Autumn Lover (29 page)

Elyssa looked at Hunter. In the mysterious twilight of the cave, her eyes were as darkly gleaming as the pool.

“If I were a widow,” she said, “would you be pressing marriage now?”

Hunter stared at Elyssa, not able to believe that she could calmly get up from their shared bed and act as though nothing special had happened.

We’re just lovers
.

No breathless promises of love.

Just lovers
.

Anger replaced the contentment that had stolen through Hunter.

“You aren’t a widow,” Hunter retorted. “You’re a hot-blooded, reckless girl who doesn’t know her own mind from one minute to the next.”

Hunter heard his own words and realized that his temper was digging a hole deep enough to bury him. He bit off a savage curse and tried again to reason with Elyssa.

Just lovers
.

“You’re a young woman,” Hunter said with great care, “and I’m a man old enough to know better. I’m prepared to do what is right.”

Anger flicked through Elyssa’s veins.

“I’m not,” she said.

“Damnation, Sassy! A few days ago you said you loved me!”

Hunter’s words went into Elyssa like knives. Her breath sucked in on a wave of pain.

“Did I?” she asked in a brittle voice.

“You damn well did and you know it.”

“Well, what do you expect from a
hot-blooded, reckless girl
but girlish declarations of love?”

Hunter winced at hearing his own words. Tenderly he stroked Elyssa’s long, tangled hair and tried to gather her closer. The stiff resistance of her body didn’t change.

“Honey,” Hunter said gently, nuzzling her ear, “I didn’t mean that as an insult to you. I love your reckless passion.”

A sensuous shiver went through Elyssa at Hunter’s caress. Even angry and hurt, she couldn’t help respond
ing to him. It didn’t even surprise her anymore.

Elyssa had never known anything close to the incandescent pleasure Hunter gave her. Just the thought of sharing his body again made her breath shorten.

“In bed, yes, you love my reckless passion,” Elyssa said. “But there’s more to marriage than sex.”

“Will you listen to reason?” he asked tightly.

“I always do. But you’re not always reasonable.”

Before Hunter could answer, Elyssa was speaking again. The sad acceptance in her voice should have come from a woman much older.

“Don’t let your conscience grind on you,” Elyssa said against Hunter’s neck.

Hunter’s fingertips caressed her hair and the downward curve of her mouth. He didn’t know what to say. Every word he spoke only seemed to make it worse.

“I know I’m not the love of your life,” Elyssa said. “But like marriage, love isn’t necessary for pleasure, is it?”

“Sassy, that’s—”

“We just proved it,” she interrupted. “Didn’t we?”

Elyssa’s teeth closed not quite gently on Hunter’s neck. If all she could have of Hunter was his body, she would take it. Deliberately her hands smoothed down Hunter’s torso until she found the place where he was most different from her.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed against the sudden, impossible leap of his flesh. Her fingertips caressed him like living flames, tracing each sensitive ridge of flesh, every changing texture, learning his growing strength in a silence that burned.

Then Elyssa’s hot, hungry mouth slid down Hunter’s body, tasting all that she had discovered, memorizing him in a way that left him shaken and wild.

“Now I know why they’re called fancy men,” Elyssa breathed against Hunter’s aroused, painfully sensitive flesh. “I’m so plain compared to you.”

With a hoarse sound Hunter dragged Elyssa up his body, rolled over and buried himself in her, ending one sweet torment and beginning another. He moved heavily inside her, sparing her nothing of his potency. Her cries and the hot scoring of her nails told Hunter that Elyssa liked his power.

The third time Hunter held Elyssa arched and shivering with ecstasy, he let go of control. The endless, pulsing release left him too spent to raise his head.

Only later, much later, did Hunter realize that no more had been said about duty or conscience or marriage.

Or love.

B
y the time Hunter and Elyssa finally left the twilight intimacy of the cave, it was mid-afternoon. Silently they rode toward the ranch.

Neither spoke, for neither wanted to argue about what their future should be. For the time being it was enough simply to ride close to each other, near enough to give a gentle touch and receive the flash of a smile in response.

When Hunter and Elyssa were still a mile from the ranch house, Morgan came at a gallop toward them.

“Did you see her?” Morgan asked them.

“Who?” Hunter asked. “Penny?”

“The Indian girl.”

“No,” Hunter and Elyssa said together.

“Well, she’s gone.”

“What happened?” Hunter demanded.

“No one knows,” Morgan said. “When Penny found out the girl was gone, she rang the dinner bell.”

“When was this?” Elyssa asked.

“Morning.”

As Morgan spoke, his glance went from Elyssa to Hunter. Morgan’s shrewd brown eyes didn’t miss the telltale red of her cheeks. The color could have come from rouge, except that Elyssa didn’t wear makeup. It
could have been sun or windburn, but Morgan suspected the color came from something closer to hand.

Hunter’s beard stubble, to be precise. A girl with skin as tender and fair as Elyssa’s showed each loving abrasion of a man’s cheek.

“She can’t get far on foot,” Elyssa said.

“She isn’t on foot,” Morgan answered. “She took that big bay mare we caught running wild last week, the one with the fresh Slash River brand on her hip.”

Elyssa bit back a curse. “That mare was one of my mother’s favorites. Thoroughbred and Arab. I had hopes for her as a broodmare.”

“No one ever accused Utes of lacking an eye for good horseflesh,” Hunter said sardonically.

Elyssa thought of the battered, bloodied Indian girl who had suffered so much at the Culpeppers’ hands. Elyssa couldn’t blame the girl for taking a Ladder S horse and running back to her own people at the first opportunity.

“One horse more or less won’t break us,” Elyssa said after a few moments. “Let her go and worry about the cattle.”

Hunter and Morgan exchanged a glance. Hunter nodded minutely.

“Yes, ma’am,” Morgan said. “I’ve got a bunch in mind.”

He spun his pony and cantered off toward the marsh.

“What are you two planning?” Elyssa asked.

Hunter’s head snapped toward her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Just what I said.”

For a moment Hunter considered lying to Elyssa. Then he saw the clear, measuring intelligence in her blue-green eyes and knew it wouldn’t work.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Hunter said.

“Rot.”

Despite Elyssa’s waiting silence, he didn’t speak again.

The look in her eyes changed. Bleak acceptance replaced the memories of intimacy.

“You don’t trust me at all, do you?” she said neutrally. “Not even a little bit.”

Hunter’s hand closed over Leopard’s reins just before Elyssa could turn the stallion away.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Hunter said.

“Of course.”

The polite agreement in Elyssa’s voice nudged Hunter’s uncertain temper.

“Damn it, Sassy. What good would it do for you to fret about the Ladder S raiding the Culpeppers?”

“None at all, from your point of view.”

“To hell with me. I’m worried about you! There’s too much on your plate already, what with the Culpeppers and Penny still sick and finding out Bill is your father and the missing livestock and the battle over that Indian girl and…”

Hunter’s voice trailed into silence.

“Taking my first lover?” Elyssa finished.

Curtly Hunter nodded.

She gave him a haunting, bittersweet smile.

“Fancy man,” Elyssa said caressingly, “you are by far the best part of what is on my plate.”

Hunter winced at the nickname but didn’t protest it. Since he had felt Elyssa’s wild, sweet mouth all over him, he couldn’t react with real anger when she called him “fancy man.”

“I wish we were back at the cave,” Hunter said in a low voice, “and I was bathing you again, tasting you again. Cinnamon and cream and fire, a kind of fire I’d only dreamed of until you.”

Elyssa’s hand went to Hunter’s mouth, stilling his words. The trembling of her fingers against his lips told
Hunter that she remembered as clearly as he did.

His tongue slid between her fingers.

“Hunter,” she said shakily. “Don’t.”

“Why? We both like it.”

“But we can’t do anything about it!”

“You’d be surprised what two can do on horseback,” he said, his voice teasing.

Inviting.

Elyssa bit back a groan.

“You’re used to this kind of thing,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Used to it?” Hunter shook his head emphatically. “Weren’t you listening, Sassy? I’ve never wanted a woman more after I’ve had her than before I did. Never.”

Elyssa’s eyes widened. “But that’s the way I feel with you. Each time more. Isn’t that, er, customary?”

“Not for me,” Hunter said. “It’s damned addictive, though. Like you.”

Ruefully he shifted in the saddle, trying to accommodate his sudden, surging arousal.

“I think,” Hunter said carefully, “we’d better change the subject. Unless, of course, you’d like to climb up in the saddle with me right now.”

The thought of it made Elyssa smile.

“Don’t tempt me,” she said, repeating Hunter’s earlier words to her.

He gave a crack of laughter. Then he touched her mouth with breathtaking tenderness.

“When the men ride out tonight,” Hunter said in a low voice, “don’t follow. Promise me.”

Elyssa paled. “Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you took me to the cave today,” she said starkly. “You were afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

“I couldn’t leave you with the memory of pain and humiliation. The thought of it…tore at me.”

“Let me go with you,” she said urgently.

“No.”

The word was like Hunter’s expression, hard and inflexible.

“But—” she began.

“No. Promise me.”

“But—”

“Do you want me to die looking over my shoulder for you?”

“That isn’t fair!”

“Do you?” Hunter asked again.

It was the very softness of his voice that told Elyssa she had lost.

“Of course not,” she said in a defeated voice.

“Then stay home.”

Methodically Hunter went through the ranch house and closed all the shutters. Because John Sutton had been a plainsman, an Indian fighter, and a cautious man, he had built heavy wooden shutters on the inside of the house rather than the outside. The shutters were meant to keep out bullets and arrows, not wind and rain.

Elyssa moved alongside Hunter, followed by the dogs. She had called them into the house to avoid any possibility that they would give away the men’s presence to the raiders.

As Hunter closed shutters, she opened the gun slits that ran in a vertical line down each shutter. There were slits in the heavy log walls, as well.

Penny tended to those openings before she took the dogs into her room and shut them up out of the way.

“Don’t show any light,” Hunter said.

Elyssa nodded.

“Someone will come to you after dawn,” Hunter con
tinued. “Sonny, probably. Morgan has done wonders with that boy.”

“Why can’t I wait for you on the ridge at Wind Gap and—”

“No,” Hunter interrupted curtly. “You’ve plenty of food and water. Even if a few of the raiders get away from us, you’ll be safe here while we drive the cattle to Camp Halleck.”

Elyssa closed her eyes and turned away, struggling not to show her fear to Hunter. The terror wasn’t for her own safety.

It was for his.

“Elyssa?” Hunter said urgently.

“I’ll stay. Will you…” Her voice frayed.

“What?”

“After you sell the cattle, will you…”

Come back to me
?

But Elyssa couldn’t say the words aloud. Those were the words of a sweetheart or a wife, a woman who had some claim to a man’s respect, his trust, his esteem.

Her only claim was to Hunter’s body.

“Never mind,” Elyssa whispered. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me, honey.”

Closing her eyes, Elyssa shook her head wearily. Tears slipped from beneath her lashes.

Hunter wanted very much to take her in his arms and kiss away her anxiety, but he knew it would be futile. Elyssa was too intelligent not to understand the danger of this raid to everyone involved.

What haunted Hunter was that the danger might be even greater to those who stayed behind. His greatest fear was that Ab Culpepper had been waiting to be raided all along.

It was what Hunter would have done in Ab’s place.

Pick your killing ground and wait for the enemy to
come to you
, Hunter thought in bleak silence.
Spring the trap. Pin them down in a cross fire and cut them to ribbons
.

That was just one kind of trap Hunter easily could imagine. Another would be to have a few men engage the enemy…while the rest of your men stole away to wreak havoc elsewhere.

The Ladder S, for instance
.

The thought was like a lump of ice in Hunter’s gut. It was why he had put off raiding the Culpeppers until time had run out and there was no other choice.

He was cutting it very fine as it was. There would barely be enough time to drive the cattle to Camp Halleck before the first day of winter.

Maybe Ab is just lazy rather than wise
.

Maybe
.

Grimly Hunter wished that he had more men to leave behind at the ranch. The Herrera brothers had insisted on going with Hunter, which meant only Lefty and Gimp remained to guard the Ladder S. The old hands were game, but were still only two against however many raiders Ab might throw at them.

Elyssa and Penny were both good shots, but the idea of them going up against the Culpepper raiders left the brassy taste of fear in Hunter’s mouth.

The thought of what would happen if Ab got his hands on Elyssa was unbearable.

“Elyssa.”

Hunter’s hoarse whisper reached Elyssa the instant before his mouth closed over hers. The kiss was as hard as his thoughts, but Elyssa made no complaint. She simply wrapped her arms around Hunter and gave back the kiss with all of the leashed wildness inside her.

“
Promise me
,” Hunter said urgently.

“Yes,” Elyssa whispered.

An instant later the kitchen door closed behind Hun
ter. He paused long enough to hear the bar thumping into place. Then he set off for the barn.

Hunter and Morgan rode out of the ranch yard first. They sat warily, repeating rifles drawn and laid across the saddle, their eyes quartering the darkness for any sign of movement.

They saw only wind blowing through trees stripped of all but a few pale leaves. Clouds raced overhead, veiling and unveiling the stars. The moon gave enough illumination to reveal movement.

A hunter’s moon.

Reed and Fox left the Ladder S a few minutes afterward. Their destination was the same as that of the first two men, but their route was slightly different. They had another part of the Ladder S to ride over, hoping to find raiders.

Or be found by them.

Live bait for a trap that could swing shut on them without warning.

By twos, the remaining men slipped into the darkness. Each took a different trail to the same place.

Hunter and Morgan rode to the rendezvous point and waited, listening intently to the small noises of the night.

No sound of shots came. No alarm was raised.

Two by two, men began materializing out of darkness at the rendezvous. Soon all but the final pair of men had arrived.

Hunter sat off to the side on Bugle Boy, glancing at his watch.

Case, damn it, where are you
? Hunter thought impatiently.
The longer we wait here, the more likely we are to be discovered
.

Two more minutes. Then the last vaqueros will be here
.

I can’t wait any longer than that
.

Seconds ticked into the moonlight like fleeing ghosts.
Silently Hunter prayed that Case wasn’t lying wounded or dead in some nameless ravine. And as Hunter prayed, he couldn’t help remembering the time he had queried Case on how secure his position was with the raiders.

Do they trust you
?

As much as they trust anyone who isn’t a Culpepper
.

Two men rode up quietly. Their wide-brimmed hats were silhouetted against the moonlight.

Morgan rode to Hunter’s side, saw the watch in his hand, and waited.

The last second fled.

The watch clicked shut with a final sound.

“No sign of Case, suh,” Morgan said softly.

“We’ll have to go in without him.”

“Yes, suh.” Then, unhappily, “It’s not like him.”

“No,” Hunter whispered. “It isn’t.”

“I’ll pray for him.”

“Pray for all of us.”

Hunter urged Bugle Boy forward. Morgan came up alongside. The other men fell in behind, two by two.

They had gone less than a quarter mile when they heard the sound of a horse running hard, destroying the silence of the night.

The horse was coming toward them.

Hunter signaled everyone into cover. Then he spurred Bugle Boy down a steep ridge, racing toward whatever was coming at him out of the night. The big stallion plunged forward in wild leaps, then sat on his hocks and slid the rest of the way down.

“Damn,” Sonny said under his breath. “That man sure can ride.”

“He shoots better,” Morgan said.

The men watched from cover as Bugle Boy hit the flats and raced recklessly over the moonlit land.

After several hundred yards a horse burst from a ravine and ran toward Hunter. The horse’s rider was
crouched low over the animal’s neck, barely a shadow against the flying mane. A rifle barrel gleamed dully in the moonlight. There was no bulk of a saddle on the horse’s hard-running body.

“Bareback,” muttered Fox.

“Injun,” Mickey said, lifting his rifle.

Morgan knocked it aside.