Forbidden (10 page)

“How could I have forgotten your response to me?” Duncan asked wonderingly. “God must feel like this when he causes the sun to rise.”

“We've never before—”

“Nay,” he interrupted softly. “You would not fly so high, so quickly, unless you knew the lure of the hunt as surely as I.”

Amber shook her head, the only answer she could make, for passion had stolen her voice.

“Don't be shy of the truth, precious Amber. Your response is a greater gift than any maidenly restraint.”

She tried to answer, but all that came from her lips was a ragged cry. The passion she felt should have frightened her. But when he touched her, whatever virginal wariness and Learned caution she had were burned away in the overwhelming heat of Duncan's desire.

And her own. Duncan's desire and hers combined.

When he bent once more to draw one of her aching, nipples into his mouth. Amber's breath came out in another low cry. When he shaped her with slow rhythms of his tongue, tender lightning burned from her breasts to her hips. Her back arched in abandoned response until she strained against the bonds of doth holding her elbows to her sides.

Reluctantly Duncan lifted his head, wondering if the hungry intimacy of the caress had alarmed Amber.

“Don't struggle” he said gently. “I won't hurt you.”

“I know. But I can't—”

She made a sound of frustration and jerked her arms. All she managed to do was tangle them more closely to her body.

“What can't you do?” Duncan asked.

The sweet swaying of Amber's breasts made sensual heat flush Duncan's body. The thought of her arching like that against his chest while he lay naked between her legs brought him to the edge of bursting.

“I can't touch you while I'm tangled in clothes this way,” Amber said.

Duncan set his jaw against the temptation she was offering.

“I think that's just as well,” he said raggedly.

“Don't you want me to touch you?”

He smiled at the confusion in Amber's eyes, even though the thought of feeling her hands on his body brought a leap of need so great that it was indistinguishable from pain.

“Aye,” Duncan groaned, brushing his mustache over one taut nipple. “And aye”—he brushed again—“and aye, and aye one thousand times more!”

The sound Amber made could have been pleasure or fear. Even she couldn't have said which. She had never felt anything as powerful as the combination of her own untried sensuality, Duncan's torrential need, and the fierce restraint he exercised on his passion.

“But if you touch me…” he said hoarsely.

The words became lost in the ripple of sound Duncan drew from Amber as his teeth raked with exquisite delicacy over her nipple. Smiling darkly, he turned to her other breast and repeated the primitive caress.

“If you touch me,” Duncan whispered, savoring Amber's unbridled response to him, “I shall be much less certain of my own control.”

Beneath the words was Duncan's own growing doubt that his restraint was equal to Amber's sweet and abandoned response. He had never known a woman could want him so much, so deeply, without coyness or calculation.

“Dark warrior,” Amber said, “you would never break your vow to me.”

The certainty in Amber's voice was repeated in the clarity of her eyes watching him. Duncan saw himself reflected darkly in her luminous depths and at the same time he saw her absolute trust in him.

“You humble me,” Duncan said.

“Then don't raise me so high,” she whispered, smiling.

“Shall I free your arms?”

Though Amber knew she could free herself if she had the patience, she wanted it to be Duncan who released her. She wanted him to understand the completeness of her trust, as she understood the intensity of his promise not to take her.

He was a man of honor. Honor was the very core of his pride and strength. Honor was what had made him the man he was.

“Yes,” Amber whispered. “Free me.”

Yet still Duncan hesitated.

“I promise I won't be too forward,” Amber said, trying, and failing to hide her smile.

The smile Duncan gave Amber then was the one that called meadowlarks from a midnight sky.

“That would be very disappointing, sweet witch.”

Slowly Duncan lowered his head to Amber's breasts, tantalizing her with the warmth of his breath while he teased her with silky touches of his mustache and tongue. His reward was a series of broken sighs and tiny sounds as she twisted against the cloth binding her elbows.

“You tempt me,” Duncan said.

“And you torment me.”

“A sweet torment?”

He cupped his hand around one of Amber's breasts, lifting and caressing, testing the tight peak.

“Aye,” she said. “Very sweet.”

“Not as sweet as these pink buds.”

Amber drew her breath in swiftly. She could feel the passion sweeping through Duncan in hot pulses as he looked at his fingers on her breasts.

“Nor as sweet as making you moan beneath my mouth,” Duncan added, bending down to Amber once more.

“My arms,” she said.

And it was all Amber could say, for Duncan's powerful forearm was beneath her shoulder blades, arching her back, and his mouth was on her naked breasts. With a ragged sound of pleasure, she gave herself to his caresses, hiding nothing of her own response.

It wasn't until Duncan lifted his head that Amber realized he had unfastened her clothes completely. He sat up and pulled the long sleeves down over her wrists one at a time. Then he eased her clothing farther down her body, revealing more creamy skin and the long, inward curving lines of her torso.

Though Duncan wanted to keep undressing Amber more than he wanted air itself, he forced his hands to stop at her waist. He kneaded her resilient flesh lightly, hungrily.

It wasn't enough for either of them. With a quick, graceful movement. Amber sat up. The rush of cool air made her shiver. Instinctively she shrugged the folds of her mantle forward, covering her shoulders even as she reached for the laces at the front of Duncan's shirt.

“Be as I am,” Amber said, pulling laces free. “Naked but for the mantle.”

“And if I take chill?” he asked, smiling slightly.

“Why, I will warm you, of course.”

Duncan's smile widened. He threw off his mantle. His shirt soon followed. With a slow care that was both torment and pleasure. Amber drew the mantle back around Duncan's shoulders and fastened it at the side.

The amber talisman he wore shimmered with an uncanny light, as though infused with Duncan's own immense vitality. Amber bent her head and brushed her lips over the ancient talisman in silent greeting.

Only then did she give in to the temptation that haunted her, running her fingers through the cloud of dark hair on his chest. Eyes closed, smiling, kneading him as a contented cat would, she tested the muscular flesh of Duncan's torso with fingernails like delicate, unsheathed claws.

“I love the feel of you,” Amber said softly. “When you slept so unnaturally, I spent many hours rubbing oil of amber into your skin to keep away fever.”

“Did it work?”

“Of course. Amber is noted for its ability to take fire from a body.”

“It wouldn't work on me now,” Duncan said.

“Why not?”

“Your hands bring me fever.”

Amber didn't doubt it. She could feel the passionate heat radiating from Duncan's body.

And if that wasn't enough, she had the truth of his words pouring into her through the medium of touch.

“ 'Tis like bathing in a magical fire,” she whispered.

“What is?”

“Touching you. Feeling your passion.”

The smile Duncan gave Amber was rather fierce, but she didn't care. She felt the truth of him, and that truth was his restraint. He had given his vow, and he was a man who would die before he was forsworn.

“But I must confess something to you,” she whispered.

“Why? Do I look like a priest?”

Amber laughed. “Nay. You look like what you are, a warrior both fierce and sensual.”

“Then why confess to me?”

“Because I only now realized that I smoothed oil over you long after the danger of fever was past.”

Duncan's breath caught. “Did you?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Why?”

“For the  pleasure of touching you.”

One of Amber's fingertips brushed over a male nipple. The sudden surge of pleasure that went through Duncan was as clear to her as a cry. Her fingers returned, lingered, and teased with a skill far beyond her experience, for his response was her unfailing sensual guide.

“But touching me isn't  now?” Duncan asked almost roughly.

“No. Tis foolish,” Amber whispered, “but not .”

“Why not?”

She bent her head and kissed first one, then the other, nipple. When she drew her tongue slowly over him, his whole body tightened with a pleasure that was nearly violent.

“Because you promised that I would be safe here with you,” Amber whispered.

“Today,” he said, doubting he would ever be able to withstand such temptation again.

“Yes, today, now,” she said, “in this place where ancient stones watch over the sea.”

Duncan framed Amber's face with his hands, then took her mouth with a hunger that was like nothing he had ever felt before. The kiss was deep and powerful, urgent with the rhythms of the joining that he would not permit, for he had given his vow.

Amber yielded her mouth and took his at the same time, glorying in the heat and strength of the man holding her. The pricking of her nails against his skin made him groan with pleasure. Hearing his passion, feeling it, tasting it. Amber raked slowly over his muscular back again.

“You will make me wild,” Duncan said against her mouth.

“I feel wild,” she admitted, “but 'tis your doing.”

He bit her lower lip with savage care.

“How wild do you feel?” he asked. “Enough to be naked to my hands and eyes? Enough to let me caress you in new ways?”

The violence of the hunger that went through Duncan as he spoke told Amber that he wanted her to say yes so much that he was shaking with it.

Knowing that, touching him, trusting him, it was impossible for her to say no.

“Yes,” Amber whispered.

Duncan's arms tightened until she could barely breathe. Slowly he pressed her back until she lay once more on the ground. Her mantle fell away, revealing the pale curves and pink buds drawn tight by his mouth.

“Lift your hips.”

Duncan's voice was hardly recognizable. The anticipation pouring through him as he looked at Amber's half-nude body was so great that it almost overwhelmed her. She could barely breathe, much less move.

Amber didn't know what Duncan was going to do next. She knew only that waiting for it was piling fresh fuel on the wildfire of his passion.

“Duncan?” Amber whispered.

“Lift yourself,” he said. “Let me see the flower whose heart I foolishly vowed I would not take. Today.”

Trembling with conflicting emotions. Amber did as Duncan asked. As her hips lifted, clothes slid down her body, urged by his strong hands. When he was finished she was naked but for the mantle at her back and the bright stockings on her legs. The feeling was both shocking and erotic.

“You are beautiful beyond words,” Duncan said hoarsely.

He was no longer touching Amber, leaving her suddenly vulnerable to her own innate shyness and unease. With a muffled cry she reached beneath herself and jerked a corner of the mantle over her hips. When he moved to pull the mantle aside, she resisted.

“Don't be shy,” Duncan said. “You are more beautiful than any flower in a sultan's garden.”

As he spoke, his hand slid beneath the mantle.

The instant Duncan touched Amber, his desire arced through her. It was like being ravished by lightning both gentle and fierce.

Fingers spread wide, he put his palm low on her body and spanned her pelvic girdle with a hand that trembled very slightly from passion and restraint. Then his hand turned and his smallest finger eased through the silky warmth of her hair to find even warmer, silkier flesh beneath.

The unexpected caress sent a cascade of heat through Amber. The ragged sound of her breath breaking made Duncan smile. Seeing the centers of her eyes darken and expand in passionate response made blood pool even more hotly between his thighs until his hardened flesh leaped with every beat of his heart.

Feeling the tight, sultry petals brushing against his finger tempted him mercilessly. With every breath he took he regretted the vow he had given.

Duncan's hand shifted again. Tenderly, insistently, watching Amber's eyes, he caressed her.

“Duncan,” she said. “What—”

Then Amber could say no more. He had discovered the sleek, sensual knot concealed within her closed petals. A sound of surprise was dragged from her as golden pleasure pulsed.

As though Duncan felt Amber's pleasure as clearly as she did, he groaned. His finger teased the bud again, calling forth another shimmering pulse, then another. Each time he caressed her, the shivering, sultry heat of her response licked over his fingers.

Yet when he tried to slide his fingers between her sleek petals, her legs were too tightly held.

“I won't force you,” Duncan said in a low voice, “but I shall die if I can't at least touch you. Open your warm keep to me. I shall be a most gentle guest.”

“I shouldn't. We shouldn't. It is too much to ask of you,” Amber said. “To come so close and yet not take me…”

“Yes. Ask it. Please.”

“But I'm afraid.”

Duncan laughed softly as he rubbed over the bud once more, drawing another pulse of pleasure.

“Nay, golden witch. That isn't fear I feel licking over my fingertips. It's passion, hot and sweet and pure.”

Fingers plucked and pleasure surged. Amber's hips lifted in unwitting response. His hand moved again. Sensual lightning stabbed. Another caress and another urgent movement, another fiery response.

“Dear God,” Amber whispered.

Duncan wanted to shout his triumph as he stroked and another wave of pleasure swept visibly through Amber. With a broken sigh, she closed her eyes and yielded yet more of herself to him, hot petals opening to his touch.