11 #2
Amber dismounted in a rush, picked up her skirts, and ran back to the outer ring. As she had feared, Duncan’s mount had balked at the ragged outer circle of stones. He spurred the horse once, then again with greater force, but the animal only backed away more urgently.
“Wait!” Amber called. “He can’t see the way!”
“What are you talking about?” Duncan shouted. “There’s enough room between these stones to run five abreast!”
“Aye, but he can’t see it!”
Cowl awry, hair disheveled, Amber ran to the outer ring. There she took the horse’s bridle and spoke soothingly to it. When the animal was calmer, Amber put one hand on the horse’s muzzle and the other on the rein.
A gentle tug, a low word of encouragement, and the horse stepped forward. The mincing wariness of its gait told how little the animal liked the place. Ears flicked nervously in all directions until the inner ring was reached. Then the animal snorted and let down its guard, visibly at ease again.
Duncan looked around, wondering what the horse sensed that told it safety lay here.
“What did you mean that my horse couldn’t see the way?” Duncan asked.
“Your mount has never been into the Stone Ring before,” Amber explained.
“Why should that matter?”
“In order to enter sacred sites, Whitefoot had to learn to trust my guidance rather than her eyes in certain places.”
“Such as the way to Ghost Glen?” Duncan asked.
Amber nodded. “But your horse hasn’t learned to trust you in the same way. Nor has it ever been inside Stone Ring before, so it couldn’t find the way by itself.”
Thoughtfully, Duncan looked around the ancient ring. Like the horse’s, Duncan’s senses told him there was more to the place than his eyes could see.
And like the horse’s, Duncan’s inner sense of danger no longer stirred. Rather, it slept, as though certain of safety.
“Remarkable,” Duncan said. “The place is enchanted.”
“Nay. It is simply different. There is peace here, for those who can see through the stones.”
“Learned.”
“Once I would have said aye. But now…” Amber shrugged.
“What made you change your mind?”
“You.”
“Maybe I was Learned in the time I don’t remember,” Duncan said.
Amber’s smile was bittersweet. She knew that the Scots Hammer wasn’t Learned.
“Maybe,” she said quietly, “you are simply a man with an unused gift for Learning.”
Duncan smiled slightly and began reconnoitering the haven that lay within Stone Ring while a wild storm broke over the trail they had just ridden.
The central mound of the Ring was fully thirty strides in length and half that in height.
The mound itself had once been completely surfaced with a paving of stones.
Time, storm, and sunshine had changed all that.
Now the mound grew a veritable garden of plants both common and rare between widening cracks in the stone paving.
Other than the mound, the circle was much too open to suit Duncan.
There was no place to hide, much less a place suited to defense.
Though there was forest just a few yards away from the outer stones, the interior of the circle was like a meadow.
Only one tree grew inside, and that tree was hardly sturdy enough to provide shelter from a storm.
Despite that, Duncan’s eyes kept coming back to the tree. Graceful, elegant, the rowan stood like a dancer at the highest part of the mound.
“What is it?” Amber asked, seeing Duncan’s stillness.
“That tree. I feel that I…know it.”
“You may. Erik found you beneath the rowan.”
Duncan turned and looked at Amber with eyes in which both shadows and memory stirred.
“It guarded me while I slept,” Duncan said slowly. “I’m as sure of it as I am that you are standing there. The rowan guarded me.”
Duncan dismounted and strode up the mound toward the rowan. Fear squeezed Amber’s heart. Not wanting to, knowing that she must, she followed him. By the time she caught up, he was already standing beneath the tree, fists on his hips, studying the rowan as though it might be either foe or friend.
“Are you remembering?” Amber asked quietly.
At first Duncan didn’t answer. Then he slowly uncurled one fist and held his hand out to her.
“Am I remembering?” Duncan asked.
The instant Amber’s hand rested in his, the complex emotions, dreams, fears, and hopes that were Duncan of Maxwell poured through the touch. Never had the contact been so vivid.
Exhilaration after the victorious battle.
Fear for Amber’s safety in the coming storm.
Determination to remember the past.
Rage at whatever had taken his memory.
And then, when the warmth of her flesh registered on his, there came a wave of desire so great that it all but brought Amber to her knees.
She could feel nothing but Duncan’s passion for her, see nothing, sense nothing.
He flooded her mind and body with a sensual hunger that was like nothing she had ever felt before.
Duncan.
Though Amber hadn’t said the name aloud, he opened his eyes and looked at her with eyes that blazed.
Duncan’s fingers circled Amber’s wrist like steel bands. He pulled her closer with a force that would have been impossible to resist. Nor did she want to resist. She wanted only to answer the elemental need that cried out to her from every fiber of her dark warrior’s being.
When Duncan’s arms wrapped around Amber, she made no objection, even though he held her so tightly she became light-headed from lack of breath.
Though she said nothing, Duncan knew.
“I’ll breathe for you,” he said in a low voice.
He brought his mouth to hers in a kiss that would have been harsh had she not been fighting to get even closer to him, to taste him more deeply, to get inside his very skin.
It was the same for Duncan, fighting to get closer to Amber, to feel yet more of her sweet flesh against his, to slake the savage hunger of his body for her in the only way possible.
Distantly Duncan realized that he had dragged Amber down to the ground and that her hands were struggling against him.
“Please,” he said, “I need you.”
A sound that was neither aye nor nay came from Amber’s throat. With an effort that left him shaking, Duncan managed to let go of her.
The instant Amber was free, she cried out as though at a blow. Duncan reached for her to comfort her, then realized he didn’t trust himself.
“Duncan?” Amber said.
Her voice trembled, as did the hand she held out to him.
“You’re a fire in my blood, in my flesh, in my soul,” Duncan said savagely. “If I touch you again, I’ll take you.”
“Then touch me.”
“Amber—”
“Take me.”
For a long moment Duncan looked at the golden eyes and outstretched hand of the girl he wanted more than he wanted life itself.
Then he touched her, felt her burning, saw the wildfire of his own need blaze in her eyes.
Duncan’s torrential male hunger poured over Amber in a river of fire. She was a spark caught in a whirlwind, recklessly burning, helplessly spiraling upward to an unknown destiny. With a woman’s instinct, she sought Duncan’s flesh both as haven and as fuel for an even greater fire.
Duncan pulled Amber close with a strength he could barely control. The feel and taste of her mouth made him groan with redoubled need. His body chained hers to the ground as his tongue shot between her teeth, claiming her mouth in urgent, elemental rhythms.
With a wildness that equaled Duncan’s, Amber fought to get closer to him, to ease the torment of his arousal and her own, a suffering that was also a savage pleasure. Her hands searched over his body, seeking ways through and beneath his clothing.
The feel of Amber’s hands on his face, his chest, his breeches, was heaven and hell combined for Duncan. When she found the aching source of his need, the pleasure nearly undid him. His hips thrust suddenly against her, once, twice, thrice, and a groan was dragged from the depths of his passion.
Amber felt both Duncan’s pleasure and his driving, unfulfilled need.
However great his enjoyment of her hand caressing him, it wasn’t enough.
She could feel the savage heat of him, taste the salt of his passion on his neck, and she knew that she was pouring oil rather than water on the fire of his need.
“Show me how to ease you,” Amber said urgently. “I can’t bear the hunger tearing at you!”
The sound Duncan made then was indeed that of a man in torment.
His hands swept down Amber’s body to her hips.
Strong fingers clenched there for an instant, sending pleasure lancing through her.
Before she could do more than take a swift breath, his hands were sweeping down her legs to her feet and then back up again.
Amber hardly noticed the cool bite of autumn on her legs, for the anticipation in Duncan was spinning through her, driving out all else. When his hand pressed between her legs, tested the liquid heat of her body, and found it ready, his wild elation speared through her.