The Roman. The arrow. Fragmented recollections stabbed through her brain, elusive and terrifying because of their very obscurity.
Had the Romans discovered the queen’s hiding place? Or were she and the princess still waiting for the return of Nimue? Goddess, what of the princess’ injury? The pain reliever she had administered would last only a few hours.
She shifted on the straw mattress and then froze as another thought ripped through her mind.
Was I brutalized? Her body hurt, but was that due to having been shot or because of what had been done to her while she’d been unconscious?
Jagged breaths clutched her breast. She had to remain calm. She had to remain in control. But the panic escalated, and the horror of what she might have endured—what she might continue to endure—hammered through her senses.
She forced her hand along the length of her body. It was a relief to discover that, at least, she wasn’t naked. Her breasts did not hurt. Her belly was uninjured. Tentatively she pressed her fingers between her thighs and for a fleeting moment incoherent images flashed through her mind.
Relief streaked through her. Her sex was not tender, her thighs were not sore. To the best of her knowledge, she hadn’t been raped.
Yet something teased the outer edges of her consciousness. An elusive sensation of touch, of need. Of rampant desire threaded through with nebulous promises of passion-drenched satisfaction.
Her fingers pressed against her lips and instantly the face of the Roman filled her vision. She could feel his mouth on hers, feel his tongue invading her, and Goddess save her, she remembered kissing him back with such wild abandon that heat flooded her body at the memory.
But then what? Everything was dark. As if nothing further had happened.
Stealthily, she pushed herself upright with her uninjured arm. She wouldn’t think about her wounded shoulder right now. She couldn’t afford to. Later she would attend to it, and could only hope the Romans hadn’t mutilated her beyond repair.
A large shadow on the ground next to her caught her attention. Her heart jerked in her chest. It was the Roman. Lying on the ground. Asleep.
For a moment she stared, bemused. Why was this arrogant Roman on the ground while she had his bed? It made no sense. Because it suggested he had considered her comfort before his own.
And then another, equally bizarre thought filled her head. Why hadn’t he shared the bed? Why hadn’t he taken her when he’d had the chance?
Because she certainly wouldn’t give him the chance now that she was in full possession of her senses.
Slowly she eased back the blanket that had covered her and held her breath as she slid her legs to the edge of the makeshift bed. Perhaps she could escape while the Roman slept. Return to the queen’s hiding place and resume the journey into the land of the Brigantes.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The voice was low, but power throbbed in every syllable. The hairs on her arms shivered in reaction to it. Although the Roman remained unmoving, he was obviously fully alert.
“I’m going to stretch my muscles.” Her legs felt wobbly, her left arm stiff, and she needed fresh air to clear the lingering cobwebs from her mind. But as much as she wanted to push herself upright and stalk from this enclosure, she had no desire to humiliate herself by staggering on unsteady legs.
“Are you in pain?” He sat up, and he was far too close. His masculine scent drifted in a tantalizing caress across her senses and her nipples hardened in response. She licked her dry lips, craved water for her parched throat and hoped he couldn’t hear the accelerated thud of her heart.
“No.” Her voice was a croak. She would die before she admitted to experiencing any pain. An uneasy flutter of memory nudged at her. Had he asked her that question before? Had she responded differently before?
“Do you need assistance?” His entire attention was focused on her. He pointed no weapon at her face but she was reminded of when he had come upon her by the mountain stream.
Now, as then, she was trapped.
“Certainly not.” She infused as much pride into her words as possible. “It was my shoulder your cowardly countryman shot, not my leg.” Thank Goddess. Had her leg been wounded her chances of escape would be greatly reduced.
“Rest assured,” the Roman said, not taking his gaze from her, “he is not my countryman.”
“He fought on the side of Rome. You’re all the same to me.” And because she had the overwhelming compulsion to remain sitting, to remain talking to him, she curled her fingers into the edge of the mattress and took a deep breath.
She would not exchange idle conversation with a Roman soldier. An officer. She had to regain her strength, discover where she’d been taken and make plans to return to the queen.
A horrifying thought slammed through her mind. Suppose the queen and her daughter had been captured? She couldn’t leave, until she’d found out. But how was she supposed to find out when she could scarcely ask outright without arousing suspicion that she was the Druid they’d been traveling with?
My medicine bag. She’d left it behind. The thought of her personal possessions being scrutinized by the enemy was abhorrent. A violation. All they needed to do was examine the intricate embroidery on her bag, where Arianrhod in her sacred image of an owl was depicted. It would take little effort to compare it to the engravings on her silver bracelets and torque to discover the indisputable connection to the Moon Goddess.
If the enemy was in possession of her medicine bag would they draw the inevitable conclusion that she was the Druid they, most certainly, now sought?
Instinctively her fingers went to her throat, but her torque was missing. Perhaps it had been stolen for its beauty and value. Yet her bracelets remained on her wrists. Again the panic twisted through her stomach and she risked shooting the Roman another glance. He continued to watch her, and in the dim light, she could not decipher his expression at all.
If they had made the connection already, she would be in chains. She would be at the mercy of their barbaric torturers, and the arrow would have been wrenched from her shoulder with the intention of causing as much damage as possible.
They hadn’t made the connection. Yet. Perhaps they wouldn’t, for what did Romans know of her culture or the gods her people worshipped? They saw only land to conquer and precious metal to claim. Perhaps the silver had already been melted down, and sold.
She smothered the shaft of pain that speared through her chest. The torque had been her mother’s, but it was only a torque. And even if the Romans took everything she possessed, they would never own her memories.
Her memories were engraved into her very soul.
“The physician removed your torque before he operated.” The Roman opened a leather pouch that had been on the ground beside him. “He didn’t want any constriction around your throat.”
Bemused, she stared at her torque on the palm of his hand. He was returning it to her? Did he not know how valuable it was?
But then, if it was plunder he wanted, he could have stripped the bracelets and earrings from her while she slept.
He had not. Nor had he brutalized her. Finally, the question she should have thought of instantly slid through her mind.
What did this Roman want with her?
Half suspecting this was a trick, she picked up her torque between finger and thumb, careful not to touch his hand. Since fixing it around her throat required two hands, and she had no intention of asking for his assistance, she held it on her lap.
Perhaps it was no trick. The queen and princess were still safe, her medicine bag hadn’t been found and no sharp-eyed Roman had seen the similarity between the embroidery and engravings.
It was time to discover the fate this Roman had in mind for her.
“So, am I free to go now?” She managed to give him a haughty look, although in this dim light she wasn’t sure whether he noticed or not.
“You wouldn’t get very far.” He glanced at her injured shoulder. “You n
eed to recuperate.”
A flicker of comprehension dawned.
“Is this your place of healing?” She tried not to feel awe that the Romans treated their injured enemies so well. Celts didn’t go to such lengths to ensure captured Romans recovered from their wounds. Not that Romans generally allowed themselves to be captured, but that was scarcely the point.
Had a wounded Roman ever been captured in battle, he would be sacrificed to the gods amid much rejoicing.
“These are my private quarters.”
“You’re a healer?” Such a thing had never occurred to her. She had thought him a foreign warrior, and nothing else.
“No.” Was it her imagination or was that a trace of amusement in his voice? “I’m a Tribunus Laticlavius. You’re here so I can ensure your safety.”
His rank meant nothing to her, except that he was an officer in his Legion and, as such, was responsible for the rape of her homeland. Once again, the thought hovered in her mind that she was exchanging idle conversation with her deadliest enemy. And yet somehow she couldn’t help herself.
As she hadn’t been able to help herself back at the mountain stream. And look what had happened to her because of it.
“I don’t need the protection of a Roman.” But why does he feel the need to ensure my safety? If all he wanted was to use her, he could have done that already. There had been no need for him to go to the trouble of healing her wound. With shaming reluctance, she pushed herself to her feet, praying desperately her muscles would support her. But as she had feared, her legs buckled, her torque tumbled to the ground and she knew she was going to collapse back onto the bed.
Her injured pride scarcely had time to manifest before the Roman was by her side, one arm around her waist, supporting her weight. As his strong fingers curled around her hip, as his muscular body pressed intimately against hers, lightning streaked across the shadows in her mind. And she recalled in vivid, mortifying detail how she had tried to seduce him last night.
Chapter Seven
Tacitus felt her entire body stiffen in clear affront as he held her upright. Unfortunately, her reaction to his touch did nothing to diminish the erection he’d woken with.
He tightened his grip on her. Although her mind had obviously recovered from the effects of the opium, her body hadn’t. And he had to stop thinking about her body. It made no difference how she tensed her muscles in outward denial. Lust sizzled between them, in every uneven breath she took, every resentful glance she gave him. Her thigh pressed against him and his chest crushed the warm swell of her breast. His arm supported the small of her back and curve of her waist and his fingers cradled her hip. Defeat thudded through his mind. He could scarcely think of anything but her body.
“Unhand me.” She sounded infuriated. “How dare you maul me like an animal.”
He let out a measured breath, and attempted to convince himself that her words of condemnation hadn’t fueled his lust further.
“I’m not mauling you.” He’d done a lot more than maul her in his erotic fantasies during the night. “I’m preventing you from falling. Sit down until you’ve regained your balance.” He hooked his ankle around the leg of a chair and jerked it toward him.
“Don’t order me around.” She glared at him as if he’d just ordered her to strip naked. Gods. That was the wrong thing to have thought. He forcibly sat her on the chair and then stepped back before he was tempted to force her to do anything else.
She was still in absolute ignorance of her new status. Was it possible he could prevent her from finding out? If she didn’t know she was a slave, she wouldn’t behave like a slave. And if, tonight, she wanted him without benefit of the drugs, he could have her.
Because, in her mind, she retained the choice.
There were so many drawbacks to that plan that it wasn’t even worth seriously considering. And yet he considered it. Because it was the only way he could envisage them consummating the mutual desire that had ignited between them by the spring.
“Suggesting you sit before you fall is hardly an order.”
Her hand clenched against her thigh. “If you hadn’t brought me here against my will, I wouldn’t be in danger of falling.”
“And if I’d left you on the mountain, you would have been rounded up with all the other rebels.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. The way she ground her teeth together and slung him another condemning glare made it obvious she knew exactly what he was talking about.
But she didn’t appear to make the connection that, despite not being in the prisoners’ tent, she had been enslaved as surely as the rest.
She would not be a slave for long. He could free her before she even knew, and he could make her his official concubine. Her lack of reverence for his social status would ensure the remainder of his term in this gods forsaken province would be entertaining, to say the least.
Her glare slid from his face and traveled down. Renewed lust scorched through his groin when she paused, her eyes riveting on his erection as if she could not help herself.
He didn’t have to look down to know his tunic hid nothing of the extent of his arousal. And knowing she looked, that she continued to look, caused his shaft to thicken further.
“You need not think,” her voice was husky and his cock jerked with appreciation. “I have any intention of continuing what you started last night when I was full of your heathen, hallucinatory drugs.”
He stepped toward her. And recalled her seductive promise of holding him in the palm of her hand.
“Are you certain of that?” He ached to take her in his arms. For her to wrap her legs around him. But he kept his distance by sheer force of will. She had to come to him.
“Of course I’m certain.” She sounded offended that he could even suggest such a thing. “You took advantage of my vulnerable state. It won’t happen again.”
“I didn’t take advantage.” But he nearly had. “Rape isn’t something I find enticing.”
She opened her mouth as if she was about to disagree, and then narrowed her eyes instead. Obviously his words weren’t what she had anticipated.
“I did not suggest you raped me.” Her voice was haughty. “I know full well you didn’t violate me. I’m merely telling you that you won’t find me so—responsive to your loathsome touch now. I’m no longer in thrall to your foreign drug.”
Despite the lust hammering through his veins, he grinned. The look of disbelief on her face only served to heighten both his amusement and his desire.
Extraordinary.
“You find my touch loathsome?”
“Utterly.” Her fingers twitched against her thigh. She either wanted to grip his cock as she had promised, or scratch out his eyes.
He knew which he’d prefer.
“So the only way to lower your inhibitions is when you’re under the influence of an aphrodisiac?”
Her lips parted in clear annoyance to his accusation. But as he fixed his gaze on those luscious lips, he thought only of how they would feel wrapped around his cock. Gods. She was so close to him. He could feel her erratic breath through his tunic, caressing his shaft.
Such fucking agony. He strangled the groan in his throat, fisted his hands by his sides and tightened the muscles in his thighs.
None of it helped.
“An aphrodisiac?” She spat the words at him. “How dare you suggest I have inhibitions?” She sounded as though he had flung the worst insult imaginable at her. It was enough for him to drag his attention from her lips and his cock to focus fully on her face. Even in this light, he could see the flush on her cheeks and the way her eyes sparkled in obvious affront at his comment.
“Of course you have inhibitions.” Gods, how intensely exhilarating it was to have such an unorthodox conversation with a woman. He had never imagined such a thing before. “You’re a woman.”
She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes never leaving his, apparently unaware that her mouth all but grazed the head of his engorged coc
k. So close…
“I do not have inhibitions.” She heaved herself to her feet, her immobilized arm dragging up his erection with agonizing disregard. “I’ve no need for aphrodisiacs when I’m with a man I want to fuck.”
He’d had plenty of girls and women in the past, both plebeians and nobles. They had been enthusiastic lovers, agreeable companions and not one of them had ever suggested by look or word that they found his presence distasteful. On the contrary, they made it plain they desired his attentions.
Until this Celt, he’d never had to do much more than smile at an available woman to indicate his interest and without fail, he’d always received encouragement in return.
“And you don’t want to fuck me?” The top of her head barely grazed his shoulder, and she glared up at him as if she wanted to tear the flesh from his bones. But her breath was erratic and the scent of feminine arousal drifted in the charged air, thickening his blood and twisting through his gut.
She could say what she liked. Her body told the truth.
“The very thought of it nauseates me.”
Her words were insults. Her breathless delivery an erotic caress. It was hard to draw breath, to think straight; to keep his hands from cradling her face and silencing her with his mouth.
“What really nauseates you is the fear you’d enjoy it.”
Her eyes widened, her lips parted and her tempting breasts heaved, straining against the delicate wool of her ruined gown. She was in need of a bath and her hair was messy with loose tendrils curling over her cheeks and shoulders. There was no reason why he should find her so irresistible in her disheveled state. Yet he found her as sexy and fuckable now as he had when they had met by the mountain stream.
“With a Roman?” She flicked her gaze over him, and once again lingered on his cock. Would she really protest if he just took her now? He’d never been so fucking hard before. “I hate Romans.” Her eyes were fixed on his groin. Her words of condemnation weaved through him like a potent aphrodisiac. “I despise them and everything they stand for.”
Enslaved (The Druid Chronicles Book 3) Page 5
