16
THE flicker of a dying candle flame beyond the bed’s luxurious draperies made Duncan start from his uneasy sleep.
Danger!
He reached for his sword as he had so often in the twelve days since his marriage. Belatedly he realized he was only half awake and fully nude.
Even as Duncan told himself it was but a dream that had disturbed him, he eased out of the bed and lit candles around the room until there were no shadows where enemies could hide. Only then did he go back to bed as silently as he had arisen.
“Duncan?”
He started again, then turned on his side toward the soft voice that was both familiar and oddly alien. Thoughts like black lightning raged through the shades of darkness that were his mind.
She is not part of my past.
Danger!
I am surrounded by enemies.
Danger!
Yet even as part of Duncan’s mind cried of peril, his recent memories scoffed, for nothing but kindness and incandescent passion had come to him at Stone Ring Keep.
Am I going mad?
Will I be torn in two and die writhing while shades of darkness and amber light battle for my soul?
The only answer that came to Duncan was an inner silence which seethed with contradictions.
The unremembered past was taking shape in his mind as random threads and fragmented patterns, names and no faces, places and no names, faces and no places. He was a tapestry rent and shredded, unraveled as much as woven, threads all snarled and frayed.
Sometimes, the worst times, he saw the shadows retreat, revealing his memory. And that was when he truly knew despair like black ice, freezing everything.
He feared his returning memory.
What is happening to me? God’s wounds, why do I fear the very thing that I long for!
With a harsh sound Duncan grabbed his head in both hands. An instant later, fingers that were both gentle and insistent stroked his clenched fingers.
“Dark warrior,” Amber whispered. “Be at peace.”
If Duncan heard, he made no sound.
Tears slid hotly down Amber’s cheeks as she shared Duncan’s anguish.
And his fear.
Like Duncan, Amber sensed the slow healing of his memory. She saw faces where only shadows had been, heard names where only silence had been, sensed time’s shuttle at work. The pattern which would weave all together was lacking, but it, too, would return. She was certain of it.
And then she would know the wrath of a proud warrior who had been defeated in secret rather than allowed to fight as he had been born to do.
It is too soon. Duncan has had so little time with me. A fortnight before we became lovers. Barely a fortnight since we wed. Not enough time to learn to love me.
Dear God, not nearly enough time.
Only love could forgive so great a deception. If he remembers too soon, he will never forgive me.
Never love me.
And great death will surely flow.
Amber never knew whether she called Duncan’s name with her lips or with her heart. She knew only that suddenly they were holding each other so tightly she couldn’t breathe.
“Precious Amber,” Duncan said in a raw voice. “What would I do without you?”
Tears burned against her eyes and filled her throat.
“You would fare better than I would without you,” she whispered. “You are the heart in my body.”
Duncan felt the hot flow of Amber’s tears. Slowly he eased his grip on her.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “It was but a dream I had, naught to disturb yourself over.”
Amber knew with Learned precision just how little of what had gone on in Duncan’s mind resembled a dream, and she knew that he knew it as well as she did.
Yet she said nothing about the gentle lie. She had no more desire than Duncan to search among the tangled, agonizing threads of his memory for the truth she feared more than she feared death itself.
“Duncan,” she whispered.
The sound was more a caress than it was a word, for she spoke with her lips pressed against the pulse that beat in his neck.
Duncan’s body stilled for an instant before he shuddered and tightened with a different kind of tension than that of a warring mind. He felt an answering ripple of sensation pass through Amber and knew how clearly she felt his desire.
Yet he knew now that it was also her desire. In the brief time of their marriage, she not only responded when he cast the sensual lure, she wanted him whether or not he was touching her.
She came to him when he stood brooding and watching the rain through the keep’s narrow windows.
If she awakened before he did, she curled against him, stroking her slender hands the length of his body and laughing softly when he rose to meet her touch.
Each day before dinner she rode with him, sharing her knowledge of the forest and fields and the people of the keep.
In the evenings she dismissed his attendant and bathed Duncan with great pleasure, teaching him the Learned way of purifying the flesh and then shivering with delight when he taught her how the Saracen sultans bathed.
And always her eyes brightened when he came to her after hearing the complaints of serf and villein in the morning. She smiled with happiness when she turned and saw him standing in a doorway, watching her decipher ancient manuscripts.
In a thousand ways she came to him, telling him how much she was pleased to be his mate.
“You are sunlight when all else is rain,” Duncan said.
More tears seeped from Amber’s eyes to glide hotly over Duncan’s skin. He shifted onto his back, pulling her close against his side.
“Without you,” he whispered, “I don’t know how I could have survived the battleground that is my mind.”
“Dark warrior…”
Pain twisted in Amber, squeezing her throat shut more surely than tears. The words of love she wanted to give Duncan were fire burning within her silence.
Blindly Amber moved to lie even more closely against her husband’s body. His heat and power were a lure that grew greater every hour she spent with him. The thought of losing Duncan was a dagger turning in her soul.
“Duncan,” she whispered.
Amber’s ragged voice and the hot glide of her tears against Duncan’s shoulder sent a wave of tenderness through him. Gently he stroked her hair. She shifted and a moist heat traced the length of Duncan’s jaw.
For an instant he thought it was her tears. Then he understood that it was the tip of her tongue in a lover’s caress.
“You tempt me,” Duncan said huskily.
A ripple of pleasure went through Amber, a sweet echo of the sensual anticipation sweeping through Duncan. He no longer fought the wild surging of his desire when she touched him, for he no longer worried whose hunger rose first to the sensual lure and whose followed.
Duncan had learned that Amber’s passion was a fire that burned brightly whether alone or entwined with his.
Small teeth delicately tested the pad of muscle on Duncan’s shoulder. Hidden within the caress was a sensual tasting of his skin. Surrounding and enhancing the kiss was a shivering sigh.
“Do you want me, precious Amber?”
Another trembling sigh.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Yet when Duncan moved to hold her, she pulled away.
“No,” she whispered.
“It appears you are of two minds,” Duncan said, smiling. “Is there anything I can do to—”
His teasing words broke over a groan of pleasure as Amber’s leg moved to lie between his.
“The flower is already blooming,” Duncan said thickly. “I can feel its heat.”
“The flower knows that the sun will soon rise. It wants each petal already open to drink the first golden shaft of the sun.”
“The sun is already risen,” he said thickly.
“Is it?”
Beneath the bed covers, a small hand trailed down Duncan’s bare torso.
The rest of him was equally naked.
Delicate fingertips brushed over Duncan, measuring and caressing his aroused flesh. A soft palm fitted itself around him. He made a sound that was laughter and passion at once.
“You know fair well it is risen,” he said. “You are holding the proof in your palm.”
“Only part of the proof. I fear the full proof would overrun both of my hands together.”
“A waste.”
“Aye,” Amber murmured.
“There is a solution for that.”
“I’m considering it.”
“Lie on your back, precious Amber. You will consider things much more deeply from that perspective.”
“I think…not.”
The laughter and husky sensuality curling through Amber’s voice made Duncan smile. Passion and anticipation coiled more tightly within him.
“What are you thinking of, then?” he asked.
“I fear it would shock you into swooning,” she said.
“I’m lying down.”
“Not all of you is supine.”
“The greater part is.”
Amber smiled and drew her fingertips up the part of Duncan which was not at rest.
“Such a sweet, witchy little smile,” he said thickly. “What are you thinking of that makes you smile so?”
“Two hands…and a mouth. Will that suffice?”
For an instant Duncan didn’t comprehend. Then Amber’s hands circled him and the velvet heat of her tongue caressed him. His whole body tightened in a savage rush.
“Amber.”
She looked up at him.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked.
As she spoke, she stroked the length of his rigid flesh. Blood beat visibly beneath her caress, hardening him even more.
“Nay,” Duncan said.
“Shock you?”
“Yes. No.”
He forced breath into a body that was clamoring for another intimate kiss, for the sleek glide of her tongue tasting him.
“Can’t you decide?” Amber asked, knowing full well how deep Duncan’s pleasure had been. “Perhaps this will help.”
She repeated the wild caress, lingering over the part of him that was most intriguingly different.
And most sensitive.
“Have I told you,” Amber murmured between caresses, “how much your body pleases me?”
“If you please me any more, I will come unraveled.”
“Then I shall just have to knit you up again.”
“The heart, falters at the thought.”
“The heart, perhaps, but not the flesh. It tugs like a stallion too closely tied.”
Duncan laughed despite the heat flooding through him, driven by the wild rush of his blood and the feel of Amber caressing him with her words, her hands, her tongue.