Only 05 - Autumn Lover

he had gone mad.
    Then Hunter turned and pinned her with a bleak glare. When he spoke, his voice was equally bleak, like a whip of ice.
    “But with God as my witness, Elyssa Sutton, if you don’t grow up and be a good mother to my children, you will rue the day you teased me into marrying you.”
    “No,” she said savagely.
    “What?”
    “ No. I won’t marry you .”
    “Don’t be foolish,” Hunter said, his voice impatient. “It’s what you wanted all along.”
    “But then, we’ve already agreed I was a fool. Unlike you, Hunter, I do learn from my mistakes. I won’t marry you.”
    “Why?”
    “If we get married, you have the right to do that to me whenever you want.”
    “You’ll want it, too. I’ll see to it. I just never thought you could be a virgin. Not the way you responded to me, like setting a match to straw.”
    Hunter smiled at the memory.
    The smile caught Elyssa on the raw, completing her humiliation.
    “Listen to me, you smug son of a bitch,” she snarled. “Right now there’s no law telling me I have to suffer a man’s rutting ever again. I’m going to see that it stays that way.”
    Hunter grimaced. “I told you, next time you’ll enjoy it.”
    “My God, you must really think I’m stupid. ‘Nexttime you’ll enjoy it,’” she mimicked savagely. “What rot!”
    “Calm down and use your head instead of your sharp little tongue. If marriage was so bad, do you think women would put up with it?”
    “Once the marital knot is tied around a woman’s stupid neck, she doesn’t have much choice, does she?” Elyssa said in a scathing voice. “No wonder churches and townships make sure girls are virgins before they marry. They would never suffer it otherwise.”
    Hunter bit back a searing remark and tried sweet reason on his unreasonable lover.
    “What if you’re pregnant?” he asked.
    “What if I’m not?”
    “What if you are?” Hunter insisted.
    Elyssa looked at him with wild, glittering eyes, feeling control slipping away with every breath.
    “Get out, Hunter. I don’t want you anymore. Ever. In any way.”
    “Damn it, Sassy, you can’t just—”
    “ Get. Out .”
    Abruptly Hunter stood and stalked toward the door.
    “We’ll talk again in the morning,” he said, “when you’re not in a snit.”
    He closed the bedroom door behind him and stood in the hallway, listening.
    Not one sound came back through the door to him.
    Not even tears.
    Elyssa’s silence made a cold knot form in Hunter’s stomach. She wasn’t acting the way Belinda always had. Belinda had used tears and words and the swing of her hips to flay a man’s pride until he had none left. With Belinda, sex had been a savage little game.
    But Elyssa wasn’t like Belinda. With Elyssa, sex wasn’t a game at all.
    I don’t want you anymore. Ever. In any way .
    Hunter told himself that Elyssa would feel differently in the morning. Beneath the feminine outrage she was too intelligent not to understand that marriage was necessary now.
    He had taken her virginity.
    The fact that he hadn’t understood she was a virgin didn’t matter. He had torn her maidenhood, spent himself completely inside her, and they must marry.
    She’ll come around once her nerves settle , Hunter reassured himself.
    The absolute silence from the other side of the door told Hunter that he was as wrong in this assumption as he had been in his others about Elyssa Sutton.
    Elyssa wasn’t Belinda.
    The implications of that simple truth kept breaking over Hunter through the long, sleepless night.

19
    W ith outward composure Elyssa pulled on work clothing she hadn’t worn since she had been sent to England years ago. The pants were a soft, navy blue wool gabardine that once had fitted her very loosely. Now they were snug across the hips. The pants were too short, but her boots would cover up that problem.
    The blouse was a more difficult affair. The checked flannel shirts that Elyssa once had worn with the pants strained across her bust. At fifteen, she had been considerably less curvy than she was today.
    Nor would any of her mother’s old clothes fit. Elyssa was bigger than her mother had been.
    I’ll just have to find something else to wear on top , Elyssa told herself grimly.
    Anything else .
    There was no chance that Elyssa would wear her English dresses. Hunter’s scathing comments about her clothes were branded on her mind.
    Some girls just don’t know they’re alive unless some fool boy is admiring them .
    Men