Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

“I hope you’re worth all this trouble,” the man muttered roughly.

“I thank you, brave warrior, for your kind- ”

His hand grabbed her breast as she spoke, then squeezed and kneaded it, a liberty the man never took in the vision before this point unless the initiate had given him some encouragement. Samara sucked in air and stopped mid-sentence.

That feels… nice…

This place in the vision was where many former initiate paladins admitted to having failed. There was considered to be no shame in failure. Those who failed as paladins could still become priestesses.

The partner in the vision varied from initiate to initiate, but he was universally a gifted lover, and many could not restrain their curiosity as well as their lust in the figure’s presence, not when he came on so aggressively.

No one had the mental clarity and devotion to her one true love the Goddess possessed, but one could emulate her self-control by chanting the appropriate prayers inside one’s mind. Prayers that, for reasons only the Goddess knew, deserted the paladin in this moment. Only a few words retained their place in her mind, the words from the vision’s script.

“I-I thank you,” Samara found herself repeating as the man ran a rough thumb over her nipple, which was quickly hardening through her thin garment. “Brave warrior, I thank you…”

He smiled down at her, and she realized how her words sounded, now, outside of the context where he was simply rescuing her, with his hand on her body.

You sound like a whore, she thought. You might as well be moaning for him, egging him on. You… oh, what’s the point? It’s only a dream. It can’t hurt anything, right? This… doesn’t matter. I’m not breaking my vow. I passed the trial. I’m not…

Samara had passed her trials in real life… with no small amount of regret, if she was honest with herself. There was always that other part of her that had wanted a normal life, a husband, a family.

She and her sister had been through a lot together, though. Rising high within the Faith of Astara was more than either of them could have dreamed of when they were young.

In truth, Samara had always wondered what it would feel like to be taken by a man. She had been curious about these chains, too, when she first experienced the trial. How was one supposed to make love while chained? She had only a theoretical understanding of the sex act, but it usually required mobile legs, didn’t it?

“You seem eager tonight,” said the man. He had wrapped one hand around her long, curly hair and continued fondling her chest with the other. It felt much better than she would have liked to admit. A heat was slowly building between her legs.

Samara blinked, pulled back into the present from her haze of regrets and excuses.

That’s strange.

“You can’t remember last time,” she said in a low voice. “This is just a dream. We’re… doing this… for the first time? Aren’t we? As far as you’re concerned?”

“No, I’m real,” the man said. “I have memories. I told you that last time, too… Do you remember my name?”

She shook her head. Her thoughts were confused.

There’s no point asking a dream character if he’s a dream. Of course he thinks he’s real. And… whether he was somehow a real person or not, that doesn’t change how I should act. For all I know, he could be a demon or a god, tempting me, like Astara herself…

She focused again on the problem of the situation. She knew she should tell him to stop. If she told him to stop, he would. The Last Temptation wasn’t a “Temptation” if the male simply took Astara against her will after she said “no.”

“I- ”

He pulled her by the hair and engaged her in a long, lustful kiss, tongues exploring each other’s mouths, hand groping her ass - and she realized her own hands, far from pushing him away, were pulling him treacherously closer, running through his hair and along his muscular side.

She felt the sticky slickness of his hands - still bloody from killing the guards - as he reached into her dress and squeezed under her clothing, and instead of being disgusted at his unclean hands, she felt a shudder of arousal go through her.

“You, ah, I shouldn’t- ” she began helplessly.

“But you want to.”

This was the last moment she could say the vision-appropriate thing. A refusal. Any language would do, as long as it was a flat refusal with no room for negotiation.

“Ah, we, um, can’t do it, I could never do it… on these filthy floors,” she said weakly.

“I see.” His eyes glowed, and by some magic she was unfamiliar with, the chains that bound her arms and legs moved, pulling her to her feet, back against the wall, legs spreading wide as the shackles pulled at them. Her arms supported her weight, but fortunately, she wasn’t heavy. The muscles seemed also to have gotten stronger than those on Astara’s arms usually were, so that it wasn’t such a big deal.

“So, then, now?” He moved in close to her, and she felt the weight of him against her body… and the pressure of his hardness against her mound. Just a couple of thin layers of cloth separated her from what she had wondered about for years, until the Goddess’s power had suppressed such desires in her following these very trials.

“I… I shouldn’t…”

“Don’t resist me,” he whispered into her ear. “You should always give in to me.”

Samara turned her head and met those intense green eyes once again. She looked away, shame-faced, and she gave him the slightest nod.

It’s a dream… This doesn’t count. I’m not breaking my-

Then she felt a hand reach down, and as if her clothing were wet paper, the dream lover simply ripped through the fabric that separated his flesh from hers. His fingers stroked her entrance, and she felt how wet she was already. Part of it was surely the delicious shame of the situation. His fingers danced above her opening, rubbing little circles of pleasure.

She quietly moaned and lowered her head. She couldn’t look at him right then. It was too much. His touching grew more aggressive, and then she felt him press his manhood against her lower lips.

Her mouth opened - whether to speak a last second objection, finally, or to encourage him, she would never be able to say, later - but all that escaped was a low moan as he entered her.

She felt pain as he broke through her maidenhead anew, but it vanished quickly. He thrust into her, slowly at first, but he would build up tempo. She knew what this would be like from last time.

Samara lunged across the short distance that separated their faces and captured his lips between hers. Now that she had broken the rules, there was no point in trying to hold anything back. He let out a pleased grunt into her mouth and thrust into her harder and faster. The chains that bound her arms raised them over her head, giving him complete control over the tempo of their coupling.

He set a relentless pace as he fucked her, ripping her clothing, sucking her nipples into his mouth, biting savagely at her neck, shoving her face against the wall, gripping her hips so hard that she thought, knew he would bruise them.

She loved every second of it.

She groaned with pleasure, kissed him back wherever she could, moaned and writhed whenever the ecstasy grew too much, and worked the muscles between her thighs, trying to give pleasure as she received it. Her lower muscles squeezed and massaged, and as she rolled her hips to meet his thrusts, she was consciously aware that her body wanted to pull him in deeper.

I’m a paladin, this is wrong, she thought feebly as she wrapped her arms and legs around him - and realized that she now had complete control of her range of motion again, the shackles having loosened for some reason. She tightened her legs around her lover’s waist, securing him so that he would not slip out of her, and he continued fucking her against the wall.

“You want more?” he grunted into her ear.

“Yeah, I-I love this,” Samara replied shamelessly, her face hot with mingled passion and embarrassment. “Keep - uh - giving it to me. Can’t get enough.”

“Me too. You’re so good, way better than that whore Astara.”

The paladin’s face froze - was that supposed to be part of a vision like this? Denigrating the Goddess? - before she reminded herself that this was just a dream. Although she could not account for what part of her mind wanted to blaspheme against her patron, it didn’t matter now.

“Oh yeah, you think so?” she managed, trying not to shatter the mood.

“You’re not as experienced, but you’re much tighter,” he said. He continued to thrust slowly into her as they spoke, sending little jolts of pleasure up and down her body. She had already risen through at least one orgasm during the act, and every touch just then was sensitive.

I’m in her body, though, Samara thought. The Last Temptation of Astara placed the initiate into a version of the Goddess’s own body.

Then her eyes landed on her arms wrapped around his neck, and she recognized her own naturally dusky skin tone.

“That… that’s not right,” she muttered. She was supposed to be in the Goddess’s body, which was fairer skinned than her own in most representations - including in her own vision quest. Had she been inhabiting her own skin this whole time?

“Oh, yeah, I did slow down a lot,” the green-eyed man muttered. “Don’t worry, I’ll speed up again, my little slut.”

“That’s not what I - ohh…” Samara’s slight confusion dissolved into a wordless moan as he thrust into her harder and faster once more.

It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s still just a dream. And dreams don’t have to make sense.

Her thoughts scattered again and again as he used her body.

Samara couldn’t have pinpointed the moment, in the haze of pleasure, when the setting shifted.

One minute, her dream lover was fucking her against the wall of a grimy dungeon, and the next, they were in a bedroom. She twisted her head to look around, suddenly distracted, and he pulled out of her and picked her up.

“What are you…?”

“Don’t worry, we’re not done,” he said.

He dumped her, face down, on the bed. When she rose to all fours, he pushed her upper back slightly down, pressing her face into the silk of the pillow case. She knew instantly what he was doing, and she felt the eagerness inside her swell up, somewhat shamefully, in the moments just before he reentered her.

As he took her from behind, she moaned like a bitch in heat, thrusting her hips back at him again, trying to fit more and more of him inside her. He got a hand on her waist and wrapped one in the hair that now fell in a messy tangle down her back and sides, and he used them like saddle and reins, controlling her movements.

Sweat trickled down their bodies as he plumbed new depths of her dripping cunt, pulling her hair, squeezing her neck, breasts, ass, and waist, shoving his fingers down her throat, taking her so forcefully that a little part of her wondered if she had ever really meant that vow of celibacy.

That was the part of her that could still think. The rest was molten heat, unreasoning, animalistic passion. She found herself repeating words he ordered her to say, humiliating and degrading things, words and phrases that she knew were obscene and had never spoken before, certainly not in this order.

“I-It’s your pussy, you fuck me so good, master! Fuck Astara, I only want this dick!”

“I’ll cast aside my oaths for you… I’ll pray to you.”

“You’re the only one I’ll ever fuck, oh gods! Mark me… use your little slut!”

“Yeah, I want your seed… breed me!”

She said things with his hand around her throat or pushing her face down into the pillows that she would never have been able to say to a living soul, things that would fill her with shame for days afterward - and with a strange thrill.

The only consolations would be the facts that this was just a dream - and that technically, promising to only sleep with the dream lover was actually in keeping with her vow of celibacy. He wasn’t real, after all… even if he said he was.

The sex act seemed to go on forever, like he was one of the automatons that the dwarves contrived, tireless and indomitable - but built for her pleasure.

Samara’s body had lost its strength, and her face lay against the pillow, her whole body covered in sweat, but her hips kept moving rhythmically with her lover’s, her pussy continuing to milk him as he took his pleasure.

Finally, he grunted, and she let out a pleased sigh and shook with a final shudder as he spurted inside her. She had no words left, but she smiled into the silk.

I loved it. Fuck… I… I can’t believe I turned into this kind of animal in a dream. The Goddess… where was the Goddess? I-

His body slowly, carefully lowered itself on top of hers. He wasn’t too heavy, compared with men she had sparred with and thrown, but it was enough weight to take her mind off of self-recrimination. He remained buried deep inside her, his manhood embedded like a plug, keeping his seed from running out. A dark part of Samara imagined she might be pregnant - and liked the thought.

Then came the worst of it. This was exactly the same as the previous dream with him.

He interlocked his fingers with hers, stroked the back of her hand with a thumb, caressed her hair, and whispered things into her ear that were almost obscene in their gentleness - their strange contrast with the vulgarity of a few minutes prior. How she was a good girl, how he would train her into a fine wife, how she would grow swollen with his child soon enough.

If he wasn’t so tender in the aftermath, she might have tried to convince herself that she hadn’t just given in to seduction - perhaps even that she had been raped. The sex had been violent enough, and her clothing was still in tatters.

But lying there beneath him, feeling his affection, kissing him back, robbed her of that opportunity.

A part of her wanted to deny it - I am a holy woman, not a broodmare, you beast! - but another part of her was just as eager to ask him if he promised, if he would really make her his woman. Anyway, she knew from last time that if she tried to argue, he would just take her again and remind her of her place. And she would enjoy it.

As they lay there in bed, the other woman he always brought with him appeared. The foxgirl. Where he was rough, she was gentle, kissing and petting every spot the dream lover had bruised. The places his hands had gripped her the hardest or his mouth had left its mark: hips, neck, breasts, shoulder blades, and of course, right on Samara’s mouth…

If she allowed it, Samara knew that the vision would dissolve from there into a more wholesome fantasy, albeit one that was a more profound betrayal of her goddess.

With her lust sated, her resistance to the dream’s allure having failed again, Samara allowed the dream to shift.

She found herself lying beside the dream lover, his green eyes staring affectionately into hers. He was sandwiched between herself and the foxgirl, but all attention was on Samara just then. Samara and her swollen belly. Because in this section of the vision, she was pregnant. That was how far from the proper path she strayed in this strange fantasy. She lay on the bed lazily, her husband spooning her, his other wife spooning him.

All was right in the world.

“Remember,” he whispered in her ear. “Remember, when we meet in life, don’t resist me. Don’t try to fight my power, or you’ll be destroyed. Don’t- ”

There was a sudden bump, and Samara was jolted from her dream.