The Warrior and the Druidess (3 page)

Brude cupped her neck and twisted his wet mouth over hers. His tongue thrust between her lips, flicking in and out. Her mouth was so hot. Tanwen moaned.

She slid her soft hands down the side of his body. She grasped his muscled thighs and dug her nails into his flesh. He groaned. Her slick, woad-painted body skimmed down his until she was on her knees. She fondled his hot, bulging sword, sliding her hand up and down from base to tip. Brude burned from her touch.

She opened her mouth wide. Stretched her lips over the fullness of his arousal, and then she drew his length inside her. Her suckling lips pulled him deep into her. He groaned and rocked against her mouth.

Tanwen withdrew her lips to dance her woad-tinged fingers across the hardened, bulging flesh. Stroking back and forth, she painted it blue.

When she rose to her feet, he gripped her hip tightly with one hand. His other hand roamed down to her nether lips, where he slipped a finger within the hot folds.

Breathless, Tanwen whispered, “Do you wish to gaze into the flowing heat of my cauldron?”

Brude rasped, “Yes, I do.”

With his arms wrapped around her, he lowered Tanwen to the ground, where she spread her legs wide, opening to him. His arousal throbbed with growing hunger, a pressing need to plunge into her.

He peeked into her sex, gazing into the deep heat. Brude dipped his finger into her sweet vessel. The blazing fire pit ignited his flesh as he churned her creamy, liquid core until she panted in a heaving rush of breath.

She gasped as he withdrew. She groaned as he jabbed his finger between his lips and sucked, licking the intoxicating elixir he had milked from her. His erection grew tighter. He dipped his head and dove for her core. With his lips on her open vessel, his tongue plunged into the wet fire of her depths. Gasps and soft whimpers escaped her lips. He was boiling.

Panting, she rasped, “Dip your sword into my cauldron.”

Brude bent down, covering her body with his. His engorged sword prodded and then lunged into the wet heat. Tanwen bucked with the impact of his thrust.

“I am a cup, a vessel. Fill me.”

On fire, feral cravings took hold. He lunged deeper. The pressure was maddening. On the brink, he had to have release.

With a constant flow, in and out, he pumped her. He grew hotter with each thrust. As he pressed harder, her moans grew deeper, more desperate. It goaded him into a faster rhythm that heated his blood even more. He couldn’t get enough of her. He grew hotter. She ran her hands down his slick, blue-tinted body. He moaned.

In the heat of it all, between his gasps he called, “Tanwen, Tanwen.”

As he quivered, she burst out, “Brude, Brude, we shall wed on the morrow, will we not?”

What? What did it matter what she said? Whatever it was. “Yes… yes!” He plunged again and again into her seething cauldron.

Mad with heather mead—and, most of all, mad with want for Tanwen—he hammered her in a wild frenzy. He thrust higher and groaned deeply from his gut. His sex clenched. They screamed out together in ecstasy.

As she snuggled against his blue-painted flesh, his pulse slowed. He fell asleep with Tanwen wrapped in his arms, their woad-stained legs still entwined.

Brude woke up naked with Tanwen’s blue-streaked legs wrapped around him. He slid out of her embrace, somehow managing not to wake her. But he couldn’t leave her there. He grabbed his clothes off the ground and dressed. Then, he laid her discarded tunic dress in her cloak and wrapped that around her nude body. Brude lifted her into his arms and, cradling her against his chest, he carried her to her wheelhouse and gently laid her on her pallet. She slept so deeply, it amazed him.

He turned then headed hastily to the chief’s wheelhouse. Upon entering, Brude stood before Calach and ran his hand through his hedgehog-spiked hair. “I cannot marry a druidess.”

“Sounds like you are ready to do just that.” Calach picked up an apple in one hand as he held a dagger in the other. “What has happened?” He sliced the apple in two.

“I lay with her.”

Calach chuckled. “That’s my son.” He tossed him half of the apple. “You seduced a druidess, and the granddaughter of Boudica at that.”

“No, she enchanted me.” Brude bit into the apple, savoring the juicy sweetness, which brought Tanwen’s ruddy lips and sweet, wet kisses to his mind. “The druidess has control over me, as I feared.”

All the time, her creamy skin and the rosy hue of the cheeks and lips on her well-molded oval face—and those full, gleaming eyes and sweeping lashes—were on his mind. Whenever she was within sight, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her, nor could he think of anyone but her. While he throbbed with this ravenous hunger, he would do anything she asked. She could so easily make a fool of him.

Calach cut a hunk off the apple and tossed it in his mouth. He pointed the blunt end of the dagger toward his son. “She has gifts that could be of great use to you when you are made chief.”

She has great gifts that I made use of last night, Brude thought. “
Da
, she is a druidess. She can control my dreams, my very life. Every time she peers into a bronze mirror, I will not know if she is merely looking at her reflection as other women do, or if she is gazing into the future.”

“She has come a long way to marry you. I do not think she means you harm. And why are you stained with blue woad on your face and arms? It is spread all over your body."

“
Da
, that is of no importance. “

“What did the two of you do last night?” Calach skewered a chunk of apple on the end of his dagger and then bit it off.

“That matters not. Listen to me. She is not the type of woman I dreamed of wedding. As a druid, she is more powerful than me.”

“She is wise,  young and comely, and she is of Queen Boudica’s bloodline. Do not turn away such a gift, my son.”

“I cannot wed her.” Brude took off to the fields, hoping that hard work would rid his mind of Tanwen. He still envisioned her nude body, painted blue, twisting and bucking wildly in the firelight.

* * * * *

Tanwen grabbed her head. The pain felt like a shard of glass lodged in her temple. “Heather mead.” She had to force herself to get up. As he drew in a deep breath, memories of last night played in her mind. She’d heard that no brew held the kick and potency of the Pict’s heather mead. She rubbed her aching head. When Brude offered the famed drank to her, she thought to get Brude drunk in order to hasten his desire to wed her. Her ancestor had sent her alone to this strange, foreign tribe. She wanted to fulfill her quest as soon as possible. It was better to be known to the new tribe as Brude’s wife than as a strange Albion druidess who had been turned down in marriage by the chief’s son.

Then, there were the feral feelings that his smooth even skin, his outstanding height, his muscular thighs, broad well-defined chest and his deep magnetic eyes stirred in her. She had to fulfill her ancestor’s wish as soon as possible and wed Calach’s son.

She rose from her pallet, noticing the woad paint streaking her body. “Ah, last night.” She sighed. She didn’t even remember walking back to the wheelhouse. Had Brude carried her to her home and laid her on her pallet? Tanwen threw on the wadded tunic dress and wrapped the plaid cloak around her.

As she walked outside, her mind swirled with memories of last night. She’d prodded him to drink with her by telling him that if she could handle mistletoe, she could surely hold her own against his heather mead. Tanwen had planned to drink only half a cup to every full cup of his in order to pull off her plan of seduction. Yet, she had spoken too soon. She’d been rendered woozy and numb with the first drink of heather mead. Still, she’d proceeded to seduce him—to bring about the marriage Boudica had foreseen.

But then he’d pulled off his woolen tunic and britches to stand before her in bare glory, as tall as a mountain fir tree. His stance had heightened the force of his muscular thighs and the slimness of his hips. Shivers of warmth ran down her body at the memory alone. Once again, she was flushed with heat at the thought of him. It had been so hard to tear her gaze away from the bulge of his sex. When she had wrenched her eyes away, they had settled onto the strong features of his face, which were so perfect, enhancing his manly aura with a certain beauty. She recalled losing herself in the depths of his compelling eyes.

As she kept walking, she remembered dipping her fingers in the dark, gooey woad dye and tracing his tattoos. She recalled the tingling in her finger as she painted over the lines of the swirling snake. Warmth had throbbed through her body as she’d gone over the last one, a man. When she’d dropped onto her knees, burning for the taste of him, she’d parted her lips and taken his hard heat into her mouth.

As she wandered through the village, she felt hot from thinking about last night. The ache between her legs had throbbed with a growing hunger, the need to be filled. When he’d dipped his finger into her throbbing, moist heat, it was a firebrand, a hot flame. Her sex clenched just recalling his tongue, afire as it plunged into her depths, bringing her to the point of boiling, of bubbling over.

Then, his sex had plunged into her with a powerful thrust. Her body had thrummed as he’d pumped heat into her. She’d tingled with each thrust, riding wave upon wave of orgasms with him. In the heat of it all, as he called her name aloud, inside her head, she heard Boudica call out, “Tanwen!”

Tanwen smiled as she recalled that at that moment she’d cried out, “Brude, Brude, we shall wed on the morrow, will we not?”

He had said, “Yes.”

Tanwen unfairly gained Brude’s consent  in a moment of passion during love play. Also, none of Brude’s ancestors had appeared to him commanding that he marry Tanwen. He hadn’t known anything about her or her intent at  securing a betrothal until she’d shown up,  a total stranger, declaring she had to marry him. And it seemed he had something against wedding a druidess with their magical abilities and their devotion to tribal duties coming before those to their husband.  Still, he did say yes.

Her quest was complete, her destiny set. She would wed the son of Calach as Boudica had commanded. He had promised. She put last night’s memories aside. Now alert to those around her, she called out to the first person she spotted, “Where is Brude?”

“In the fields.”

First harvest, she thought. She wondered, How could I have forgotten? But I’m a druidess; I should be there. He should have woken me, she thought.
What else did he choose to exclude me from?

* * * * *

The tribe was in the wheat fields when Brude arrived.

He and all others held scythes at their side as wrinkled, gray-headed Lossio pulled off a few ears of golden wheat. “Brude, should we not consult the druidess? She has the ear of the gods and could best deem if it is time to reap.”

“She is asleep.”

“This late in the day?” Lossio plucked kernels from one ear and rolled the grain between his finger and thumb.

“It is but dawn.”

The elderly man picked the grains off another stalk of wheat and tested it in the same manner. “Does she not wake each dawn to give blessings to her ancestors?”

“Yes,” Brude sighed, “I am sure she does, who does not?”

What could he do? The last person he wanted to see was Tanwen. She was incredible, but he was not about to marry a druidess—heather mead or not, the most beautiful body he had ever seen or not. Never mind if his blood boiled and he couldn’t stop thinking of her. He wouldn’t wed her.

“Yes, we should call for Tanwen.” Brude nodded to Lossio. “Get the druidess.”

His stomach churned and his head ached. He thought, it is naught but the heather mead from last night. As for the druidess, she was a woman like any other. He wasn’t ready to marry her or anyone. His father must have been mad to even suggest it. There were other women—women who weren’t druidesses, women who did not think they had to marry him.

Tanwen walked through the wheat field. Half willow tree, half fey was the only description that fit her. Tall but lithe, her red hair was waving in the wind, streaming down her slender body. Her skin was still pale blue from the woad, giving her the appearance of an enchantress summoned from the other world to bless the crops.

Everyone gazed at her as she walked forward. She halted at a stalk. She plucked an ear of wheat and rolled the grain between her finger and thumb, as Lossio had done. “It is plump and yielding.” She stared at Brude with an intense gaze that set his insides on fire. “Yes, it is time.”

A cheer went up from everyone, but Brude, captured by her gaze, he couldn’t glance away. He didn’t want to. He wanted to step forward, scoop her up into his arms and carry her off to his bed. By the gods, the druidess
had
enchanted him.

He did not say a word to Tanwen, nor she to him. She turned her head, flipping her red hair across her back as she walked off.

He schooled the desire she raised in him for a moment to take pride in the good crop, which ensured the tribe would fare well in the coming winter. The people watched as he, the son of the chief, moved forward to be the first to reap the wheat.

He worked his firm, muscular arms, swinging the sharp scythe down through the golden crop with an easy rhythm. He did not have to marry her. Boudica was dead, and she wasn't his grandmother. She was not a Caledonian.

He moved the blade forward through the tall stalks. That was what he would tell her. He could not marry Tanwen; he had to marry a Caledonii woman. Yes, he would choose a wife from among the women of his tribe.

As he reeled through the field, cutting the golden grain, Brude gazed at the other fields, full of his tribesmen swinging scythes through crops of oats and barley.

When he turned, he nearly jumped at the sight before him. It was Tanwen with a sharp scythe, heading toward him as she cut down wheat. He stood his ground, waiting for her approach.

“Hail, Tanwen.” He gazed into her bright, beckoning eyes, waiting.