Page 69 of Forbidden

“Are you cold?” Duncan asked, seeing her shiver.

Amber trembled again, for his voice was like the rasp of a cat’s tongue. She tried to answer his question, but her mouth was dry and her heart was beating frantically. Without Duncan’s touch pouring his hunger into her, her own desire was being quenched by unease.

“Dinna worry, golden witch,” Duncan said thickly, bending down to Amber. “I will warm you.”

The searing heat of Duncan’s hands and mouth on her breasts was both unexpected and fiercely arousing to Amber. As he kissed first one pink tip and then the other, they hardened magically. His mustache caressed the sensitive flesh while his tongue licked slowly, hotly.

Fire lanced through the center of Amber’s body, setting aflame places that had been secret even from her.

Until Duncan touched her and she burned.

When he finally lifted his head, the breeze found Amber’s heated skin. He smiled to see her nipples tighten even more. His fingertips closed over the flushed pink tips of her breasts. He rolled the velvet flesh lightly, pressed sensuously. When heat bloomed just beneath her creamy skin, he felt as though he were being stretched upon a rack of fire.

“How could I have forgotten your response to me?” Duncan asked wonderingly. “God must feel like this when he causes the sun to rise.”

“We’ve never before—”

“Nay,” he interrupted softly. “You would not fly so high, so quickly, unless you knew the lure of the hunt as surely as I.”

Amber shook her head, the only answer she could make, for passion had stolen her voice.

“Don’t be shy of the truth, precious Amber. Your response is a greater gift than any maidenly restraint.”

She tried to answer, but all that came from her lips was a ragged cry. The passion she felt should have frightened her. But when he touched her, whatever virginal wariness and Learned caution she had were burned away in the overwhelming heat of Duncan’s desire.

And her own. Duncan’s desire and hers combined.

When he bent once more to draw one of her aching nipples into his mouth, Amber’s breath came out in another low cry. When he shaped her with slow rhythms of his tongue, tender lightning burned from her breasts to her hips. Her back arched in abandoned response until she strained against the bonds of cloth holding her elbows to her sides.

Reluctantly Duncan lifted his head, wondering if the hungry intimacy of the caress had alarmed Amber.

“Don’t struggle,” he said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know. But I can’t—”

She made a sound of frustration and jerked her arms. All she managed to do was tangle them more closely to her body.

“What can’t you do?” Duncan asked.

The sweet swaying of Amber’s breasts made sensual heat flush Duncan’s body. The thought of her arching like that against his chest while he lay naked between her legs brought him to the edge of bursting.

“I can’t touch you while I’m tangled in clothes this way,” Amber said.

Duncan set his jaw against the temptation she was offering.

“I think that’s just as well,” he said raggedly.

“Don’t you want me to touch you?”

He smiled at the confusion in Amber’s eyes, even though the thought of feeling her hands on his body brought a leap of need so great that it was indistinguishable from pain.

“Aye,” Duncan groaned, brushing his mustache over one taut nipple. “And aye”—he brushed again—” and aye, and aye one thousand times more!”

The sound Amber made could have been pleasure or fear. Even she couldn’t have said which. She had never felt anything as powerful as the combination of her own untried sensuality, Duncan’s torrential need, and the fierce restraint he exercised on his passion.

“But if you touch me…” he said hoarsely.

The words became lost in the ripple of sound Duncan drew from Amber as his teeth raked with exquisite delicacy over her nipple. Smiling darkly, he turned to her other breast and repeated the primitive caress.