“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.
By the time Duncan slid the mantle covering Amber aside, she no longer cared. All that mattered to her was that the sweet torment continue. When his hand pressed against her legs, she gave him what he sought, opening herself so that he could touch her in any way he pleased.
Deliberately Duncan drew his fingertips over the petals that were slowly opening to him. He caressed Amber in a taut silence that was heightened by the rapid, broken sound of her breathing. She no longer sensed his leashed passion, for her own had become overwhelming.
Without warning, ecstasy burst, ravishing Amber’s senses. Her shivering cry and the hot, helpless rush of her response told Duncan just how much she had enjoyed his caresses.
Despite the savage thrust of his own unanswered need, Duncan smiled. Even after the last tremors of pleasure no longer shook Amber, he was reluctant to leave off caressing the sultry flower he had so recently coaxed into opening.
But he knew he must stop.
If he kept caressing her, he might very well throw his vow to the sea winds and sink his hungry flesh into the place that was so fully prepared to receive him. With a difficulty that was in itself a warning, he forced himself to release the tender flower.
Yet even then, Duncan couldn’t make himself retreat entirely. His hand remained between Amber’s legs, close enough to feel her warmth, but not touching her.
Amber’s eyes opened and she knew herself naked with Duncan’s hand lying intimately between her legs. She flushed and reached for the mantle to cover herself once more.
“Nay,” Duncan said thickly. “Don’t hide. You are even more beautiful in full bloom than you were unopened.”
As he spoke, his fingertip skimmed her still sensitized flesh. She cried out as the violence of his hunger and restraint poured through her, shaking her.
“It isn’t enough!” Amber said. “You are in pain.”
“Aye. And this,” Duncan said, caressing her slowly with his fingertip, “is salt in the raw wound of my need.”
With a harsh word he closed his eyes.
Into the silence came a rustle and murmur, a whispering of wind, grass, and the distant voice of winter. The sound increased until it grew greater than the rush of breath from Duncan’s harshly restrained body.
A distant part of Amber’s awareness registered the fey, growing sound, but she ignored it. Duncan was all of the world she cared about.
And she had hurt him without even knowing what she had done.
“Duncan,” she said huskily.
When Amber’s fingers touched his bare flesh, he flinched as though she had taken a whip to him.
“Nay,” Duncan said in a raw voice. “Don’t touch me.”
“I want to ease you.”
“Breaking my vow won’t ease me.”
Amber took a deep, shaken breath. What she was going to do was dangerous, two parts of the bleak prophecy fulfilled. Yet she could not endure Duncan’s pain any longer, not when the means to banish it lay within her.
“I release you from your vow,” Amber whispered.
Duncan surged to his feet.
“Don’t tempt me, golden witch. I already wear the fragrance of your passion. ’Tis like breathing fire. I can’t take much more.”
The silence that followed Duncan’s words was filled by distant rustles and murmurs and eerie cries that swelled until they were a breaking wave of sound pouring across the fen. Air whistled through thousands upon thousands of wings as skeins of wild geese spiraled down, their bodies dark against the falling sun, their voices calling in autumnal urgency, crying of untimely winter.
Death will surely flow.
Death will surely.
Flow.
Death will.
Surely.
Amber put her hands over her ears to stop the sounds of a terrible prophecy coming true.
9
ERIK waited for Duncan and Amber in a chair of riven oak whose seat was softened by a loose cushion. Despite luxurious wall hangings and a roaring fire in the central hearth, the great hall of Sea Home’s manor house was cold. Each time a violent gust of wind forced icy air through chinks in the manor’s thick timb
er walls, the tapestries stirred. Though the carved wooden screens were placed so as to turn the drafts from the manor’s main door, torch flames leaped and wavered when the door opened, as it just had.
The flames of the central fire bent and whipped in the draft. Their dance was reflected many times over in the eyes of the rough-coated wolfhounds that lay at Erik’s feet, in the peregrine’s unflinching glare from the perch behind the oak chair, in Erik’s own eyes…and in the ancient silver dagger that he was turning slowly in his hands.
A door bar thumped home as the main door was shut once more. Moments later the leaping flames shrank to their accustomed size. Sounds of hurrying footsteps accompanied the low urging of Alfred’s voice as Erik’s knight approached the great hall.
Without a word, Erik stared at the three people who had barely beaten moonrise back to the keep. Egbert looked sheepish. Amber appeared flushed with more than the cold wind that had sprung up. Duncan looked like what Amber had named him—a dark warrior.
In the silence that stretched and stretched, Erik watched the three people, ignoring Alfred entirely. In defiance of Erik’s usual good manners, he invited no one to sit on the chairs that had been dragged close to the fire for warmth and ease.
It was very clear to Amber that Erik was holding on to his temper by a bare thread.
“You seem to have brought winter with you,” he said.
Despite Erik’s nearly tangible anger, his tone was mild. The contrast between his voice and the dagger gleaming wickedly in his hands was alarming.
“The geese,” Amber said. “They have just come to Whispering Fen.”
The news did nothing to soften Erik’s expression. Yet his tone remained the same, calm to the point of flatness.
“Ahhhh. The geese,” Erik murmured. “Cassandra will be pleased.”
“By an early winter?” Duncan asked.
“It must be reassuring to have one’s every though turned to truth,” Erik said without looking away from Amber, “while mere mortals must depend upon such slender reeds as trust and honor.”
The blood left Amber’s face. She had known Erik for her entire life, yet she had never seen him quite like this. She had seen him angry, yes, for he had a volatile temper. She had even seen him in a cold fury.
But never with her.
And never this cold.
“You may retire now, Alfred,” Erik said.
“Thank you, lord.”
Alfred vanished with the alacrity of a man fleeing demons.
“Egbert.”
Erik’s voice was like the flick of a whip. The boy jumped.
“Yes, lord?” he said hurriedly.
“As you slept the afternoon away, you will have guard duty tonight. Go to it. Now.”
“Aye, lord!”
Egbert left with impressive speed.
“I believe,” Erik said thoughtfully, “that I’ve never seen the boy move so quickly.”
Amber made a sound that could have meant anything or nothing at all. She was still absorbing the fact that Erik knew Egbert had spent much of his time asleep.
She wondered if Erik also knew that she and Duncan had ridden off alone.
“He is frightened of you,” Amber said.
“Then he is smarter than I guessed. Smarter than you, certainly.”
Amber flinched.
Duncan took a step forward, only to stop when Amber grasped his wrist in an unspoken plea.
“How was your ride?” Erik asked silkily. “Chilly?”
“Not at first,” Duncan said.
“The day was beautiful,” Amber said quickly.
“And how was your special place, Learned maid? Was it beautiful, too?”
“How did you know?” she asked in a strained voice.
Erik’s smile was that of a wolf just before it leaps.
Abruptly Duncan wished he were wearing a sword or carrying the hammer. But he had neither weapon. He had only the certainty that Erik, for all his moments of charm and laughter, could be a deadly enemy.
With careful movements, Duncan took off his mantle and draped it on a trestle table to dry.
“May I?” he asked, reaching for Amber’s mantle.
“No. I—that is, I’m—”
“Afraid your laces aren’t fully tied?” Erik finished gently.
She gave him a fearful look.
The expression that came over Erik’s face didn’t make Amber feel any more easy. He was in a savage humor.
“What, no protestations of innocence?” Erik asked in a soft voice. “No reassurances that you didn’t leave Egbert sleeping in a field while two horses cropped grass nearby?”
“We—” Amber began, but Erik’s voice overrode hers.
“No soft cries that honor hasn’t been outraged and trust breached, along with your maidenhead? No blushes—”
“Nay, that’s not—”
“—and stuttered little pleas that—”
“Enough.”
The flat promise of violence in Duncan’s voice shocked Amber.
The hounds around Erik’s chair came to their feet in a bristling, snarling rush. The peregrine’s hooked beak opened in a shrill, savage cry. Unknowingly, Amber’s nails dug into Duncan’s wrist.
“Leave off harrying her,” Duncan said, ignoring the threatening animals.
He opened his mouth to add that discussing Amber as though she were a virgin was ridiculous, and nobody knew it better than Duncan. But a look at Erik’s feral, wolflike eyes convinced Duncan to be careful how he stated the truth.
“Amber’s maidenhead is as intact now as it was this morning,” Duncan said flatly. “You have my vow on that.”
In a silence outlined by the leap of flames, Erik turned the dagger over and over in his hand while he studied the dark warrior who loomed in front of him, ready for battle.
Yea, even eager for it.
Abruptly Erik understood. He threw back his head and laughed like a tawny devil.
The hounds settled their ruffs, stretched, and sprawled at ease once more, yellow eyes reflecting fire. A sweet whistle from her master cooled the peregrine’s ire.
When quiet had been restored, Erik gave Duncan a look of masculine sympathy.
“I believe you,” he said.
Duncan nodded curtly.
“You don’t have the relaxed air of a man who has spent the afternoon—and himself!—lying between a woman’s soft legs,” Erik added.
Duncan said something profane beneath his breath.
“Come to the fire, warrior,” Erik said, struggling not to show the smile concealed within his beard. “You must be stiff as a sword with chill. Or is that the only part of you still warm?”
“Erik!” Amber said, embarrassed.
He looked at her bright cheeks and smiled with a combination of affection and amusement.
“Little Learned innocent,” Erik said gently, “there isn’t a man or woman in the keep who doesn’t know where Duncan looks—and who looks back at him.”
Amber put her hands to her hot cheeks.
“’Tis a source of much betting among the men,” Erik said.
“What is?” Amber asked faintly.
“Whether you or he will break first.”
“It won’t be Duncan.”
Amber didn’t understand how much the tartness in her voice had given away.
Erik understood immediately. So did Duncan. While Erik gave in to laughter, Duncan went to Amber and hid her flaming face against his chest.
The contradictory currents Duncan’s touch revealed—prowling hunger, rue, laughter—were oddly comforting to Amber. But nothing was as reassuring as knowing that Duncan again welcomed her touch.
He had all but turned himself inside out to avoid contact with her on the way back to Sea Home.
With a sigh, Amber leaned against Duncan. Silently she drank the heady wine of his presence, letting it drive out the cold that had come over her when she heard the geese descending.
“Touching,” Erik sai
d dryly. “Literally.”
“Leave off,” Duncan retorted.
“I suppose I must, but I haven’t been quite this amused since you accused me of wanting Amber for myself.”
Her head snapped up. She looked at Duncan, startled.
“You didn’t,” Amber said.
“Oh, but he did,” Erik countered.
Amber made an odd sound.
“Are you laughing?” Erik asked.
“Ummm.”
He frowned at her.
“Do you think it so unreasonable that a maid might be drawn to me?” Erik asked, offended.
“Nay,” Amber said quickly.
Erik raised his eyebrows.
After a moment Amber lifted her head and looked at the dark warrior who held her quite gently.
“But,” Amber added, “’tis absurd to believe that this maid would ever allow any man to touch her, save one.”
“Duncan,” Erik said.
“Aye. Duncan.”
“That is to be expected between a man and his betrothed,” Erik said matter-of-factly.
As one, Duncan and Amber spun and stared at Erik.
“My betrothed?” Duncan asked carefully.
“Of course,” Erik said. “We will announce it tomorrow. Or did you expect to seduce Amber with no thought to her honor—and mine?”
“I have told you,” Duncan said. “Until my memory returns, I can’t ask for Amber’s hand.”
“But you can take the rest of her, is that it?”
Duncan’s face darkened.
“The people of the keep are whispering,” Erik said. “Soon they will be talking openly about a foolish maid who lies with a man who has no intention of—”
“She has not—” Duncan began.
“Leave off,” Erik snarled. “It will come as surely as sparks fly upward! The passion between the two of you is strong enough to taste. I’ve seen nothing like it in my life.”
Silence was Duncan’s only response.
“Do you deny this?” Erik challenged.
Duncan closed his eyes. “No.”
Erik looked at Amber. “I needn’t ask you about your feelings. You look like a gem lit from within You burn.”