21
AMBER lay awake in the luxurious bed that had been hers since she had married Duncan. Each time the wind shifted or sleet rattled against stone or a voice drifted up from the floors below, her heartbeat doubled.
Then she would hold her breath, listening with every fiber of her being for the sound of footsteps approaching her door.
Duncan will come to me tonight.
He must.
Come to me, dark warrior. Let me touch you in the only way you allow yourself to be touched.
Let me be one with you once more.
Just once.
I can touch your soul if you will let me.
Just once…
But none of the sounds Amber heard were those made by Duncan climbing the spiral stone stairway to her bedchamber.
As the night lengthened and the autumn sleet beat against stone, Amber understood that she would remain alone in the storm. Duncan would not come to her on this night of all nights, when nearly dying at Erik’s hand had renewed his appreciation of life, of living, of simply being alive.
Tonight Duncan would be vulnerable to his amber witch in ways he didn’t want to be.
She knew it.
And so did he.
Abruptly Amber sat up and threw the rich bed coverings aside. The fine, fragile linen of her nightdress glowed with ghostly light, reflection of the dying hearth fire. The amber pendant she wore had the shuttered gleam of banked coals.
Her eyes gleamed in the same way, veiled by a darkness that had nothing to do with night.
Amber whirled her mantle around her shoulders, pulled the cowl into place, and set off for the bedchamber of the lord of the keep.
She needed neither candle nor lamp to light her way.
Duncan’s presence was a fire burning against the night, as certain a guide to him as dawn is to the day that follows.
The path to Duncan could have been through a strange forest or a tangled glen, and it would have been the same to Amber. Clear. Certain.
No one was about in the hall. The voices of the sentries from the battlements above were the only noises not made by the storm. Amber’s feet moved soundlessly over the wood of the floor. Her mantle lifted and fell around her ankles with every swift step.
No squire slept outside Duncan’s door, for he hadn’t had time to choose among the young, wellborn boys who were eager to be trained in the ways of war by the legendary Scots Hammer. Indeed, the door to the lord’s bedchamber was half open, announcing the confidence of the warrior who slept within.
A glance around the room told Amber that Duncan must have gone late to bed.
Flames still leaped within the hearth. Candles still burned in their sconces.
On a chest near the bed, an oil lamp burned at low ebb, sending the scent of rosemary through the room.
Next to the lamp, a battle hammer lay in readiness, gleaming coldly with reflected fire.
The golden light of the candles wavered when Amber walked in and shut the door quietly behind. Duncan didn’t stir. Nor did she expect him to do so. Though untrained, Duncan had a Learned warrior’s appreciation of when danger was nearby.
And when it was not.
Amber’s mantle slid to the floor with a hushed sound. Her nightdress followed, settling like a cloud over her mantle. Her golden hair shimmered with firelight. Golden amber gleamed between her breasts. Making no more noise than a candle flame, she eased into bed beside Duncan.
The subtle smell of spices on Duncan’s skin told Amber that he had sought whatever peace could be found in a warm bath before going to bed alone. The same scent was on her own skin, for she, too, had sought water’s soothing embrace.
But what she truly wanted was an embrace less soothing, more fiery, Duncan locked within her body.
Deftly Amber drew the bed covers aside. Duncan’s bare back gleamed in the muted light. He was lying on his side, facing away from her. The naked power of his shoulders was both a lure and a warning.
Dark warrior, who could make the hammer sing as no other.
With the delicacy of a butterfly sipping nectar, Amber’s fingertips stroked from the nape of Duncan’s neck down the length of his spine. Though she had hungered to touch him, it was painful to her. Even while he slept, the savage conflict within his soul raged on, truth set against truth.
And you say you never betrayed me. Such fine calculations they must teach the Learned, all the ways to split hairs until nothing remains but dishonor.
My body knows you. It responds to you as to none other.
We are lost, witch. Your soul was sold to the devil a long time ago.
You’re a fire in my blood, in my flesh, in my soul.
Yet when all truths were weighed and measured, one remained against which there was no measure, the Glendruid Wolf’s words ringing like thunder through every silence.
Beyond all doubt, beyond all temptation, you are a man of your word. And your word was given to me.
For Duncan to go back on that word would be to destroy himself. To keep his word meant destroying Amber. Neither was bearable.
One was inevitable.
If I loved her, I could not do what must be done.
Pain that was both Duncan’s and her own lanced through Amber, cutting her, scoring her soul.
“As I feared,” she whispered, “it will destroy you.”
Were it not for the equally great need in Duncan to touch Amber, to lie with her, to lose himself within her until he was too spent to battle himself for a time…were it not for that, touching Duncan would have been as agonizing to Amber as putting her hand within the hearth fire.
As it was, touching Duncan was a bittersweet torment that cut her until she bled.
And not touching him also cut her until she bled.
Drop by drop, bleeding into darkness.
And as I feared, it is destroying me.
Yet Amber didn’t lift her hand. Duncan’s skin was smooth, supple, warm. The layers of muscle on either side of his spine lured her. She stroked the resilient flesh with gentle sweeps of her hand, savoring the sheer power of him, ignoring the pain.
“You are strong in so many ways, dark warrior,” Amber whispered. “Why can’t you be strong enough to accept what can’t be changed?”
You’re a fire in my blood, in my flesh, in my soul.
Muscles shifted and coiled as Duncan rolled onto his back. His head turned toward Amber. She held her breath, but he didn’t awaken.
“If you could accept,” she whispered, “then you could love me despite all the truths known too soon and told too late.”
Duncan’s deep, even breathing remained unchanged. The amber pendant he wore shifted and gleamed with each breath.
Sighing, Amber gave in to the temptation to smooth her hand over the hair that curled so intriguingly across Duncan’s chest. The crisp mat tickled and aroused and pleased, making her hand tingle with heightened sensitivity.
Amber lowered her head, kissed Duncan’s shoulder, and laid her cheek on the muscular pad of flesh over his heart. The sound of his life beating so close beneath her cheek swept through her.
“If only I could touch you. Just once.”
Somewhere in his mind, Duncan was aware of Amber’s presence. She could tell by the change rippling through him, savage arguments fading, muffled by the sleek, sensual tide that was rising in him, called by her touch.
Though Duncan had allowed nothing but the most basic physical connection between himself and Amber since he had learned his true name, he had once enjoyed being stroked and petted by her. He had held his own arousal in check simply to savor a less urgent exchange of caresses with his lover.
In sleep, Duncan was enjoying being stroked again, absorbing Amber’s pleasure in touching him as avidly as dry ground absorbed a gentle rain.
“You, too, missed this,” Amber whispered. “You, too, hungered to share tenderness as well as wildfire.”
Relief shivered through Amber. She had feared that the darkness growing at Duncan’s core had eaten away all softness in him. She bent down to brush her lips over his skin once more.
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.