An instant later his hand gripped her hair with painful force. Duncan was fully awake.
And fully furious.
“I don’t want you,” he said through his clenched teeth. “I don’t even want to touch you.”
Though the currents of desire swirling between their bodies made a mockery of his words, his rejection still stung.
“Is that a promise?” Amber asked silkily.
“What?”
“That you won’t touch me tonight.”
“Aye, witch. I won’t touch you!”
Amber’s triumphant smile was as primitive as the light in Duncan’s eyes. Had he been less angry he would have been wary. The feminine ruthlessness in Amber was almost tangible.
“Then take your hand off me,” she said distinctly, “or find yourself forsworn before you’ve drawn another breath.”
Duncan let go of Amber as though she were the burning end of a candle.
“Get out,” he said flatly.
Amber simply looked at Duncan for a time. Then her hand moved with a speed that rivaled Simon’s. The last of the bed coverings were raked aside, revealing that Duncan was like her, naked but for an amber pendant.
Equally naked was his desire. Rigid, erect, his flesh stirred with each quickening beat of his heart.
Amber made a sound of pleasure that was almost feline.
“Get. Out.” Duncan’s voice was icy.
Smiling slightly, Amber trailed her fingertips down his chest to his navel, slowly approaching the center of his need.
Duncan started to grab Amber’s hand, then realized that he could not.
Not without being forsworn.
“Witch.”
Furious and savagely aroused at once, Duncan watched Amber’s elegant, teasing fingers prowl closer and closer to his straining flesh. At the last moment she turned aside, tracing a half circle in the thick nest of hair.
“You could call for Simon,” Amber suggested.
Her smile said just how much she enjoyed Duncan’s dilemma. Her fingertip traced the creases where muscular torso and legs joined.
Duncan hissed through clenched teeth.
“Simon has little trust in me,” Amber pointed out, “and less liking.”
Her nails bit delicately into the taut skin of Duncan’s thighs. She felt the hot explosion of his desire.
His finger’s dug into the soft mattress. He willed himself to feel nothing.
Amber laughed softly, knowing everything he felt. No matter what his mind said, his body knew what it must have.
Soon.
“Simon would be pleased to drag me from your bed,” Amber murmured.
She fitted her palm over Duncan’s thigh, openly savoring the strength of him. The contrast between her graceful fingers and the blunt, clenched power of his body aroused Duncan until he could barely stifle a groan.
“But I wouldn’t be pleased to be dragged from you,” Amber whispered, bending over Duncan.
Her hair spilled across his thighs in a cool cascade. He groaned despite his determination not to respond.
Amber smiled even as her teeth bit sweetly into the long muscle of his thigh. The center of the bite was a hot touch of her tongue.
The shudder that went through Duncan went through Amber as well.
“Tonight you are like winter wine to me,” she said in a low voice. “Dark, potent.”
Duncan made a thick sound.
“I would like to taste you from your forehead to your heels,” Amber murmured.
The tip of her tongue traced a line of fire from Duncan’s knees to his navel.
“I would like to do…everything.”
With a throttled sound, Duncan clenched the muscles of his legs and covered himself with his hands, trying to prevent further intimacy.
“Wouldn’t you rather my hands were holding you?” Amber asked.
“Nay,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Truly? Is that why you grow more formidable with each breath? You hope to frighten me away?”
Duncan had no answer save the one he was trying to conceal or ignore.
Amber knew it as well as he did. Better. His desire and her own combined.
“It won’t work, dark warrior. No matter how formidable you become, I can sheathe you. You know it as surely as I do.”
Then Amber laughed softly. “Nay, you know my sheath better than I, for you have measured it full well.”
Duncan’s answer was a low sound that had no meaning but frustration. She was bringing him to bay with her words alone. His body knew what it wanted. It clamored for it.
And his body knew where to find what it must have.
“Move your hands,” Amber said huskily. “Give me the freedom we both desire.”
“Nay! I don’t want you!”
Amber couldn’t help laughing despite the slice of pain that came with his repeated denial of her.
“Not so, coy knight,” she said. “You can scarce conceal your desire with both hands.”
There was also no way Duncan could hide from Amber the fire burning within him. Each time their skin met, his hunger poured through him into her, truth known through touch.
And Amber made certain their skin was always touching.
Laughing, she began to seduce Duncan’s hands away from his body. Her teeth nipped boldly. Her lips brushed tantalizingly. Her breath was a sultry warmth bathing him. The tip of her tongue traced each line between his tightly held fingers.
In time, Amber’s hand sought the shadow line between Duncan’s tightly held thighs, stroking in the same rhythms as her tongue probing between his thumb and forefinger. Then she caught his smallest finger between her teeth and pulled it into her mouth. The movements of her tongue silently offered him another, even more intimate caress.
A groan was dragged from deep in Duncan’s chest. Desire shook him until his hands jerked. Instantly Amber’s hand slid beneath one of his. Slender fingers curled possessively around him. His body jerked again, as though he had been struck by a whip rather than by a tender caress.
“Amber,” Duncan said between his teeth. “No!”
“Yes,” she whispered raggedly. “Dear God, yes!”
Her hand moved beneath his, and then her breath, and then her tongue.
“Amber”
“Aye, dark warrior. ’Tis Amber. And this…”
Her tongue swirled, tasting and caressing in the same motion.
“…this is magnificent. Warm as a cat. Hard as a fist. Surging like a storm.”
When Amber’s tongue circled Duncan teasingly, he made a last effort at escaping her by turning away from her onto his side.
She was too quick. She turned with Duncan, flowing over him like a hot rain.
Then Duncan found he could retreat no farther. He was caught between Amber’s mouth and her hand sliding up between his thighs. She cupped him in her palm, weighed him, and laughed with pleasure at his readiness.
“Every part of you is hard,” Amber said. “You burn very hotly, dark warrior, but I would have you hotter still.”
She bent to Duncan again, caught him against her tongue with loving care, and stroked him until sweat glistened on his skin like rain.
“Stop,” he said hoarsely.
“Stop?” Amber’s laugh was low, delighted, a bit savage. “Nay, my stubborn warrior. You have barely begun to burn.”
“I cannot—hold—much longer.”
“I know.” A delicious shivering went over Amber. “I like that knowledge.”
“Witch,” he said thickly.
But there was more pleasure than anger in his voice.
Amber’s teeth closed delicately. Duncan said something dark as he fought the desire consuming him with every breath, every heartbeat, every hot caress.
Yet just when ecstasy was on the brink of overcoming his restraint, Amber stopped. Torn between relief and disappointment, Duncan breathed deeply, trying to calm the wildness of his need.
Tenderly, soothingly, Ambe
r stroked hair back from Duncan’s heated face and kissed his cheek as though he were a child who needed calming. Finally passion’s claws eased in Duncan, allowing him to breathe evenly once more. With a groan, he rolled over onto his back.
Amber smiled at him, kissed his shoulder, and slid like fire back down his body.
And like fire, she burned him.
Soon Duncan was hotter than before, harder, shaking with what it cost not to give in to Amber. When he was no more than a breath from ecstasy, she stopped and calmed him again.
And in time she set him to burning all over again.
“Finish it,” Duncan said through his teeth. “You will drive me mad!”
“Soon,” Amber murmured.
“Soon I will be mad!”
Laughing, she drew her nails over his clenched thighs and between his legs, goading him ever higher, yet always knowing when to draw him back from the sensual brink.
Sweat gathered and ran on Duncan’s loins. Amber tasted it, found it good, and tasted again, elsewhere. She found that good as well.
Fire poured over Duncan, burning him to the marrow of his bones. Never had he known Amber to be like this, waging a sultry, determined seduction over every bit of his body. She wanted him, and she meant to have him.
All of him, in every way there was.
“Release me from my promise,” Duncan said thickly.
The warmth of Amber’s laughter washed over him.
“Not yet.”
“’Tis beyond reason. I must touch you!”
“How?”
The word was as much a purr as a question. Low, husky, breathless with desire, the sound of Amber’s voice sent a shudder of anticipation through Duncan.
Suddenly she moved astride his thighs and he sensed her opening to him. She radiated heat and wept with desire. The scent of her made him wild.
Yet Amber stayed where she was, poised just above him, brushing against the very flesh she had tormented so thoroughly.
“Finish it,” he said hoarsely. “You want me as much as I want you. I can feel it.”
“That will never change as long as I draw breath.”
“Then let me take you and end this torment!”
“That can’t be your hand upon my thigh, pushing me down, can it?” Amber asked.
With a dark curse Duncan snatched back his hand.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said.
“I know. I felt your surprise.”
“Have I no secrets from you?” Duncan asked angrily.
“Many. But only one that matters.”
“What?”
“Your soul, dark warrior. It is shut away from me.”
“So is yours from me.”
“Nay,” Amber whispered. “Tonight I am giving it to you one breath at a time.”
Whatever Duncan might have said in answer was lost in the husky cry he gave as Amber slid down over him, taking all of him in a slow, caressing glide.
Before the taking was half complete, Amber came undone. Her shivering flesh and rippling cries undid Duncan. Even as she took him fully, he gave himself to her in a succession of deep pulses that left him shaking.
And then it began all over again.
The tempting and the teasing, the intimate caresses and the sweet torment. Whispered words and touches that made Duncan jerk with pleasure. Unexpected kisses, love bites that stung and pleasured at once.
While candles guttered and flames winked out, Amber burned on undimmed, pouring herself into Duncan as surely as he poured himself into her, burning with her because he could do no less, consuming her as certainly as he was himself being consumed.
A whispered plea, a vow given back, and Duncan’s hands were at last free to touch, his mouth to kiss, his body to sink deeply into the wildness that was Amber burning. She drank his passion and gave it back to him redoubled, driving both of them higher and higher, speaking to him in wild silence, describing a love that could not be put into words, expressing an unspeakable need.
Let me reach into you as you have reached into me.
Then rich life might grow.
When finally nothing was left undone, when both were so spent they slid from shattering ecstasy into sleep in the space of a breath, still Amber clung to Duncan, wanting to share her dreams as deeply as she had shared the rest of herself.
Let me touch your soul.
Just once.
But it was Duncan’s dreams that were shared, bleak turmoil redoubled rather than relieved by Amber’s wild giving and taking of self.
Soon Amber awakened, dragged into awareness by the conflict raging through Duncan’s soul. When she realized what had been gambled and what had been lost, cold seeped through her.
The last part of the prophecy had been fulfilled.
Yet Duncan was farther from her than ever, locked in battle with himself. His word had been given.
It had not been given to her.
Yet he was part of her.
Darkness gathering, drop by drop, breath by breath, one soul given, one soul locked away. Untouched.
Cassandra is wrong. His soul won’t wither, for he does not love me.
Slowly Amber drew away from Duncan and slid from the bed, unable to bear the agony of touching him any longer. With hands that trembled, she removed her amber pendant and placed it across the coiled metal of the war hammer that had given Duncan his name. She reached out to him one last time, but did not touch him.
“God be with you, dark warrior,” Amber whispered, “for I cannot be.”
MEG looked across the table at her husband. Their cold breakfast of bread, meat, and ale lay largely ignored on the trestle table in the great hall. Dominic was leaning back in his chair, eyes narrowed. The fingers of his right hand drummed softly on his thigh in time to the haunting tune Ariane was playing on a lap harp.
Simon carved another slice of venison, poured some ale into a dainty goblet, and set both in front of Ariane.
“Leave off making the harp weep and eat,” he said tersely.
“Again? I feel like a goose being fattened for a feast,” she muttered.
But Ariane set aside the harp and began to eat. It was easier than arguing with Simon when he had that determined look in his eyes.
“Have you dreamed, Meg?” Dominic asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
“Glendruid dreams?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The fact that Meg said no more told Dominic that the dreams had been unhappy…and that they had offered no solutions. The backs of his fingers stroked her cheek.
“Small falcon,” he said in a low voice, “I must find a way to give Blackthorne peace. I want our child to be born into a time and a place not torn apart by war.”
Meg kissed Dominic’s palm and watched him with eyes made luminous by love.
“Come what will, Glendruid Wolf,” she whispered, “I will never regret bearing your child.”
Ignoring the others in the room, Dominic lifted Meg into his lap. Golden bells braided into her hair shivered and chimed. He held her close, whispering his love.
After a time, the haunting cry of the harp resumed, beautiful music describing all the shades of sadness.
“What a cheerful gathering,” Erik mocked as he entered the great hall, his peregrine on his wrist. “Do you play often for funerals, Lady Ariane?”
“That is one of her lighthearted tunes,” Simon said.
“God save us,” Erik muttered. “Leave off, lady. You will have my peregrine in tears.”
The peregrine in question flared her wings briefly before she settled to watching the gathered humans with inhuman curiosity.
“I would have expected you to be with Duncan,” Dominic said, “driving Learning into his thick skull.”
“My sister tried a more certain method,” Erik said, smiling slightly. “She went to Duncan last night.”
Dominic’s smile was an exact reflection of Erik’s. “That explains their absence at morning chapel.”
&n
bsp; “Aye.”
“Did it help my quest for peace?”
Erik hesitated. Then he shrugged. The peregrine shifted restlessly on his wrist, making silver bells on her jesses ring.
“Something has changed,” Erik said. “I can sense it. But I don’t know what.”
“Permit me to educate you,” Cassandra said from behind Erik.
The quality of the Learned woman’s voice brought a hush to the room.
Erik stepped aside, allowing Cassandra room to pass. He saw that her normally braided and concealed hair was loose, a seething silver glory rippling freely over her scarlet cloak. Ancient silver rune stones glittered in her hands.
The peregrine flared her wings again and gave a keening cry.
“You have just come from casting silver runes,” Erik said, his voice toneless.
There was no answer. None was needed. The hammered silver markers in the Learned woman’s hands spoke for themselves.
“What did you learn?” Erik asked.
“More than I wished. Less than I hoped.”
Cassandra walked until she stood in front of Dominic and Meg.
“Witch of Glendruid,” Cassandra said formally, “do you dream?”
A single glance at Cassandra’s silver eyes brought Meg to her feet.
“Yes,” Meg said. “I dream.”
“Will you share your dreams?”
“A scream the color of amber. A darkness being torn apart like tough cloth, one fiber at a time.”
Cassandra bowed her head for a moment. “Thank you.”
“For what? There is neither comfort nor answer in my dream.”
“It was confirmation I sought, not comfort.”
Meg gave the older woman a curious look.
“When my emotions are involved,” Cassandra said calmly, “I have to be wary of casting the silver stones. Sometimes I see what I wish rather than what is.”
“What did you see?” Meg asked. “Will you share it?”
“The amber prophecy is complete. She has given her heart and her body and her soul to Duncan.”
“You didn’t need to cast the silver stones to see that was coming,” Erik said.
Cassandra nodded agreement.
“Then why did you cast them?” Erik asked. “They are not to be used lightly.”
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