Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

“It hurts,” Mariella groaned quietly from beneath Tybalt. “Sorry to rush you, but are you close to finishing?”

“Yeah,” the necromancer said, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on the back of her neck. “Can you endure it for another minute or two?”

“Sure,” she breathed. “I mean, I’ve obviously felt worse, and this is important.”

“Good. After this, I’ll make you feel better,” he promised, stroking her hair.

“You don’t have to worry about that, it’s more urgent for you to take care of the others…”

“It’s sweet of you to be so selfless, but the others aren’t planning to go anywhere right now. They’re taking the threat seriously.”

“Still… you and I will have plenty of time alone. Let’s just say you owe me one?”

He grinned and kissed her bare shoulder, the one he wasn’t working on. Then he reached down for the bone needle he was using and resumed tattooing his fiancee.

It was the day following the rockslide.

With Dero’s help, he had deciphered how to create the proper combination of mystic runes to produce the effect of Undead Storage. It was a skill he’d been offered the last time he had a selection, but he had not chosen it, and now that he knew the magic was in his book for the taking, he never would.

The skill would only produce a mark like this on the targeted surface, fueled and made permanent by his mana. He had tested out his mark already, using ink and the paper of the book as his medium, and he had found he could seal an undead within and then call it back out, confirming that the combination of runes worked as advertised.

Right now, he was tattooing Mariella with the same mark on her right shoulder blade, using a mixture of ink and his own blood along with bone needles he had crafted himself.

Once it was complete, the Undead Storage mark would allow Tybalt to place as many undead as he wanted in a non-physical space that would travel with the bearer of the mark. When Mariella - or anyone else he marked - wanted to release the undead, they’d just need to send a tiny surge of mana to the mark. It was just like Tybalt’s storage ring, except the tattoo was a symbol specialized for keeping the undead.

He had intended to place the mark on Kistana first - she was asleep most of the time, which made her far more vulnerable than any of the others - but he had found that she moved in her sleep if touched, and she still had far greater muscle power than any other living person he knew. So marking her would have to wait until she was awake and could choose to hold herself still for him.

Tybalt pushed a little burst of mana into the tattoo to lock in the magical effect, then told his fiancee he was done. Mariella put her shirt back on and sat up, facing Tybalt with a smile.

“Thank you… my protector,” she said in a tone that spoke of more than gratitude. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They shared a long, passionate kiss.

Then it was Vidalia’s turn. She had a harder time enduring the pain than Mariella had, constantly clutching the sheets, letting out little moans, and finally asking what sort of reward she would get for letting him complete it.

“A very becoming tattoo,” Tybalt replied. “One that symbolizes your eternal connection to me.”

That quieted the foxgirl down for the rest of the procedure.

When he got off of her and told her he was done, she rose to her knees, put her dress back on slowly - definitely aware of Tybalt’s gaze - and kissed him softly on the lips.

“Thank you for your efforts to protect me, darling. Even though you hurt me, I know it was only out of love.” She pouted far too cutely for that slightly twisted remark, then got up and left.

Tybalt had offered Dero the tattoo, but she had given a gentle shake of her head.

“Those marks are for women who want to belong to you forever,” she said. “Whether they admit it to themselves, like Vidalia and Mariella, or they deny it like Victoria seems to, the woman is saying, ‘I want your protection, daddy, mark my body permanently.’ There’s something undeniably erotic about it, but you and I don’t know each other that way… and I don’t need protecting. Unless you send all your undead to kill me at once, there’s nothing in this desert that can threaten me. Not even an explosion right in my face.”

That made Tybalt wonder again what the story of Dero’s own tattoo was. But he knew if he asked her then, he would only get the same non-answer again. All she meant to tell him just then was why she wasn’t interested in his tattoo.

So it was Victoria who came last.

“Um, how do we do this?” she asked nervously, fiddling with her braid as she looked at Tybalt.

“I don’t want the tattoo to be visible to people who are seeing you in your regular clothes, so I’ve been putting it on the shoulder blade,” Tybalt said. “You need to take your dress off, or at least pull it down to your waist.”

“But then I’ll be - um, in front of you? I…” She blushed and averted her gaze.

“I’ll leave the room while you get undressed. Lie on your stomach, and cover yourself up with this sheet. You only need to expose your back above here.” He traced the line on her back with a finger so she would know what he meant.

“I understand.” She nodded.

Tybalt left the space and didn’t return until he heard Victoria’s voice call out for him, only slightly muffled by the thin hut walls.

“Ready!” she said. She had to repeat it before Tybalt understood.

As he slipped past the cloth that separated the interior from the main room of the hut, he saw a blur of motion, and then he recognized that Victoria had been in the process of getting up. Her breasts jiggled slightly, her cheeks visibly red, as she quickly pressed herself back against the floor, covered with the sheet.

“Um, I thought you hadn’t heard me,” she said, talking almost into the ground.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said softly, slipping alongside her.

He thought about teasing her a little. You know you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before… Because he had already seen Vidalia naked in real life, not just in dreams, and Victoria was an identical twin. But there was an earnestness to Victoria that made him unwilling to mock her for being embarrassed. He hadn’t gotten to see anything clearly except the look of cleavage pressed into the ground anyway. She had jumped into motion as soon as he poked his head through the opening.

“I’m going to have to get on top of you,” he said, “to do this.”

“I-I understand,” she said, blushing even more furiously. “Thank you for, um… Thank you.”

He smiled against his will. She was too cute.

Then he straddled her, pulled the sheet down slightly - she shivered as more of her back was exposed - and set to work.

Out of the three women Tybalt tattooed with his symbol, Victoria handled it the most stoically. She stiffened, stifled little cries of pain by biting the sheet, and visibly suppressed tears. But she never complained like the other two, and she held still better than either.

He had to resist the impulse to kiss the back of her neck or rub her shoulders - the little gestures of comfort he had made toward the other two women, who he thought of as his, when they were in pain. Victoria hadn’t signed up to be harassed, only to receive his protection. And Tybalt didn’t want to rush the development of their relationship when he didn’t have to.

As the process went on, she gradually seemed to get used to the pain, and her body loosened up. With no distracting moans or cries, Tybalt focused only on the process - and, against his will, on her body. Victoria’s body was trouble.

Physically, she was a second Vidalia, but more filled out. Breasts that he had noticed earlier were medium sized instead of small. More muscle definition to her back, from long days of working outside. Thighs that, while still slender, were noticeably more muscular. An ass to match.

“Did you… um, did you have a d-dagger in your pocket when you lay down?” she asked with a hint of nervousness.

Oh. Shit. He had noticed a little harder than he meant to.

“No… Sorry, it’s not really under my control.”

“Oh… yeah, of course… I understand.” She flushed slightly.

“I’ll try to focus on the tattoo and just hope it goes away. Sorry to make you uncomfortable.”

“I… guess I need to get used to it, anyway. Um, not being uncomfortable, but just… that.”

“Maybe. That’s up to you.”

“I’m… not ready to be with you. Not the way Vidalia is. I want to get to know you better.”

“I get it. No rush.”

“But… I’m also not really considering anyone else,” she said, then paused as if surprised at herself.

“Oh?”

“You… it’s just like what Mariella told me.” Her voice was low, as if she was talking to herself.

“What?”

“Sorry, I was thinking out loud. I remember Mariella said that you sort of swept her off her feet. Once you started paying attention to her, things happened very quickly. She couldn’t completely control how she reacted. I think I get it.”

“I’m deliberately not rushing you. She and I were fighting to stay alive, and… things happened. How is this the same?”

“It’s not, but it also is. Just, things with you are more intense than they should be. Like you bring a sandstorm with you, wherever you go, scattering things, turning them topsy turvy.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It’s bad… and it’s good. Like the way you arrived, saving the village from the Army. The way you pulled Mariella into your orbit permanently just after you woke up, and Vidalia and I kind of helped you do it… You got the cat tribe to follow you as soon as you met them. Then you seemed to know exactly what to say to me when we went out. The very next day, the day after we started courting, you gave me an undead to do my work forever and changed my life. Not long after that, Vida and I almost die because someone tried to kill you and was willing to murder everyone around you to accomplish it. And now we’re letting you permanently mark our bodies to provide protection.”

“When you put it like that, it does sound like we’re moving a little quickly.”

“The really wild thing to me isn’t how quickly it happened. Fast courtships happen. Short engagements. Often when a woman has… let a man undo her braid… marriage comes fairly quickly after that.”

Right, that means that they’re having sex, Tybalt reminded himself. It was something Vidalia had mentioned before. The maiden’s braid was a signal that a woman wasn’t sexually active. If a man and a woman went out in public, and he undid the braid, it signaled that they were sleeping together.

“The odd thing for me,” Victoria continued, “is that it all feels like it was inevitable. It couldn’t have gone any other way.”

“Like it was meant to be?” Tybalt asked, raising an eyebrow, amused.

“I don’t know. I just… I’m not sure about this. You make me suspicious of myself. It feels like you cast a spell or something. Maybe it’s less like it was meant to be and more like you’re an irresistible force. You change everything you touch, whether it’s willing to be changed or not. I’ll say it’s mostly good… so far.”

“As long as you’re admitting to yourself that you can’t resist me.”

She made a little “Tch!” sound, but Tybalt could tell from the way her cheeks moved that she was smiling.

“For the record, I don’t want you to make any decision you might regret,” he added after a moment. “We’ve known each other for a week, and most of that time, you’ve been working while I’ve been trying to act like a politician.”

“Yeah…”

“You just met me. So, even if you’re pretty sure you like me, it doesn’t make sense for you to decide to marry me yet.”

She sighed a little in relief. “Yeah, why does this have to be so quick?” She let out a low, nervous laugh, and Tybalt smiled.

“It doesn’t. Take your time.”

“I… For the record, when I say, ‘I’m not ready,’ I mean I wouldn’t be ready for anyone. Maybe I’m not… grown up enough in this area. But you’re the one I’m actually thinking about in this context. I don’t know… how someone who isn’t you could even measure up, honestly.” She swallowed and then let out a long breath as if she had just confessed a crime.

“Did you tell Andric that? Not to put pressure on you, but you know, he thinks he has a chance. It doesn’t sound like he does. If that’s the truth, he deserves to know.”

“No, I didn’t tell him. When Vida said basically the same thing, he looked like someone slapped him in the face. I didn’t have the heart, and my mind wasn’t completely clear about it either. Now that I think about it, it must seem to both of you… or all three of you… as if I’m playing games. But I- ”

“It doesn’t seem that way to me,” Tybalt said.

“All right. Good. I’m not trying to. I’m just trying not to rush into anything. I don’t think I would regret making my decision now, but… well, I’m a bit too careful by nature.” Her tone was apologetic. “I feel like kind of a bitch, though. I’m keeping my sister from having what she wants, I’ve got Andric wondering if he has a chance, and then there’s you…” Her head twisted around to look at Tybalt. “You’re doing what you have to do to protect all of us, treating me the same as Mariella and Vidalia, treating me… even though I haven’t…”

Tybalt reached down and stroked her hair, and Victoria relaxed under his touch, her voice trailing off.

“I shouldn’t let you…” The foxgirl started talking, but as his fingers reached her ears and caressed them, her words dissolved into a quiet, pleased noise like a purr. Her legs moved slightly beneath him, and he looked back and saw her toes had curled with the pleasant sensation.

“Don’t worry about accepting my protection,” Tybalt said, leaning down until his lips were an inch away from her ears. He was painfully aware of how his erection still pressed into her backside - it hadn’t gone away this whole time - but she wasn’t moving away. “It doesn’t mean I own you.”

“Messing with my ears is really unfair,” she said with a little, shuddering breath. “I know Vidalia would have told you that…” She pushed herself up slightly, covering her chest carefully with the sheet, and they stared into each other’s eyes for a long few seconds.

At just the moment when he leaned slightly in, thinking she was giving him an opening to kiss her, she turned to face the floor again.

“Sorry to disrupt your concentration,” she said quietly, her cheeks bright red. “You should finish. I… won’t talk anymore.”

“All right.”

Tybalt pulled the sheet down slightly again, maybe a little more than he needed to, making the sides of her breasts slightly visible. He ran a finger over her shoulder blade just below the tattoo - he almost couldn’t help doing that, it felt as if his hands weren’t his own - and he took a deep breath.

Then he resumed marking her.

The necromancer didn’t pause this time, nor did the foxgirl underneath him interrupt, until he had completed his mission. As he sealed the tattoo with a little bit of his mana, the notification appeared.

“All done,” he said. He slid to the side, thankful that most of the tension had gone out of his body.

Victoria rose to a half-seated position, propping herself up with one arm, the sheet loosely wrapped around her and barely covering her breasts. She looked Tybalt in the eyes, and her face reddened again. She swallowed. Her eyes darted back and forth between his and the ground. Neither of them said anything. He desperately wished he could read her mind.

A long, quiet few seconds passed.

“You…” She suddenly leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek. Just like her twin, she smelled of strawberries. “Th-Thank you again,” Victoria said quietly. “For giving us your protection. Um, Vida and I… owe you a lot.” She pulled back, looked at him nervously, ran a hand over her hair, half turned away, and then looked back at him. “Um, I’m going to get dressed now.”

If she’s doing this on purpose, this is an amazing performance of hard-to-get. If she’s not… that might be even more attractive.

He reached over, grabbed the hand that she wasn’t using to cover herself, and lightly squeezed it. Then he turned toward the flap that led into the common area.

“I’ll let you get dressed, then,” Tybalt said. He left.