4 #3
When Amber started to speak, he talked over her.
“What if I’m merely a knight back from the Holy Land looking for a lord to serve?”
Duncan’s words went through Amber like delicate lightning, making even darkness bright, if only for a moment.
Amber’s smile trembled uncertainly. “Have you fought the Saracen?”
“I…yes!” Duncan’s smile flashed against the silky darkness of his mustache as a memory gleamed briefly. “I fought them in a place called…God’s blood, ’tis gone again!”
“It will return.”
“But I fought. I know it,” he said. “Just as surely as I know I want this.”
Duncan bent until his lips were all but brushing Amber’s. When she would have withdrawn, his hand tightened on her chin and his arm slid around her body.
“Just a single kiss. ’Tis all I ask. One kiss for the man you brought out of darkness.”
Amber stiffened, but couldn’t fight against the lure of his passion and her own.
“We shouldn’t,” she said.
“Aye,” he murmured, smiling.
“’Tis dangerous.”
“’Tis sweet beyond belief.”
Amber tried to argue, but could not. It was indeed sweet beyond belief to be held by her dark warrior.
“Open your lips for me,” Duncan whispered against her mouth. “Let me taste your nectar as delicately as a bee tastes a violet.”
“Duncan…”
“Yes. Like that.”
This time Amber wasn’t shocked to feel the living warmth of Duncan’s tongue gliding into her mouth, but she was amazed by his restraint. She could feel the passion in him like a wild sea battering against the shores of his will.
His whole body was taut, fierce. He quivered with hunger. Yet his kiss was barely a breath of warmth, a fragile pressure that came and went like a flame.
Without knowing it, Amber made a soft, tiny sound and opened her lips wider, seeking more than Duncan had offered. Hands hardened by war shifted gently on her body, coaxing her closer and then closer still, luring her nearer the fire that was burning in his loins.
“Duncan,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“You taste of sunlight and storm at once.”
His breath caught as his heartbeat quickened.
“You taste like spiced honey,” Duncan said. “I want to lick up every sweet drop.”
“And I want you to,” Amber admitted.
His breath came out in a groan. His mouth came down over hers less gently, seeking a deeper mating. His arms molded her supple warmth to his body until she could feel every bit of his strength. His strong hands rocked her hips in a rhythm as ancient as desire and as new to her as dawn.
After a long time Duncan lifted his head and took a deep, harsh breath.
“My body knows you,” he said in a gritty voice. “It responds to you as to none other.”
Amber trembled and fought against the twin torrents of passion—his own, hers, their hunger combining until it was like a river in flood, and she stood on crumbling banks, ripe to fall at any moment.
“How many times have we lain in darkness together, our bodies joined and slick with desire?” he asked.
Amber started to speak, but the feel of Duncan’s hand over her breast stole her thoughts.
“How many times have I undressed you, kissed your breasts, your belly, the creamy smoothness of your thighs?” he asked.
A broken sound of desire was her only answer.
“How many times have I opened your legs and sheathed myself within your eager heat?”
“Duncan,” she said raggedly. “We mustn’t.”
“Nay, lass. Why not do again what we must have done so many times before?”
“We have—” Her breath fragmented. “Never.”
“Always,” Duncan countered.
“But—”
Gently he caught Amber’s lower lip in his teeth, stopping her words. When his fingers slid beneath her mantle, finding and teasing nipples that hardened at his touch, her knees buckled.
“Desire is a road we’ve traveled many times together,” Duncan said, smiling, bending to her breast. “That’s why our bodies respond to each other so quickly.”
“No, it’s—”
Amber’s voice splintered as she felt the heat and pressure of Duncan’s mouth over her breast. When his teeth raked lightly, she could barely stand.
“Duncan,” Amber said brokenly, “you are a fire burning me.”
“It is you who burns me.”
“We must stop—touching.”
Duncan smiled rather darkly.
“In time,” he agreed. “But first I will quench the fire within your body. And you will quench mine.”
Trembling, Amber thought of being naked with Duncan, no clothing to dull the piercing joy of his touch, nothing between them but the sultry heat of their shared breath as she gave her body to her dark warrior.
A man with no name may you claim, heart and body and soul.
“Nay!” she cried suddenly. “It’s too dangerous!”
Strong hands tightened, holding Amber when she would have wrenched herself away.
“Let me go,” she cried.
“I can’t.”
“You must!”
Duncan looked down into Amber’s wild, golden eyes. What he saw there so astonished him that he released her. Instantly she retreated beyond his reach.
“You’re afraid,” he said, hardly able to believe it.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you, precious Amber. You must know that. Don’t you?”
Amber backed away from Duncan’s outstretched hand.
With a savage curse, Duncan turned on his heel and stalked back out into the yard.