The sensations were indescribable, delicious. She wanted to twist and turn against the caresses like a cat.
“Such enticing little cries,” Hunter said huskily. “They tempt me to pull off these men’s clothes and find all the soft woman hidden beneath.”
As Hunter spoke, his hands shifted to the waistband of Elyssa’s trousers. The buttons started coming undone at a rapid rate.
Elyssa’s eyes widened at the thought of being absolutely naked in front of Hunter. She stared at the male hands that were even now urging the thick fabric of the trousers down toward her hips.
“But we didn’t—” she began. “Before, I wasn’t—”
“Naked?” Hunter offered.
Hesitantly Elyssa nodded.
“My fault,” he said in a low voice. “You should have been as naked as a flower. And I should have been all over you like warm, gentle rain.”
A shiver went through Elyssa.
Hunter stopped trying to pull the trousers down over her hips. Though the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was lift his hands away from her clothes, Hunter did just that.
“Too shy?” he asked.
“I never thought of myself as shy,” Elyssa whispered. “But—”
“Would this help?”
Hunter took a thin cotton blanket from the end of the bedroll. He shook the blanket out over Elyssa.
“Is that better?” Hunter asked.
She clutched the blanket and nodded.
“May I continue?” he asked.
Elyssa looked away from Hunter’s intent, dark eyes, but she nodded agreement.
“Tell me if you change your mind,” he said.
Hunter bent and kissed Elyssa slowly, thoroughly. Before he lifted his head, she was breathing in soft bursts, as though she had been running.
The heat of Elyssa’s response was addictive to Hunter. He wanted more of the hungry, sensuous kisses, but he was uncertain of his own control. Her combination of shyness and abandon aroused him as nothing ever had.
Instead of searching beneath the blanket for the waistband of Elyssa’s trousers, Hunter began unlacing her hunting shirt. After a few moments his fingers slid into the opening he had created. He stroked one of her smooth, warm breasts. The tip hardened instantly at his touch.
Hunter clenched his teeth against a husky sound of need as his own flesh leaped in response. He removed his fingers so slowly that it was a long caress rather than a withdrawal.
“I’ll need your help now,” Hunter said in a low voice.
“How?” Elyssa whispered.
“I want to take off your shirt, but the way you’re clutching that blanket…”
Hunter waited.
Letting out a tightly held breath, Elyssa dropped the blanket into her lap, grabbed the hem of the buckskin, and began pulling off the shirt.
Hunter’s long, strong fingers slid beneath the buckskin. At first he helped Elyssa move the shirt upward. Then he simply caressed her, enveloping her breasts in his warm hands.
A husky cry came from beneath the buckskin tangled around Elyssa’s head. She didn’t even know she had made the sound. She knew only that Hunter’s hands sent the sweetest kind of fire cascading from her breastbone to her thighs.
The buckskin shirt landed unnoticed beyond the bedroll. Elyssa didn’t realize that she had dragged off her chemise with her shirt until she felt the untamed heat of Hunter’s mouth where his fingers had been moments before.
Elyssa’s back arched in abandoned response. Her fingers speared into his thick black hair. Twisting slowly against his mouth, she held Hunter close. Small cries rippled out of her, echoes of the hot pleasure cascading through her and pooling in the secret places of her body.
Fierce response stabbed through Hunter, making him shudder with need. He gave Elyssa’s breasts nibbling kisses and listened to the broken, urgent breathing of her response.
“May I finish undressing you now?” Hunter asked in a low voice.
The feel of his tongue tracing first one hard nipple, then the other, made a coherent response impossible for Elyssa. Instead, she simply began tugging at the loose trousers.
Hunter lifted Elyssa’s hand to his mouth. He kissed her palm, bit the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb, and smiled at the jerk of response that traveled visibly through her body.
“Let me undress you,” Hunter whispered.
“Yes. Yes, please.”
Yet when Elyssa felt her trousers sliding down her legs, she instinctively made a grab for the drawstring waist of her soft linen drawers. The trousers vanished, leaving her wearing only the sheer, loose leggings of the drawers.
A moment later Hunter’s long fingers tangled with Elyssa’s at the waistband. Slowly he drew his fingertips down the open front of her drawers.
Elyssa jerked as though touched by lightning.
Her eyes grew wide as she realized that her underwear would give Hunter free access to the moist, sensitive flesh between her legs. The drawers were sewn together only at the waistband and down both sides of the legs. The crotch remained completely open.
Elyssa didn’t know if that fact tantalized or terrified her. It was the same for Hunter’s hand hovering so very close to discovering her most private places—desire and fear intertwined in her.
Hunter stopped just short of the pale, thick curls he knew lay beneath the fine linen of Elyssa’s drawers. Slowly, repeatedly, he drew his fingertip over her abdomen.
“I love touching your skin,” he said. “So smooth. So warm. Makes me wonder what it tastes like. Cream, I’ll bet. Spiced with cinnamon.”
An odd sound came from Elyssa’s throat when Hunter kissed the skin just below her navel.
“Fear or pleasure?” Hunter asked against her skin.
Elyssa couldn’t answer. The feel of his fingers sliding down the central opening of her drawers took her breath away.
When Hunter skimmed the heated petals of her desire, Elyssa’s response spilled softly onto his fingertips.
“Pleasure,” he said huskily, relief and passion combined. “Pure, wild pleasure.”
Hunter repeated the gentle touch and again was rewarded by Elyssa’s hot, helpless response. Each slow movement of his hand brought more heat, more pleasure, more freedom between her legs for his caresses. Finally he parted the soft, slick petals and found the sensitive nub concealed within.
Elyssa’s eyes closed as a wave of wild pleasure swept through her, lifting her against Hunter’s hand. Another wave lifted her, then another and another until she was crying huskily with each breath, each caress.
Slowly Hunter’s fingertips skimmed, circled, then gently probed the deep well of her response. The slick heat of her made his whole body clench with need. With great care he pressed inside her, first one finger, then two.
And every bit of the way he wished that he was truly, deeply joined with her rather than merely teasing her and tormenting himself.
The increasing pressure inside Elyssa’s body returned sanity to her in a rush. Memories of the first time returned. First the exquisite pleasure. Then pressure.
Then pain.
“Hunter, I—”
Elyssa’s words ended in a hoarse sound of pleasure as Hunter’s thumb rubbed over the slick, shimmering knot of passion he had teased into life.
“It’s all right,” Hunter said gently. “You’re tight, but I was expecting it this time. I won’t hurt you. Remember my promise? All of the pleasure and none of the pain.”
Elyssa made a ragged sound as pleasure coiled and burst inside her.
Through lowered eyelids, Hunter memorized the picture Elyssa made as she lay undressed but for the fine drawers that served to emphasize rather than to conceal the swollen petals of her desire. The trust implicit in her abandon humbled him.
The hunger in his own body raged at him.
Deliberately Hunter moved his hand, measuring and pleasuring Elyssa in the same smooth motions. Pressing, sliding, caressing, stretching the snug, incredibl
e softness of her body. With each movement he gently se-duced the very flesh he had once taken in a storm of ignorance and desire.
When Hunter could press no deeper he bent down to the passionate nub that now lay exposed. The tip of his tongue circled the knot of flesh, stroked it…and then he sucked hungrily.
Surprise and violent pleasure shot through Elyssa.
“Hunter.”
His hands and mouth moved in slow, caressing response.
Husky cries rippled from Elyssa’s throat as she lay helpless, open, a willing captive of the man whose unexpected loving burned her to her core.
Hunter heard, felt, tasted her response; and forced himself to remember all the reasons why he shouldn’t open his pants and plunge into the very fire that was burning both of them alive.
Without warning ecstasy transfixed Elyssa, held her arched and quivering, wholly abandoned to Hunter. Like the hot, hidden convulsions of her body, the wild song of her pleasure was a bittersweet torment to him.
Finally, reluctantly, Hunter withdrew from Elyssa’s body. Only after he pulled the thin cotton blanket over her did he trust himself to gather her into his arms. He held her in his lap and rocked gently, trying to calm both of them.
Slowly ecstasy eased its fierce grip on Elyssa’s mind and body. With a deep, shattered breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Hunter.
He smiled almost sadly at the wonder in her blue-green eyes.
“Good,” he said. “That’s what it should have been the first time.”
“I…”
A delicious echo of ecstasy shivered through her, stealing her ability to talk.
“I have no words,” Elyssa said after a moment.
She lifted herself to brush a kiss across Hunter’s lips.
The gentle caress twisted his guts into an even tighter knot. Hunter closed his eyes and battled with the savage clamor of his body.
When he could trust himself to look at Elyssa again, she was watching him with troubled eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You.”
“What about me?”
“The first time I had the pain and you had the pleasure,” Elyssa said. “The second time I had the pleasure and you had the pain. Is it always that way, one hurting and the other helpless with pleasure?”
“I’m not hurting the way you did.”
“You don’t look it,” Elyssa said unhappily. “You look…drawn.”
“I’ll get over it.”
Elyssa shifted her position to get a better look at Hunter. The motion made her hip move against his abdomen. His breath hissed in between his clenched teeth.
“You are hurting,” she said quickly. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Don’t tempt me,” Hunter said under his breath.
But Elyssa heard him.
“Tempt you?” she asked quickly. “How?”
Hunter closed his eyes and tried not to think of all the ways a girl with Elyssa’s passion could tempt him.
And then satisfy him all the way to the soles of his feet.
A threadlike groan was dragged from Hunter’s throat. He fought not to give in to the hunger pulsing through his body. He had done what he had promised himself he would do. He had pleasured Elyssa thoroughly, making up in the only way he could for his haste and misjudgment the first time.
“Hunter?” Elyssa whispered.
He couldn’t answer. All he could do was remember how she had looked lying open to him, abandoned, shivering with the ecstasy he had brought her.
Elyssa gave Hunter’s face quick, tiny kisses, whispering his name between each caress. Her arms wound around his chest as she pulled herself even closer, trying to comfort him.
The blanket fell unnoticed to her hips.
Hunter’s body jerked. His arms shifted to push Elyssa away. Then he felt her breasts against him. Without meaning to, he caressed her nipples with his fingers. Tight crowns rose to his touch.
The shudder of response that went through Elyssa surprised Hunter. He hadn’t expected her to enjoy being touched so soon after she had found her satisfaction.
Belinda certainly hadn’t like being petted. After they were married, she lost interest in sex, other than to tease him mercilessly whenever she wanted a new dress or better curtains for the drawing room.
Hunter looked down at Elyssa’s soft breasts resting against his hands. Even in the cave’s twilight, he could see the deep, pouting rose color of the nipples and the creamy contrast of her skin. She looked fragile against the strength of his hands, but the shivers that went through Elyssa didn’t come from fear.
“You feel so good,” Hunter whispered against her hair. “I could get drunk just touching you.”
“May I…touch you?”
Hunter’s hands hesitated. The thought of Elyssa’s fingers stroking him made his body clench with need.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea,” Hunter said roughly.
“Don’t you like being touched?”
“I would love to have your hands all over me. Too damned much.”
Elyssa understood only that Hunter wanted her caresses. In a hush whose tension grew with each breath, she began unbuttoning his shirt.
“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I saw you half-naked in the garden,” Elyssa confessed.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to take you this time,” Hunter said bluntly. “I just wanted to teach you the pleasures of your own body. To make up for hurting you.”
“By hurting yourself?”
“Like I said. I’ll get over it.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Elyssa—”
Hunter’s breath caught hard in his throat and stayed that way. His shirt was open. Her naked breasts swayed and pressed against his chest as she pulled shirttails free of his pants.
With a murmur of discovery and approval, Elyssa ran her hands over the masculine territory she had just uncovered.
Hunter watched Elyssa through half-opened eyes. He knew he should stop her.
And he knew he would not.
He had just made a discovery himself. It was a wild, hot pleasure to have a woman pet him with admiration rather than calculation in her eyes.
The longer Hunter was with Elyssa, the more he realized what a cold, manipulating female Belinda had been. Elyssa might be reckless and maddening at times, but no one could accuse her of lacking passion.
Hunter’s hands tightened on Elyssa’s breasts, his thumbs circled her nipples, and he smiled to hear the throaty sound of her response.
“Hunter?” Elyssa asked huskily.
He made a rumbling sound deep in his chest.
“May I kiss you too?” she asked.
Hunter bent to take Elyssa’s mouth, only to find that she had another kind of kiss in mind. Her lips and tongue and teeth made hot forays across his chest while her fingers kneaded muscles with open delight.
The resilience of the hair on Hunter’s chest seemed to particularly intrigue Elyssa. She tugged sensually on the cushion of hair, buried her fingers in it, and probed with her tongue to taste the flesh beneath.
Soon she discovered the small, smooth disk of a male nipple. She repeatedly teased the tight little nailhead in the center with her tongue.
The caresses dragged a groan from Hunter.
Instantly the curious, oddly hungry strokes of her tongue stopped. Elyssa’s head lifted.
“Did that hurt?” she asked huskily.
“Does this?”
Hunter’s fingertips closed on her hard nipples and tugged.
Elyssa’s breath caught on a ragged moan. Then she understood that her question had been answered.
She smiled slowly.
The reckless curiosity and sensual anticipation in Elyssa’s smile made fire pulse through Hunter.
“How about this?” she asked.
Her hands slid down Hunter’s body. He sucked in his breath hard
when he felt her fingers working over the buttons on his trousers, then his underwear.
Very quickly Elyssa uncovered a thin strip of Hunter’s skin between folds of cloth. Delicate fingertips traced the skin, found the thatch of hair growing below, and brushed lightly.
Hunter bit back a curse and a prayer.
“Does that hurt?” Elyssa asked, only half teasing.
“No more than this.”
Hunter’s long index finger skimmed the opening in her drawers, parted thick curls, and probed sensuously.
The reflexive jerk of Elyssa’s body made Hunter smile. He watched her face while he felt her hand slide inside his clothes, searching, finding, caressing.
Hunter closed his eyes and shuddered with raw need.
“Hunter?”
“Dangerous,” he said through clenched teeth. “Damned dangerous.”
“Why?”
Hunter’s fingers slid into Elyssa, found her even hotter than his memories.
“Because I want this,” he said bluntly.
“Then it’s yours,” she whispered.
The slow, deliberate movement of Elyssa’s softness against his hand, and the liquid silk of her response, snapped Hunter’s control. He stretched out suddenly, taking her down to the pallet with him. As he did, he freed his aroused flesh from the confinement of his clothes.
Before Elyssa could draw a breath, Hunter was between her legs, opening them. The pressure of his caresses tore a cry of passionate surprise from her.
Abruptly Hunter realized what he had done, pushing Elyssa onto her back, forcing her legs apart, giving her no chance to protest or to push him away.
Again.
Hunter forced himself to stop just short of taking Elyssa. She was so close to his erect flesh that he could feel the heat of her reaching out to him, licking over him, promising him fiery oblivion.
His body vibrated with the sexual tension that was tearing him apart.
“Damn,” Hunter groaned thickly. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to—again.”
He kissed Elyssa’s eyelids, her cheeks, her lips, her throat, and with every kiss he whispered words of raw need that made her shiver.
The heat of Hunter’s body against Elyssa’s hands was like a wild fever. The tension vibrating through his flesh made her desperate to ease him.
Autumn Lover Page 30
