Medieval 02 - Forbidden

over his fingers.
    Yet when he tried to slide his fingers between her sleek petals, her legs were too tightly held.
    “I won’t force you,” Duncan said in a low voice, “but I shall die if I can’t at least touch you. Open your warm keep to me. I shall be a most gentle guest.”
    “I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. It is too much to ask of you,” Amber said. “To come so close and yet not take me…”
    “Yes. Ask it. Please.”
    “But I’m afraid.”
    Duncan laughed softly as he rubbed over the bud once more, drawing another pulse of pleasure.
    “Nay, golden witch. That isn’t fear I feel licking over my fingertips. It’s passion, hot and sweet and pure.”
    Fingers plucked and pleasure surged. Amber’s hips lifted in unwitting response. His hand moved again. Sensual lightning stabbed. Another caress and another urgent movement, another fiery response.
    “Dear God,” Amber whispered.
    Duncan wanted to shout his triumph as he stroked and another wave of pleasure swept visibly through Amber. With a broken sigh, she closed her eyes and yielded yet more of herself to him, hot petals opening to his touch.
    By the time Duncan slid the mantle covering Amber aside, she no longer cared. All that mattered to her was that the sweet torment continue.When his hand pressed against her legs, she gave him what he sought, opening herself so that he could touch her in any way he pleased.
    Deliberately Duncan drew his fingertips over the petals that were slowly opening to him. He caressed Amber in a taut silence that was heightened by the rapid, broken sound of her breathing. She no longer sensed his leashed passion, for her own had become overwhelming.
    Without warning, ecstasy burst, ravishing Amber’s senses. Her shivering cry and the hot, helpless rush of her response told Duncan just how much she had enjoyed his caresses.
    Despite the savage thrust of his own unanswered need, Duncan smiled. Even after the last tremors of pleasure no longer shook Amber, he was reluctant to leave off caressing the sultry flower he had so recently coaxed into opening.
    But he knew he must stop.
    If he kept caressing her, he might very well throw his vow to the sea winds and sink his hungry flesh into the place that was so fully prepared to receive him. With a difficulty that was in itself a warning, he forced himself to release the tender flower.
    Yet even then, Duncan couldn’t make himself retreat entirely. His hand remained between Amber’s legs, close enough to feel her warmth, but not touching her.
    Amber’s eyes opened and she knew herself naked with Duncan’s hand lying intimately between her legs. She flushed and reached for the mantle to cover herself once more.
    “Nay,” Duncan said thickly. “Don’t hide. You are even more beautiful in full bloom than you were unopened.”
    As he spoke, his fingertip skimmed her still sensitized flesh. She cried out as the violence of his hunger and restraint poured through her, shaking her.
    “It isn’t enough!” Amber said. “You are in pain.”
    “Aye. And this,” Duncan said, caressing her slowly with his fingertip, “is salt in the raw wound of my need.”
    With a harsh word he closed his eyes.
    Into the silence came a rustle and murmur, a whispering of wind, grass, and the distant voice of winter. The sound increased until it grew greater than the rush of breath from Duncan’s harshly restrained body.
    A distant part of Amber’s awareness registered the fey, growing sound, but she ignored it. Duncan was all of the world she cared about.
    And she had hurt him without even knowing what she had done.
    “Duncan,” she said huskily.
    When Amber’s fingers touched his bare flesh, he flinched as though she had taken a whip to him.
    “Nay,” Duncan said in a raw voice. “Don’t touch me.”
    “I want to ease you.”
    “Breaking my vow won’t ease me.”
    Amber took a deep, shaken breath. What she was going to do was dangerous, two parts of the bleak prophecy fulfilled. Yet she could not endure Duncan’s pain any longer, not when the means to banish it lay within her.
    “I release you from your vow,” Amber whispered.
    Duncan surged to his feet.
    “Don’t tempt me, golden witch. I already wear the fragrance of your passion. ’Tis like breathing fire. I can’t take much more.”
    The silence that followed Duncan’s words was filled by distant rustles and murmurs and eerie cries that swelled until they were a breaking wave of sound pouring across the fen. Air