Only 05 - Autumn Lover

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