11 #3
With it came a piercing pleasure that was hers, for in the act of withdrawing his touch, he flicked over the aching nub of her own need. Instinctively she sought another such caress, twisting beneath Duncan in silent demand.
“Aye,” he said savagely. “I can wait no longer either.”
His hands clamped on Amber’s thighs, stilling and opening her at the same instant. In the next instant he drove into her.
A searing pain clenched Amber’s body, only to be burned away by the fierce pleasure that pulsed through Duncan as he felt himself fully sheathed in her. Then came a moment of utter stillness and disbelief.
Duncan struggled to control the wildness hammering in his blood, but it was impossible. Amber was a velvet fire surrounding him tightly, caressing every bit of his aching length. With a broken sound, he began to move, driving for completion within her body.
His release broke over Amber like a storm. She let out a long, ragged sigh and closed her arms around him, feeling both the ecstasy and the wildness pulsing through him into her.
Yet as soon as the last pulse was spent, there came not peace, but unhappiness. Duncan rolled aside and saw what he feared he would—his lover’s blood bright on his body.
“I hurt you,” Duncan said through his teeth. “God’s wounds, I never meant that! What is wrong with me? I’ve never been like that with a woman!”
“Nay,” Amber said, touching Duncan’s cheek. “I’m not hurt.”
“You’re bleeding!”
“Of course. ’Tis the nature of virgins to bleed when they first take a man into their body.”
The look on Duncan’s face would have been amusing, if he hadn’t been so clearly horrified.
“You were a virgin?” he asked roughly.
“How can you doubt it?” Amber asked, half smiling. “You wear the truth of it like a crimson banner.”
“But you responded so quickly, so wildly, like a falcon that has been flown many times.”
“Did I?”
“God’s teeth, yes!”
“I wouldn’t know,” Amber said simply.
Duncan closed his eyes and measured the extent of what he had done. She had been a virgin, she had given herself to him…and he had given her nothing in return but pain.
He was certain of it. He had felt the tearing instant as clearly as she must have, but he had denied it even as he had felt it.
If I take Amber’s maidenhead, I will marry her.
With or without your memory?
Aye.
I will hold you to your vow.
With fingers that trembled, Duncan pulled Amber’s clothing into place so that she was fully covered.
She watched with troubled eyes, not understanding. His touch told her that he was angry and sad and disgusted all at once, but touch alone couldn’t tell her why.
“Duncan,” Amber whispered. “What is wrong?”
He looked at her with eyes that were more dark than light, more shadowed than she had ever seen them. His mouth was twisted with the same dark emotion.
“You were untouched,” Duncan said harshly, “and I rutted on you like an animal. God’s teeth, I should be whipped!”
“Nay! You didn’t force me.”
“I didn’t pleasure you, either.”
“What do you mean?”
Amber’s look of confusion did nothing to restore Duncan’s self-respect.
“The pleasure you knew in Ghost Glen,” he said, “you knew none of it today.”
“I knew your pleasure most keenly today. Is that wrong?”
Duncan made a growling sound of disgust and turned away, unable to bear the sight of himself reflected in her anxious golden eyes any longer.
“Dark warrior?” Amber whispered.
The raggedness of her voice haunted Duncan. The merest touch of her fingers on his wrist chained his great strength.
“Tell me what I’ve done wrong,” she said.
“You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then why do you turn away from me?”
“It is myself I turn away from,” Duncan said savagely, “but wherever I turn, I find I am already there. Leave me be.”
When Amber lifted her hand, Duncan surged to his feet. He arranged his clothing with a few curt motions and stood with his fists clenched at his sides.
“Can you sit a horse?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“Of course.”
“Are you certain?”
“Duncan,” Amber said in exasperation, “I rode here with you, remember?”
“And then I tore at you until you bled. I ask you again: can you ride?”
“And I say again: aye!”
“Good. We must go quickly to the keep.”
“Why?”
No answer came.
Amber looked up at the sky. What had once been wildly threatening and riven by lightning was now the pearly gray of a dove’s breast.
“Look,” Amber said wonderingly. “The storm is fled!”
Duncan gave the sky a single, savage glance. Broodingly he turned and looked at the rowan that stood guard over the mound’s eternal sleep.
Are you pleased, rowan?
Better that you had let me die than live to become a warrior with no self-control, a defiler of virgins.
The bitterness of Duncan’s thought wasn’t lessened by the realization that he would have to endure Erik’s displeasure that his vassal was a virgin no longer.
Duncan had taken that which was clearly forbidden. Now he must bear the consequences.
And he must pray that in keeping one vow, he would not forswear another, unremembered vow.
“Come,” Duncan said flatly, starting toward the horses. “There is a wedding to be arranged.”