Only 05 - Autumn Lover

conversation.
    Hunter’s door was closed.
    For a long minute Elyssa stood in front of the door,her hand resting on the doorknob and her heart pounding. Just before her courage faltered entirely, she opened the door a few inches.
    “Hunter?” she whispered.
    The distinct sound of a revolver being uncocked seemed as loud as a cry in the silence.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hunter asked softly, furiously.
    Elyssa jumped. The question had come from a point not six inches to her left.
    “We have to talk,” she whispered.
    “It can wait until morning.”
    The door started to close in Elyssa’s face.
    She stuck her satin slipper through the crack and leaned hard on the door with both hands.
    “No,” she countered. “It has to be now, when there’s no one to overhear.”
    “Keep your voice down!” Hunter demanded very softly.
    “Then let me in.”
    Hunter hesitated, trying to cool the hot racing of his blood that had begun when he realized Elyssa was standing outside his doorway late at night.
    He took in a swift breath. The air Hunter breathed in was suffused with Elyssa’s unique scent, a garden spiced with rosemary and moonlight.
    The heat in Hunter redoubled.
    “This isn’t a good idea, Sassy.”
    “It is.”
    “No.”
    “Yes!” she hissed. “I know what I’m doing, Hunter.”
    He didn’t doubt it.
    The thought made him even hotter.
    Why not ? Hunter asked himself savagely. God knows we both want it bad enough to taste it .
    It isn’t like she’s a virgin, after all. Mickey made that clear enough with his brags in the Dugout Saloon .
    And Sassy confirmed it when she talked about shocking her proper cousins with her behavior .
    Without warning the bedroom door opened wide.
    Elyssa all but tumbled into Hunter’s arms. Automatically he reached out to steady her. The heat of her body through the satin wrapper was like fire.
    And like fire, it burned him.
    Because Hunter wanted so much to strip Elyssa and take her with all the furious passion she aroused in him, he forced himself to release her. Letting a flirt control him was something Hunter had sworn he would never do again.
    Instead of pulling Elyssa close, Hunter reached past her and shut the door. The faint click of the latch drew a quick, whispering sound from Elyssa, as though she had just taken a swift breath.
    “All right,” Hunter said in a low, husky voice. “What’s so all-fired urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning?”

18
    E lyssa opened her lips to speak, only to discover that her mouth had gone completely dry. Hunter’s naked chest gleamed in the moonlight flooding through the window.
    The male beauty of muscle and sinew and midnight hair riveted her.
    The intimacy of being alone with Hunter in his bedroom broke over Elyssa in a long, seething wave of emotion.
    “Sassy?”
    “Um.”
    Elyssa swallowed and licked her lips. She wanted to ask Hunter to put on a shirt, but didn’t. He already thought her girlish as it was.
    “I just wanted to…” Elyssa’s voice dried up.
    Hunter waited.
    His stillness irritated her.
    Here I am hardly able to draw a breath for being this close to him , Elyssa thought angrily, and he’s looking at me like it’s nothing at all for him to be half-naked with a woman in his bedroom .
    Realization hit Elyssa with a force that shook her.
    Of course, nitwit , she told herself. Hunter was married. It’s nothing for him to have a woman in his bedroom .
    Or his bed .
    Elyssa swallowed hard. Then she squared her shoulders and quelled her nerves. She was determined not to appear juvenile in front of this irritating man.
    “I’m not flirting with Mickey,” Elyssa said.
    “Keep your voice down!”
    “All right,” she whispered angrily. “Did you hear me?”
    “Hell, half the hands on the Ladder S probably heard you.”
    “Listen to me. I’m not flirting with Mickey or Bill or any other man on the face of this earth.”
    “Do tell.”
    “I just did!”
    “Then what do you call it when you cut sideways glances at me and lick your lips like you can’t wait to find out if I taste as good as I look?”
    Elyssa hoped her blush didn’t show in the moonlight. She felt like sinking between the cracks in the floor-boards. She hadn’t thought that her actions were so transparent.
    “Only with you, Hunter,” Elyssa whispered painfully. “I only look at you.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The sound should have meant agreement, but Elyssa knew it didn’t.
    “Hunter Maxwell,” she