The Warrior and the Druidess Read online

“It is true, but there is more. I tried to place the shape of her eyes. There is something so rare about them. But it is not that they are unusually large, nor is the shape exotic in any way; it is the perfection of shape and size. Are they not the eyes of a goddess?”

  “She is Boudica’s granddaughter.”

  “That must be it.” Brude reached out for the jug sitting on the floor and filled his cup to the brim. “So, do you think she is telling the truth about that?”

  “Aye, she is a druidess. They do not lie.”

  “Druids are well known for speaking in rhymes and answering questions with questions so no one understands what they truly mean.” Brude took a gulp of mead.

  “She has not done that.” Calach grinned. “When it comes to who she is and why she is here, she has been most plain.” He laughed heartily. “There have been no rhymes or guessing games there. She has made it quite clear. She is here to wed you because her ancestor told her to.”

  Mead sputtered out of Brude’s mouth. “She wants marriage? With me?”

  “Yes.” Calach rubbed his chin. “Boudica’s spirit appeared to the lass and commanded a union to keep the queen’s bloodline alive.”

  “Marriage to a druidess, with secrets and spells beneath my own roof? I won’t have it. Never.” He set his cup of mead down. “Sire, it is moon madness. All of Caledonia honors Boudica for her battle prowess and courage against the Romans, but I will not let her ghost dictate whom I shall wed.”

  “No, you will never marry her. You are just passing time, speaking on and on about her eyes.” Calach rocked with laugher. “And what is this of her eyes? Have you not taken a look at the rest of her?”

  Brude couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, Father, I have noticed her body.” It heats my blood to a boil, he thought.

  His mind wandered. There is an immortal perfection. Though she has a slender build, aspects which are ample on a fuller figure stand out on her as well. Her breasts appear small until you truly gaze at them, and then they are a feast, an unexpected treat for the eyes. Plump and full and as ample as breasts can be on a body so thin. They jiggled when she walked beside me; it was all I could do to not reach out and touch them. And when my gaze lowers to her hips, there again, though she seems thin as a pole, there are slight, yet vividly enticing curves. I long to place my hands on her firm, tight hips, my palms itch and burn for the touch of her flesh. Brude leaned his head back then dumped the entire cup of mead into his mouth. It burned a trail of fire down his parched throat. “Mayhaps I will marry her.” He didn’t laugh.

  Calach was silent. The unmistakable twinkle in his eyes was his only response.

  * * * * *

  Brude walked to the clearing on the other side of a cluster of wheelhouses. There, Tanwen stood before the cauldron, in the open air, brewing a mix of blue woad dye while her two guards tended to the horses.

  He gazed across the amber blaze at her and basked in the heat of the flames. As he listened to the crackle and spit of the fire, he realized there was an easy way to discover how powerful a druid she was. He needed to know if she could enchant him, read his mind, or control his dreams. A good warrior never underestimates his foe. “On Ynys Mon,” he paused and looked deep into her eyes, “were you chosen to gather the all heal?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I am but a novice, but I accompanied the arch druid when he reaped the mistletoe with the golden sickle.” She stood over the cauldron of dye and stirred the thickening brew with the wooden spoon she’d tied onto a large stick.

  A novice mayhaps, but still Boudica’s granddaughter, he thought. He sensed that there was power in her. “The druids do not share the secrets of the mistletoe.”

  “It is a sacred plant. If handled by those unknown to it, mistletoe can be deadly.” She withdrew the spoon from the dye and checked the thickness of the woad paste.

  “The all heal is poisonous, yet druids use it to save lives. If I ate it, I would die,” he said, “but if you—an oak seer—gave it to me it would cause no harm.”

  “It is true, for I would brew the right portion— no more than six pinches of chopped mistletoe soaked in a beaker of water. And the tea is brewed from one pinch of mistletoe leaves in a cup of boiled water, with no more than two cups had in a day.”

  He gasped. “I am honored. Druids seldom share sacred secrets with anyone.”

  “You are to be my husband; I will share all with you.” Tanwen flashed a challenging grin.

  His heart leapt in his chest. Gods, this woman is dangerous. “You still insist that I am to wed you.”

  “Yes.” Her warm, sultry voice made his skin tingle.

  “Boudica would not have sent me here if it were not to be.”

  He had to be strong. He could not let this creature and her druid magic enchant him into a marriage he didn’t want. “You shared your secret with me; I shall share mine with you.” He leaned closer. “Heather mead.”

  “I have heard of a mead brewed from heather that makes the Picts invincible to their foes.”

  “It is so.” She’s falling for the trap, he thought. “As mistletoe grows on oak, moss grows on heather,” he continued. “Bees feed on the heather and make a special treat—heather honey. We brew mead from that honey, along with heather tops. It is all we need—no barley.” A few cups of heather mead, and she’ll answer all my questions.

  Her bright eyes gleamed with curiosity. “Due to the moss on the heather.”

  “Yes, that is the secret. It also makes the mead stronger.”

  Tanwen smiled. “Let us drink of this heather mead together.”

  “I do not think you can handle it.” He prodded on purpose to ensure she would drink with him.

  “I have drunk mistletoe afore, stronger than what is given to the sick. I use it to aid travel through the oak door.”

  “You must be a powerful druidess if you have crossed the veil to the other world.”

  “The mistletoe helped. If I can handle it, I am certain to be able to hold my own against your mead.”

  “We will see.” Brude stood and then walked away, but quickly returned. He held a skin of mead and two smooth, wooden cups, which he brimmed with the golden drink. He handed one to her.

  The sweet smell of fermented honey perfumed the air and dulled the strong odor of woad dye.

  She raised her cup high, flashing Brude an enticing smile. “With this draft, drawn from the well of wisdom, I fill the cauldron of my spirit with the brew of inspiration.” Tanwen pressed the rim of the cup against her lips and tossed the golden liquid down her throat in one motion. Brude did the same.

  The drink freed his spirit from the constraints of his mind. Unable to think, he watched her breasts bounce and her hips sway as she began to dance.

  She gazed deep into his eyes. “We enter the world naked, in our natural state. Only when we shed our outer clothing, can we know our true selves.” Tanwen licked a drop of honey mead from the corner of her mouth. “I want to know you.” She was as a red flame, flickering freely this way and that as she danced.

  Fire raged in him. His groin tightened and swelled. Hastily, he filled another cup and drank it dry. He didn’t notice Tanwen’s first cup was still half full.

  With the confidence of those whose ancestors watched over them, and with the boldness brought by the heather mead, Tanwen threw her plaid cloak aside and seductively shed her tunic dress. “When the mead was brewed, the cauldron was hot.”

  His erection throbbed. His heart raced. He wanted to grab this woman.

  With lithe movements, she danced around the fire. Her breasts jiggled for Brude, and her legs leapt as they would move in love play. “Do you feel the heat flowing underneath your skin?” she rasped.

  He burned like a flame and couldn’t form a solid thought. Blood pounded in his head. He yanked the wool tunic off his hot skin and threw it to the ground. He stepped out of his checkered braies and stood fully nude before her, stiff and pulsating with need.

  He gazed into her eyes.


  She stopped dancing. After a long breath, she refilled his cup and hers. “Drink.”

  Together they gulped down the golden mead. Never—not once—did they tear their eyes away from each other.

  “As the mead flows through you, let the spirit fill you.” Tanwen walked over to the cauldron and dipped her hand in the gooey, blue dye.

  Her finger slinked down his face, streaking both cheeks blue. The woad was warm, her touch hotter. His tinted checks burned. After dipping her hands into the dye again, her ring-bedecked fingers danced over the muscles rippling down his arms, tracing each of his tattoos, following the lines as she painted them blue.

  He quivered. The gods shielded him through these symbols. The first was a wolf, with an open mouth drawn as a curve. The second was the boar with a tusk made from a circle with a line drawn though it and two knots on each end. His flesh tingled as she painted the lines of a swirling snake. His arousal throbbed and pained him with the need for release as she traced the last one, a man.

  Far more potent than heather mead, the power the woad awoke in the tattoos left him light-headed. He drew in a deep breath to clear his head as she spread her hands over his firm stomach and down his strong legs, coating them blue.

  She took a step back and smiled coyly, as if wondering what mischief she could stir up next. With her woad-covered hands, she cupped her breasts, squeezing and massaging the soft, full peaks. He groaned with need. She wrapped her smooth arms around his neck and crushed her lips against his. The softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. Her nipples had tightened to hard points, rubbing against his muscles, imprinting woad dye on his chest and coating the small whorls of hair with blue. Shivers of heat rushed through him.

  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.

  Chapter Three

  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 p
layed 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.