Medieval 02 - Forbidden

effect on his body. The rushing, flooding heat and the hardening of his flesh was something he was becoming accustomed to around Amber. What he wasn’t accustomed to was a small, quiet voice warning him that he must not take her.
    It would be wrong .
    Yet as soon as the thought came, Duncan disputed it.
    She isn’t betrothed. She isn’t married. She isn’t virgin, despite Erik’s protestations. She and I have known one another. I’m certain of it .
    And she is willing .
    What can be wrong with that ?
    Nothing answered Duncan’s inner questioning except the stubborn silence of the darkness where memories lay beyond his reach.
    Am I married? Is that what the cursed silence is trying to tell me ?
    No memory came, yet Duncan felt certain he was not married. He couldn’t say why, but the feeling remained unshakable.
    “Duncan?”
    He turned toward the girl whose eyes were even more beautiful than the amber gems she wore.
    “We are nearing the Stone Ring,” Amber said. “Does the countryside look familiar to you?”
    Amber reined in her horse at the top of a low rise. Duncan urged his horse alongside before he stopped and stood in the stirrups to get a better look at the land.
    It was a glorious, hushed country of mist-wreathed trees, random outcroppings of stone, and steep-sided hills whose tops were lost in silvery cloud. A brook gleamed darkly among mossy rocks and fallen leaves, its voice hardly greater than that of the water drops slowly sliding from naked oak branches to the ground.
    Anxiously, Amber waited, watching Duncan’s face for the recognition she both feared and prayed would come.
    The fear was for her own happiness.
    The prayer was for Duncan’s.
    “It looks much like the trail to Ghost Glen,” Duncan said finally. “Would that Whispering Fen lay beyond.”
    A small smile played beneath his dark mustache as he spoke. Color that had nothing to do with the cool day rose in Amber’s cheeks. When Duncansaw her blush, his smile widened into a frankly sensual grin.
    “Are you remembering what it was like to feel my mouth upon your breasts?” he asked.
    The color in Amber’s cheeks deepened.
    “Or are you remembering the lush blooming of the flower?” Duncan asked.
    Her breath hesitated.
    Watching Amber, Duncan added softly, “I dream of the flower’s sleek, hot petals and wake up in a fever.”
    Amber could no more conceal the sensual shiver that went through her body at Duncan’s words than she could take the high color from her cheeks.
    “Tell me you remember,” Duncan coaxed in a low voice. “Tell me that I’m not alone in my fever.”
    “I’ll die remembering,” Amber said, her eyes half closed. “You gave me…Paradise.”
    The sensual catch in her voice sent a stroke of heat through Duncan’s body.
    “You delight and tempt me beyond endurance,” he said huskily.
    A sad smile curved Amber’s lips.
    “I don’t mean to,” she said. “I’ve tried not to, now that I know.”
    “Know what?”
    “The power of what draws us together.”
    “Is that why you’ve avoided touching me as though I were somehow unclean?”
    Amber gave Duncan a quick, sideways look. “I thought it would be easier for you that way.”
    “Is it easier for the falcon to have broken wings?”
    “ Duncan ,” she said, stricken. “I never meant to hurt you. I thought—I thought if I weren’t always in your sight or within your reach, you would want me less.”
    “Do you want me less now than yesterday or the day before?”
    Her eyes closed as she made a despairing sound.
    “Amber?” Duncan pressed.
    “I want you more, not less,” she said in a low voice.
    Duncan’s smile flashed. Then he saw the tears slipping from beneath Amber’s closed lashes and the smile vanished as though it had never been. He urged his horse closer to hers.
    “Why do you cry?” he asked.
    Slowly Amber shook her head. Warm, hard fingers tilted her chin up.
    “Look at me, precious Amber.”
    A torrent of Duncan’s emotions poured into Amber with his touch. Even as she drank them, she knew she must stop. The longer she knew Duncan, the more she understood what taking her would cost him.
    His honor.
    “Won’t you tell me why you cry?” Duncan asked.
    Amber’s tears simply fell more rapidly as she sensed his concern.
    “Do you feel I dishonored you with my touch?” he asked.
    “Nay,” she said.
    The sound of Amber’s voice was thinned by the restraint she had to exert to keep herself from fleeing