard, his mouth almost bruising in its search for a deeper joining. His hands swept from Elyssa’s shoulders to her hips. His fingers sank into the taut, yielding flesh.

The sound of surprise and pleasure she made at the back of her throat nearly brought Hunter to his knees. He repeated the caress and was rewarded again by a throaty cry and a more complete softening of her body against his.

When Hunter’s long fingers slid from Elyssa’s hips to her ribs and then to her breasts, she stiffened in surprise.
Sudden pleasure drenched her, left her trembling, aching. She twisted hungrily, increasing the pressure of his hands on her breasts, for she sensed instinctively that he would soothe their aching.

Hunter said something dark and hungry. Never had a woman been like this for him, matching his sensuality, demanding his caresses,
needing
him.

Knowing he shouldn’t, not willing to stop himself, Hunter began undoing the tiny buttons on Elyssa’s bodice. While he worked over the buttons, his mouth joined with hers in an elemental intimacy that was as new to him as it was to her.

When the final button came undone, the fragrance of rosemary swirled up from her heated skin.

It was like breathing fire.

The sound Hunter made was of a man in torment. He wanted to kiss the nipples that had risen so swiftly at his touch, but he couldn’t force himself to end the wild mating of his mouth with Elyssa’s.

Distantly Elyssa understood that her dress was undone, her chemise was in disarray, and Hunter’s hands were caressing her bare breasts.

She didn’t care about her nakedness. All she wanted was to have the aching in her body be answered by Hunter’s soothing, inciting, consuming caresses.

Hunter tore his mouth from Elyssa’s and lifted her swiftly. The fragrance of rosemary was all around his face. He breathed it in, worshipped it, and suckled a soft breast whose nipple drew up hard against his tongue.

The coolness of moonlight and night against Elyssa’s heated skin was like a benediction to her.

And Hunter’s mouth was a sultry paradise.

Wildfire raced through Elyssa, shaking her, burning her. Every breath she took was a hungry sound, a sensuous whimper, a husky demand.

Hunter felt the night turning to fire around him. He
wanted nothing more in life than to release his restraint and sink into the heart of wildfire and beyond, into a burning land he had never known before, yet had hungered for all of his life.