Page 49 of Duncan

As soon as she stood her knees dissolved, and then the healer was catching her as she pitched forward.

“You’re yet weak, lass.” He lifted her onto the bed, but one of his tunic laces became caught in her diamond earring. “Och, forgive me.”

“I’ll do it.” She pushed his hand away and tried to untangle the lace, but the threads of the linen were caught fast in the platinum prongs. Since there were no mirrors in this time, she couldn’t even look to see how it was tangled. “Or maybe you’d do better.”

Duncan drew a dagger and cut the lace between her ear and his tunic, freeing her. “May I remove the bauble?”

“The back is very small, and pulls off,” Nicole told him, closing her eyes and turning her face away as he bent closer. The warmth of his breath whispered over her ear and along the side of her neck like an intimate caress.

“’Tis paining you, your ear?” he murmured as he fiddled with the lace.

She didn’t want him this close to her. Whenever he put his hands on her he made her extremely nervous. As time went by the physical attraction between them seemed to be growing stronger and more irresistible. If he didn’t stop touching her she was going to do something truly reckless, and she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t make another mistake.

“Forget about it,” Nicole told him. “I’ll ask Lark to help me later.”

“I wish I could forget.” His hand moved away from her ear, and his fingers slid around the back of her neck. “Yet with every passing day, the vows I make myself fade from my memory. All ’tis left, ’tis you. Your softness. The sweetness of your scent. What ’tis, being inside you. How may I banish such memories from my thoughts, my lady?”

She shouldn’t have turned her head to look at him, because he had bent so low her lips skimmed his jawline.

“That was an accident,” she whispered as his heat sank into her, and the silky darkness of his hair brushed against her skin. At that moment every nerve in her body woke up and shivered.

His mouth hitched. “’Twas?”

When he began to push himself back up, she caught the front of his tunic. “No. You owe me one now, and I want to collect.”

Duncan eyed her lips. “Collect what, my lady?”

“An accidental kiss.” Nicole smiled as she pulled him down until only a breath separated their mouths. “I want–”

She never got to finish telling him, because he covered her lips and parted them with his tongue. Had she ever really been kissed properly before she had met this man? Not in college, when she’d gone on a few dates behind her father’s back, and ended up in stiff or sweaty clinches with boys who thought they could easily seduce her. Later, when she’d realized her effect on men, she’d given up on furtive dating without any qualms.

Duncan destroyed the memories of those blurry, uncomfortable embraces. He kissed her leisurely and with lingering absorption, as if he meant to enslave her to his mouth. She heard fabric tear as his arms came around her. Her breasts ached so much she whimpered as he clamped her against the hard muscles of his chest.

Duncan lifted his mouth from hers, breaking off the kiss to glide his lips up to her ear. “You vowed we shouldnae make love again. Do you change your mind, my lady?”

Yes, of course, was he crazy? Nicole was shivering, shaking, burning up with all these desires he brought out in her; she could hardly think. Then his words pierced the haze of lust and longing in her head, offering her a choice.

I can. I can’t. I want to stay. I have to go.

“I don’t know what to do.” Her face probably looked like a beet, and humiliation ground down on her as if it meant to crush her into the bed linens. “You and I…we’re good together, but I’m not staying. I can’t live here with you, ever. I don’t want to hurt you by leading you to believe otherwise. It will just be this.”

Duncan’s expression blanked, and his entire body went rigid. Then he kissed her so tenderly, she gasped.

“As my lady desires,” he murmured.

She watched him pull his tunic over his head before she reached for the laces of her bodice. Her fingers trembled so much she kept fumbling, as if this were the first time she’d ever made love with him. She shouldn’t be so nervous. He understood it was just sex, didn’t he?

Duncan glanced at her, and then planted his hands on his lean hips. “Do you change your mind again, my lady? Dinnae fear I shall mistake what you offer. Nor do I mean abandon you, should you admit you truly love me with all your heart.”

Nicole pushed herself off the bed and marched up to him. Yet as she got close she saw the torment in his eyes, the same suffering that filled her own heart.

“I can’t afford to love you.” She hated him a little right now, however. “You know why I have to go back.” He reached out and took hold of one of her hands, which she had knotted into a fist. “This ring can’t fix things for me in the future. Only I can do that.”

Duncan gently pried open her fingers, and then pressed her hand over his chest. Against her palm the deep, steady throb of his heart pulsed.

“I ken you love me as I love you.” He brought her wrist to his lips. “I hear it in your voice, I sense it in your touch, for ’tis the same as mine. You shall never leave me willingly, nor I you. Yet if we must part, I shallnae stop you.”

He’d seen through her, just that easily. He knew. It should have horrified her, but instead it made something hard inside her crack.