Critical Tits

By Isaac Byrne

Copyright © 20 23  by Isaac Byrne

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Edition, 20 23

Chapter One

“All right gang, good session zero!” Bobby chirped happily, waving to the camera. Across the table from him, Cynthia rolled her eyes. He was always so damn upbeat, and (blech) peppy . He’d been a male lifter in high school. If not for common interests and the small size of their class, she never would have said a word to him. Except maybe to encourage him to drop one of those anorexic cunts mid-lift. “We’ll get started with the actual Game game next session. Good work on character creation!”

She flipped off the back of the webcam. Those morons had barely understood how basic game mechanics worked last year before covid shut their sessions down. Now that they were finally reopening, she and Bobby had needed to handhold them through every last aspect of it, like their gaming virginities were as intact as their actual virginities.

“Cynthia says bye, too,” he lied, giving her a thin smile as he closed the zoom session.

“Can you believe those two? Brent didn’t remember what a feat was, and Andy required a fresh lesson in what 4d6 meant.” She shook her head, sweeping strands of her jet black dye job over her shoulder. “I didn’t know it was possible for the human brain to lose so much so fast.”

“Not everybody’s as hard core as you and me,” Bobby explained, standing and beginning to gather up the various books spread around the table. “Honestly, I didn’t want to tell you, ‘cause I didn’t want you to get even more… yeah. But they didn’t even want to play again. It took some convincing just to get them back to the table.”

“Not that they’re at the table,” she complained. “This half-live, half-digital crap is so stupid. Everybody talking over everybody all the time, sound quality going in and out, Andy stuffing his fat fucking face with a crinkly-ass bag of chips on an open mic.”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him about that. That was sort of gross. But they’ll be home from school and vaccinated like us in a month or two, and then we can all meet up. For now, it’s this or nothing, and you said you wanted to play, so…”

“I know what I said. Doesn’t mean I don’t get to bitch a little, though.” She tucked her character sheet into her gaming folder, and then that into her black purse along with her dice set. They were a birthday present from her dad, a rare success from him, carved bone with pips made of chips of red stone. “Ah, well. At least my character won’t suck. Sintheigha’s gonna need those strong shoulders to carry the rest of the party. A melee bard and a sorcerer building to dragon disciple. So at least the second one will probably be worth a damn in, like, eight levels.”

“Don’t worry. I’m making an NPC party member to help supplement. It’s gonna be fine. Might be rocky in the combat, but they bring other assets to the table that, um, ‘Sintheigha’ lacks.” Normally she put more effort into a character name, but it had been her way of conveying her contempt for Andy’s lack of thought into his build. Bobby had not been impressed. “Teamwork makes the dream work. We’re all friends here.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times, Bobby. We’re not friends. We’re gaming buddies.”

“And I’ve told you, buddy,” he grinned brightly, but she could see it was a bit forced. “I don’t see a difference.”

“Bobby, we haven’t seen each other since pre-covid, when we shut down gaming. We don’t text, except about gaming. We don’t hang out, except to game . We don’t have mutual friends, except the other people at the gaming table.” She flashed a duh  look.

“Well I like you anyway,” he insisted to her irritation. “Actually, I even got you something for the re-commencement, though now I’m not sure you deserve it.”

Cynthia grimaced behind his back and silently hoped he wasn’t going to start up with the flirting again. Bobby had been friends with a lot of the Cool Kids back when, while Cynthia had kept beneath the radar with her fellow goths. (Both of them, and neither exactly model gothizens.) Yet she was conventionally attractive, while Bobby was… friendly. She wasn’t a bitch enough to point it out, but the cessation of his “athletic” career as a male lifter hadn’t done his build  any favors either. Still, the fact that he’d gone to the in crowd parties with those preppy assholes had made him feel like he was more than entitled to a less popular girl like Cynthia. She had not been gentle shutting that bullshit the fuck down, and hoped she wouldn’t have to again.

All this went through her mind as he left for the kitchen of his dumpy studio apartment. (She admittedly did like his grungy shithole of a pad.) He returned a moment later, hands folded behind his back. Mercifully he didn’t try to make her guess or beg; Bobby simply produced…

“Some dice?”

He nodded, holding them out further. It was a metal case with a glass – nope, make that clear plastic – lid. Inside were a set of seven dice set into impressions in some foam rubber, d4 up to d20.

They were… perfect.

She felt her jaw drop as she bent closer. The dice were solid black, but somehow blacker. Like holes in the case, holes that led into a bottomless pit. Except they weren’t quite pure black. The black parts were, but the numbers, and something else sprinkled sparsely throughout, were something glittery. White silver. It didn’t seem likely to her to be some cheap material. Definitely not, in fact. Whatever that black stuff was, it was somehow transparent, as if there were nothing there to see at all. The silvery flecks gave it the impression of looking into the infinite void of space.

Cynthia made herself glance up. Bobby was watching her reaction – or at least he was after he stopped looking down her neckline, easy as she’d made it by bending over. She didn’t even care. Much. These were the most incredible dice she had ever seen.

“Thank you,” she uttered, a bit more breathily than she had intended.

But Bobby shook his head. “Tut tut, my non-friend. These weren’t exactly cheap, you know, so I expect you to earn them.”

Something in his tone… Cynthia stood upright again. She tugged her black t-shirt back into place. It almost covered the broad raven crest tattoo that she’d gotten last year, shortly before the pandemic screwed her out of the parlor. Her other tattoos were small things, easily concealed since her jerkwad parents wouldn’t sign off on them. This one had set her back a pretty penny, but the raven was her pride and joy. Its wings were spread over each breast, its tail hung between; all that was visible now was the top of its head and the crooked silver crown atop that. Bobby had been more than curious to get a better look at it ever since she’d gotten it; the little perv stalked her social media and slathered any post with a hint of sex appeal with flame emojis.

“Look, Bobby, if you think I’m gonna show you my tits for dice, you’re fucking nuts.”

Bobby laughed it off, though. “Look who’s quick to jump to conclusions! Relax, Cynthia. Nothing sketchy. Really, it’s more accurate to say ‘Sintheigha’ has to earn them. Week to week.”

“Wait, so like they’re… loot?”

“Sort of? Yeah, that’s not a bad way to think about it. A little quest reward for what you bring to the table.”

“So… what does Sintheigha have to do, then?”

“Right. Are you ready?”

“What the fuck did I just ask? Do I need to say it again?”

Bobby smiled. “First project: Very simple. I want a portrait for her.”

Cynthia glowered. “What happened to theater  of the mind?” They’d always been content with description alone. It was more immersive. The way things were supposed to be.

“Theater of the mind is great! It is. Only, now we have two digital players, so we have to use a virtual tabletop, which needs a portrait. Now I know, I know, finding fantasy portraits of female warriors is its own kind of chore, but maybe just… be more open-minded? This once?”

The glower deepened. That was the other reason she’d always resisted a call for portraits. “I’m not going to find you some skanky portrait of a blonde bitch in bikini armor.”

“Did I say that? But remember, you sprung for the 16 Charisma–”

“For my I ntimidate  score, and only because I got some lucky stat rolls! So we don’t have to rely on Brent’s idiot bard to sing and dance our way to getting answers!”

“–so remember that’s also supposed to represent physical attractiveness. That’s all I’m saying, find something accurate .”

Her eyes went to the dice again, and she let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. So what do I get if I do this? I want half.”

Bobby tried to pat her on the shoulder reassuringly, but she rolled it out of the way in the nick of time. She might flex on the stupid portrait, but she wasn’t going to let him touch her. “You get one . And you’ll find out which when you submit your portrait. Buddy.

****************************************************************

Submit  turned out to be a more accurate term than Cynthia had originally supposed. She’d selected and sent a pic before even getting home, fishing out what was to her a satisfactory image  at a long traffic light, a blurry but badass portrait of a ripped warrior woman with heavy armor and a battleaxe dripping blood. Not perfect, but good enough. She hit the share button.

Bobby’s response?

lol very funny, but Sintheigha’s not a dwarf

That’s NOT a fucking dwarf!  she answered.

His follow-up added Brent and Andy into the discussion. What do you guys think?

Andy replied in short order that the woman in the picture was “fugly af.” Brent took until that evening to note, If THAT is a 16 Cha then I need to slap another eighty pounds on Skuf’s portrait.

Bobby concluded the discussion with a shrug emoji. The jury had spoken.

Her next proposal came the next day. She’d taken most of her lunch break at her second job, fast food bullshit at Arby’s, to look for something that might appease those apes. Her coworker Charlie snuck up behind her and peered over her shoulder. “Whatcha doin’?”

“It’s a D&D thing. Finding a character portrait. Mind your fucking business.”

Charlie was undaunted, though. She’d told him to fuck off so many times that it was basically their standard farewell. “Oh, that one’s hot.”

“That one’s half-naked. She’ll die the first time a goblin swings a pointed stick at her.”

Charlie shrugged, popped a curly fry in his scruffy mouth. “Hot though.”

Ultimately she compromised with another image , obviously not the one Charlie suggested. The boob armor was stupid, basically engineered to guide a blade into the heart, but it was boobs, and the chick was otherwise pretty badass. A berserker vibe, caught mid-howl. She went ahead and wrote the hair and eye color down on her sheet to make it official.

Yikes, feminazi , said Andy.

Not very realistic-looking… said Brent.

Come on, don’t just send the first pic you find,  said Bobby. Put a little effort in!

I already wrote it on my sheet!

That’s why the gods provided us the eraser,  the GM answered with a winky face.

The next day, after coming home from her first job at the carwash and doing her best to rinse that nasty industrial soap off of her – at least as bad as the roast beef and grease – she curled up on the sofa and spent the whole evening searching. Her parents tried to bait her into joining them for dinner, but she lied and said she’d already eaten. Probably all these starved waifs getting into her subconscious.

Tell me this chick  isn’t hot enough , she sent at last with another pic. It was after midnight. She fell asleep on the couch.

She awakened to the boys’ responses. That’s Ciri from Witcher 3 , Brent countered. She can’t use someone iconic like that, can she?  Son of a bitch asked Bobby, as if she weren’t also in this thread.

Not unless she uses one like this  lol , Andy had replied, linking to another noncanonical pic, this one bare-chested and visibly horny out of her mind. Jesus fuck, these trolls were openly sending her porn now? The fuck?!

I’ve seen worse lol  was Bobby’s reply to Andy’s debauched suggestion.

Thank the gods for fucking erasers,  she shot back. Why was it she was letting them do this again? For a fucking die ? It couldn’t have been that impressive, could it? Cynthia resolved to leave her suggestion as it was. If she didn’t respond, Bobby would have no choice.

That night, she dreamed of an all-consuming starfield. Cynthia tried to dive in, but every time she felt like she was getting close, she felt a slap, and heard Bobby’s voice telling her she hadn’t earned it. The backs of her hands, at first. The front of her leg. Then her forehead. Eventually her ass. The dream was the same the next night, but this time she started bent over his lap and didn’t even try to get closer. She wanted to, but it was time for punishment, not rewards.

She woke up so wet she thought she’d pissed herself. But no.

“Too much fucking fantasy porn,” she grumbled as she renewed her search.

Her next proposal  – which was only coincidentally the same one Charlie had endorsed the other day – earned a heart emoji from Brent. It ought to. Blonde and docile, impractical armor baring most of her massive chest and matchstick legs, it was the sort of portrait she’d always hated and the guys had always loved. This time, however, Andy persuaded Bobby she could still do better. There was no guidance from either about what “better” explicitly meant, but it was obvious enough.

Time was winding down, and if Cynthia’s dreams got any more intense she was going to have a hard time making eye contact with Bobby at the table on Saturday. With her eyes squinted shut, she pressed the Send button for her raciest proposal yet . It as basically a bikini with metallic coloration, a few spikes and skulls added for decoration – which was what the whole thing was, really. Decoration. Skanky as hell, but it was at least gothy. Sort of. The knee pads, anyway. She practically held her breath waiting for Bobby’s reply. In fact, she was checking her phone so often that her Arby’s manager Doug had to yell at her. Twice.

Wow! Brent said simply. That was one endorsement.

That bitch is tasty,  added Andy to her immense relief, though his addendum that you could totally look that hot if you wanted Cynthia ;)  didn’t help. She told him to shut the fuck up and waited for Bobby to weigh in. The votes were in, but she needed his thumbs up. He had the dice.

That’s some pretty intense armor for 1st level,  he answered. Liking the spirit, but remember that it ought to be practical, too. Within Sintheigha’s means, you know? But I like where your heart’s at!

Like that, democracy dissolved. After all, his  was the only vote that really counted.

The morning of the session, haggard from fitful sleep punctuated by fevered searches and calculations of how much dignity was worth sacrificing for a simple piece of plastic, she sent her final submission .

It was pathetic. A gif of a modded Skyrim skank, some playboy bunny in a thong bikini and a loin cloth turned sideways to make sure it failed at its only job. Sintheigha’s nipples were bullseyes for any foe who wanted to ogle her before they ran through her totally exposed midsection. The only thing resembling protection to it was a shoulder plate atop an arm even more slender than Cynthia’s own. (She made a silent commitment to work on that.) Big tits, perfectly coiffed blonde hair, a pussy practically revealed by default.

If Cynthia had seen someone cosplaying this crap she would have been unable to resist punching the bitch on principle.

Now, it was Sintheigha. Not Cynthia, just Sintheigha. She remade her character sheet, the lines for her appearance already worn through from previous erasures. For a moment, she considered swapping her Con and Charisma, but that was stupid. Hit points were a resource. Charisma was for a minor boost to one skill.

By then, it was time to go to the session. None of the boys had replied by then, and she found herself praying – not that she even believed in god – that it was enough. If she’d been through this whole rotten, degrading, son of a bitch of a week and didn’t at least have the promised trinket to show for it…

Bobby greeted her at the door. “Hey, you made it.” He hugged her. Somehow, she let him. Even hugged back with one arm. What the fuck. “You look nice, by the way.”

“I didn’t dress up for you,” she retorted. It wasn’t even that different from the norm. Instead of her usual black jeans and black t-shirt (sweatshirt, in the colder months), she was wearing black jeans and a black tank top. It showed a lot more of her chest tattoo, all of the wings and most of the body, and sure, a little bit of cleavage. Not that she could help it. Tits were gonna tit. She dressed like this regularly, in fact, just not for her gamer buddies, so they didn’t get even a ghost of an idea about having a shot with her.

But Bobby hadn’t approved her picture yet. It couldn’t hurt to give him a tiny little nudge. Not like it cost her anything. Just some dignity. Her dignity had regen  2.

The DM said nothing, only ushered her in and went back to getting everything in place. Cynthia took her spot opposite him, where the mic would pick her up but not the camera. She wasn’t here to be ogled by those creeps.

Well, not by two of them, at least.

Brent joined their zoom call, his doughy face taking its spot in the bottom corner of the TV, which Bobby was using to run the virtual tabletop for her sake. His own iteration was running separately on his laptop. Andy’s face appeared atop the VTT soon after.

“Sup, folks. Just wanted to say Sintheigha looks smoking hot.” The first words out of his mouth.

“Yeah, way to go, stepping outside your comfort zone,” Brent added, nodding appreciatively. Cynthia flipped both of them off under the table, where Bobby wouldn’t see it. She couldn’t have their approval flagging here in the home stretch.

“So… it’s official, then? Finally did  good enough?” she asked irritably.

Bobby smiled. “I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by some of the effort you put in this week. I knew that if we pushed you, though…”

“You’re pushing it right now, asshole.” She grimaced as soon as the words were out. This was no time to be proud.

“Right. So I remember how you hate to be made to wait for dramatic reveals. So cutting to the chase, drum roll please…”

“The whole point of a drum roll is for a dramatic reveal!” Her bitter retort was cut off by the thunderous sound of Andy’s drumming piping through his microphone. Evidently Bobby had not had that talk with him about switching to push to talk, after all.

But then, there it was.

A d4.

Using the lid of the dice case to keep the other six in place, Bobby jiggled the case until the d4 tumbled loose and landed in front of her, bouncing until it came to a stop against her breasts. It landed on a 2. Not auspicious, but at least it wasn’t a 1. The number was etched somewhere inside the inky depths in the same silver as those flecks, only more solid. She’d been secretly hoping for the d20, or at least the d10, since that was her weapon’s die damage. Still, she picked it up, so elated that it was almost like she could feel it tingling in her hand.

Then she heard the boys applauding. Cynthia set her new treasure down, pale cheeks flushing in embarrassment. She could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d smiled in front of these guys, and all of them were because of lucky crits. Not smiling was something she was legendary for.

“Um, nothing uses d4’s, though,” she pointed out as she began to think it through.

“Nonsense,” Bobby said dismissively. “Daggers, nunchucks, sai, a halfling quarterstaff or shortsword…”

She threw her hands in the air. “Sintheigha isn’t a halfling! She uses heavy swords!” She’d gone for the d10 on purpose. The average was lower than comparable weapons with a 2d6, but with the right spec she could one-hand it.

“How’s that for gratitude,” said Andy, shaking his head.

Like that, the moment was over and Bobby was addressing Brent about something he’d been struggling with on his character sheet.

Meanwhile, she hastily made an adjustment, erasing her sword and replacing it with a dagger. Woefully inadequate DPS, but she could pick up two-weapon fighting later. She had the Dex for it. For now, a dagger would do. Almost half the damage, but it was a game, after all. Games were supposed to be fun. She would have more fun rolling her amazing new die. Yes, he would eventually give her other dice, but there was no guarantee he’d work up in size order, or how long he’d make her wait. For now, it was all in time for her new d4.

The backdrop on the VTT was solid black save for their icons. There was no sign of Bobby’s party NPC as yet, but the rest were there. Skuf , with a broad grin on his rough face. Jerom, his clawed hand holding a ball of fire. And Sintheigha, animated, bobbling and jiggling into the adventure with a placid smile on her simpering face. She fixed her eyes on her new die so the embarrassment would be less palpable.

“So, we begin in the land of Hypheron…” Bobby began. Cynthia couldn’t tell if the words were addressed to the web cam between them, or her chest beyond it.

With six more dice in that container, though, she didn’t care.

Chapter Two

“What do you mean, I can’t take it with me? You gave me that die, Bobby! After you made me use that skanky blonde portrait, the way those two pinheads laughed right in my face, no way am I walking out of here without it!”

“Keep your voice down, Cynthia. It’s going on midnight , and my place has thin walls, remember?” She did remember. They’d been treated to the sound of his next-door neighbors having noisy, grunting sex about an hour ago. It lasted almost four minutes.

She lowered her voice, but didn’t back down. “Hand it over.”

Yet Bobby merely opened the lid of the container and put her special d4 back inside, nestled in its spot in the shaped foam. “The die stays here. You don’t want to break up the set, do you?”

“So let me hold onto the whole set.”

“They’re rewards , Cynthia. And you didn’t earn the rest of them. Besides, think how you’d feel if you lost it.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to lose it.”

“I dunno, seems  like you’re losing all sorts of things today.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, let’s see. The fight you picked with the city watch…”

“Picked…?! They attacked me after that cutpurse Bluffed them into thinking we  were shaking him  down. And then you threw a bunch of CR 4 guards at our 1 st  level party!”

“Which brings us to the loss of freedom,” he continued, ignoring her dramatic roll of the eyes, “and then because you lost your temper with the jailer, you lost the next three days.”

“Stupid me, assuming that if the DM throws the party in jail, he has some kind of plan to enable them to get back out.”

“I told you, Cynthia, this is a sandbox game. I make the world, and then whatever you do in it is on you. So if you assault people four times your level and lay around grumping about human rights violations in the city dungeons for three days waiting for someone to rescue you, that’s on you. Besides, it still turned into an adventure, didn’t it?”

Brent and Andy had been pissed at the dungeon master too, at first. The encounter with the guards had been a complete rout. Her dagger had only scored three hits, two of which scored minimum damage. In hindsight, the way she giggled at the chance to roll her d4 each time had been pretty embarrassing, but at the time, she’d hoped the fight went  on the whole session. Once it ended with them in cells, though, they’d started looking askance at their fighter, like Sintheigha had some secret ability she’d held out on them.

“I’d like to point out, I was technically the one who got us out of there,” Cynthia retorted, hoping her cheeks weren’t as flushed as the heat she could feel rising in them suggested.

“Right. And how exactly did you manage that?”

“It doesn’t matter how!”

Bobby folded his arms. He and the guys had enjoyed themselves way too much over that. “How, Cynthia?”

“Well after our attempts to pick the lock, Bluff the jailer, and trying to punch our way out failed, what else was I supposed to do?”

“How?”

****************************************************************

“So do we need to roll up new characters or what?” Brent asked despondently.

“Hey, Battle Bitch over there got us into this mess. I say she owes it to us to get us out.” Andy crunched a chip loudly into his microphone.

“First off, moron, I wasn’t the one who tried to run off with our purses.”

The boys sneered. “Jerom doesn’t have a purse. Purses are for girls.”

“Oh I remember, because you guys all said I had to be the one to be carrying it all, like Sintheigha’s your goddamn pack mule.” She flipped off Bobby’s webcam, although since its back was to her, it was merely therapeutic ire, not functional. “But anyway, here we are. I’ve tried every skill I have training in, so if you have suggestions about how I can save your dipshit asses, I’m all ears.”

“What about a bribe?” Brent suggested.

“Did you sleep through the part where we had all our money stolen, fuckwit?”

“Where you  got all our money stolen,” Andy grumbled.

Brent nodded his agreement. “Sure, but maybe there’s something else we have that the jailer might want.”

“Like what? My flea-bitten hide armor? Jerom’s spell pouch full of bat shit and lizard eyes?”

“Well… I mean, there’s always…” His eyes avoided his own webcam. Even without being able to see her looking back at him, he was too much of a pussy to say it.

Cynthia stated flatly, “I am not  doing that.”

“Come on, it’s not like it costs you anything. It’s only a game.”

“Oh yeah? If it’s only a game, why don’t you have Skuf offer? C’mon, let’s all hear Skuf in his manly baritone beg this dirtbag for the opportunity to blow him in exchange for our freedom. The stuff of legends.”

“That’s not a trope, though,” he said sheepishly.

“Do it. Do it. Do it,” Andy began chanting.

“It’s a sexist trope!”

“Do it. Do it.”

“You don’t have to go down on him or anything. Sintheigha’s pretty hot – you could probably just… you know.”

“Do it. Do it.”

“I’d rather die in prison.”

“Do it. Do it.”

“C’mon, do you really want to have to take a whole ‘nother session to help us remake new characters because you got these ones killed?”

“Do it. Do it. Do it.”

Cynthia raised a clenched fist to punch Bobby’s TV screen where the fat prick’s face was giddily chanting, but stopped short.

Bobby finally spoke up. “C’mon, Cynthia, not like it’d be the first time today you used your body to get what you wanted, right?” He spun the camera to face her, giving Brent and Andy their first glimpses of the tank top she’d worn to the session. It was nothing special, but her boobs were big and the tank top was a cup size old. On the plus side, it stopped that idiotic chanting. On the down side, it was replaced by an obnoxious wolf whistle that, when it hit the microphone, nearly blasted their ears out. Bobby’s downstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling a moment after.

“Oh my god, shut up , Andy!”

“Sorry, just… dayum, gurrrrrl.”

“Ignore him, Cynthia,” Brent said, though even through the display on Bobby’s TV, it was obvious his eyes were directed at where her chest was on his screen. “I think you look really pretty.”

As if she cared whether these losers – or anyone anywhere, for that matter – thought she was pretty! She snatched the d4 and held it against her chest, at least partially disrupting their view. Only after Bobby set his webcam back in its original position, pointed at him, did she consider how pressing down on the girls like that only made them pop out her neckline more.

“Screenshotted that shit,” Andy boasted. Jokingly, she hoped. Was he seriously screenshotting a lukewarm-hotness pic of her cleavage?

“Anyway, so about the jailer. Come on, just have Sintheigha take one for the team, and all’s forgiven. Yeah? I want to get on with the game, and we haven’t even met Bobby’s party NPC yet.”

“Yeah. Don’t kill the game, Cyn.”

Like it or not, their arguments were working. If the game died in its infancy, they’d all blame her for it, rightly or not. She really didn’t want to handhold these idiots through another character creation session, and, she supposed, it was just words. Not like she actually had to show the DM anything.

“Fine. Sintheigha flashes the jailer. Happy?”

“Actually, let’s get back in character, OK everybody? This is a roleplaying game, after all, not a role describing game. So, before long, the jailer returns to your cell with the evening meal, a steaming bucket of green-brown slop. It looks and smells like it’s barely fit for the pigs. In fact, it looks like what’s left of this morning’s slop , and not enough left to even feed the three of you.”

Brent answered pensively, “Hopefully this won’t devolve into starvation checks, but how many meals, officially?”

“Fair. Let’s randomize it. Let’s call it… 1d4-1, minimum 1. Cynthia, you wanna do the honors?”

Finally.  An opportunity to roll her die. She inadvertently flashed Bobby a grateful smile before remembering what was coming next. The die seemed to sparkle subtly as it hit the table, lustrous and infinitely dark at the same time. It came up a 2.

“Right, so she rolled a 2, so that’s 1 meal. You can draw straws to see who–”

“Jerom eats it,” Andy declared.

“All right then, survival of the highest initiative,” Bobby said with a laugh. “Now, anything anyone wanted to say or do before he skulks  away again?”

Cynthia lunged across the table toward Bobby’s mouse he used to control the VTT program, conscious of the way it gave him a perfect view down her neckline. He took full advantage. Once it was in hand, she used it to drag Sintheigha’s bouncing, jiggling token towards the part of the jail map closest to the bars.

“Wanna see my tits?”

****************************************************************

“Well, Cynthia? How exactly did you save the day?”

“I flashed that prick, OK? Happy? Sintheigha’s a skank, ha ha ha.”

“Flashed the whole party, technically,” he pointed out. True, though she was only now internalizing it. They’d shared a cell, and after her prior attempt at assault, the jailer had denied her pleas to take her somewhere private for the show. In fact, she’d hoped to get the drop on him again, that the DM would be too busy imagining Sintheigha’s big blonde titties to remember to Sense  Motive. No such luck. “And let him feel you up.”

“Feel Sintheigha  up. What’s your point?”

“My point is, you lost your dignity, too.” He laughed at his own wordplay. It was playful in tone, but it cut anyway. “Sorry. The dice stay here.”

“I better get the rest next week, Bobby.”

“We’ll see. I’m still considering whether you've earned any.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. You better have one ready for me next time, or goodbye tank tops.” Wait, what had she just offered?

“I said, we’ll see. Now do you want me to walk you to your car?” he said, a portrait of the perfect gentleman.

“Get bent. See you next week.”

****************************************************************

You should quit,  the surly goth told herself on the drive home. Tell them they’re a bunch of neanderthals, and quit.

She pulled up to the red light on Jefferson, the same one where last week she’d sent her first half-hearted attempt at a portrait. (The woman had  looked a little dwarfy, she could admit.) (That wasn’t a bad thing, though.)

It was a slow light, stupid left turn arrows for nonexistent traffic, and she’d caught it at the worst time. The red of the light was a reflection of the malevolent red glare in her soul. Get out your phone. Call them right now, and quit.

Then her gaze pierced beyond the light, to the canopy of trees above it, rippling motes of street light drifting through the dark sea of leaves. Her eyes slid closed, and the pinpricks of light remained on the backs of her eyelids. A perfect, vivid dream of her beautiful d4. And it was hers, whatever Bobby said. Which one would he give her next week? Work up the chain low to high, or would he randomly–

HONK

The car behind her was flashing their headlights at her; the light had turned green while she was daydreaming. Die-dreaming, more like it.

Cynthia must have had that same losing debate a hundred times over the next few days. Brent sent a group message asking about a feat he’d found in a third party expansion book. Charming Assistant.  It doubled the Aid Another bonus received from ally’s Charisma-based skill checks if the ally could be construed as physically desirable to the target of the skill. In essence, he wanted to know if Sintheigha’s half-bared tits were worth an extra +2 on Diplomacy. Bobby said it sounded fun, and that he’d lower the requirement so he could take it at level 2.

Andy said boobies (yes, “ boobies” ) like Sintheigha’s should be worth at least +3, then got offended that she didn’t take it as a compliment.

Then she didn’t hear from them for a few days. It was quiet, at least externally. Inside, she was constantly grappling with whether her self-respect really sold so cheaply. Even her parents, long accustomed to their brooding daughter, went out of their way to ask if she was feeling well. She screeched at them to stay out of her business, which was usually pretty reliable for at least a few days’ peace.

There were still the dreams, though. Yes, Bobby was in them, too, but that had to be incidental. She’d never really thought of dice as a thing that could be sexy , yet there was no denying that something about them turned her on. Like they had been made for her, found their way to her, were courting her, tempting her, an inevitability. Or something. She tried not to think too hard about them or she got a little dizzy.

Whatever else happened in those dreams, though, she was always surrounded in a world made of her new dice. Infinite blackness surrounding her, filling her, expanding her so she needed more, reaching always at those distant points of light. Bobby made her get on her knees and beg for them; spanked her for trying to take them uninvited; walked away with them and left her crawling behind him; rode her like a horsie with her dice dangling from a string on a stick… Regardless, it wasn’t any of that waking Cynthia up with a puddle in her panties, jilling herself to completion before she even opened her eyes.

It was the dice.

Cynthia went through seventeen pairs of panties that week. She thought she saw her mom eye her askance after emptying the dryer of her daughter’s laundry, but neither of them were about to spark a conversation about it.

The d6 next week, no doubt? Of course it would be. She could pick up a shortsword, some javelins, up Sintheigha’s laughable DPS a bit. D6. A perfect little enumerated cube. Suddenly, squares were sexy. At one point, she even tried sucking her own six-sided die into her mouth, rolling her tongue around it while she played with herself. Hotter? Maybe? Probably not. Not enough to counteract how weird she felt about it afterward, anyway. For sure the most fucked up kink she’d ever developed, but harmless enough, she supposed.

****************************************************************

Bobby texted her on Thursday. Hey Cynthia! Hope you’re having a good week, slugger.

She received it during a smoke break, sitting on an upturned plastic crate by the dumpsters behind Arby’s. Only the cigarette in her hand slowed her from telling him to fuck off with his random chipper texts before receiving his follow-up.

So I hate to be the harbinger of ill tidings, but it looks like we’re not going to be playing this weekend.

On a normal day, back pre-covid when they’d gamed on the regular, it would have been irritating. It was one of the few parts of her weeks she looked forward to. Last week’s session notwithstanding, Bobby was a good DM, and those other idiots at least didn’t ruin it for her. Now, though, with the specter of her next die looming, she’d been fixated on it. She’d gotten a calendar and had been cutting slashes through the days with one of her knives, the one with the bone handle and the dark gray finish to the steel.

Wtf for? If one of them has shit going on or whatever then let’s just play without them. We still got quorum , she replied, perhaps a bit too eagerly. Or we could reschedule. We could do Friday, I get off at 10 and we could just do an all-nighter?  

Back in the day such late-night sessions had been commonplace, a bunch of high school kids staying up until five in the morning playing D&D in Bobby’s parents’ basement. Far more wholesome a pastime than whatever her parents assumed she was out doing, taking ecstasy at the cemetery or whatever. (Which she had done, but infrequently.) Her folks had given up on curfews, Brent’s and Andy’s didn’t know a girl was involved, and Bobby’s were those too-understanding douche nozzles who’d let him host keggers if he felt like it so they wouldn’t be doing it elsewhere. Better he play games in their basement with the weird goth girl with her smoky makeup and smoking body than go fuck her in the back of a car somewhere and let her become the mother of their grandchildren. As if that were on the table. The way his parents smiled at her face and directed wary looks at her back had spoken their anxieties clearly, though.

She respected people listening to their fears. Better yet, it meant they incentivized the activity with free sodas and pizza.

Eventually, she’d brought those late-night sessions to an end. Too often it left her too tired (or, when Bobby’s parents were being a little cooler than usual, too tipsy) to drive home, and sleeping around these three horny geeks didn’t sit right with her. She’d woken up more than once to find Brent staring at her, and she’d put money down that Andy had taken pictures.

For another die, though…

Bobby took his sweet time replying, and when the block of text appeared, she saw why.

This isn’t easy to say, so I’ll just come out and say it. The guys don’t feel comfortable gaming with you. I know, I know, and I don’t think they mean anything hurtful by it. They just think, and I don’t totally blame them I guess?, that you can sometimes be a little… abrasive? It’s your personality I know, so it’s not a judgement, just an observation. Please don’t be mad.

Cynthia read with building rage at his craven attempts to soft pedal his accusation. Since when am I too fucking abrasive Bobby?! You tell those shriveled nut sacks to say that bullshit to my fucking face , she wrote.

Bobby’s reply was quite simply , ^^ , and nothing else.

OK fine, so I’m abrasive or whatever, but it never bothered them before!

I don’t know what to say, hon. I’m just relaying our conversation. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear. I’m sorry.

Well you and I can still play, right?  she pressed. God, what was she even asking for? A solo game? She’d definitely have to make a new character. Surely she could get away with something less skanky for her next portrait. It was probably going to mean a lot more idle RP and less dungeon crawling, but she could tolerate that so long as–

Actually the guys and I are still planning on playing…

Her ciggie tumbled from her fingertips. Those miserable sons of bitches were dropping her  from the group?! She was the one who’d gotten the ball rolling to get them back together! She was the one who’d held their hands through creating their stupid characters, who’d endured their teasing about Sintheigha’s slutty portrait, who’d used her tits to get them out of the dungeons! Her! And these pencil-dick pricks had the nerve to evict her from the group?!

How mother fucking DARE you Bobby. This is SO not ok. You cut me out and I will make every one of you fucking pay for it. I have more knives than you would believe. They’re goddamn sharp. I didn’t put with five years of creepy looks and shitty flirting from you fucktards just to be the odd woman out and I swear to Satan herself that heads will fucking roll, understand? And yes I am being literal. There will be fucking blood!

That was her first draft. It was therapeutic to type. Less so to delete.

Instead she sent, OK, fine, I promise to be chill, all right?

It’s not my call to make, hon.  Again with the “hon.” If he kept that shit up, she’d show his ass how abrasive she could be. The guys said they’d have more fun this way. I really am sorry.

“Yo Cynthia! You  here to play Fruit Ninja all day or are you here to work?” yelled Doug from the back door.

“Chill out, I’m coming,” she barked back, then stuffed her phone in her pocket. She pushed Charlie out of the way and took hold of the meat slicer and went to town on it. Every sliver was Brent and Andy.

Unfortunately, taking out her rage on cow slabs wasn’t going to get her back in the group. A few hours later she was home from work, had most of the scent of curly fry grease rinsed out of her hair, and had taken a few minutes to get herself off. Tonight it had been with her d6 in her pussy. It had turned out to be a really bad idea irrespective of how hard she came. Slippery little fucker. It had come out, thank god, sparing her the most embarrassing emergency room visit imaginable, but it hadn’t come easy.

(She had.)

Cynthia prepared a video chat invite, took a deep breath, and pressed send.

Brent answered first, his hair mussed and eyes looking tired. The background looked to be his dorm room, from what she remembered seeing on the zoom call at Bobby’s during their sessions. “Cynthia? Um, what’s going on?”

Andy chimed in a moment later, a deafening burst of noise accompanying him. The phone was unsteady on his ruddy, sweaty face. “ Evenin’  bitches!” he called out, scarcely audible despite his bellowing it.

Cynthia gritted her teeth. “Hi, Andy. Can you get somewhere we can actually hear you?” Brent nodded irritably as well, hopefully taking some of the edge off of her implied rebuke.

“Oh, sure. Man, shit’s wild in here tonight. Our boys stuck it to Ohio State tonight, last minute shot in OT, baby! Wooooo!” A chorus of woo’s went up from the other folks in what seemed to be some kind of campus bar. Brent and Cynthia waited for him to make his way to the restroom, and the noise was finally tolerable.

“Evenin’, bitches,” he repeated.

“Yeah, hi. So I heard from Bobby today, and… what the hell, you guys? You really asked him to kick me out of the group?” There. Better to dive in than faff around.

Brent grimaced. Andy, however… “Oh shit, he gave you the boot, huh? Man, he said he’d think about it, but we both said there was no fucking way he’d actually do it with that huge-ass crush he has. Used to have, I mean. Man, didn’t know the boy had it in him! Bwahaha!” His jeering laughter echoed in the bathroom.

So it had been Bobby, had it? Some crush, kicking her to the curb. Typical of that little bitch to blame it on his fellow morons, though. Nevertheless, there was no way he was going to reverse his decision without their encouragement. Onward. “Seriously though, what gives? I thought we were friends.”

“Friends? I thought we were just ‘gaming buddies,’” Brent said, a bit of heat in his voice. “Yeah, Bobby told us. You know, we put up with a lot of shit from you Cynthia. The teasing, the mean comments. Getting away to school and making a new social circle for myself, I finally realized I don’t deserve to be treated like that. Then I let you drag me back into this gaming thing, and you won’t even appear on camera.”

She rolled her eyes at his description of his amazing new group of dorks he’d assembled. Probably a whole two of them. “So what?”

“So, it’s like you can see us, but we can’t see you, like you’re this disembodied snark. Like we’re props in your  game. It’s just… hurtful.”

Cynthia frowned. She’d eschewed Bobby’s request to bring her own camera and join the zoom because of bullshit like Andy and his screenshot stunt from last week, not to hurt their feelings. “I hadn’t meant it like that. Fine. You want me to bring a cam, I’ll bring a cam. OK?”

“And maybe try not making fun of us all the time,” Brent pressed. “Acting like we’re stupid because we don’t know every single game rule. Telling us what actions to take. We’re not the ones who made a fighter and gave her a dagger and hide armor.”

She wanted to protest that Bobby had made her, but… maybe he hadn’t? Hadn’t made her use the dagger, certainly. The hide armor, that was the closest thing to her portrait other than giving up and writing “skimpy bikini” in her armor slot. It wasn’t clear. “Fine. I’ll be nice. OK?”

Andy snorted. “Yeah, you’ll just completely reinvent your whole personality in the next forty-eight hours. Are we supposed to swallow that?”

“You can’t throw me out and not even give me a chance to do better. That’s not fair.” Fuck, how Cynthia hated hearing people whine about what was fair. The customer aggrieved she wouldn’t accept an expired coupon. The prick at the car wash who threw a fit when the wash wouldn’t buff out what was obviously a chip in the paint. Her dad, existentially pissed off about his lesbian daughter because he was too dense to know the difference between a goth and a dyke.

She heard a sound. Was that… “Holy fuck, Andy, are you actually going to the bathroom right now?!”

He grinned as another disgusting noise sounded through her phone. “You called me, Cyn.” Even Brent made a face at that. “So hey, I tell  you what. You want back  in, it’s gonna be conditional. The cam. Not being such a bitch. Anything else from you, Brent?”

“I mean, I don’t even think she can actually do those things, so…”

“All right, so let me. You want back in? Well I want you to wear something hot.”

Cynthia gaped. “What the fuck did you say?”

“I said, wear. Something.” He paused, and it took her until the grunt before she realized his pauses weren’t rhetorical, but something else. Ugh, this was repulsive. “Hot. You wanna play, I want boobies.”

“I’m not going to play topless!”

“Did I say topless? I said hot. And while you’re at it, smile.”

There was another voice, this one from Brent’s feed. “Who’s that, B? She’s kinda hot, for an emo chick.” His roommate probably.

“First off, rando hiding in Brent’s closet, I’m goth, not emo, fuck you. Second off, fuck you. And for you two dickheads… you’re insane. You want me to show up in a halter top and grin like an idiot for six hours? Have you met me?”

“Not for six hours. Any time you say something bitchy, you gotta smile for us. I know it hurts that frozen bitch face of yours, so that’s your penance to keep your mind right.”

Now Brent was grinning, too. “Yeah. If you say something mean, you have to smile for us. And apologize.”

Her body trembled in outrage. These pigs thought they could tell her how to dress? How to talk? They thought they could make her smile on command?! Maybe she should go back to knife threats.

A robust rumble of flatulence called her back to the phone. Andy smirked. “Come on. Give us a trial, now. Show us you can smile and be polite.”

“You’re practically shitting in my ear and you want me to…!”

“Sure, sorry, have a nice life,” he said. His phone lowered as if in preparation to hang up.

The d6 on her nightstand glistened with her cum in the edges of her vision.

“Wait wait wait!” she shouted. The phone returned to his face, smirk  broader than ever. Brent watched mistrustfully. “OK, fine. I can be nice.”

When Cynthia was little, before she’d formalized her divorce from traditional feminine expectations and embraced goth, she’d still hated having to be sweet, demure, polite. School picture day was the worst. She had been a pretty little blonde girl, and her grandparents wanted bright, smiley photos of their pretty little blonde granddaughter. Her mother had threatened her with everything she could think of, more extreme by the year, to make her comply with those photos. When the threats failed in fifth grade, succumbing to a photo of her glowering at the camera like it had wronged her in another life, then came the bribes. She scored a new bike in sixth grade, $40 in seventh, and in eighth, she’d worn a solid black t-shirt, a metal-studded choker she’d borrowed from Evan, black lipstick and enough eyeshadow to dim the sun.

Cynthia reached back to seventh grade. Grandma Judith had really liked that picture.

One side of her face complied before the other, but it got there. “I promise to be on my best behavior. All right?” A smile this broad, her eyelashes were pleading to be batted.

“I guess,” Brent said skeptically. “Andy?”

His flush drowned out the first few words of his reply. “… long as she wears something worth looking at.”

“Yo. Third person much? I’m right here.” The smile almost, but not quite, slipped.

“OK. But you better not disappoint.”

“And you’ll tell Bobby?”

“You want Bobby to change his mind, you gotta talk to Bobby,” Brent answered. “Now I got to get  back to studying. See you Saturday.”

“Man, she really is a bitch,” said his roommate just before he hung up.

Andy was walking back out to the bar – without washing his hands, she noted – and she hung up a smidge too late to miss a fresh round of woo’s.

After a moment, she reminded herself that the call was over and she didn’t have to keep smiling.

****************************************************************

Cynthia never called Bobby. Her pride had barely survived that first call; it wouldn’t last another, not after bending however low it took to get underneath that veneer of chummy graciousness he wielded against her. She’d tackle this one face to face at the door.

Her webcam fit inside her dice bag. She could have brought her laptop, the one she’d stolen from the high school a few years back, but didn’t want to obscure her view of the table, and regardless of her passion for gaming, it remained a distraction. Besides, she’d nearly tripped over all of the cords for Bobby’s stuff when she’d gotten up to snag a beer from his fridge last week, so who knew if he’d even have an outlet. So she’d gone out and blown a day of Arby’s wages on a new one, a little wireless thing, bluetooth and all. A great investment if she ever wanted to sneak the thing into the restaurant and catch her boss violating health codes. Health codes meant fuck-all to her – she didn’t eat that garbage – but it left the door open for blackmailing Doug. Something to consider another day.

Cynthia took a moment to look herself   over one  last time, then knocked on the door. Usually Bobby had to buzz her into the building, but she’d mashed every button but his instead until somebody let her in. This would go smoother if he could see her instead of bickering over an intercom on the doorstep. Time to cash in on that crush.

The door opened, and a sheepish-looking Bobby answered. Cynthia had braced herself for that sheep to turn wolf, but somehow the boy took her presentation in stride. “Can I come in…?”

He did not stand aside, however. What an asshole. Cynthia knew full well that she looked killer. Her top was a black leather vest, liberally decorated with silvery metal. Zippers, dangling rings, straps with fasteners that didn’t really do anything, studs along the straps over her shoulders (which were actually pretty uncomfortable, but nobody bought a top like this and expected comfort). The two sides were held together by a stretchy mesh screen. It clung to the swell of her breasts in the middle, the dots of pale skin drawing the eyes like magnets.

Beneath six inches of exposed, alabaster midriff were a pair of matching pants, tight black leather with the same sorts of adornments on them. The zippers here were actually functional, if useless, and she’d left a few unzipped, her thighs and hips peeking here and there. It wasn’t easy to walk up stairs in them, the pant legs clinging to her thighs like this. The boots were her usual clunky black combat boots, but she doubted they’d bother looking down that far.

Hair and makeup had taken extra attention today, too. A flat iron had done most of the work for her hair, jet black and now straight as an arrow, tickling her exposed shoulders with every turn of her head. Her favorite lipstick, one she seldom used because it was so hard to get her hands on more of it. Black blaze,  the color was called. It was ink black, but even before the addition of a layer of gloss, it gleamed in the faintest light. Her eyeliner went out to points at each side, and she’d added a heavy amount of blush to her cheeks. (Better to do it artificially than simply let them see her actually blushing.) All the piercings in her ears were filled with silver studs except for the two big hoops, a narrow crescent moon filling a small bit of the space within. Her nose piercing held a tiny, glistening point of silver. For all she knew, today would be the first these  boys learned about her belly button piercing, which today was a black stone that stood out beautifully in her pale tummy.

It was too heavy-handed by far, more a costume than an outfit, but it was undeniably sexy. She dared those bastards to say otherwise. This, she’d bought for concerts and such when she was out among strangers and wanted to strut, confident that if she was a bit much, at least she wouldn’t be the most over-the-top goth girl present. Somehow wearing this felt less degrading than letting them leer at her in clothes she actually wore when she was simply being a person.

A little less.

One week. She’d do this today, play nice, and then things could go back to normal when she showed them they were all gaming buddies and this was simply a hiccup in an otherwise smooth relationship. Then back to hoodies and jeans and cursing and scowling as she liked.

As for today, that Bobby regarded her as if she’d showed up in her normal attire was… strange.

“Cynthia, we talked about this. I appreciate how it must feel for you, really I do, but it’s been decided.”

Been decided , he said, as if he weren’t the decider. She could play along, though. Let me him keep  his delusion of being a servant of the people carrying out their will. “It’s cool. I talked to Brent and Andy and they said it was fine. I heard them out, made some concessions, and they said I could come.” Cynthia heard herself, heard how she sounded like a child trying to convince Mommy and Daddy that her nappy time meant she could stay up an hour past beddy bye. Best not to think of the switchblade in her boot sheathe.

“Concessions?” Finally, his eyes flickered down to her outfit. “Hmm. They didn’t say anything to me about it. You do look… nice, by the way.”

She flipped her hair over her shoulder. It flowed immediately back into place. “Yeah. I know.”

Rather than let her in, though, he turned toward the portion of the studio apartment designated “the living room” (as it had a sofa and not a futon, like the “bedroom”). She couldn’t see in, but he seemed to be looking to the  TV.

“Hey. Are you guys OK with Cynthia joining us? She says you said you were.”

Brent’s voice, filtered through Bobby’s secondhand TV, answered in a thoroughly apathetic affirmative. Andy’s had more pep. “Is she there? Let her in! I wanna see her. Is she hot? She better look hot.”

Bobby shook his head reprovingly, but with a smile. “Looks like you’re in.”

As the DM continued getting himself set up, clearing Cynthia’s space at the table opposite his, she took her time setting up. Placing the camera, checking the feed to make sure the angle was right, opening the blinds for better lighting, getting everything situated. Behind her, the live feed from Brent and Andy played on the TV. Brent looked sort of bored; Andy was practically salivating as he waited. She tried to ignore the running commentary.

“Come on, Cynthia. Sign on in. Show us them pearly whites, girl,” he taunted.

She joined the zoom . Standing, arms splayed to display the goods. And yes, with her teeth clenched fit to chew gravel, she smiled. “So? How did I do?” she managed, allowing only a little arrogance enter  her tone.

Brent went wide-eyed; Andy literally dropped the chip he’d been guiding to his fat face. “Holy shitballs, Cyn, that’s so hot! I figured you’d, like, do a low-cut t-shirt or something, maybe just something tight.” That  had been an acceptable option? Goddammit! “But fuck! That’s full-on fetish shit! Did you buy that shit just for this?”

“No, I had it in my closet,” she answered. Good. So far, playing out better than she’d hoped. Standing had been the right move. Smarter to give it up first thing than  have to put up with Andy seeing how hot she looked sitting at the table and demanding she amuse him by standing and doing a twirl.

Oh, right. Cynthia twirled, glaring daggers at the far wall when someone (almost certainly Andy) whistled at her round ass in tight pants. The undone zipper right under her left butt cheek probably didn’t help. Could they see her panty lines? Hopefully not. The smile flashed back as her face turned to the lens, though.

“So is this good? You guys wanna tell Bobby to chill?”

“Chill all the way the fuck out, Bobbo,” Andy said, nodding.

“You still have to apologize if you’re mean,” Brent muttered, but he looked more reconciliatory than he had. She noted that he hadn’t reiterated the expectation of niceness, but rather of making amends for when she wasn’t. Clear what the little fucker really wanted. Groveling.

“Looks like you’re back in!” Bobby announced with a broad grin as he took his place across from her. Cynthia managed an excited whoop and took her own place, readjusting the camera for her seated position.

“Aim your cam a little lower, eh?” Andy requested. “I can barely see ‘em.”

Her sense of having cleared the obstacle vanished. “You said I had to wear something hot, and I did. You didn’t say I was live-streaming my cleavage to you the whole session.”

Brent arched an eyebrow. “It was sort of implied, though, wasn’t it?”

“Bobby, tell Cynthia she can’t play if she’s not going to honor the agreement!”

Bobby squeezed his forehead. “You guys, we can’t have a fun play environment if you’re gonna be squabbling over side issues the whole time. Cynthia, can you just tip it down a little and let us get on with things?”

“Wait, you’re on his  side?” Then again, how could that be surprising after the way he’d pressured her into picking Sintheigha’s avatar last week.

He switched off his mic for a moment. “I’m not on anybody’s side. I just wanna play, and Andy’s going to kick up way more fuss over it than you, so this is the fastest way to do it. OK?”

“I heard that!” Andy yelled.

Brent added, “One of you really needs to adjust your noise filtration if you’re going to sit in the same room.”

Bobby was still looking at her expectantly, though. She drummed her fingers a few times. “I do this, and I get my die for the week, yeah?”

The boy stroked his stubbly chin a few times. Was he really going to deny her? He’d gotten those for her! It cost him nothing to let her hold onto them! He couldn’t seriously mean to withhold–

Cynthia lowered the webcam. It was a little too close to her, giving one the sort of view they might have if they were eating her pussy and came up for air, gazing up at her face through two heaping mounds of titty. “Please, Bobby?” The smile returned.

He tapped his lip pensively. “You know, you look pretty when you smile, Cynthia. If you think you can keep it up, then… sure, I guess so. I mean why not, right?”

Her heart froze in her chest as she waited. She’d seen the case the moment she’d entered the apartment, almost sensed it before her eyes even detected it. It was sitting atop his bookshelf, between a stack of junk mail and an old pizza box. Like it was trash. It was blasphemy. She silently praised herself for all she’d done to liberate those incredible dice from such ignoble handling.

Bobby deposited the d4 from last week. She snatched it up immediately, like a piece of her had been returned. God, maybe she could sneak off to the bathroom with it later, be quick and quiet about it. She looked up, waiting for the d6.

Instead, a decahedron clattered to the table before her, bouncing off her left boob and back a few inches toward the camera. “The d10?” The die she’d needed for her old weapon, the good one. The one she’d scrapped all the feats for, turning her character into a worthless wimp.

“Hell yeah, those D’s are a perfect ten in my book,” interjected Andy.

“Actually,” Bobby corrected patiently, “it’s the d100. So you can use that with one of your normal d10’s for percentile rolls.”

“I know how dice rolling works, thanks,” she snapped, seizing it. There they were, the numbers 0-9, each with a zero after them. Then she looked up. All three of the boys were fixing her with wounded stares. Fuck. Three seconds in and she’d already screwed up.

From somewhere inside her, somewhere deep, deep down, right at the level where she’d buried that sweet little blonde girl her grandmother had so adored, her spiritual auger drilled into a reserve of honey. She poured every ounce of it into her voice. It probably sounded sarcastic, but she’d have to learn that. How to ingratiate without being a twat about it was apparently a skill.

“I’m so sorry, Bobby. I love it. It’s beautiful. I’m so grateful.” She squeezed her tits together with her biceps, clasping her hands pleadingly. “Forgive me?”

The smile. So bright it was practically lightening her hair.

Bobby reached out and casually slapped the back of her hand. The die fell from it. She dove for it, clutching it to her chest and mentally reassuring it that she would never let it fall to the floor. “Now don’t let it happen again, OK?” He laughed, but she didn’t feel it. “Now, where were we.  I believe Sintheigha had  just gotten you out of jail.”

“Next week you should dress like Sintheigha, Cyn!” Andy hooted.

“What, you mean topless?” Brent laughed.

“Guys, be nice. She only did what she felt she had to,” Bobby went on. Cynthia barely heard them. She was too busy smiling and keeping her boobs in frame.

Chapter Three

“No way, Cynthia.”

“Come on, Dominic. I’m desperate. Do you think I’d be asking someone like you if I wasn’t desperate?”

The Friendly’s bus boy shook his head and wiped his table faster, eager to escape the awkward confrontation. “I don’t care if you’re desperate. I’m not going to get my hands dirty for a – pardon my French – bitch I barely knew in high school.”

Knew me well enough I’m a bitch , she thought. Though not well enough to know I wear it as a badge of honor.  Before she could gut punch him, though, she remembered. Smile. Apologize.  It had worked on those neanderthals last Saturday (OK, it had mostly  worked), and it could work here. It had to. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer to you in high school, OK? I really am. I’m trying to change here. Can’t you see that I’m trying to change?” Was this what that was supposed to sound like? She felt like she’d seen pleading in a horror movie or two, though there they were usually screaming.

Dominic finally paused his wipe down, glancing to the register to see if his manager was watching. She was, though from the curious smile on her face, her concern wasn’t her employee socializing during work hours but rather why this beautiful stranger was clasping her dumpy dishwasher’s forearm needily.

“Look, maybe you are. Still, I’m not gonna spy on Bobby for you. It’s… weird. Whatever drama you all have going on is between you two. He and I barely hang out any more. Why don’t you ask Frank or Evelyn? They were in cheerleading with him. I’m pretty sure that crowd is still in touch.”

The truth was that Cynthia knew full well that they were. She’d been in Bobby’s apartment when that meathead asshole and the anorexic insult to womanhood texted him, and it wasn’t infrequent. Still, she had no leverage over the beautiful people. Frank had fucked his share of girls as hot as Cynthia, and Evelyn was utterly contemptuous of her goth classmate for her refusal to join her in dressing like a baby hooker who catered exclusively to stepdads. Same for the rest of that crowd, in one respect or another.

Now, somebody like Dominic, somebody who looked at her and saw, in addition to whatever else, a hottie the likes of which he’d spend his whole pathetic life jerking off wishing he could press his earthworm lips to… That was something she could use.

“But you could, right? Just call him up, bring up some old memory from one of your dork clubs you were in together or something, ask him if he wants to hang out.” Cynthia winced inwardly, but thought of a quick cover. “As a fellow dork, I’m begging you, Dominic. Do this for me?” She rubbed one hand up and down the length of his forearm. Was he starting to sweat just from being touched on the arm? Gross.

He wrinkled his nose. “But like… you guys have been friends since forever. Why can’t you just go talk to him yourself?” Something in his eyes, however, told her that Dominic knew Bobby had long wanted her to be more than a friend, a fact which was no doubt compounding his confusion.

“We had a fight. I can make it up to him–” I have to make it up to him!  “–but I need to know when and where to find him. That’s all I’m asking. Talk to him, find out when they’re gaming again, and let me know so I can make it up to him. Them. Him.”

“What’d you do?” Dominic asked, moving to another table and trying to ignore the probing look from the woman at the register.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it must have been something big if he won’t even talk to you. And if you…” He looked her over, as if her appearance could only be explained as an apology to male kind. He wasn’t entirely wrong, though the apology was only a means to an end.

“It’s not important.”

Dominic frowned. “If you’re not going to be straight with me, then never mind.”

“No!” She’d already been rebuffed by two of Bobby’s old non-cool-kid friends, one of whom hadn’t even spoken to him since graduation. She’d already had one of Bobby’s neighbors call the cops on her for staking out his apartment to ambush him. The fucking pigs had found her weed in the car, so now there was a court date on the horizon to see if she got jail time or just a bullshit fine. Plus her parents had had  to come bail her out.  Grounded! Twenty-one years old, and grounded!

Luckily, her parents were too afraid to knock on her door and underestimated her willingness to jump off the roof of the garage, conveniently accessible from her window.

“It’s kind of a story, though, so I’ll give you the Sparknotes version. So–”

But Dominic shook his head. “Tell you what. My shift is over in about an hour and a half. Why don’t you meet me here then, and we can talk about it… over a date?”

Oh boy. This would be the most delicious rejection of her life. The smile on his broad face was too pitiful. Even Dominic didn’t expect her to agree to it, but the glimmer of hope was there just waiting for her to knock it into a bottomless pit with a full force blast of bitchcraft. “Sorry, I don’t date guys that far  out on the spectrum,” she said.

Almost. She wanted  to say it, that was for damn sure.

“Oh, I wish I could but I have a strict two-titty maximum on dates, and you’d put us four over” came a close second.

“Well… sure. Why not? One date,” she actually said out loud. Somehow, she even smiled. It was like there was a permanent after-image of her new d% burned into the insides of her eyelids. It made smiling come easier than it normally did. Which, according to Andy, made him  come easier than he  normally did. Perverted fucking prick.

In case there had been any doubt he’d been expecting a rejection, his eyes widened as big around as the coffee saucers in his gray plastic dish bin. “Um, cool. Then, uh, yeah. See you then.”

Cynthia said nothing as she departed. She had nothing kind to say, and any rejoinder she might have issued would not have only been self-defeating, but furthermore the not-so-sly thumb’s up Dominic’s manager was giving him half-behind the register embarrassed her beyond the capacity for speech.

Ninety minutes later, Cynthia returned, wearing a pale pink top with a deep V-neck, strappy sandals, and a pair of tan shorts that were much shorter than anything she’d worn in public in years. She blushed as Dominic pointed out that the tag was still on her top, and again after he walked her to her car when he repeated himself for her shorts, peeling the sticker off her ass and pinching her in the process. On accident, he swore, and he might have even meant it. Still, she smiled. And still, she hated him.

Over dinner, she gave him the story of why it was she  needed his intercession. Cynthia wasn’t sure if he’d been paying attention to her story or simply staring at her boobs. So long as he did his part, she didn’t care which. She’d told it, like she promised. No apology needed. Only bright smiles on her freshly whitened teeth.

****************************************************************

“My name is Bregan,” her rescuer said after helping Sintheigha to her feet. “You might consider wearing proper armor if you’re going to be traveling in the Webwood .”

“I would have had things perfectly well in hand if I weren’t wielding a stupid dagger,” she grumbled in reply. Cynthia hoped the requirement to smile didn’t include times like these when she was role-playing frustration.

“Another excellent consideration,” Bobby answered, using a rather deep Irish brogue for Bregan. His (her) tone was as condescending as it had been in the criticism about the armor, though.

Bobby actually did voices pretty well. She filed the thought away in case she needed a compliment later as part of an apology. She’d made so many that afternoon that a simple “I’m sorry” no longer cut it. Yelling at Andy for making a cunnilingus face; griping that Brent was using a spell from an unapproved compendium; being reprimanded by Bobby for using her gorgeous new d% to make a decision at random one too many times. For “unladylike language,” which Andy had laughingly accused her of, but Bobby had backed him, and so followed the apology and a whole lot of choking down so-called obscenities since.

“Wait, zoom in on Reagan,” Andy demanded over the voice chat.

“It’s Bregan, I think,” Brent corrected.

“Who the fuck ever. I can barely see the token and you have the zoom locked, Bobby.”

Bobby complied, unpausing the combat field and narrowing the focus in the VTT. The hobgoblins’ portraits, which she had thought looked like mash potatoes during the fight, became recognizable, and the gore spatters the DM had employed as each fell did as well. The production values were admittedly impressive. She’d say so next time she needed an apology for Bobby.

As Bregan’s round icon enlarged, however, Cynthia was the only player who didn’t seem surprised. She’d recognized it immediately, since Bobby’s TV was a lot larger of a screen than Brent’s or Andy’s computer monitors. When she did, she had choked down an apoplectic rant. “Holy shit! Is that the ugly dwarf bitch Cyn tried to use first go  around?”

Brent nodded, no less caught off-guard. “You know, I think you’re right. Was that a coincidence, her choosing the pic you’d set for your party NPC?”

As Bobby shook his head, Andy spoke over him. “Wait, this is the party NPC?”

“Obviously, man. She totally saved Sintheigha’s shapely little ass. You were what, three rounds from bleeding out?”

“Two,” Cynthia answered glumly. Not that either of you assholes even tried to come over and stabilize me , she thought to herself. Outbursts like that had to be kept to herself. Ugh, it was getting to the point that every ounce of swallowed vitriol was reminding her she needed to smile more, a confusing and infuriating feedback loop.

“See? Easy in, saving Princess Perkytits there. You know how she loses her shit when her character dies.”

“Let’s get back in character,” Bobby interjected, then shifted to Bregan’s voice. It sounded a bit masculine, leaning into that whole fat chicks have deep voices stereotype. Not that she was fat. “What brings the three of you so far afield? Was the city getting so peaceful that you had to seek out trouble here in the wild?”

“We were looking for a group of hobgoblins who ambushed and kidnapped the mistress of Lord Koltron,” she explained in Sintheigha’s voice. Unlike the DM, players didn’t need to bother with accents and vocal acrobatics to distinguish themselves, but she had found herself talking in a higher pitch when speaking as Sintheigha. With that bouncing, jiggling avatar hovering before her on the screen, it was hard not to. “Have you seen them?”

“Unfortunately, the closest thing to a noble in this encampment was the brother of the Warbringer Mokvinorg  over there.” Bobby spun the avatar so the woman’s homely blonde face tilted towards one of the nearby blood stains, his way of pointing.

They’d heard one of their fellow prisoners in the dungeon ranting about the might of this Mokvinorg . Evidently a nemesis was emerging. So the party exchanged information with Bregan and made introductions. Bregan professed to be a cleric of Ureus, god of peace, guided here by a vision from her god that foretold great strife without the Merciful One’s intercession. Satisfied that a healer would come in useful, though not exactly thrilled to be “saddled with this fugly peacenik,” as Andy put it (a point with which she actually agreed), the boys welcomed Bregan to the group.

Nobody consulted Sintheigha. Who smiled at the pronouncement.

At Bobby’s encouragement, Brent as Skuf and Andy as Jerom explained their skill sets to the newcomer, mostly the DM’s way of making sure they understood their abilities. It was a clever way of quizzing them, even Cynthia granted. When it came her turn, however…

“So, you must be their concubine or the like then, I take it?” Bregan asked casually, as if there were no way her words could be taken as an insult. Or as if to virtue signal at how she could find no fault with a non-traditional party arrangement such as that.

“I’m a goddamn fighter, asshole,” she retorted with a snarl.

“Whoa, language!”

“And that is definitely  not a smile.”

Cynthia was actually disgusted with herself for the ease with which the contrite took control of her face this time. Pavlov’s fucking dog with that by now. “I’m sorry, guys. It just felt like the new guy was hazing me or something. And by the way, Bobby, I love  the production val–”

“She’s still doing it,” Brent complained over her. “I told you her promise wouldn’t mean anything. At this point we’re wasting more time listening to her apologize than playing!”

“I’ll do better!” she swore. Worse, she meant it. Her cheeks already burned like a Walmart greeter doing overtime, but she could do better. Sintheigha would just have to pretend to be happy, quietly, same as her player.

“Bullshit. I say, next time she crosses the line, she has to show us her tits. Or I’m done.”

Brent’s image showed him frowning skeptically at some point on his own monitor back in his dorm room. “Come on, dude, don’t make it weird. She’s never gonna flash you no matter what you threaten her with.”

The two quibbled back and forth. Andy seemed to feel that as fixated on her dice as she’d been all session, she owed them something pretty to look at all their  own; Brent insisted it was an uphill battle they’d never win and therefore not worth fighting.

Neither of them bothered to consult her.

It was Bobby, though, who made the final call. “Cynthia, how about next time you have a problem, you roll a percentage. 01 to 50, you give Andy what he wants–”

“Oh, well then I think I want a nice sloppy–”

“Meaning show him your boobs, 51 to 00 you don’t. Sound  fair?”

She gestured to her tight leather outfit. “Do you have any idea how hard this is to take on and off?”

“Oh come on, fifty fifty? At least go sixty forty,” whined Andy.

“Shit, go eighty twenty. I’m so bored of all these distractions, and embarrassing her might be the only thing that’ll teach her anything.”

Cynthia shook her head, but took care to keep the smile in place. “No! Fifty fifty is fine,” she insisted. Only after she said it did she realize what she’d agreed to.

Bobby merely nodded, however, and continued the scene. “It’s sweet of you fellas to let your friend here practice her knife play. Still, I worry what might become of a summer rose like her, tended only by the rough hands of two ruffians like yourselves. Perhaps it’s for the best I  come along, help  you preserve such a delicate  beauty. Eh?”

And so Bregan joined the party. Cynthia smiled. She had no choice.

That hadn’t been why she needed Dominic, though. But it had all followed from there. Her violent hatred of the party NPC, walking around in the non-humiliating portrait Cynthia had picked out for herself, treating her like she was some half-witted princess forged out of glass. Worse, Sintheigha’s own stupidly sub-optimal build necessitating Bregan’s healing time and again. It was the only thing keeping her character going through the hobgoblin’s camp and ensuing dungeon crawl into the caverns pursuing Mokvinorg . With her Armor Class well within reach of even the weakest minion and her damage from that pathetic dagger totally inadequate.

In one hobgoblin tent, they found a magical bastard sword, +1 and with the frost enhancement! It was an incredible find for their level, far beyond anything a first level party ought to have. As a fighter, Sintheigha was the only one proficient in it, too; had she not respecced  to focus on knife fighting, it would have been the perfect weapon, one to last her the next seven or eight levels easily.

And yet… it dealt 1d10 damage. Not 1d4. (Plus Bobby insisted that she was not allowed to use the d%, with its 0’s after the numbers 1-10, even though it was the exact same number range.) So, in a small voice, she told the party she would rather use her daggers, so she could keep on using her perfect d4. There was no alternative.

Brent and Andy had been beside themselves. Not only were they being forced to pick up her slack, but now they’d been given a gift from the gods, and Cynthia turned it down to play with her sparkly new die. She apologized; she flashed her teeth until her cheeks hurt; she even flexed her cleavage together and nudged the camera to zoom in on her tits a little closer.

She was not forgiven. There was actually a moment of regret when the d% roll came up 85, letting her out of flashing her tits to the camera. That might have gotten her out of it.

In case there was any doubt about the boys’ bitterness, this was made evident when they walked into Mokvinorg’s  trap, his remaining forces surrounding their party with over a dozen of his warriors. Instead of killing them, however, he recognized his depleted forces and offered a bargain. He knew where Lord Koltron’s missing mistress was being held; turns out, the goblin king had a taste for human women. (Brent speculated on the physics of such a coupling, and Andy snotted root beer out his nose laughing. She managed to smile through his question about whether Cynthia thought a goblin would be tall enough to fuck her and suck on her nipples a the same time.) In any case, given his liege’s proclivities, Mokvinorg  was willing to betray his fellow henchman, the one holding the woman they sought, in exchange for an offering to the goblin king of his own.

Sintheigha.

“Time to roll initiative then, you wart-faced fuck,” Cynthia snarled. Sort of. It was hard to snarl in character while beaming out of character.

“Now hold on,” Andy said quickly.

“Yeah, hold up.”

Cynthia blinked. “Uh, what?”

But Andy replied to Mokvinorg . “This is some pretty prime specimen  of human female . If we hand her over, we want more than just your assurances.”

“I am NOT–”

“A guide, for one,” Brent interjected. “Without her, we don’t have anybody trained in Survival and we’d probably wind up lost.”

“Done,” agreed Mokvinorg .

“But–”

“Five thousand gold,” Andy demanded.

Cynthia listened in horror as the boys were slowly bartered down to two thousand. Twenty-five hundred, actually, but then she protested yet again, Andy rolled his eyes and gave the hobgoblin a discount with a giggle.

Brent remembered they were probably due another d% roll for Cynthia’s tits, but with a 54, no such luck for them. Andy wondered aloud if they should just give her away for free.

“You can’t let them do this.” Cynthia was addressing Bobby, but instead he took it as Sintheigha addressing Bregan.

“I am a woman of peace, sweet girl. I cannot force them to change their course. If it is any consolation, your sacrifice will mean the salvation of many others. You will be–”

“You guys can’t sell my character to this creepy fucking hobgoblin!” she shrieked.

“Uh, watch us,” said Andy, popping a Dorito in his mouth.

“This is bullshit. Did you set this all up just to hurt my feelings or something? Make me play this Barbie doll bimbo, make me give up my build, make me smile and dress like a slut?”

“Um, nobody ‘made you’ do anything,” Brent said snidely. “Don’t be pissed because someone finally stood up to you and you couldn’t handle it.”

“I am handling it! My cheeks are on goddamn fire! I’ve tripled my total lifetime apologies! I’m dressed like a fetish slut, just to get you two off my back!”

“Yeah, because we ‘made you’ have that waiting in your closet for just such an occasion to flaunt your bod ,” Andy retorted.

“What? Waiting to… What are you trying to say?”

“You want some honesty? Fine, real talk.” Brent leaned down toward his camera imperiously. “I’m tired of watching you jerk Bobby around. You know he likes you, and so you use that affection so you can control him and control the group and get your goth kicks denying him, and I’m sick to death of it.”

Cynthia’s eyes widened in shock. He thought… what?! Bobby was studying his own lap, though, clearly embarrassed. “Is this an incel chat room or a D&D group? Jesus fuck, you limp dick losers, I’m sorry I’m hot and I’m sorry I’m goth and I’m sorry none of you are my type. Is that my fucking fault somehow?! Why can’t we just play the game and quit acting like I owe any of you something!”

Andy shook his head. “Seems like whatever he spent on those fancy new dice, you owe him at least a little something for those. Never seen a bitch lube up like you do over those stupid things.”

“Whatever. I’m done. I told you she can’t change. Until she’s gone, I’m gone. Sorry, Bobby. I didn’t mean to put you in this spot, but… I feel for you, man. Let me know when you make up your mind.” His webcam went dark.

Andy stoked his chin a moment. “How about you flash me them  titties and we’ll see.”

By some twisted reflex, she reached for her dice and dumped them onto the table. 09. Shit. She took a deep breath and started slowly undoing the clasps fastening the mesh between the two halves of her vest. Andy, however, wasn’t in a mood to wait. “Oh, whatever, you teasing fucking bitch. Eat a dick.”

“Fuck you, Andy!”

He disappeared as well. A few clasps later she remembered she didn’t need to take her top off. The die had said to , but… no, it didn’t make sense. She stopped herself, with some effort.

She hadn’t noticed Bobby standing up, but suddenly he was behind her, his hand gently rubbing her back. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Cindy.”

“ Don’t  call me Cindy.” She shucked his hand off her roughly.

“I think you should go. I’d hoped that a little positive reinforcement, something to aspire to, you might come around but… look, I’m gonna go with the majority. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

In spite of her rage, Cynthia’s jaw quivered. When was the last time she had been rejected? Had  she ever  been rejected? “Fine. Fuck you, Bobby. And when you talk to those little trolls, tell them I said double fuck them, too.”

“I… yeah.” He shook his head as she threw her books into a stack and stormed off toward the door. She was one foot out before his soft words reached her, her haste in vain. “And Cynthia? I need you to leave the dice. You didn’t earn them.”

So here she was, no gaming buddies, no dice. Shit, no dignity. The only thing she had left was the hope that Dominic could do her spying for her. Her dreams were worse than ever. Her dice locked away behind an adamantine gate, and Bobby wouldn’t part with the key no matter how she pleasured him, and she was inventive in her dreams. Not even when she let him spit roast her with that cretin Frank, high-fiving over her helpless body, or when she joined Evelyn in a tandem titty-fuck.

Yet in spite of it, she woke up smiling, every time. As the days passed, it started feeling uncomfortable not  smiling.

If she couldn’t find out when they were gaming, couldn’t make them take her back, maybe she’d break into Bobby’s apartment and steal the dice. If she could stop touching herself long enough to make a plan for how to do it.

And convince  herself that she deserved them, which sounded harder still.

It was one of the longest weeks of her life. Dominic told her he was having coffee with Bobby on Friday, parlaying the delay into two further dates. When her parents got a look at their daughter and saw how hard she was struggling – what to their eyes no doubt looked like a return to their darling little girl they remembered from grade school – they ended the grounding unasked. Dominic showed up early to their second date, chatting up her folks while she finished in the shower, and she could see her dad beside himself with relief that she was dating this normal, ungothed  boy. Dominic took their obvious approval as a good sign, helping himself to a meek handful of tit around her shoulder during the movie. She brushed him aside. Gently. After a moment. The first time.

Cynthia really needed that intel.

Her coworkers noticed, too. It was fortunate, really, that she had Charlie on hand to test her resolve. “ You  feeling OK?” he asked, taken aback.

“I feel great!” she said, grinning like the bimbo from the customer service training video. “How do you  feel?”

“Uh, like I’m tripping balls or something, honestly,” he said, eyeing her askance. “What the fuck is up with…?” he gestured.

“What? I wanted to look nice. For a boy. I’m just sorry I didn’t try it sooner, honestly. Say, you’re a boy. Do you think I look nice?”

“I mean, nobody looks nice in an Arby’s uniform.”

For a moment – a long moment – Cynthia pondered taking her top off. It was the break room, so not like anybody else was likely to come down. Now that she was apparently on the market, it would be good practice, right? Getting used to inviting a boy to stare at her chest. But she waited exactly a moment too long; by the time she’d jerked the top off over her head (damn hem wouldn’t come out from where she’d tucked it into these new, tighter pants), Charlie was gone. Had he even seen anything? It should embarrass her more than it did if he had. And it embarrassed her quite a bit. Moreover, a blow to her boobs’ ego – that made twice in one week a boy had been too impatient to wait to see them! What the fuck, malekind?!

It was good practice though. As the week went on, she sought out opportunities to learn how to choke down her pride. Helping her parents prepare dinner, setting the table and insisting on doing the dishes after. Volunteering to mow the lawn, disregarding the lingering glances from neighbors and passing cars in her too-brief gym shorts and skimpy tank top. Helping elderly Mr. Gehrman across the street haul in his groceries, pretending not to notice when she caught the old pervert staring at her ass. The first time. The second, she flashed an indulgent smile and said she was sorry. He asked what for, but she didn’t know.

It was working though. By the time she met up with Dominic for their third date Friday night, enduring male piggishness was becoming almost habitual. Almost. Knowing her use for the boy was at an end, she didn’t bother dressing up, nothing more than loose black jeans and an unflattering t-shirt. Whatever. He’d gotten his thrills at her expense already. If she led this guy on any further, she’d wind up with his dick out, and that was decidedly more than she ever hoped to see of Dominic.

“So how’d it go?” she asked him as he sat down across the table from her, back at the restaurant where she’d first agreed to this extortion. Yeah, yeah, she should probably say hi, exchange pleasantries first. But she had to know.

“It was… interesting,” he replied slowly, and instantly, she could tell something was wrong. The cautiously proprietary smile of his was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a clear gleam of suspicion.

She frowned. Interesting?  Cynthia might be pretty hard core about her gaming hobby, but she knew as well as anyone that listening to people blather on about their D&D group was almost never interesting. The only reason Dominic had listened to her tale of woe was because he thought good listening skills might translate into getting his dick wet.

“Interesting how?”

“So… straight up, let me ask: what’s up between you and Bobby?”

“Between…? What? I told you, we had a fight over stupid gaming stuff. Why, did  he say something?”

“Ayep. He seemed to think – and seemed to think everyone in your little club thinks – that you have a thing for him. Something about some… dice?”

Oh god.  Cynthia was pretty sure she felt a little something trickle into her panties at the unprompted reminder. They were out there. This boy had talked to the boy who held them, about them. It was hands down the sexiest thing about him.

He went on, “Something like you’ve been leading him on to try to get these designer dice from him? Is that true, Cynthia?”

“It’s… it’s complicated,” she mumbled.

Dominic’s manager chose that moment to stop by the table. She greeted her employee enthusiastically; Cynthia immediately picked up a mother-hen-minding-her-chicks vibe from the woman. She’d had managers like that before, and had quickly disabused  them of the notion that she needed minding. “So, how’s your date going so far?”

“Great,” said Cynthia, right as Dominic said, “Not great.”

Given those two responses, the woman opted to scowl, and Cynthia was immediately nervous about eating whatever arrived on her plate. “Oh. Sorry to hear that. Maybe I can get you something from the kitchen, help things along?”

Dominic ordered a burger and fries, Cynthia a salad. She’d already dropped five pounds this week, starving herself like she meant to out-skinny that cheerleader cunt Evelyn. Once the woman was gone, the boy pressed his attack.

“So it’s complicated, huh? Well uncomplicate  it. Because right now it looks like you were using me, toying with me to try to get a shot with Bobby. I mean, I know I kinda pressured you into this a little, but I thought we were having a good time.”

“We were!” she  lied. A week of practicing unblinking deference paid off; his frown softened. “I like you, Dominic. Really. I am not  into Bobby. We’ve just gamed together for a long time, and we’re friends. That’s it. Just friends.”

“Yeah? Because he showed me the outfit you put on for him last week, to try to… be friendly, I guess. It was like how you used to dress in high school, but like, even sluttier.”

Cynthia’s jaw clenched invisibly. She had not  dressed slutty in high school! Or ever! “They tried to kick me out once already. I thought, maybe if I looked cute, maybe they’d… I don’t know. I was weak, Dominic.” She looked up at him fretfully. “You think I like dressing like that for those guys?”

“You sure don’t dress that way for me,” he fired back at her, pointing to her shapeless, unflattering garments.

“Well maybe I should sometime.” Right after that cold day in hell.

“I’m sorry, Cynthia, but I feel like you’re not being straight with me. I’m sort of wishing I never agreed to all this. Thanks for taking pity on me or whatever, but no thanks.”

As he stood up, she dove for his wrist, holding him in place. Ugh, was he just always sweaty or what? “Wait. You don’t believe me? Let me show you.”

He froze. Showing  caught his ear. “Show me what?”

She smiled, put  a little smoke into it this time.

“You work here. Is there somewhere… private? And close?”

And so, ten minutes into their third date, Cynthia found herself kneeling behind the dumpster at Friendly’s with her top in one hand and Dominic’s over-eager cock in the other. Showing him her boobs hadn’t quelled his paranoia, or maybe he simply saw he had the upper hand and pressed his advantage. It stank back here, the same basic stink as the one at Arby’s. She knew it well. Still, at least when, without so much as a grunt of warning, Dominic came all over her face, his jizz made for a handy air freshener. The thought was some small help in maintaining her grateful smile.

“See?” Cynthia said, blinking through a long line of cum dangling from the fake lashes she’d gotten earlier that day at her third salon visit of the week. “I told you, I like you . Would I do that if I was into Bobby?”

Dominic was grinning so broadly she could have shoved the dumpster in there. She wanted to. “I suppose not. I’m sorry I doubted. I just… wow. Anyway, so they’re playing Sunday at 2, he said. He invited me to join, but… is it OK if I don’t? I’d love to spend more time with you, but it’s really not my thing.”

“Yeah, that’d be fine. We can always find other things to do.” She winked.

He looked down to her crotch. “So, do you want me to…?”

“No, I’m OK. Thanks, though.”

“Hey, any time for my girl, yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Can I get you a napkin for the…?” He made a face, like he was the one with a right to be grossed out. “Or maybe you like to, you know, swallow…?” Then his grin was right back in place, almost as big as the one she was forcing in place.

It struck her that the cum blurring her vision sparkled in a too familiar way. “Sure, I’ll swallow.”

****************************************************************

Cynthia arrived at Bobby’s apartment at 1:45 Sunday afternoon. She was supposed to be at work at the carwash. It had taken a lot of favors to secure the regular Saturday evenings off at her jobs so she could game; her boss Mr. Herzog had flatly refused to give her the whole weekend, especially on no notice. After burning through hundreds of dollars at the mall and the salon this week, she couldn’t afford to lose her job.

So she went to work in a thin white t-shirt.

It had only taken an hour and a half before some Karen called to complain about the “lewd display” barely visible through her soapy windows. (An hour and a half in which the tips rained like a monsoon from the male customers, she might add.) Whatever. Mr. Herzog was a stickler for the uniform, and she was pretty sure he was that weird subspecies of gay who didn’t merely reject the feminine form, but bore it hostility. She was sent home by the day manager on Mr. Herzog’s orders, just in time to get to her hair appointment and then off to Bobby’s.

It was nerve-wracking, to say the least. She knew how she looked. She even took a moment to examine herself using her camera as a mirror before heading upstairs. Platform sandals, check. The least sexy aspect of her ensemble, but they went with the rest of it, and added several inches to her height. Plus, she was extremely unused to walking in these things, so every step had to be this tiny, prancing thing. Her body didn’t jiggle this much naked.

Then there were the leggings. In her whole life, Cynthia had never worn leggings. They might be cheap; they might be comfy; they might be supremely easy to find in black. Still, there was no denying that they were sexy , and she didn’t do sexy. Not casually, anyway, not so she’d find herself walking through the parking lot with the Andy’s and Dominic’s of the world trailing behind her like lost baby ducks.

These  were pink. Hot pink. They were a megaphone for a cry for attention. She looked killer in them, true. They fit not even like a second skin, but a first, so tight it compressed her flesh and settled in its place. In back it rode all the way up her crack, distractingly so, the shadows of that narrow valley making it the only dark spot in the pink landscape. It made her ass crack visible from a mile away. In the front the outline of her labia was totally visible despite the frilly pink g-string she wore beneath it. It was the only way she could keep a thin pad over her pussy to conceal her constant leaking (which intensified an order of magnitude whenever she got to thinking about her dice); even that, however, kept her camel toe in the public domain.

For a top, she’d kept it simple, but she was learning that even simple wasn’t cheap in hot girl fashion. It was sort of a retro 80’s look, a t-shirt so loose it completely missed one shoulder. It left an expanse of her stomach exposed, but more than that, an enormous portion of whichever boob was on the lowered side was out in view . Her strapless bra offered impressive support, enough lift that where her tits departed from her upper chest was plain as day. Moreover it ensured that her nipples would be kept out of sight. Of course, that meant anyone looking would get a good chance to see her bra instead, but so it went. If she tried to fix the drooping shoulder by centering her top, it only fell off on both sides, supported only by the widest part of the swell of her boobs. At that point, it would fall down to her ankles if she exhaled too deeply. The t-shirt was plain white excepting  a big red heart with a crack down the middle. It looked suitably pathetic.

Of course, the first thing the boys would see was her face, and so Cynthia had made good and sure it would begin the tale of her transformation. What they would first notice, she had no idea, but the best odds were on her platinum blonde hair and the copper skin that now covered every inch of her body. Every  inch. Even her nipples were less red now, more brown. It was all still sensitive to the touch, but whatever. The pain was the part of it all that she could most easily accept. As for her hair, it was done up in a mop of tight, near-white curls, the product so thick that it would look wet for the rest of the day. Then two huge gold hoops in her ears plus sparkly little stones in the other holes ( don’t think of your sparkly dice, don’t come in your panties, don’t think of your sparkly dice ), a thick layer of glossy, fire engine red lipstick to match her finger- and toenails, and… well, she supposed it was about the usual amount of makeup, but now it was pink and red rather than black.

All that, plus a teensy Hello Kitty backpack to keep her D&D books in. It was too small even for her, and forced her to thrust her chest forward whenever it was on. Lastly, the tray in her hands, which she thrust forward after knocking on Bobby’s door.

The peephole darkened a moment before the door opened. “I made these for you!” she sang before he could get a word in. Her voice had never in her life been so… merry .

Bobby awkwardly accepted the tray, lifting the foil covering to get a glimpse of the brownies inside. “Um, thanks. I’m sorry, my name’s Bobby. Are you new in the building, or…?”

Cynthia laughed. “I know your name, silly. Don’t you recognize me?” She spun in place. Not even when her back was to him did she dare let her gleaming smile fade. (It was freshly whitened too, which, without dental insurance, had cost her a week’s income.)

His eyes sprang agog. “Cynthia…?!”

“Of course! Who else?” She leaned back on her heels, then sprang upward, hands splayed to give it the tada!  that much bouncing and jiggling deserved. Her tit nearly burst free of where she’d stuffed it into her bra.

“What did you…” The boy slapped his forehead, laughing. “Oh my god , this is nuts. I never would have imagined… But no.” He forced himself to look serious again, though the grin was still in his eyes. “They said no. We  said no. You had your shot and you blew it. You can’t buy your way back in with brownies.” He tactfully avoided mentioning her other bribe, though it was far more obvious and far far  more of an investment on her part.

“That was Cynthia, though. You can call me Cindy. ” she said, waving off his concern like it was a normal case of mistaken identity. Had  her voice risen? Fuck, she was even talking like Sintheigha now. Maybe even higher. Oh well. Hopefully this boy liked it enough to let her in. She’d talk any way he liked to get at those dice.

For a moment, it dawned on her that this was the kind of behavior that ended in multiple personality disorders. She sure felt like she was going insane.

(Were the dice in there? They had to be. She could feel  them.)

Um, what had she been thinking? Whatever. Not important.

“I always thought you seemed more like a Cindy . Still, whatever you want to go by, you’re still you . I think Brent really will bail on me permanently if I vouch for you again.” No sense suggesting Andy would do the same. With her tits bursting out like this, he’d take her back no problem, so long as he could still bully her.

“He threw me out because I was being a little bitch, which I for sure won’t do any more.” She nodded seriously. “And because he thought I was teasing you. Leading you on but never… you know.” It wasn’t hard letting that hunger shine in her eyes. She’d dreamt of submitting to this boy every night for the past eight nights, pleasured herself ten times a day reliving it in her imagination. It was disgusting, and degrading, but she wasn’t some Evelyn who thought sex and relationships were always supposed to be fairy tales, everything sweet and kissy and consensual.

His hands went to his hips. “I thought you were with Dominic now.”

Fuck. She’d figured her “boyfriend” would blab, but still, it would’ve been nice if he’d kept his stupid mouth shut. Worse, Bobby was the sort of do-gooder who’d be mad if he thought she was using his friend to get to him, even if the friend was barely an acquaintance and, ya know, he got to fuck her for the small price of a betrayal.

Not that she was ready to fuck him yet. Obviously.

“I’m not so sure it’s going to work out between him and me, actually,” she said, trying her hardest to sound like it pained her. “He’s a sweet guy and all, and I thought maybe if I could find a nice  boy, someone like you, it would help me forget how I blew my shot at the real thing.”

Bobby’s cheeks flushed at the heaped-on layers of obsequious flattery. That seemed to work. One could never go wrong by appealing to a boy’s ego, no matter how little right to it he might have. She wasn’t all the way there, though. He was still blocking the door, still holding that key from her dreams.

Bobby’s hands slowly went to his hips, though he did a pathetic job of looking stern even when he wasn’t drowning in a beautiful woman’s sycophancy. “Look, no offense, but how do I know this isn’t some attempt to get your hands on my dice?”

MY  DICE!!!  

Cindy actually startled herself with how violently that thought came, stumbling back a step as she reined  herself in. Not hers, not yet. Soon! But not yet. “Oops, I’m sorry. Clumsy old me – still learning to walk in these things.” She shrugged, and that time her tit definitely escaped her bra, if not her lopsided neckline, thankfully. “Come on, Bobby. Do you really think I’d do all this just for some silly dice?” I’m SO sorry, dice. Please ignore what I just said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love them. They’re beautiful. More than that, I love them because you got them for me. I was only thinking of myself and how much I liked them and not how thoughtful it was of you to find the perfect present for me. But I get it now. And I want to show you how grateful I am.”

The tiniest of gleeful giggles escaped from Bobby’s throat. Almost like he knew she was performing for him, that this whole setup was nothing more than her prostituting herself for dice. “Cindy, sweetie, I don’t know. We’re starting at 2. The guys are gonna log in soon, and there will be hell to pay if you’re here, plain and simple.”

Cindy took a step closer. Still trying to block her from his apartment, he had no choice but to abandon his post or let her close the gap. “So… that gives us ten whole minutes to have some fun before they show up, yeah?”

“I, um, need to set up…”

Another step. Her prominent breasts were pressed firmly against his less-prominent ones. “Pleeeease, Bobby? Just for a few minutes before you start?”

“Cindy…”

All this, and still he dragged his feet, played hard to get. If there was one thing Cynthia despised in a person, it was playing hard to get. Either reject someone, or don’t. Twist the knife if you need to, but keep things honest, be real with people. It was these kinds of coy, petty games that had kept her single through most of high school.

Cindy shuddered as she imagined what her ex-boyfriend Iain would say if he could see her pathetic, Barbie bitch self right now. They used to practice putting out their cigarettes on their tongues. Now she’d thrown out every ciggy she owned and was shrouded in a mist of cloying perfume. This was beneath her. This was beneath anyone .

So yeah. She could accept Bobby’s judgment, leave the group, and go back to her life. A life she had worked hard to cultivate the way she liked it. Dye her hair back, let this hideous golden tan fade, slip back into her bleak, standoffish wardrobe, and find somebody else to game with. They were only… dice. Only dice. Nothing more than sublime, transcendent, life-affirming, primally satisfying to hold, as dark as the void and as candescent as the night sky, and… What had she been thinking?

Oh right. Dice. Ony… dice. (There. The thought was hard to form.)

So yeah, she could salvage what was left of her dignity, hunt down that son of a bitch Dominic and systematically ruin his life, and when Brent and Andy got home for the summer in a few weeks, double ruin  theirs. The more she thought on it , the better it sounded. She deserved revenge for what they’d said to her, made her do . Or if they hadn’t “made” her do it, for pressuring her into making stupid cunt decisions. See how Andy’s swagger fared when she smashed in his window in the middle of the night and threw a bag full of snakes into his bedroom. She knew where to find some. See what happened to Brent’s social standing at his preppy little Christian college after she drugged him and carved a cross into his forehead, turn  him into a little Harry Potter Jesus bitch boy.

Bobby plainly expected she was about to kiss him. He was even twisting his head to the side in readiness. Hard to get mother fucker. Only… as he turned his head, it gave her a window over his shoulder, and there on the bookshelf behind him was a small metal container.

The dice tin.

Cindy gasped, and threw her mouth against his. The boy squealed in alarm at her ferocity, but she clamped her hand down on the back of his head and held him there until he relaxed enough to slide her tongue into his mouth. Then she held him even tighter.

It was objectively repulsive. She wasn’t attracted to Bobby. Cynthia – Cindy – was in fact actively unattracted  to him. Not physically, not socially, and certainly the recent shift in their shared history had soured anything that ever might have been. The only thing she had ever really liked about him was his creativity and enthusiasm and engagement as a DM, but look how he’d destroyed that in a few short weeks. All he had left to recommend him were those dice.

As she drove him backwards until he landed awkwardly in the armchair he sat at during their sessions, Cindy told herself it was only for dice. As soon as she’d made out with him enough to earn the rest, she’d be done here, and never come back.

Surely making out with him would earn her an extra die today. It had to. Right? So long as she kept her stupid mouth shut and didn’t let him realize what she was really after, didn’t expose her weakness again. Lately it had felt like she was nothing but exposed weakness. Exposed lots of things, really.

Cindy settled onto her DM’s lap sideways, her lips not leaving his for an instant during the transition. She was even closer to the dice now, and she prayed to all the goddesses of the abyss that he couldn’t feel how insanely wet she was getting. The pad had to be doing its job. She’d have to find an excuse to nip off to the bathroom and remove it before long so, in case she let him at her pussy, he wouldn’t find–

Wait, no. Let him at her pussy? No way was she going anywhere near that far!

Not a bad idea to remove the pad, though, still.

Like far too much of a gentleman, Bobby settled one hand on her hip and the other gently atop her thigh. They didn’t squeeze, didn’t pinch, didn’t so much as rub her. It was more like he needed a place to set his hands and her legs happened to provide the most comfortable options. That was fine. Cindy had no particular desire to be groped by this pudgy dork. If he was content to have a hot blonde until-recently-goth babe on his lap kissing him, she wasn’t about to ask for more. She could see his oven clock over his shoulder in the kitchen, grease smears blurring but not concealing it, and saw she only had another five minutes to go before the session started and she was officially here for it so why not let her play and sorry about last week by the way and I made brownies for everybody so if yours haven’t arrived at your dorms yet they will soon and by the way do you think I look cute boys? Ugh. Just bide her time, put up with the taste of whatever potato chips Bobby had wolfed down for lunch for five little–

“Hey, before I forget, do you want your dice?” he asked when she was pausing for air.

As her pussy spasmed like it was hosting a dozen vibrators, Cindy moaned. Loudly. More a howl, really. If she had ever had a shot at denying her desire to hold those dice, she’d blown it in the first microsecond. Oh fuck, she’d squeezed her tits, too; Bobby had definitely seen how she’d escaped that half of her bra. No sense fixing it now. No sense trying to salvage any of the shattered fragments of her self-respect.

“Yes, please,” she said meekly.

“All right, go fetch them then, Cindy.” He patted her butt, prompting.

She didn’t even care about the condescension in his tone. Not much, anyway. Asshole. She was out of the chair and lunging for the shelf where the dice tin was kept. Bobby didn’t even look surprised that she knew right where to find it; he just watched her greedily tear the lid off, and then fall into slow motion as she oh-so-delicately withdrew the two dice she had thus far earned. The d4 dug sharply into her palm as she clenched her fist around them.

Bobby clicked his tongue at her, and she hastily obeyed his summons back to his lap. Only this time, she climbed aboard straddling his crotch, grinding herself against it fervently. The leggings practically negated friction. Cindy hated to admit that it actually felt pretty great. Or it would have, if the cock gliding  between her labia weren’t Bobby’s. Bobby, who gave her the dice.

“You like those, huh?” Still his hands went to hips, not her ass. Why wouldn’t he squeeze her ass? It was begging for a man to squeeze it in these slutty hot pink leggings. Begging. Please. Touch me. Let me earn more!

She grinded her sopping cunt on him faster, the points of her dice pressing so hard into her palms it was painful. Oh god, she was already coming. (Again? Had she come already?) Her whole body quivered against him as she rode the high. Every single bit of it had been  worth it. The hair, the tan, the clothes, the makeup, the cum plastered all over her face behind that Friendly’s dumpster–

Cindy came again.

“Oh FUCK ,” she groaned, her hands trying to intercede between their respective genitals to get his zipper down. There could be another die on the line. So worth it. Better than her dreams. Better even the one where Bobby walked her on a leash down the halls of their old high school, walked her to work, to her other work, to meet her parents and his, to where he tied her off to a parking meter while he popped into the grocery store and let strangers come and pet her and give her treats.

Cindy came again. Louder still. She must have been making more noise than she’d thought, because the downstairs neighbor was already banging on the ceiling.

“Holy fuck! Did… Bobby, did you get a fucking hooker?! Damn, son!” Mere seconds later she heard a startled exclamation from Brent as he signed in, no less punctual. Andy reiterated his delight at the discovery immediately. “Dude, look, Bobby got hisself  a working girl, dude! A fucking hot  one, too! What’s your rate, baby?”

Slowly, Cindy’s head came back down onto her shoulder and she pivoted awkwardly to look to the TV screen, where Brent and Andy’s webcams showed them staring with utter shock and open lust, respectively. “Damn, you got some nice titties, hooker chick!” Andy guffawed as Cindy remembered that at some point she’d lifted her shirt and rammed her tits in Bobby’s face. Still one tit in the bra, one tit out, but both as golden as the rest of her skin. His hands were still demurely on her hips; he’d never made a single move on her.

“Um, guys, this is… Cindy,” Bobby announced, leaning around the side of her protruding boob to show his face to the camera.

She hoped her stupid tan made her blushing less obvious. Even so, somehow, from some deep reservoir of discipline that could only be the place in her soul where those dice had nested, she managed to look to the  webcam… and smile.

“Hi, boys! Sorry, you weren’t supposed to see all that.” She waved, beaming, and only then put her tits away. And rolled her Fort save not to die of shame.

Chapter Four

The d12. It was hers now. Yes, only when Bobby let her, but when he gave his permission, it was hers. That was three down, four to go. From here, they were only going to get better. The d6, useful for all sorts of rolls; a d8, standard dice damage for many of the games most common weapons from longswords to longbows; the d10, not only handy for damage but also completing her d% rolls. Then, finally, the d20. She knew Bobby would save it for last. After all, it was the d20 system. She could roll it, and roll it, and roll, and roll, and roll…

The car behind Cindy honked. That same intersection at Jefferson Street, a little ways from Bobby’s house. It was getting so that she almost had to be at least this far out to be able to concentrate again. They tended to play late and cut off abruptly, which left little time for the transition. And what a session! Lows, yes – there would always be lows with assholes like Brent and Andy (and maybe once in a while Bobby) – but highs, too. For the first time, everyone had walked away from the session seeming to look forward to the following week’s. That in and of itself was progress.

Cindy only wished she could take more credit for it. After all, the session had mostly comprised of a  rescue mission. Targeting her.

In a sense, she supposed she deserved some  credit. They’d run into their existing problem face first in the opening moments of the game – namely, that the week before, those pencil-dicked assholes had sold her character to the hobgoblin warlord Mokvinorg  as a tribute to his pervy goblin king. At first, they’d simply shrugged and said she should make a new character – “One who can actually do anything this time would be nice,” said Andy – but Cindy had thought fast.

“I was thinking of doing a half-orc,” she speculated, pivoting on Bobby’s lap to face the stack of core books. “Maybe a barbarian? Finally just embrace a solid cliché, make a hairy-chested, long-tusked thug and kick some ass.”

The pronouncement had produced the desired hesitancy. She had little doubt that their diverted gazes were to take in the bobbling, jiggling sight of Sintheigha’s token. However it might embarrass her, she knew full well they liked it, not only for the aesthetic, but precisely because  of how it embarrassed her.

A brief discussion followed, Andy decrying the perils of gender-bending and Brent encouraging her not quite passive aggressively to try something outside her usual warrior wheelhouse.

“I just want to do kind of an opposite thing. Sintheigha worked out so badly – all cute, and soft , and delicate. This time, let’s try some farting, belching, big dick energy, ya know?”

“Sintheigha wasn’t so bad,” Brent conceded immediately. “The dagger was probably a bad idea, but hard to complain about walking around with booby armor.”

“Booooooooobs,” added Andy gravely.

“You guys are sweet. But I don’t want to make you keep carrying me. You’re supposed to be saving Lord Koltron’s mistress, not your own party  member.”

It worked too well. The two dunderheads spoke on top of each other, both desperate to establish that a rescue operation was their own novel idea. Saving hot babes from dungeons was a timeless trope, something they hadn’t done in so long that it might be fun to relive the glory days. Meaning three years ago. Before she knew it, they had about faced, Brent employed his bardic social skills to dupe Mokvingorg’s hobgoblins into thinking they were considering joining forces.

Bobby rolled with it well. Scene wipes transitioned the action back and forth from Skuf and Jerom’s infiltration and where Sintheigha was held captive. Three sessions in and she’d spent two of them in holding cells. As dice rolling became necessary, Cindy scooted off of Bobby’s lap and took her own chair. She soon lost count of how many times Andy had to have something repeated for him because he got lost staring at Cindy’s chest where it heaved out of her off-the-shoulder top.

She located Koltron’s mistress in the cell next to hers. This was where the campaign began to take shape, the reveal  that Koltron was employing the same tactic as Mokvinorg , selling his woman to the goblin king. Was he a traitor, giving the enemy aid and comfort, or was he a coward, hoping to buy his way out of the worst of the coming invasion? That would come later. For now, she was glad to have an opportunity to roleplay a little, and while usually the guys got fidgety if she hogged the spotlight for too long, today they were all too content to sit back and watch her play.

Finally, they pressed their nosiness as far as it was going to go, and battle ensued. Trapped in her cell, helpless, useless, Sintheigha could only listen to the sounds of her rescuers making their way closer. Meanwhile, with nothing to do in game…

“Excuse me for a minute.” Never had excusing herself to the bathroom been so awkward. Was that how she usually sounded? Did she usually say anything? She couldn’t have guessed in that  moment.

She was halfway down the hall when Bobby’s voice caught up with her. “Um, Cindy? Your dice…?”

Her eyes squeezed shut, fists clenched in despair. He’d caught her. A forced, pleading smile was plastered on her freshly tanned face when she turned around. “I just want to look at it, OK? I won’t do anything or try to take it – I know it’s yours – but I want to look. Only look. Is that all right? Please? I promise–”

Bobby looked at her like instead of dying her hair blonde, she’d gone full medusa. “Uh, sure. I just saw one of them wasn’t on the table and wanted to make sure you hadn’t dropped it or something. Looking out for you, that’s all.”

Copper skin turned flaming orange in embarrassment as she heard Andy’s pffffffffft  of bemusement. Without saying another word, she headed towards the bathroom. “What the hell is she so nervous about…?” came Brent’s query as the door closed behind her.

Bobby’s bathroom was its usual grunginess, mildew spotting the paint on the ceiling overhead and god only knew what around  the base of the toilet. Flecks of toothpaste spittle decorated the sink and lower portion of the cracked mirror. Cindy loved it in here . It was a window into the vile, disgusting nature of mankind. (Boykind, anyway; she kept her own bathroom reasonably tidy.) If she had ever thought to give Bobby a shot, it would have been in here.

Not that she ever would. That little show out there was all she’d ever give him.

(Plus whatever was needed to get those last four dice.)

Before releasing the dice from her fist, Cindy made sure the toilet lid was down and the drain on the sink was plugged . No way was she going to risk losing one in an accident. She’d been through too much already. Satisfied that the area was secure, she set the d4, d100, and the new d12 on the counter, kneeling to gaze at them at eye level. For a moment, the bathroom faded to black; there was nothing in her vision except these three miniature starfields, where entire cosmos birthed and swirled and died before her eyes. It was the sum total of existence, on a scale beyond anything her mind could hold.

“BOOYA, BITCHES, NAT TWENTY!” roared Andy’s image in the TV from out in the main room. As Bobby congratulated, she gave it a second kiss. Then, just to see what it would be like, she let the pointed tip, currently showing a 2, slide between her lips.

She kissed the d4. It was… good.

She tried it again.

Really  good.

By the time Cindy came some minutes later – or hours? she really had no idea – she was on her knees in front of the toilet, bobbing up and down on the d4 like it was the tip of an incredibly petite cock. Meanwhile, the d12 was rubbing slow circles around her clit, the energy from it not vibrating, quite , but still pulsing into her in some divine wavelength only her pussy was capable of discerning. As for the d100, she’d been afraid of losing it up inside her pussy, so she’d rummaged through drawers until finding a condom, slipping it inside, and guiding it inside her.

In the absence of a bathmat, her hot pink leggings had served as a kneeling pad. Now there was a dark puddle on them from where she’d come. As she unfurled them, she realized it was sort of everywhere, little spots that had been adjacent when they’d been bunched up but were now spread up and down her legs, ass and crotch when she spread them out. There was no hair dryer Cindy could use, even if she could have invented some reason why she might have needed one, so all she could do was pat them with Bobby’s towel (which doubled as the hand towel) and hope he didn’t see.

Or smell. God, even she could smell the cum in here.

If he noticed anything, he kept it to himself. Cindy made her way right past him, making sure to bend over deep, right in the field of her webcam, as she took her chair. (If the battle had gone badly, she wanted them to remember why they’d suffered on her behalf.)

“We’ve almost bailed Sintheigha out,” Brett explained by way of catching her up. “Just got to finish off the jailer and a few more guards, and you’re good.”

“Oh, great!” Cindy only just realizing  she was still flushed and breathing a bit heavily. She fanned her face with Sintheigha’s sheet, trying not to notice how much jiggling even that small motion set off.

“You’re welcome,” he mumbled after.

“I promise I’ll show you all the gratitude in the world as soon as you save me.” With her clit still thrumming, it was easier to force a smile at the mother fuckers who’d put her into that cell in the first place than she might have expected.

The car behind her honked again. Cindy rolled down the window to flip him off, but found her reminiscing had robbed her of a lot of her fire, so she waved apologetically and proceeded through the intersection.

****************************************************************

“Cynthia, don’t clock in yet. We need to talk. In my office.” Mr. Herzog folded his arms across his chest imperiously.

“It’s Cindy now, actually.” It would be easier to grit her teeth letting her gaming buddies call her that if she adapted herself to it elsewhere. She was a walking testament to the veracity of immersion therapy.

“Cindy then.” He gestured to the office door. Though none of her coworkers were in earshot (and earshot was practically nonexistent over the roar of the carwash), several pairs of eyes followed her in.

No doubt they’d heard about her little stunt two days earlier to get sent home early the other day. Not that it was much of a stunt. She’d simply worn a white t-shirt to work instead of the itchy blue wool of her uniform. That was it.

After taking his seat opposite her, Mr. Herzog made a show of looking through a stack of papers until finally selecting the one that rested on bottom . Well staged. “Cynth… Cindy,” he looked up, eyeing her new look with obvious distaste, “what can you tell me what happened here this weekend? I have a write-up from Ian, who says… Well. Why don’t you tell me in your own words?”

“My work shirt was dirty, so I wore a different shirt. Honest mistake.” She shrugged.

The man stroked his chin like this was all an awful lot to ponder for one simple car wash owner. “Mhm, I can understand that. But you’ve worked here for a while now, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Another shrug.

“And it didn’t occur to you that wearing a, it says here, ‘thin white shirt,’ to your job at a car wash, was particularly poor judgment?”

Cindy folded her arms frostily. “And why’s that?” It was plain where this was going, but she was in no mood to make the dressing down easier for him. Fuck this old prick.

He frowned. Clearly, he didn’t like being made to put such a fine point on it – that she’d given customers a free pass to a one-woman wet t-shirt contest – but that was his problem, not hers. “You see, Cindy… you’re a pretty young woman. I don’t know what brought about all… this,” he said, gesturing to all of her, “but it’s doubly important for girls like yourself to present themselves… professionally.”

“A white shirt is unprofessional?” Her eyes glanced down to his white button-up pointedly.

“It can be,” he answered stiffly. “I wouldn’t wash cars in this, after all. But a young girl, like yourself, dressing a certain way…”

Oh god, this was turning into an object lesson in rape culture. “And what way is that?”

Her boss fidgeted with the papers in his hands. “I think you know perfectly well what way I  mean. You, um, appeared not to be wearing any… brassiere.”

“So, what, you’re afraid people would see my tits through my shirt? Is that it?”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t–”

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid my tits are gonna drive business down ? Fuck that!” She rose to her feet as her voice rose to a shout. “Your asswipe customers would line up to get a peek at these things! I looked dynamite  Sunday, I’ll have you know. If you can’t handle the heat, get the fuck out the kitchen, old-timer! I bet you my next paycheck that if I keep showing up in a white t-shirt every day, I’d triple your business! At least! You’ll have a line around the block!”

Cindy grasped one breast in each hand, raising them up, daring him to notice them. Those idiots at the gaming table had been dancing to their tune all session long. Maybe she’d been wrong all this time about how her body could serve as an asset to her goals.

What was her goal here, again?

She fondled her tits shamelessly, egging him on. It was too much, but… it also felt really  good.

Mr. Herzog slowly rose to his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. She’d suspected he was gay before, but this had to make it official. “That is not  how I do business here.”

“Well maybe it should be! Come on down to Tits ‘N Suds, get your windows cleaned and something worth seeing through ‘em! Nice ring, huh?” Maybe when she was done talking him down, she could sneak off to the bathroom to–

“Cindy!” She blinked. His tone suggested he’d had to say her name more than once.

She lowered her shirt, not sure when she’d lifted it over her breasts, or when she’d tugged the cups of her bra down to let her at her nipples. “Yes, Mr. Herzog?”

So yeah, she got fired. If only that had been the worst of the trouble her libido got her into that week.

****************************************************************

Cindy fanned herself with her folder thick with old character sheets from campaigns past. Ever since coming back from the bathroom – though she was already worried there was no coming back from giving your dice a blowjob on a toilet seat – she had been flushed. Sweaty. Leaky all over, really. She’d been nervous to sit back on Bobby’s lap, drippy as she was.

The fight was on-going, and her jail cell was now on the battle map displayed on Bobby’s TV screen. Down the hall, Skuf, Jerom and Bregan were battling the barghest jailer and a trio of hobgoblin soldiers who’d doggedly waded through the swath of carnage they’d left in the wake of their rescue. There was Sintheigha’s token in her cell, and Eisheth, Lord Koltron’s discarded mistress, in the one next to her. Sintheigha bore both the sickened and fatigued status effects. (Bobby explained that the poor accommodations were taking their toll, even though she’d only been a prisoner here a few scant hours. Not worth starting an argument over, not when the boys were finally being nice to her. Her hotness would only mask her bitchery so much.)

Unfortunately, there was also nothing Sintheigha could do to help in the fight, either. If she’d gone for a spellcasting class, maybe she could have come up with something, but as a fighter, and one stripped to her smallclothes and deprived of weapons, the best she could do was feebly beat her fists on the cell doors. She went so far as to suggest that one of her rescuers make their way down the corridor to liberate her – “another initiative count  on our side, right?” – but it was met with irritated eye rolls.

“What is it  you think you’re gonna contribute with AC 9 and an unarmed strike at a -4 penalty? Maybe score a lucky crit, pull off 1d3+1 x2?” Brent pointed out snidely.

“It’s more hit points though, isn’t it?”

Andy laughed. “I know they’re hobgoblins, but they’d have to be pretty stupid to waste swings on you. Jerom’s farts are more dangerous than Sintheigha, our so-called fighter.” His image on screen took a few sniffs; she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d actually passed gas to make his point. If there was a point in there.

Bobby admonished them for strategizing out of character, his usual reminder that their characters didn’t share a hive mind, and there was nothing for it but to let it drop. Four rounds and almost two hours later, the battle finished. Cindy followed most of it, but her dice were simply too distracting to give it her all. Jerom went down twice thanks to the idiotic melee sorcerer build she’d warned him about during character creation, spared death only by timely healing from the questionably pacifistic Bregan. Skuf hadn’t fared much better. If the two saw any irony in their being repeatedly rescued by the party NPC even as they berated her for necessitating a rescue mission, they gave no sign of it.

As if to evidence their displeasure at being tasked with bailing out Cindy’s little-beloved character, they released Eisheth first, and only after making sure both she and her virtue were intact did they turn their attention to Sintheigha’s cell.

“I knew you’d come back for me,” Cindy gushed in character. Couldn’t hurt to lay it on thick, especially since she followed it with, “I would have been too glad to help you slaughter those bastards if you’d freed me sooner.”

“What good is a naked blonde chick against a barghest, except maybe to sate  his infernal appetite?” Skuf answered. Scuffily .

“I’m not  naked,” Cindy protested, this time out of character. She looked to Bobby imploringly. “Right? You said they took my armor, not my clothes.”

“Look at that portrait . If that’s her armor, what the fuck clothes is she talking about?” Andy pointed at what she surmised was the location of Sintheigha’s avatar on his monitor.

After a considering  look, Bobby slowly nodded. “He has a point, Cindy.” (Already, Cynthia was forgotten by all in the group.) “If you wanted  to keep your dignity intact, don’t choose an avatar so scantily clad.”

Her jaw dropped as the other two guffawed openly, but she collected herself quickly. This wasn’t about the game. It wasn’t even about her dignity, nor even her increasingly fragile grasp on reality. This was about her dice, plain and simple. “Fine. Well then I’ll start looking around for my armor before they get too much more of an eyeful. Ogle Eisheth instead, guys. She doesn’t seem to mind.” As if they hadn’t been ogling her feed on their monitors with diminishing subtlety all session long.

“ You  minding is what makes it so funny,” Andy pointed out. Still, he and Brent did acknowledge that Eisheth’s portrait showed a reasonably attractive woman as well. Bobby pointed out that although nearly a week of incarceration by hobgoblins hadn’t been especially kind to her, she was still sporting an impressive Charisma, and had been left there in nothing but her shift.

Soon enough, Sintheigha came across a locked trunk where, once they used the barghest’s key to access it, they discovered not only Sintheigha’s gear but a cache of loot that was rather impressive for their meager level, Bobby’s way of keeping the party geared up after so little loot had been acquired between levels 1 and 2. Gold and silver, scrolls, potions, what could only be a bored DM’s enjoyment at random loot generation in wondrous items. There was even a magic dagger, albeit merely +1 with no special qualities. For Sintheigha’s paltry DPS, however, it was quite a–

“Hold it right there,” Andy interjected. “How come Sintheigha’s getting a share of the loot when she didn’t do any of the actual fighting?”

“Yeah, she’s walking out of here full health, consumables unconsumed, her weapons clean and dry, and somehow thinks she’s entitled to an equal share of loot and  XP? That’s not fair, Bobby.”

“That’s how we’ve always done it,” she protested, hating how meek her voice sounded. Hating how her tits were literally sweating. It wasn’t even hot in there. God, she wanted to run back to the bathroom again. This was important though. Sort of. “Sometimes folks are unlucky, but we still do it equal .”

Andy shook his head. “There’s unlucky, and then there’s worthless! What did she do to earn anything in that whole series of encounters aside from grind  her ass on the DM’s dick?”

There was some back and forth, but the session was already going late, so Bobby soon stepped in to adjudicate. “Gang, let’s meet in the middle, yeah? Sintheigha can get half XP, since she was the reason there even was a mission, even if yeah, she couldn’t contribute much. And loot-wise, why don’t we say she can have a half share of the coinage, and one other thing, but only if she agrees to be the Stuff Girl for the rest of the adventure. Agreed?”

Stuff Boy was the group’s usual term for whoever was tasked with the tedium of maintaining the party’s loot stash. Brent had done it for years, hence the choice of gender. The advent of a VTT program had rendered it easier, but still, there was lots of adding and subtracting that came with it. It would have been far less of a slap in the face than the XP deduction – the boys would level up to 3 while she languished back at 2 – except the boys soon added the expectation that Sintheigha personally carry the party’s stuff. A sentient, bipedal pack mule. Albeit one with mouth-watering titties.

“And what do we say?” Andy pressed, smirking.

As livid as she was at their treatment, the memory of the past weeks and her brushes with banishment were still too fresh. “Thank you,” she muttered sullenly, dragging the items into her character sheet one by one. Sintheigha was suffering from heavy encumbrance by the time it was done.

So was Cindy.

****************************************************************

“Why do I feel like I shoved a stick of butter up my fucking snatch,” she muttered to herself as she studied her reflection in the mirror.

The fog of arousal was intense. She told herself it was merely that it didn’t lessen that gave it the illusion of worsening, but as a trickle of moisture visibly leaked down her inner thigh, she had to admit, this was getting pretty nuts. The dreams were part of it. Most of it, probably. It was always worst  first thing in the morning, and waking up with a finger or three in her cunt was no longer strange. The morning she woke up from a dream about begging the boys to let her blow them for a die ended with waking up fellating her own cummy fingers, and it barely fazed her.

It was more than that, though. She was hot  almost all the time. Her oscillating fan, a relic from years back when her house’s AC had failed and it had taken a few weeks to fix, was now getting a workout, turned up to full blast and aimed straight at her whenever she was in her room. Which was most of the time, because she was edging her pussy whenever both hands weren’t actively engaged elsewhere. Sometimes even when they were. Her mind would wander, eyes slid closed, and a speckled void of nothingness awaited her, stretching her consciousness into atomic thinness over its infinity. No conscious thought remained, only a mindless, frantic longing  for her dice. Or at least the opportunity to prove her worthiness of them .

Once she forgot to close her door. Her dad was subjected to the sight of his only daughter lying on her bed, black jeans around her ankles, her work shirt hiked up to expose her bra and her bra tugged down to expose her tits, one array of digits crushing a nipple while the other only slightly more gently pistoned in and out of her pussy. Mortified, his intended invitation to the dinner table became a sputter of apologies, as did her own breathy moans. After that – once she finished up – the family sat down for the most awkward meatloaf in recorded human history.

As for her remaining job, that was rough going. With restful sleep an increasingly distant memory and her mind constantly slipping into the lustful haze of oblivion, even her simple job was a struggle. Normally she liked working at Arby’s. Doling out sacks of D-grade meat oozing mystery sauce and what could only legally be called “cheese” in the confines of the continental U.S. to fat, impatient strangers was goth as hell, smiling as she distributed heart disease and colon cancer. Suddenly Cindy found herself mixing up orders, spacing out while entering them at the drive-thru, her jaw hanging slack with cow-like ambivalence as she passed food through the window. “Damn, this stuff is gonna be the death of me,” chuckled one diabetic-in-waiting as he accepted his three thousand calorie meal, and Cindy didn’t even laugh.

To cope, she eventually hit upon combining her work with her imagination. If doing Arby’s drudgery while keeping her horniness in check was no longer possible, then she’d simply have to channel the one into the other. Whenever her manager wasn’t looking she undid the buttons of her grubby uniform. Tuesday’s shift found her sans bra; Wednesday’s ditched her panties, too. Channeling Bobby’s cheerleading buddy, that cunt Evelyn, her smile to passing customers was less of a smile and more of an unspoken invitation to come back and fuck her face sometime. She uttered the rote “would you like to try our new prime rib sandwich” with the tone and enthusiasm of a phone sex operator who was going to die in two weeks unless she scrounged up enough for a kidney transplant. If she was waiting on an order for drive-thru, she alternated back and forth between hopping up on the counter and letting them stare at her ass through the glass and chatting them up while they waited, bent low, tits dangling like two mouth-watering Happy Meal toys from her old work across the street.

Thursday night, she hadn’t even been scheduled but was picking up a shift to give herself something to do other than sit around the house masturbating to LED dice ads for the millionth time. During break, she fucked Charlie in the breakroom. It felt like there ought to be more lead-in to the incident than that, but there really wasn’t. He’d come down to grab some cups and restock, paused to ask how her new boyfriend was liking her makeover. She told him she was single, then proved it. Or proved she was a cheating little slut; she’d forgotten all about Dominic.

At any rate, the sex occupied less than a quarter of her thirty-minute break. After inviting Charlie to bend her over the broken shake machine and pump her full of cum, she still had more than enough time to finish her sandwich. It felt slutty. It was  slutty. Still, she’d hoped maybe some actual sex would help cool her off, but as she made her way to her car after closing with Charlie’s hand possessively inserted in the back pocket of her work jeans in preparation for another ride, at best it hadn’t made things worse.

Charlie swore he was clean, but she still took a morning after pill. If she was going to let herself be the village bicycle, she could at least make sure she didn’t wind up having to squirt out some random loser’s kid. She knew enough of her gaming buddies’ turn-ons to know preggos weren’t numbered among them, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize her time with her dice on account of a fat, stretched out belly.

Or, you know, ruin her life becoming a single mom working part time at Arby’s, she supposed.

She reflected that things were really getting out of hand somewhere in between unblocking Dominic to invite him to come over and fuck her and getting thrown out of her house.

It was an honest mistake. Bobby had sent a group text asking if folks would mind starting and ending an hour early Saturday. Nobody had a problem with it, though Andy couldn’t resist asking if Cindy would be able to get herself “ slooted  up” in time. She wished she could ask what that idiot term even meant, but it wasn’t mysterious, only stupid. Then Bobby, with surprising sweetness, even added in a separate message only for her, Feel to come over earlier if you want, Cin.   Like you used to, back in HS, remember?  he added with simple, straightforward smiley face.

That was all it had taken, the offer of more time with her dice, barely implicit though it was. She’d let Charlie fuck her to test a theory; if Bobby wanted to stuff it up her ass while the others issued rankings to the way her ass jiggled while he pounded it, that would at least be for a higher purpose.

God, what if he wasn’t giving out the dice in pre-planned ways, but randomly? This week could be the d20. The holy of holies. She could picture it, the light-bespeckled icosahedron, resting on the table before her, waiting to service her character’s every need. Skill checks, attack rolls, saving throws. All of it right there at her disposal. She doubted Bobby would be so generous, not even if he knew how thirstily she awaited the day when she was finally told she had earned that prize.

Still, the thought of it. Roll after bottomless roll, tumbling down the infinite staircase.

So, of course, she stumbled semi-consciously down the hall to her parents’ bathroom to use their shower with its handheld head to spritz her clit to completion. She didn’t hear her dad enter, nor notice him shedding his pants and stroking himself as he watched her play. Cindy almost certainly would have stopped then, if she’d known. If he’d realized it was his daughter there behind the foggy glass and not his wife, as he soon after struggled in vain to explain, he probably would have stopped, too. Instead, he was caught in the act by a wife who went straight to apoplexy, no excuses accepted nor even heard as the both of them pleaded their innocence. That Cindy did so with nothing more than a towel wrapped around her waist likely didn’t help her case, but her titties were on fire .

She was told she was no longer welcome in their house, that they’d tolerated enough from their moody daughter over the years and whatever this skanky new phase was, that she’d have to figure it out for herself. She was given enough time to get dressed and then firmly shoved out the door by her still-livid mother, a beet-red husband cowering behind.

Cindy shouted a few expletives through the door, then stalked off to her used Subaru and pondered just where the fuck she was supposed to live now. And to finish off what her dick parents had interrupted.

****************************************************************

“Cindy? What are you– Hey, yeah, come– Are you crying? Why are– Did you tear your shirt?”

“No, it came this way.”

By the time she’d made the drive over to Bobby’s slummy apartment complex, reality had slammed home, and the floodgates had opened. She’d been caught masturbating by her dad. Again. Maybe it really had been mistaken identity. Had Mom known about the first time? (Had there been others she hadn’t noticed?) Cindy really had been pretty absent-minded about it, she was pretty sure. Now she was homeless. Disowned. Despised. It was some goth-level hardship, and boy oh boy had she not been in goth-level resilience mode when it happened. No, the curly blonde mess stumbling into Bobby’s studio apartment with its jeans sliced to bare its ass cheeks and its shirt cut off below the nips was very much not goth. It was still somehow Cindy, though.

Somehow.

The wardrobe adjustment had been a ploy to get in the door. All she needed was a place to crash until her parents cooled off to at least let her pack up her things, maybe a day or two. She could have reached out to Kristelle and Joaquin. They hadn’t hung out much lately since she’d picked up two jobs – ironically, to save up for that day when she could tell her parents to fuck off and move out on her own – but they would have been good company right then. They were fellow goths, or at least what passed for it in this shitty little town. (Joaquin was more an emo kid, but close enough with such slim pickings for like souls.) Having people to vent to, who would share and magnify her sense that the universe was a place of loss and pain and misery, would have been a boon.

In the midst of reaching for her phone to text them, though, Bobby’s offer revealed itself again, and the dice had decided it from there. Her presentation was horrible, literally the first t-shirt and first jeans she’d found in her drawers, blood red and Joker purple respectively. The switchblade she kept in the glove box of her car had not been the most efficient tool for tailoring her clothes, hence the right cheek being almost completely exposed yet only a little pinch of butt showing on the left, but things had been so dicey with Bobby lately she wanted some extra incentive for him to let her crash for the night. (The top she’d cut four times until she was sure her tits were looking their best for him.)

“Of course you can stay here, Cin,” Bobby agreed immediately. Almost too immediately. “I’m so sorry. It’s hard to imagine your parents flipping out like that. They always seemed so nice. Open-minded and all? About your whole… you know. ‘Goth.’ Thing .” He was distracted by gathering up fast food containers, cups and napkins from around his living room, a frenzy of preparation for hot girl company. Cindy, meanwhile, could see only where the metal dice container was sitting, buried casually beneath a six-pack of Coke Zero and two family-sized bags of Doritos. If the rest of the apartment had been infested with cockroaches or outright burning down, it would still be her preference to stay right where she was.

“Thanks, Bobby. It’ll only be for the night. Maybe two. They’ll calm down.” How she’d look either of them in the eye ever again, she didn’t quite know yet.

“However long it takes. I’ve actually sorta missed having you around, you know?”

“That’s nice of you to say,” Cindy replied hastily,” but it was too late. Bobby saw the chance to play at being Mr.  Nice Guy, and there was no going back.

“Like, one day we’re going to school together, in classes together, hanging out once or twice over the weekends for gaming, and then bam. School’s over, everybody’s got college or work or both so we’re struggling for bi-weekly hangouts. Then this stupid plague ruins everything so I barely get to see my– you. You can stay as long as you need to, OK? Hell, move in, for all I care.” He laughed awkwardly as if to say it was a joke, but it was a feeble thing, very much within his limits of insisting he was sincere.

The couch was finally crumb and wrapper free, and she settled down. Bobby plunked down next to her. “Do you wanna talk? I don’t want to make you dwell on it. If you’d rather have some distraction… Whatever you need.”

The TV was running some nature-artsy screensaver, but she’d seen before that it had been paused on Glee . “Just hit play. This is fine.”

“Oh, no, I was actually watching…” Her disdain for the show was no secret to him, but before he could work up the nerve to confess it, she’d already seized the remote and done it for him. A group of uninspiringly  beautiful assholes were in the midst of singing an even less inspiring melody. In a locker room, for some reason? Whatever, none of it was meant to emulate anything real except to the Franks and Evelyns of the world.

“We can watch something else.”

“No, keep going. I don’t care.”

“I distinctly remember hearing you say that every episode someone watches of this show slices away a portion of their soul.”

“I’m goth,” the tanned blonde with her tits and ass spilling out reminded him. “Dicing up souls is cool.”

“If you’re sure.”

Cindy made it through the song and the credits between that episode and the next. (Holy balls in a batting cage, there were six  fucking seasons of this nightmarishly inane garbage?) That was as long as she could hold out. About four minutes, all told. Longer than she’d have thought. Then her resolve broke.

“Um, Bobby?”

“Yeah, Cin?”

“Do you think, um, I could maybe…” She put a hand on his thigh. Couldn’t hurt. “Hold them?”

“You mean my…?” He blinked. “Oh! Oh, you mean the dice. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want them to wind up lost in a couch cushion or anything…”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“Yeah, still, they’re really only for game days, you know?” He winced sympathetically.

“Oh. Sorry. Just, I’ve had about the worst day of my life, and I thought…” She trailed off. How could he endure the ham-fisted attempts at gendering empathy for the vapid whores on the show, while feeling so little for her? Her plight was basically made for this show – way  too hot girl misunderstood and maltreated  by her parents, in desperate need of a friend to see her through the dark hours. Evidently he wasn’t taking much away from his seven hundred viewings of this crap.

Instead, he took the trailing off as acquiescence and returned his attention to the screen, where some teacher was mansplaining at a group of girls Cindy knew nothing about but already wished dead for their fashion sense alone about what they could learn from people of different walks of life despite the fact that every indicator said their walks in life were indubitably to the same country club in preparation for some dimwittedly  obvious coming together bullshit at the end of the episode which Cindy could only imagine would be unraveled for some fresh mindless drama in the next. Bobby lapped it up, sniffling away tears as the girls learned their oh-so-temporary lesson.

So she went to work. Whenever he looked over to monitor whether she was enjoying herself, she smiled politely. As politely as she knew how; showing her teeth without grimacing seemed to work for him. Waiting until she caught him sufficiently inured  to her presence to actually sing along in front of her took three more agonizingly insipid episodes. If it put Bobby in a good headspace, though, that was all she could ask for.

So she curled up on her side and plopped her head in his lap.

“Is this OK? I’m just sorta tired.” On her side, her t-shirt was barely hiding her tits any more, sweat beading on them in the heat only she could seem to feel. It felt fucking whorish, but after the past few weeks, humiliating herself to get things out of Bobby felt disturbingly normal.

“Sure. You  want a pillow or anything? I, um…” I’m hard as a rock , she assumed was what he meant. Her temple confirmed that, as if it hadn’t been obvious through his baggy athletic shorts even before first contact.

“No, this is fine. If you’re comfortable, that is.”

His right arm was hovering over her, clearly without a guess about where to put it. She decided it for him, draping it over her, his thick fingers settled over her bare, slick stomach. As he slowly relaxed into it over the next mind-numbing episode, Cindy took initiative only at intervals, attacking by stealth in plain sight. Her elbow hooked over his arm, pinning his hand to her body. A nuzzle here, a vague noise there. (A sigh of contentment? A whimper? Muffled arousal? Listener’s choice.) Her breathing, even, shifted to open-mouthed until she made sure the heat and moisture was palpable on his cock in a way that had to be making him want more. There was only one way he was going to get it, though.

Give her permission.

Err, no. No, not permission. A die. Give her a die. Sheesh.

Little to do but wait and hope he began to see the potential benefits to making her a little happier. Eyes closed, ears closed, Cindy wrapped herself in the space between rolls. Nothing but the stars and the boundless emptiness separating them. More boundless than the unslakable thirst in her throat, more hollow than the trickling hole between her thighs. She sunk so deep she couldn’t even smell the wetness gushing from her arousal, the drool trickling onto the tented shorts of the fat dork she was using as a pillow.

It took him until the end of the season finale before he finally caved, but cave he  did.

“Cindy? Um, if you want, maybe I could let you hold one…? For a little while. Not to keep, mind you, but for a bit.”

She moaned in forestalled relief. “Oh thanmf mm…”

His cock was in her mouth so fast she forgot to wait for the dice, and his player blew him with a passion like his cum was XP. Bobby would never even guess where she’d been getting her practice. After the second time he came on her face, she finally remembered to wait long enough for him to retrieve what her fingertips assured her was the coveted d8. Sandwiched between two fat, bare, sweat-slicked tits, the points dug lasciviously into her skin until she no longer knew or cared where he shoved his cock.

He was inside her, somewhere. The void inside loomed, unfillable, so as her DM’s jizz dried into her eyelashes, she couldn’t help but laugh at him for trying.

Chapter Five

“Uh, what the heck are you wearing, Cin? I mean… You look…”

“Brent’s trying to say that you look like half a shit sandwich with double shit. Jesus. The goth shit was hot. The slut shit was hot. This is just… you’re dressed like my little brother.”

“I had a bit of a situation come up,” Cindy muttered, then repeated herself once it was clear the mic hadn’t picked it up.

“What situation? Washer break down? Man, I guess it’s your wardrobe and all, but still.”

“Mind if we get started, guys? I planned kind of a lot for today, and I was hoping to get through as much as possible. You two can play fashion critic on your own time.”

Bobby set up the next leg of the adventure. With Mokvinorg’s forces broken and scattered by their offensive, they began to process their other captive. Eisheth, the beleaguered ex-mistress of Lord Koltron, exposited about  her lover’s betrayal. Taken captive and made to pose as his doting lover, she sounded as if she’d have been happy to sell him out even before he gave her away to the goblins. She knew next to nothing of why he betrayed her; her attentions  had always been received with ardor. While she was no adventurer herself, the information she had about him and his estate could be invaluable in learning more.

To his credit, Brent focused on the story foremost. Even Andy only made one joke about how Sintheigha and Eisheth should hook up and let them watch, but admitted that Cindy’s “little boy vibes” kept him from putting his heart into it.

They fled the scene, pursued by Mokvinorg’s remaining minions, few in number but not diminished in strength like the party. Bobby had arranged a fun little minigame of cat and mouse, abstracting almost a week of chases into a half hour of skill checks that culminated in the party turning the tables and ambushing Mokvinorg  alone in his camp. Cindy watched the boys defeat him with a forced smile; her character had been assigned to the distraction that led his fellow hobgoblins astray. 400 XP to Sintheigha, 3600 apiece to Skuf and Jerom.

Around that time, Brent finally put his finger on the truth that had been eluding him. “Hang on… Bobby, wasn’t Camp ToKenOke the boy scout camp we went to in like fifth grade?”

“Um, yeah. It was,” Bobby admitted, eyes unable to look at the camera.

“So then… why  is Cindy wearing your Camp ToKenOke t-shirt?”

Andy pointed at his monitor. “It is. Oh my god! Oh my GOD!”

“You guys–”

“You two fucked!”

“Did you guys hook up, Bobby?!”

“Dude, she’s wearing  his shirt ! Look how she won’t look at us.” He laughed. “Pouts don’t count. Dude, you finally got in those goth panties! Grats, brah!”

The two fell all over themselves congratulating Bobby, who, to his credit, tried to clarify that they didn’t go all the way or anything, and that she was just crashing there for a bit while she worked things out with her parents. She’d arranged to get a spare Arby’s uniform so she could still work, but beyond that, all she had was Bobby’s charity to sustain her. This shirt had been a keepsake, but since he was a 2 or often 3XL and she was a women’s M, this old thing had fit a lot better than most of his stuff, though it was skin-tight. The paper-thin fabric made it all too obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. She’d only brought the one, and she couldn’t afford to waste it on these idiots, who’d all seen her in far more compromising attire.

Brent asked, “Don’t you have a studio, Bobby?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“So… what’s the sleeping situation?”

Cindy opened her mouth to insist that it wasn’t their business, that she’d slept on the couch almost the whole night – and with most of her clothes on, no less – but then she heard how it sounded and her jaw clamped shut with an indignant sulk. There were no excuses that didn’t sound beyond pathetic. Bobby didn’t have AC, so it was too hot to sleep fully dressed. He’d let her pick one die and hold it for the night, which had made her way too horny not to crawl over to his bed, a grungy old mattress and box springs on the floor in the corner, and ask if he wanted another blowjob. She’d given him a shake, but he still didn’t wake up; embarrassed, she went into the bathroom and diddled herself until the hot water ran out.

“I have a couch, Brent,” Bobby said while she was still remembering how hard she’d come, kneeling in the least mildewed spot on the shower floor, staring at the d12 resting on the soap dish. (She’d wanted so desperately to hold it, but the thought of dropping it, of it slipping down the drain and being lost forever, made her throw up all over herself in pure terror. Right place to do that kind of thing, she supposed. It hadn’t slowed her down, that was for damn sure.)

“Can we get back to the game, boys?” Calling them boys, she’d been noticing the past couple weeks, seemed a more successful way of guiding them. It was gentle and a little flirty. Two traits she deeply loathed in a woman, but it beat being kicked out again. Ingratiating herself was fast becoming second nature.

****************************************************************

It was weird, not driving home after the session. After congratulating Bobby on how interesting the plot seemed to be shaping up, she learned a bit about his post-game ritual, typing up notes to himself and for the next few hours cranking out plans and adjustments to existing plans while the energy and ideas were hot. For Bobby, D&D didn’t end when the session concluded. It was a way of life. Meanwhile, Cindy briefly tidied up her own books and papers, then quietly curled up on the couch with her dice until Bobby told her it was time to put them away.

She started masturbating right there on his sofa three times before that came, though each time she thought she caught it before he noticed. She really had to quit being such a fucking slut around Bobby before he got the wrong idea. He was just a friend who–

No. A gaming buddy. But yeah, just a gaming buddy who was lending her a hand, and who happened to have randomly picked the most incredible dice in history of the multiverse as a gift. That was it. She couldn’t keep sucking his dick when she wanted something, or when she was horny.

Luckily, she had other outlets.

“You know, not for nothing, Cynthia, but I always thought you were sorta hotter with the whole goth witch look,” Charlie shared in the Arby’s breakroom that Tuesday.

Her glare over her shoulder could have lit the grease vats on fire. “Are you seriously going to complain right now? With your dick inside me, you wanna tell me I’m not at my best? Fucking really?”

Charlie grimaced and kept plugging away at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything. Just sayin’. Goth shit was hot is all. Not that you’re not killing it with the blonde Barbie doll thing.”

Cindy merely grunted and ignored him. Charlie didn’t matter. What he said and did meant as much to her as what team won the big sportsball match. So long as he helped her fuck this shit out of her system. The backs of her eyelids were the stars in the void, and while he blathered on asking her when she’d decided to “YOLO that puss.” The cretin’s choice of words couldn’t pierce her veil. She came, and came, and at some point he came, and then he went.

Only that time, he came back. Still reeling in delirium, tingling with bliss of anticipation and nostalgia of the dice, Cindy lay bent down with her cheek resting on a pile of empty roast beef sandwich containers that had paradoxically already picked up their future occupants’ signature odor. Suddenly Charlie’s cock was back inside her; it was only then she realized she’d forgotten to pull her pants back up, just lying there in the break room presenting herself.

He was quicker this time, which was a shame, but she supposed she had to clock in again soon so it was just as well. He came even quicker the second time around, though that time the fucker pulled out and came all over the back of her work shirt. She wouldn’t even have noticed but she felt some dribble onto her bare butt, too. He ran off before she was even through her first slew of curse words. Only then, she pictured the tiny flecks of pearlescent white shimmering on the black field of her shirt and she was back inside her dice, and she came all over again.

Back on the floor, some fat slob was making a bunch of special requests for his order. Cindy ignored him – what was he gonna do, drive back after he got home and found out? – and shot a glare at Charlie behind the grill.

“What’d I do now?” he asked tiredly.

She put her hand over her mic and spoke in a vicious hiss. “Coming on my fucking uniform? Asshole?”

Except his reaction was to give an exasperated look at Kyle sweeping up behind the register. Kyle blushed and focused hard on his broom.

It took her a moment to comprehend that look, but only a moment. Fucking hell. He’d sent someone else in to finish her off. She hadn’t even known that some 30-year-old rando she barely knew had fucked her. Worse yet, even knowing that, it was still sort of hot picturing that stain on her back. She wished she could see it instead of everybody but her. For the rest of her shift, when waiting for an order to come up, she made it a point to sit down on the counter next to the drive-thru window to show it off.

She made sure to tell Kyle before her shift ended that if he wanted another shot, he better up his stamina next time. Slutty, yes, but she was still horny, and maybe if she fucked enough other guys she’d keep herself from climbing into bed with Bobby and making everything weird. Weirder. Besides, every interaction with men was another chance to practice being flirty and deferential to them. It was easy to forget sometimes that she was only doing it to prepare herself for more of Brent and Andy’s bullying. She knew how short her fuse was, and if it blew again, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she chose a solid jibe over another die.

Only two left. She could hold out for two more weeks. Maybe no longer, but at least that.

Meanwhile, what had happened with her parents began to sink in. Her dad, jerking off watching her masturbate. Maybe he’d really thought it was his wife; maybe he didn’t. Her blonde hair still looked pretty dark wet . She shuddered every time she thought of it, tried  not to think how amazing she’d felt at the time. Not because of her dad, obviously, but because her skin felt so sensitive to touch that it was an ever-present temptation. Maybe something in the finish of the dice rubbing off on her? Hard to say.

Still, it was royally fucked up. As it was, her stupid parents were probably going back into couples counseling, and she wished them oodles of fun trying to talk their way past jacking it to their daughter’s naked ass in the shower. Bobby swore she could stay as long as she needed. Blowjob like that, small wonder, though she still thought she was getting the better end of that deal.

The apartment was hers most of the time. She only worked three shifts a week at Arby’s (though she’d requested more after getting fired from the carwash), and Bobby was out more often than in. He worked, of course, a job every bit as prestigious as hers, but he also spent a couple days a week with his old cheerleading buddies, at least those of them who hadn’t gone to college. She’d already been notified he was having them over on Friday, which her brain interpreted as “find somewhere else to be.” Her life might be circling the drain, but she wasn’t about to stoop to hanging out with wastes of stardust like Evelyn and Frank.

So instead of trying to work her way back in, she stopped by her parents’ place after work from Arby’s, Kyle’s cum still sticking to her back through her shirt, to pick up her things.

To her surprise, there was a note on the door. GARAGE , it read in her mother’s hand. So she went over to the garage. Preferring stealth, Cindy tried to sneak in through the side door, but her key wouldn’t fit in the lock. Fuckers. So she used the keypad and opened the big mechanical door; that hadn’t been changed. There, where her dad’s car should be, was a pile of trash bags and cardboard boxes she soon discovered were filled with her possessions. Clothes, books, bathroom stuff, all her useless old goth makeup. No need for that any more. The guys liked the new her, the one that was tan and blonde and cheerleader-sexy.

So once she loaded it into her car, Cindy withdrew a black tube of lipstick and wrote CUNT  a couple dozen times on her mother’s new SUV.

It was empowering. The first empowering thing she’d done in what felt like forever. Having to make herself smaller, less than, quieter, meeker, objectifying herself and – she wasn’t about to forget – sucking off and fucking all these random guys… it had begun to feel normal . Like that was the real her, or maybe that she was becoming who she was meant to be. Leveling up, as it were. Striking back at someone felt like a return to sanity. What was more Cynthia than calling her mom a cunt and doing a little destruction to make a point? She didn’t even feel bad about it. After all, who was to say it wasn’t an improvement? Nothing was meant to be this way or that way. Besides, property was a social construct, so to call her act “damage” was meaningless.

Also, fuck that bitch.

Cindy sneezed, and for a moment, saw stars. Not the real stars in outer space, but the better ones, the ones inside. Also, she nearly came.

Without really knowing why, she decided to drive one last nail into the coffin of her relationship with her rat-fucking parents. After a couple minutes of searching, she found a spot with good lighting. With a hand trembling with nervous, elated energy, Cindy took off her top – still no bra, of course – and retrieved the lipstick from where she’d jammed it inside the gas cap. There was still plenty left. Using her phone as a mirror, she scrawled another message on herself in lipstick. The heat trapped in the garage had softened the stuff quite a bit, so it came off in broad smudges. Some of her letters came out backwards, which was fine by her, and all of them sloppy . Legible, though. When she finished, she snapped a picture, tapped a few buttons, and headed back to her car with all the bags she felt like carrying.

She was around the corner of the block before she realized she’d forgotten her work shirt on the garage floor. Whatever. She could convince her manager to issue her another new one. Put the stupid asshole in line behind Charlie and Kyle if she had to. Her seatbelt smeared the lipstick, but she’d done what she’d wanted to do – why had she wanted to do that?  – and if she held it in place just so, it covered most of her boobs.  Once she got back to Bobby’s apartment complex, she was hesitant to smear lipstick on her purse, so she used an old paper bag from Arby’s as a sort of physical censorship box. Some of his neighbor’s got an eyeful, including one old lady who gaped when she saw Cindy go through Bobby’s door.

Not a lot of half-naked sluts strolling into that pad, she’d bet.

She paused as the door closed behind her. Don’t call yourself a slut , she reminded herself. Not that she wasn’t. Like, she’d fucked two guys today, neither of whom she even liked much less respected, nor even wanted anything in return from, and one of them she hadn’t even meant to. To say nothing of what she’d done in that garage. What in the hell had possessed her to…

Suddenly all thoughts of her parents and that pic dissipated in a wisp of steam. There they were. The container out , open, on the end table beside the sofa. That’s not where they’d been when she left for work. Had Bobby been doing something with them? She almost laughed at the idea that they had ensnared her host as they had her. Still, they were there. Out in the open. All  of them. Her knees caught her, mostly, but she crawled rather than walked from there. It was too much. Another multiverse. Hers could never contain such a wealth of geometric transcendence.

Bobby emerged a moment later from the kitchen. Not that Cindy heard him asking how work was, what had happened to her shirt, why her jeans were down around her knees as she crawled toward her tiny portable Shangri-la.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to… shoot.” Bobby rushed out in front of her, quickly stuffing the dice back into their tin container and sealing the lid.

The strength in Cindy’s arms gave out. She collapsed on her face and began masturbating. And crying.

“Oh, don’t cry, hon,” Bobby said once he got past staring at the way her ass rippled as she plumbed around in her panties.

“Can’t… help it…” she whimpered. “So… beautiful…”

Bobby frowned, not that she saw, tears shimmering in a thousand infinitesimal sparks in the slits between the darkness of her eyelids. “Hey. OK, what if I… just for a bit.”

She wasn’t listening, but gradually felt a cool pressure on her skin, a smoothing motion across the middle of her forehead. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and there was Bobby’s hand, holding… something. She went cross-eyed trying to see it, almost sure what it must be but unable to get a good enough look. He watched her with a nervous smile, and finally pulled back so she could see what he was holding.

The d6. A perfect cube of perfect darkness, penetrated by perfect chaos in speckles of perfect light. As her jaw lowered, Bobby sat back on his grungy couch filled with chip crumbs and loose change and here and there a little stuffing. Cindy followed him by instinct. Followed the die, anyway. The d6. The classic die people thought of when they thought of dice. Handaxes and hand crossbows, shortswords and shortbows.  The most common damage dice  for spells. A die that came up in a thousand and one minor functions.

She crawled until it touched her forehead again. Which coincided with when Bobby’s cock reached her lips.

“Oh thank you, thank you, thanffmm …” She engulfed him in her mouth, and he resumed stroking her forehead with it. It was rapture. She lost herself in the blowjob, savoring and lavishing affection on the turgid staff ( staff – quarterstaff – dual weapon – BOTH d6 damage – oh fucking GAWD )   in her mouth. He came in her  mouth without warning. Or maybe he warned her. She didn’t care if he slapped her in the face or tattooed “cum disposal site” on her forehead so long as he kept rubbing.

“Can I keep sucking? Please?”

Bobby looked like he was thinking it over. “You had a rough week, so I suppose. Tell you what. I know how hard it is for you to ask, so I’ll just say something if I want you to stop, or you can stop whenever. OK?”

Cindy smiled. Sort of. Smiling wasn’t really possible with her face all dick-mounted like that. Sometimes she was glad for Bobby and his stupid passive aggressive nice guy bullshit. At some point she realized he was snoring – how many times had he come by then? not nearly as many as her, she was sure; those corners just felt so sharp and crisp and ungh  – but she didn’t stop until she fell asleep, too. Once or twice she woke up and found out he’d slipped out, but the d6 was still there, in his hand, so every time, she slurped him back between her lips and blew him until she drifted off again.

Bobby woke up first. He’d had the courtesy to pull out and come on her body rather than risk drowning her in the stuff in his sleep. Or maybe he just wanted to give her a cum bath. Either way, she awakened to the sound of a jarring CREAK  in the pipes as his shower turned off. Modesty was still apparently a thing for him, as he soon exited the bathroom fully dressed. Cindy blinked sleepily, frowning at all the black lipstick smudges smeared incomprehensibly around her torso.

“Is there hot water left? I wanna wash the cum off.” It was hard to even sound ashamed at this point. But not impossible. She managed.

“Should be if you don’t take too long. And thanks for last night, by the way. You were great.”

“Thanks for, you know, the…” The what? Rubbing a d6 on my face? Letting  me sleep with your cock in my mouth so I could be as close to it as possible for as long as possible? “You know.”

“I’m sure I don’t, but hey, I’ll take it.” He chuckled and patted her shoulder affectionately. Realizing he’d accidentally patted a splotch of his own half-dried splooge, he darted back into the bathroom ahead of her to rinse his hand, then ducked out and waved her in.

As the hot water dwindled and eventually turned cold, Cindy began to examine her circumstances. Homeless. Part-time employed at $0.85 over minimum wage. Sucking off one of her gaming buddies without even eking out a promise from him to let her keep staying there.

This was bad.

No. “Bad” would be any one of those conditions. This was a catastrophe.

But in spite of it, knowing that d6 would be hers to roll all session long Saturday, it was hard to worry too much. Living in the Arby’s dumpsters and fucking her coworkers in exchange for… she forgot why she was letting them fuck her. Practice? Anyway, it wouldn’t be that  awful so long as she got the dice occasionally. In the freezing water, she warmed herself up masturbating to the thought of rolling that d20 over and over. Her brain even generated a random result for her. It was showing a 4 when her orgasm hit her. The result was nothing. Everything was nothing. The die was everything.

With the water off, she could just make out Bobby’s voice from the living room. Nothing worth paying attention to, sounded like – and so she thought right up until she exited the bathroom, her curves stuffed with pathetic insufficiency into a coarse white bath towel, and saw that he was speaking to someone on her  phone.

Who is that?  she mouthed demandingly, livid and confused.

He held up a finger. “Mhm. No yeah, I understand that. I agree with you. Totally unacceptable. I’m shocked, honestly. Shocked.”

Someone’s voice (female, Cindy thought) responded. They sounded angry. Bobby kept his admonishing finger aloft – the very same finger which had the power to grant or deny her access to her dice – so she kept silent. For the dice, she obeyed.

“No, you’re absolutely right. I had no idea.”

“Yes, I’ll tell her.”

“Oh, that’s just awful. I’m so sorry. Really. I just… gosh. No words.”

“Mhm. Yeah, I saw it all right. Yep, no doubt about it.”

“Wow. Oh yeah, she’ll hear about it from me, too.”

“No, I mean, I can’t… Yes, I appreciate that. But I couldn’t… No, yes, I mean I get you. But I can’t… If you’d just let me…”

The woman on the other end of the phone call was getting louder, but by then Cindy had discovered where the dice tin was sitting and it was hard to focus.

“Look, I’m as upset with her as you are, but I can’t let her roam the streets. I just can’t. But you better believe I’ll talk to her.”

“Yes. Yes, you have a good– well no, I guess that’s out. But I’m so sorry, and I hope you have a better tomorrow. Mhm. Good night.”

Was it night time? Having just woken up, Cindy had thought… but no. Day and night, light and darkness, reason and madness, all of it blurred together.

Bobby hung up her phone. The scowl that had been deepening on his face throughout the conversation was perhaps the most displeased she’d ever seen him. He hadn’t looked that pissed even when he’d found out she’d started a rumor that his male lifter buddy Frank had been roiding  up (which, she still maintained, he probably had been, muscles as big as her goddamn head).

“So… can I have my phone back now?”

Wordlessly, he held it out to her, though clearly he wasn’t about to let whatever it was drop. Cynthia snatched it greedily, which made her towel slip to show her left tit, which made her squeak in embarrassment and tug it up, which made her drop her phone, which made her fumble-squat to recover it, which made her towel fall off altogether, which gave Bobby got an excellent view of her bare ass and pussy as she bent to pick it up. Which did not make him look any happier with her, somehow. (Should she bleach her asshole? She’d heard that was a thing.)

Towel back in place, phone in hand, she endured his stony, judgmental glare and opened up her recent calls.

“You… that was my fucking mom?!”

“It was. Anything you’d like to tell me about?”

“What? No! None of that is any of your butt-fucking business whatso-fucking-ever. It’s got nothing to do with you, and fuck you for poking around in my  fucking life!” Oh god, she was taking an attitude with him, and he was already mad. She fell to her knees in contrition, though simultaneously tried to maintain an indignant glower of her own. How dare he?!

And also, maybe he could make it up to her with an extra die?

“You’re my friend, Cindy, and also, I’m the person you turned to for shelter, so yeah, it kind of is my business.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “You told me your parents threw you out because they got mad about your new boyfriend. Now your mother says it was actually because you were putting on a show? A… sexy show…? For your dad ?” His face was pure disgust. Not a in  tag fan, Bobby, evidently.

“I said it was about my new boy-toy, not boyfriend, which is sort of true, because…” She couldn’t say it. He was getting too much leverage over her already without hearing because your dice turn me on more than any boy ever has or ever could and I can’t stop jilling myself stupid . “Whatever. The point is, it’s between me and them. You had no  right.”

“No right? Cindy, I’ve known your folks since I was like twelve years old. Earlier actually – remember when your dad chaperoned that field trip to the zoo in second grade? And I was in a group with you and him, and I got scared in the reptile house and he covered for me. It was huge.”

Cindy actually remembered that, though she hadn’t thought of it in forever. That was the day she fell in love with snakes, watching a boy almost piss himself because he leaned too close to the glass and didn’t see a giant constrictor until it slithered at his face. As to his status with her parents… whatever. They’d always liked Bobby. You’d have to find the douchiest meth-head trailer park in America to find a set of parents who wouldn’t cream themselves over a do-gooder suck-up like Bobby.

It was funny, almost. When she first started having boys over as a middle schooler to play D&D in the basement, they’d insisted on open doors, and her mother had found excuses to come down at painfully regular intervals to watch for hanky panky. Yet when she’d gotten tired of her parents’ ham-fisted nudging to give Bobby a chance and moved the game over to his place, they’d literally tried to bribe them into staying with a hoard of new gaming stuff that she just packed up and biked over to Bobby’s basement. His  parents sure didn’t want their son to have anything to do with the weird girl with the black nail polish and skull ring.

“So?” Her look could have burned through solid steel.

“So, you went too far. Way too far!”

“Whatever she told you, it’s bullshit. I didn’t–”

“She sent pictures, Cindy.” He folded his arms imperiously. “You really think I’d believe your mother would make up something like that?”

Sure enough, there in her text messages (which the little fucker had also helped himself to) were shots of her mom’s car, accompanied by assurances that Cindy would be paying for any cleaning needed. Then half an hour later she’d sent a second message. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! WHAT DID WE EVER DO TO YOU, CINDY?!  accompanied by a picture of…

“Fuck. You weren’t supposed to see that.” Really, nobody should ever have seen that. Hell, even Cindy knew she shouldn’t have ever done it in the first place, but she’d been so horny, and void  and sparkle and need-want, and…

“Well I did. So that’s really you? What am I saying? Who else would it be. ”

Her eyes slid down to the ground. “I mean… yeah.”

“Cindy, that’s awful. Are you trying to ruin their marriage or something?”

“No! I mean… no. I wasn’t… I didn’t think…”

She looked at the image on her phone, a picture of the picture she’d sent to her family printer right before leaving the garage. There was a glare off the ink (her mother could never figure out how to turn off the flash), but it was unmistakable. There was a girl who could only be Cindy, her shirt lifted over soft brown tits, tongue dangling out spastically at the very top of the shot. The words FUCK ME were written across her tits. PLS  was snuck into the valley beneath them, a huge gob of black goop from the P smudged on her underboob.

Then DADDY  across her tummy.

In hindsight, she supposed that might have explained some of the sneers from Bobby’s neighbors on her way in from the car.

“I was just fucking around. It’s… you know, satire. Like, making fun of the idea that I wanted my dad to beat off to me . Which was absolutely not  my fault, by the way!”

Bobby wasn’t distracted, however. “Really? That  picture is supposed to show how someone would not  want to do stuff to you. With your boobs out. Asking him to… ugh. I can’t even.”

“You didn’t seem to mind when I came in here with that on my body yesterday!”

“How was I supposed to know that  was why it was there?! I figured it was another part of this weird, flirty, over-grateful thing you’ve been doing. I felt bad letting you go down on me, to be honest, but I would’ve felt worse rejecting you with all you’re going through.”

The sonofabitch thought he was doing her favors, letting  her blow him?! The nerve! “What does any of this have to do with you, anyway? This is my family drama, and it’s over anyway. I’m done with those assholes. If you’re cool letting me stay, then great, I’ll stay. But you don’t get to tell me how to live. Not even if you’re taking me in.”

It was difficult to sound proud when she was on her knees, her towel long since pooled around her on the floor, nipples still diamond hard from the icy water. And because they were always hard lately.

She tried, though.

“Cindy, it’s not–”

“Drop it. We’re gaming buddies, not friends. Just because I put your dick in my mouth a few times doesn’t mean you get a say in how I live.”

“I don’t think I want to game with someone who’s capable of doing things like that.” Bobby shook his head. “So you know, your mom wanted me to throw you out, but I can’t do that to a… a ‘gaming buddy,’ or whatever you want to call it. You can stay here as long as you need to. But I don’t think I can have all… that  in my happy place.”

Her blood froze in her veins. Then it dialed the thermostat down to absolute zero, as cold as the darkness in the dice themselves.

Not again. Her dice.

Dice.

The dice.

Dice dice dice dice dice die die dice deicide dice die dicicide FUUUUUUCK

“I’ll apologize!” she blurted instantly. Never in her life had she capitulated so quickly, so completely, so totally, but there was no alternative. Salvation itself demanded it. “I’ll make things better. I will. And I’ll mean it.” She could already see his skeptical retort forming. “Not some bullshit apology – I’ll make things right, as right as they can considering how stupid I was, how awful I was, you’re so right Bobby, and my mom is too. I’ll clean up the car, and I’ll explain that my dad had nothing to do with it, any of it, that I was being a stupid little selfish bratty bitchy slut, and I won’t ever do it again.”

“That’s all well and good, but you can’t undo–”

She vaulted into his lap. Good. His cock was hard. Her body was still there, still worth something. Very good. So little of her remained. Cindy wriggled her hips, grinding her pussy against him. She was already so wet just from breathing the dicey air, so it was easy to pretend he had anything to do with it.

“You’re right. You’re so right. Apologies can’t change the past. So true. But I have an idea.” She had no idea. She was blurting out things she thought he might like to hear as fast as she could think them, and nothing more. Her plan, if a stream of consciousness plea of desperation could be called a plan, tumbled from her lips, each step an effort to top the last, to show him she wasn’t that horrible girl who’d done those horrible things, that she could be good, be deserving, be whatever he wanted her to be.

By the time she was done, she actually, for the briefest of moments, wondered if the dice were worth all that .

“You really want to do all that ?” Bobby seemed as incredulous as she was.

She nodded, wet hair flying, trying her best to sink his dick inside her through his shorts. “Absolutely. I want it. I deserve it. You have to know I’m serious. That I mean what I say. That I totally absolutely  one hundred percent think that you’re right and I was wrong.”

Bobby looked apprehensive, but at last – soon after she clutched at his fat fingers and forced them onto her fat titties – he gave the slightest nod. “OK. But if you don’t follow through, then…”

She was already dialing  her mother with one hand, bracing herself for the shame of begging for that judgey cunt’s forgiveness. The other was working at Bobby’s elastic waistband, freeing his cock and trying to guide it inside her. Bobby stopped her at the last minute, but he let her jack him at least, which was better than… something. She didn’t know what. “I will. Please let me, Bobby. Thank you, Bobby. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Bobby. I… Hi, Mom.”

God, she wasn’t sure if she could go through with this. Could she really…? After all, only a few days earlier, during their session… It was one hell of a coincidence, if it was one. Which of course it had to be.

****************************************************************

The party’s return to Hypheron was slow going. Slower because the boys thought it was funny to double down on Sintheigha’s offer to serve as pack mule, her encumbrance stretched to its limits. It was hard to imagine any armorer in the city would have wanted the hobgoblins’ grungy armor even before they redecorated it full of puncture holes and blood. Still, the boys insisted it was 10 gold pieces per suit, so they’d loaded her up until a single extra pound would prevent her from being able to walk at all.

Then Andy joked that Sintheigha’s clothes probably weighed a few pounds, maybe enough that they could make her lug a few more javelins (5 silver apiece!), and then the joke became a discussion, and it was finally the NPC Eisheth who offered to carry the javelins in Sintheigha’s stead. Cindy gave Bobby a grateful look, though his NPC didn’t stop treating her like an embarrassment to be seen around. Weighed down by eighteen suits of putrid cured leather, now almost two full levels behind the boys and even the party NPC Bregan, who kept leveling up alongside the rest of the party in spite of not participating in battles on account of her bullshit pacifistic dogma.

With commerce seen to (and Sintheigha awarded her diminutive partial share of the proceeds), it was time to get into the mystery of why Lord Koltron was in league with these goblins.

Eisheth knew the way to the estate, and provided them a  map. It was pretty nifty, really. The map for Koltron’s estate, he’d gotten from some guy’s patreon. Leave it to Bobby to live in squalor but find money to shell out for digital art for their game. Then, he’d taken the map and drawn his own version of it in the sand at the volleyball pit at the park down the street from his apartment, done pretty impressively to scale. That was uploaded to the VTT as a navigable map, so in the end, it created the effect of Eisheth picking up a stick and doodling the estate in the dirt at their camp site. In combination with some reconnaissance (which Sintheigha was allowed to participate in!) , the  map let  them walk their characters around Koltron’s estate to prep  for their infiltration on the rendered map.

“So it looks like we have three ways we could try to go in. Four, if you count frontal assault–”

Brent interjected. “Just drop it on the frontal assault already!”

“Fine.” He grumbled, “Princess Perkytits and her stupid daggers probably couldn’t hack it anyways.”

“Anyway…” Cindy quietly nudged him along. It was as confrontational as she’d been all session. She slapped her left tit to make up for it.

“So there’s the sewer access. Classic. But it leaves us coming up in the servants quarters, which means unpredictable foot traffic and farthest proximity from Koltron’s room. And you know Bobby’s got some sewer monster waiting down there on the way in.”

The group laughed. What was a romp through the sewers without otyughs, trolls or giant insects? Ah, the good old days. “Then there’s that gap in the east wall. We have a sense of guard patrols, and we could climb up to the upper levels. Of course there, we have to make it past their checkpoint, which almost certainly means alarms raised, stealth impossible. So from there, it’s smash and grab.”

Then all eyes, both physical and digital, shifted to Cindy, who adjusted herself in her seat and wished she’d worn a bra under Bobby’s t-shirt. Thin fucking fabric made her nipples way too easy to spot. “You guys…”

“We can’t make you do it,” Brent acknowledged with surprising gentility. While he stared at the way Camp ToKenOke  was distended across her chest. He had enlarged her feed and zoomed in on them, confirmed by the reflection in his glasses. “But it’s for sure the best shot.”

Andy nodded, though he had only conceded they couldn’t make her do it because even if they booted her from the party, it would mean they’d be stuck with one of the other options regardless. “Your call, Sin.” Or Cin? How long it   had been  since none of these puds would dare call her anything but Cynthia?

She mulled it over. Again. They were right, was   the  annoying thing. It was the sort of strategy she wouldn’t have considered when they were playing pre-covid, but suddenly all kinds of lines were being blurred. Plus, if she pulled it off, she might finally catch up in XP and perhaps even regain a measure of respect at the table. Power and autonomy and respect all sounded like fine, novel awards.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

The boys cheered; Bobby smiled indulgently, looking as proud of himself for creating this opportunity for her as he was of her for seizing it. So the group collaborated, got her outfitted as best they could, concealed her weapons, gave her some talking points if she ran into guards. She hadn’t built her character for social encounters, but thanks to the Charisma score they’d forced on her and the decision to invest in Stealth (a no-brainer, considering how little armor Sintheigha wore), she was in decent shape.

And it mostly worked. Per Eisheth’s intel, Lord Koltron didn’t merely maintain a steady rotation of mistresses, one who rotated fairly regularly. This was merely his public façade to allow him to parade out members of his private harem. He was renowned as a patron of the unfortunate, but in fact, many of the young women he “helped” escape to a better life outside the rough and tumble streets of Hypheron were kept in sexual servitude beneath his estate. Not Eisheth’s tale, but when she discovered it, she had been horrified at what she found.

Clad only in what the DM described as a “gauzy, diaphanous, almost ephemeral garment,” subjecting himself to a round of mockery for his overuse of the thesaurus, Sintheigha slipped in over the wall. The climb was easy for her; she was a Strength-based fighter, after all. A Stealth check got her across the yard, dimmed by the long shadows of the setting sun, and an Athletics to the upper level. Being good at anything felt strange.  She waited on the balcony for the guard patrol to pass the window, then slipped in behind them. Padding along barefoot, she wasn’t noticed until rounding the corner where, exactly where Eisheth described were  a pair of Koltron’s most loyal bodyguards.

She spun the tale they’d concocted, that Lord Koltron had demanded the opportunity to “break in” his harem’s newest addition. “Is this even the right way?” she asked, voice trembling.

Suspicious, they grilled her a bit, which was mostly just the DM giving her an opportunity to use the backstory they’d drafted for her. More thorough than Sintheigha’s actual backstory, honestly. A girl growing up impoverished, thrown into debtor’s prison when her family couldn’t make good on their taxes. From sessions past, she was even able to supply the men with vivid, accurate details of the prison to bolster the story. From there, she was told Koltron had paid off her share of the family debt but she was then to be indentured to him until repaid. Eisheth had said this was a common practice for the lecher. Sure enough, as Sintheigha’s eyes welled up with tears at her trepidation at having to service Lord Koltron, the DM gave her a +2 bonus on her Bluff for thoroughness, another for using the prison details, +2 more for an assist from Skuf’s Bluff check during prep, and finally a +6 for her own real life tears.

It wasn’t hard. All she had to do was think of him taking away her dice, and she started leaking in seconds.

It worked. They showed her to Koltron’s chambers and instructed her to wait, that  he would see to her  at his leisure. When their footsteps were no longer audible to her ear pressed to the door, Sintheigha set to scouring the place for clues.

After a few failed Perception checks, it worked. Hidden beneath a false bottom in a desk drawer in his study was a sheaf of papers, correspondences between Koltron and the goblin king. Andy muttered his skepticism that goblins were much for being pen pals, but Sintheigha ignored him and kept reading. Bobby said that unless she intended to take them with her, only she could read the documents he’d prepped, and even then she wouldn’t get to keep a copy. (He’d probably allow a Wisdom check later for recollection, gauging from past experience, but little more.) Still, it painted a clear picture. Members of the same doomsday cult, both servitors of the same great old one, something called Nyarlathotep, whoever or whatever that was.

Bobby had muted their feed so the two of them could run the session without input from Andy and Brent. (Meanwhile, aware as ever of the need to keep them happy with her, she twisted her nipples hard and made sure they had something to look at.) Cindy read hurriedly, notified that things were happening in real-time. “Eisheth a human sacrifice, Crawling Chaos, service rewarded, city must burn… I think I got it.”

“OK. Now what?”

“Let’s blow this dicksicle stand, baby.” She and Bobby shared a grin of anticipation.

The extraction plan was pretty good, much as she hated to give credit to Andy. The letters went back to their hiding spot, exactly as she had found them. Sintheigha waited by the door until she heard the patrol nearing, their greaves clanking along the marble corridor. When they grew close, she knocked over an urn from a high shelf, letting it crash loudly to the floor. (She pantomimed the action rather elaborately; stretching like that made Bobby’s tiny t-shirt creep up and treat them to a sliver of underboob. Andy licked his lips hungrily; from the way his hand suddenly darted below the field of the camera, she suspected Brent had screenshotted it.)

In came the guards, mighty pleased with themselves to have caught her in the act of stealing. How they thought that she thought she could walk out of there with a golden candelabra stuffed into a dress so sheer it showed her pubes, she couldn’t say, but thieving was thieving.

Only, instead of taking her back to the easily escapable harem to await Koltron’s judgment, as she suspected… they  dragged her right out of the manor. Worried these men might do something dire, Sintheigha put up a struggle to escape, but unarmed and unarmored, she was easily subdued. Another punch or two and she’d go unconscious and wind up who knew where. The party, waiting for her to escape through a path she’d identified in the gardens near the harem, had no idea she was even taken.

They brought her to the Seat of Justice. Clapped in irons at the wrists and ankles, Koltron’s men escorted her along as they waited in line to see a judge. The process was beyond farcical from a human rights perspective, a sort of assembly line of disposing of the disposable, but she conceded it was the sort of old-timey medieval setting where the accusation of a crime against a lord by an indentured servant required little to no due process. She was before a judge less than an hour after her arrival, her oblivious party members only beginning to contemplate their next step. She was only glad the bored-sounding judge Bobby introduced didn’t probe into her backstory as a ward of the very system he oversaw. No, to him, Sintheigha was only a step above garbage, the entirety of her value in the obvious pleasures of the flesh she was meant to provide to her lord.

In the end, her case was opened and shut within minutes. Guilty. Sintheigha was then given her choice of punishments: either a week in the pillory, or else submission to corporal punishment.

To be administered by the judge himself, privately, in his chambers.

“You… he wants to spank me?”

It was only then she realized the mic was live once more, the rest of the party let in on it now that it was too late for them to use their metagame knowledge to intervene. Brett and Andy doubled over in laughter as Bobby caught them up. Cindy merely glowered. Spanking. Fucking seriously? Was she a criminal, or a bratty teen in a porno?

“The pillory, obviously,” she answered defiantly.

But immediately, Andy groaned. “Are we seriously going to have to bail your bitch out again ?”

“No shit, man. Sorry, I am just sick to death of ‘let’s save Sintheigha from the consequences of her decisions’ adventures. God, maybe we just leave her there and see if it helps anything sink in.”

Bobby shrugged. “Tell you what. It’s getting late. Why don’t we pause here, you guys can confer – or not – and I’ll have plans ready for next week either way she ends up choosing.”

****************************************************************

“Holy fuck .”

“Fuck my mouth and call me Maurie. That’s fucking Cindy.”

Cindy whimpered around her ball gag. That was the least comfortable part of a very uncomfortable outfit. If one could call this an outfit. It had cost her the whole of her last paycheck from the carwash, despite consisting of little more than leather straps and metal buckles, all of which strategically avoided covering anything she might want covered aside from an inch-wide strip of leather from her lower back, over her cunt and asshole, to her waist.

Surely getting fitted for it would be as humiliating as wearing it in front of the camera, she’d thought. She was wrong. Just as she’d been wrong, taunting her family like that. Bobby was right, and she was wrong. Her parents were right, and she was wrong. Everyone was right, and she was wrong, and bad, and needed to be punished, for her wrongness.

“What the fuck are we even watching right now…?” Brett wondered aloud, his head cock almost horizontal, trying to make sense of his gaming buddy’s predicament. She’d worn some skanky outfits in recent sessions, but this was simply pornographic, no two ways about it. Hog-tied, but with class , was how the creep at the sex shop had described it. Her wrists bound together behind her back, ankles joined as well, then that cord joined to the wrists through a series of connections which somehow made it impossible for her to stand up. She was stuck, bent over Bobby’s gaming table, her ass bared except for a latex g-string that did nothing to contain the moisture dribbling  from her pussy, until he decided to use his key to release her. She had no say in the matter. Literally, because with the ball gag in her mouth, she had no say in anything.

She wiggled slightly to make sure her naked ass was displayed in the center of her webcam’s shot. There. That was better.

“I know, guys. This was her idea,” Bobby explained patiently. “She thought it would show some contrition for certain past misdeeds, and to pay you guys back for agreeing to keep her on.”

Cindy squealed indignantly. She had never said that! And presently she couldn’t  say that even if she wanted to. She’d told Bobby this was how she wanted her punishment, something unbelievably humiliating and degrading and painful, to prove she was sincere beyond any doubt. No way she would be bound and gagged for them, to have her ass smacked into contrition in front of them, unless she absolutely meant it. This was the act of a woman who knew she was guilty, knew she deserved to be punished, and submitted herself unquestioningly to judgment.

Pleading for her parents’ forgiveness, literally on her knees (albeit in Bobby’s apartment, idly jacking him off for some reason), had been humiliating. Being made to go over there in Bobby’s ill-fitting t-shirt and shorts that tried to fall down over her hips and flash her ass every six seconds, that had been harder still. Bobby was with her every step of the way, listening to her apologize, debase herself, tell them what a dumb slut she was, an ungrateful bitch, a worthless cunt, implore them to chastise her any way they liked… brutal. What remained of her ego was tatters, where there were even tatters. That their  reaction to all that was to say they never wanted to see her again, and then seeing them slowly walk it back after Bobby’s intercession on her behalf… it cut  to the soul. Almost down to the dice. Shuffling away with an admonition to send payment for the scratches her dad had put in the paint trying to remove her lipstick, and not to return unless invited… She learned a new level of darkness in her heart.

If she were still a goth and not some idiot blonde slut like that cheerleading cunt Evelyn, she might have appreciated it on some level.

Still, none of it was as bad as listening to Andy and Brett’s running commentary – or often as not, hisses of commiseration – as Bobby rained down blow after blow on her bare, bulbous behind. She tried to count, but her eyes squeezed shut around the tears, which was too much like her dice not to start working up to a good hard come. She hoped he kept abusing her like this forever.

“Dude. DUDE. Cindy just fucking came in her bondage bitch gear from being spanked!  That is some goth-ass shit right there!”

Brett said nothing. When Cindy opened her eyes and looked to where his portrait sat on the monitor, she was pretty sure he was jerking off.

Bobby patted her butt softly, and spoke in the British accent of the judge from the previous session. “Consider your crimes absolved, young miss. Run along now, and don’t let me hear of you being late reporting to your lord for his own judgment.”

He released the gag. First she let out a whimper of relief, but then replied in character. “Thank you, Your Excellency.”

Bobby smiled and leaned down to whisper in her ear as he worked at unlocking her bindings so she could at least stand, move her arms, roll her dice. “I forgive you. And here’s a little something for going that extra mile. Go get dressed, and we’ll get started for real.”

Freed, but still too weak to stand, Cindy’s vacant stare took in the sight of the d6 being lowered to the table in front of her. After a moment, it was joined by the d10, the companion to the percentage dice she’d been given weeks ago.

She came again, another tiny point of light in her black and empty existence. Brett’s camera went dark; she supposed he was coming too.

“I think she really likes those dice, Bobby,” Andy commented in what sounded like an attempt at irony. If he only knew.

Cindy stood up and pulled Bobby’s lips to hers. She would have fucked him right then and there – would have fucked anyone, everyone, really, but especially him – except there were dice, and every minute spent boning her DM was a minute not spent rolling them.

“I think I’ll just keep wearing this, if it’s OK with you boys.” The best she could do. The least they – and she – deserved.

Chapter Six

“Guess we’re a little late to save Sintheigha,” Brent observed as a trembling, freshly spanked and freshly climaxed Cindy took her seat.

The boys bantered back and forth while she set up for the session. Mostly about how hot her tits looked, about how hot her ass looked, about how hot her tits and ass looked. Side points in the chatter included her bondage slave outfit, as well as to their shock at what they’d just seen. Cindy barely listened. She was so proud of herself. She’d barely even cried. And when her eyes squeezed shut through the haze of blistering pain exploding through her now raw, red-painted backside, she had seen the heart of the dice, starlight exploding in the endless dark.

She switched on her camera; four eyes on Bobby’s TV screen immediately went to where her tits rested atop Sintheigha’s character sheet. Those were the real tabletop game  the boys wanted to play. Requesting to borrow a pencil reminded her that she still had the ball gag fastened in her mouth. Cindy trotted back over to Bobby and carefully knelt at his feet, head lowered in submission, while she waited for him to dig the key out of his pocket and release her. Then he gave her permission to get a cup of water to wet her throat, raw from all the recent screaming and squealing, muffled though it had been.

Bobby had to snap his fingers to get their attention, and even then he had to repeat the recap twice, parts three times, before being satisfied that the boys heard it over the sound of the leather straps squeezing beneath and around but definitely not at all across Cindy’s big fat titties. She didn’t care. She was browsing the core rulebook’s section on obscure combat rules to see what other ways her dice might be rolled, to make sure she got as many opportunities as possible.

Her tits would still be there when the session was over. Her dice would go back in the box.If only she could go in there with them. An anachronistically goth impulse, to want to lock herself inside a lightless airless box forever. Cindy suddenly felt rather–

“Oooh, if I bull rush someone into a wall they take 1d6 nonlethal. I’ll have to remember that.” She clapped her hands together giddily, bouncing in elation at her rediscovery.

Finally, Bobby threw up his hands and told the boys to just snap their screenshots, take ten, and come back to the virtual table clear-headed. Cindy obliged; she figured they’d get all this distracting lust out of their systems faster – ergo letting her roll her dice sooner – if she posed for them. Andy moaned like a wounded moose when she bent over and spread her glowing red ass cheeks for the camera. Brent’s roommate could be seen watching from somewhere deeper in his dorm room. Cindy blew him a kiss and winked. Brent must have thought it was for him, because at that moment he darted out of the room.

A little while later, a red-faced Andy and a very pale Brent returned to their stations. Almost simultaneously, weirdly. “Should I put on one of your t-shirts, Bobby?” Cindy asked. Her voice was higher pitched now. Breathy. Fucking slutty as hell. Probably on purpose. Pleasing boys was a constant drive in the back of her mind now. If these boys stayed happy, she got to play. In hindsight, she could hardly believe how long it took her to abandon dignity. That tired old instinct had been in the way of what really mattered for far too long. She would never let self-respect stand between her and her dice ever again.

Andy and Brent tripped over themselves in their rush to swear they could focus despite her toplessness, so Bobby didn’t make her delay things longer trying to find another old t-shirt of hers that would fit while still showing off her titties. That was good. Bobby hurried through the process of Sintheigha’s release from her spankylicious  captivity and return  to the party, where Jerom and Skuf formally learned all the recap Bobby had provided earlier.

“All right, so this Koltron fucker is part of some weird cult, along with the goblin king. Do we know anything about that name, their god or whatever it was? This… what  was it? Naggalabba… shit. I’m so bad with names.”

“Nyarlathotep,” Brent supplied. He still took good notes, even after all these years. “Skuf still has bardic knowledge, even as a skald. Can I make a check on that?”

Bobby permitted a Knowledge check for it. The only thing stopping Cindy from tearing her hair out in anguish at not having taken any ranks so she could have an excuse to assist was the fact that she didn’t have the special d20, so it would only have been another roll on sad old plastic. She had the rest, but not that. Not yet.

Maybe if she fucked Bobby? Who was she kidding. Of course she was going to fuck Bobby. She would fuck him out of sheer gratitude for what he’d already done to her. Err, for her. She would fuck him just because she was horny. She would fuck him because she’d forgotten that was something she didn’t want to do.

Brent’s check failed. “Nope, the name doesn’t mean anything to you. That was a decent roll, though, so let’s see…” He flipped through his thick stack of notes. “You can at least surmise it’s something ancient, something very secretive. Almost like you used to know it, or like it’s right in front of you on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t make yourself acknowledge it.”

“Huh. Creepy. Well, could we gather info? Maybe try the local holy men. If it’s a cult, the churches might know something,” Brent suggested.

Cindy spoke meekly, and carefully swirled her d12 around her nipple as she spoke. “Should we risk it? Right now, our biggest strength is that we got our info without them knowing about it. If we wander around the city asking strangers questions, we might lose that.” Bobby nodded to her.

“Oh, and real quick, before I forget, you two said you were doing some looting from Koltron’s storeroom while Sintheigha was doing her thing in his bedchamber. Cindy, you want to give us some rolls? We’ll need 4d12 platinum, 6d100 gold, 10d10 x10 silver…”

Her pussy squeezed hard around her fingers as she came. “I can just roll 100d10 for the silver if you want, so it’s really random,” she offered in a tremulous voice.

But Bobby laughed. “We do have other things to accomplish today, Cin. Go on, get rolling. Let’s see, 1d4 random potions…”

Massaging her tits with her slimy hand, she got to work. It came out to less than a thousand gold, plus a collection of minor items so meager it wasn’t easy to parcel them out with no one wanting to bother writing them on their sheets. Cindy took them on as party packslut, as Andy dubbed her. But Cindy had gotten to use every die at her disposal. She prayed he would let her fuck him after this.

****************************************************************

“Can I quit my job, Bobby?” Cindy asked. “Please?”

Bobby shook his head again. Even with his dick nestled between two pudding-soft tits, he wasn’t bending. “No. C’mon, you need to get out of the apartment sometimes, right? Not that I don’t like having you here, but it’s not good for anybody to just sit around the house all day every day. Plus, if you ever decide you want to move out–” For all his boyish earnestness, she was somehow sure he didn’t really think that would ever happen. “–you’ll want to have something saved up, right?”

“I could make way more money with an OnlyFans than I do at my shitty fast food job. I’ve been thinking about it.” Sort of. She had actually been dreaming about it, dreaming of an excuse to not wear clothes, to pleasure boys and pleasure herself all day, to become something boys would adore. Diamonds on black marble. “The articles say starting up is always hardest because you have to get word out there, except a lot of normal girls, the ones who aren’t in real porn, they don’t want their friends and family to know.”

“I can imagine. Perfectly reasonable.” Bobby spurted her on the chin with a little precum. Her nipples tightened.

“No, but I mean, I don’t care. My parents already think I’m a degenerate little whore, right? Not that they’re wrong, I guess. But I know a ton of people from high school would pay out the ass to see my tits and ass.” How much would Bobby have paid a month ago? Now he saw them almost constantly. One less customer – though even in jest, thinking of taking anything from Bobby turned her stomach. “You reel them in with a bunch of skanky stuff, bikinis and underwear and implied nudity, but then you sell all the good shit piecemeal for like $5, $10 a pic. That’s where I’d rake it in.

“Neighbors, maybe some creepy relatives – I have this one cousin who is always staring at me at family get-togethers – and some teachers, probably. Remember that sub who got fired for looking at porn at the teacher’s desk, like… sophomore years? I bet I could find out who he is. I bet he’d put a hundred bucks a week in my account, easy, fucking perv. I could pretend I’m a little younger, too, slap the teen hashtag on there next to amateur , have men all over the world paying  to see your – my – body.”

Cindy paused to rub his leakage into her boobs. It wasn’t enough, so she squirted another blob of lotion. She might have to go out just to get more of the stuff. With this many handjobs, titjobs and footjobs and buttfucks ( why not “buttjobs?”  Cindy wondered), she went through the shit like crazy. The place had taken on a permanent odor of coconut.

“Well I won’t stop you, if that’s what you want to do. Women should be free to earn a living however they like. But I still think you ought to keep doing Arby’s. Just for a little while longer.” He patted either side of her boobs, squishing them against his cock. “You have the meats ! Right? What if some hotshot customer comes along and you’re not there to wow them, huh?”

Cindy wanted to tell him she’d never heard of, much less met, a hotshot customer, and was pretty sure she had never wowed anyone at any job. Well, no, maybe a few folks on her wet t-shirt day at the carwash a couple years back. Or weeks? Weeks, somehow. Not sleeping, at least not without losing the night to more dice dreams, was making time flow by like a river in flood season.

Speaking of floods, then Bobby really came. Cindy threw herself forward, aiming him at her face. He always came hardest on her face. It seemed like he must have already come on her half a dozen times that day and it wasn’t yet noon, but she didn’t really know. She didn’t really know anything any more, it felt like, especially not pointless shit like the time of day. Bobby reminded her when it was time to rinse off and put on her work clothes and go sling beef, but otherwise she pretty much didn’t stop worshipping his cock any more.

Work was stupid anyway. All she did was let her coworkers take turns using her in the break room. She’d decided to stop letting them fuck her pussy. That was for Bobby, if he ever decided he wanted to. Her pussy could be special for him, some exclusive privilege to show everyone that only the dice could open up some gates. Not that Bobby knew that. And not that Charlie or her other coworkers minded fucking her mouth, tits and asshole instead. Fuck, if jizz could fry mozzarella sticks the store could have stopped ordering oil. She loved how their spattered cum looked on her black work shirt, the way it echoed the rattle of the dice in what was once her soul. No telling what it was now, but not that.

The owner, some super rich megamillionaire named Oleander whom she’d never even met before, fired her manager after he got wind of an employee flashing her tits and ass at the drive-thru window. When he came to the store to deal with the vulgarities himself, Charlie wound up getting promoted into the vacancy after introducing the man to her. A “just show him what you do for morale around here, Cin” later and she’d lifted her shirt and dropped her pants, plunged the old fucker into her cunt – oh yeah, maybe it wasn’t so special – and fucked him into acceptance. He promised he’d stop in more often, to check and make sure the new manager was keeping her in line. Charlie did insist she spend at least a little time actually working, so she took a customer or two from time to time.

One of them told her how much he liked the new uniform, and she couldn’t stop giggling. Cindy didn’t have the heart to tell him it was nothing but cum soaked into the fabric so thick it practically looked like a monochromatic tie-dye.

Then one day – she knew they had names but other than Saturday, game day, none of them meant anything to her any more, and even there she thought she remembered there was something wrong, something the boys had said last week – Charlie sent her home early.

“Why? I’m still so horny ,” she whined, slipping his hand up to cup her boobs. Charlie really liked her boobs. Most of them did. Especially slapping them, for some reason. Whatever. It wasn’t as good as when Bobby had paddled her with his Core Rulebook that morning, but it was still pretty hot. That time, though, he pulled his hand back, frowned at the slime trail on his hand, and hastily reached for the hand sanitizer dispenser, rubbing the stuff in intently.

“Sorry, but I got two new trainees coming in this afternoon. No offense, but you’d freak them the fuck out. Plus I figure a shift with you is more of a perk of seniority, anyways, right Cin? I have every guy on crew offering to take a pay cut if they can get a shift with you, you know that? Can’t believe Mr. Oleander wanted to fire you. When he sees how much you’re cutting down overhead, he’s gonna give your ass a raise.”

“Not my tits?” Oh, that had been figurative. Cindy giggled. Boys didn’t care if she was going insane as long as she giggled a little. “But… please can I stay? I’ll be good. I’ll stay in the breakroom and play with myself quietly until someone wants me.”

“God, you’re fucked up. I don’t know what the fuck your deal is, if this is your breakdown after getting dumped by Dominic or something…”

“Who?” Oh, right, Dominic, the guy she’d pimped herself out to when the boys threw her out of the group again. She giggled.

“But yeah, you are delightfully damaged goods, Cynthia.” Charlie inspected the shoulder of her uniform, decided it was safe to touch, and patted it affectionately. She smiled, as much because he’d dead-named her as anything. The dead were always funny, and she’d murdered that cunt Cynthia as surely as any bitch had ever been murdered. It was a shame she was dead. Cynthia had always appreciated an especially grizzly murder story.

So her shift ended early. Cindy changed in the parking lot. It was the first night that week when it hadn’t been dark out while she was heading home. Oh well. She didn’t want to go home to Bobby a  cummy mess. Turning her into a cummy mess was part of his privilege for letting her breathe the close, dicey air of his apartment. A car honked its appreciation as she tied the exercise band around her naked, glistening tits. Bobby didn’t have many clothes that fit her, but he basically never exercised, so she figured it was OK to borrow these things as clothing. They covered enough of her boobs to be legal in public, even if anyone looking would assume she was on her way to a shift at a strip club.

It was uncomfortable, almost hard to breathe in with how tightly it squished down on her tits, bulging over and under the strip of gray rubber. She’d already begun to untie it in the hallways outside his apartment, but as she neared the door, she heard unfamiliar voices on the other side. Shit. For now, she’d be stuck hiding them. It wasn’t fair. Bobby deserved to see them, touch them, pinch them, squeeze them, chew on them, motorboat them, fuck them. He’d given her so much.

Well, no, the dice were still his. But he’d let her borrow so much, which still went a long way with tit access. Then again she’d loaned them out to strangers all shift long for free, so maybe she was just a fucking slut.

In the living room sat Bobby and the sources of those other unfamiliar voices, two of them known to her, the other familiar. “Well hey there,” said Frank, rising to his feet, looking her over with very male appreciation. There was a beer bottle in his hand to go with the dozen or more like it on the floor and coffee table. The other boy, sitting on the chair Cindy usually used for gaming (or practicing lap dances when Bobby was sleeping and she needed to work out some libidinous energy), she didn’t know by name, but it was someone else from the cheer squad, another male lifter. Buff, like Frank, and likewise holding a frosty beer.

Cindy’s attention, however, was more drawn to the other occupant of the room, none other than cheerleading alpha bitch Evelyn. Cindy almost didn’t recognize her with her honey blonde hair dyed deep purple, her skin so fair she would have looked sickly if she weren’t so goddamn sexy. Though Cindy was glad to note that the girl didn’t look like such hot shit right then. Splayed out on her back in the middle of the living room rug, frigging her clit so rapidly it looked immensely painful with one hand and twisting even more painfully  on one petite breast’s cherry red nipple with the other. Evelyn didn’t look up when Cindy came in. If she minded being naked in front of company, masturbating like a trailer park hooker celebrating a fresh hit of meth, she didn’t show it.

There was cum on her, too. Frank’s? The other boy’s? Bobby’s?! That was worrisome. Had he needed to get off and she hadn’t been there? Why wouldn’t he let her quit that stupid job!

“Cindy, you’re home early,” Bobby said, looking surprised, though not embarrassed. He was so good about taking her whorishness in stride. No wonder he didn’t seem to mind Evelyn trying to be as bad.

“Charlie made me. I tried to do what you wanted. I’m sorry. He made me. I can ask for more hours if you want. I’m sorry. Punish me.” She put her hands on the wall beside the door, presenting her ass. She had a big ass; the old pair of boxers Bobby had loaned her were stretched almost as tight on it as they would have been on his dumpy butt.

“Cindy…?” Frank twisted his head to the side. “Wait, no fucking way. Is that Cynthia? Goth Cynthia? What the fuck, dude?! She’s so much hotter, now ! Not that she wasn’t hot before, brah, but damn, she’s like Barbie hot now!”

Evelyn moaned. It was needful, animal, primal. It reminded Cindy how horny she was. She moaned. Evelyn moaned. So she moaned even sluttier, which Evelyn returned along with a high-pitched whine and a single desperate “please?” with no request attached. Following a glare over her shoulder at her copycat, Cindy broke off the cycle (with a whimper and a few shuddering breaths). “Why is Evelyn diddling herself on your living room floor, Bobby?”

Frank laughed, as did the other boy. Bobby shook his head. “It’s a cheerleader thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“The rings,” Evelyn whined. Cindy’s scowl intensified. The girl’s voice was so… weak. Sexy. She was envious.

It was hard, craning her neck like that, but there on Evelyn’s fingers were a set of rings on every finger but her thumbs. No – not on her ring fingers, ironically, not on either hand. They were hard to miss once she looked for them. Solid black, though  her eyes, ever attuned for anything even remotely dice-like, picked up some glitter in them. For a moment, she wondered… But no. She was kneeling on the floor beside the lust-stricken cheerleader before she knew it, yet up close, it was obvious these were nothing like her dice. These were plastic. Cheap, sparkly plastic, nothing more. Cindy would have been embarrassed to be seen wearing them.

Evelyn’s dad owned the major factory in town and was some kind of state senator or some hifalutin shit like that, and his daughter had always liked to show off her daddy’s money with jewelry. The only girl who’d worn real diamonds to prom, while Cynthia attended in a pair of black men’s slacks and a tuxedo t-shirt. It had felt like that was all anybody had wanted to talk about that night, precious Evelyn and her big fat diamonds. Cindy had learned about it in spite of how hard she had tried to avoid having to know anything about the skinny bitch that wasn’t kompromat.

“Is she… like her?” asked the third boy.

“They’re each their own thing,” Bobby answered, and Cindy wanted to fuck him more than ever for recognizing her individuality. He was entertaining company, though, so for the time being, she would take care of her own urges. Her dice were in their usual handy spot on the coffee table, but nobody objected to her lying down near Evelyn and pouring out the contents between her boobs. It was easy to keep them smushed together with her left arm while she began playing with herself with her right.

Would Bobby mind her masturbating in front of his company? No, he didn’t say as much. Good. She hadn’t gotten off in almost an hour, not since taking Lance’s dick in her ass in the breakroom. She didn’t come easily from anal, but he’d already done her butt earlier that shift, so he’d had enough stamina the second time around to get her off, too. Very considerate, for a boy.

“So, when exactly did you decide you wanted to copy my entire brand, Cynthia?” Evelyn asked between heavy pants.

Cindy laughed. Sort of laughed, anyway. Whatever a laugh-moan hybrid was called. A whore like Evelyn probably knew the word. “Since when did your ‘brand’ include having actual titties and an actual booty, you anorexic ironing board?”

The part of Evelyn’s retort was impossible to understand; she had taken the three fingers out of her pussy and was sucking them clean. No, just two, actually, index and middle. Her bare ring finger went neglected. At the same time she rolled onto her side and wriggled closer to the mystery boy, pawing at his calves pleadingly. It was only then Cindy caught sight of what had to be a recent tattoo on Evelyn’s back. It was positively massive, broader than her shoulder blades and covering from her neck down past where her beltline would be if the fucking whore were wearing pants. A red-skinned humanoid demon with big red titties bared, a vicious grin on a beautiful, evil face. The succubus herself was covered in arcane tattoos, pentagrams and upside-down crucifixes and tons even Cindy didn’t recognize.

“Whoa, and who’s stealing whose look now?” she grumbled.

“Don’t hate ‘cause you ain’t, you blonde bimbo.”

Cindy groaned as the d4 dug hard into the tender flesh of her tits. She injected a thick, fake, chipper tone in her voice. “You’re right, Evelyn. I oughta be chipper as a chipmunk, like you, right? Shit, I guess if I’d let the football team run a train on me as a consolation prize for losing sectionals, maybe I’d have lots to smile about too!”

“Uh, we won  sectionals senior year, you hateful spiritless bitch.” The nipple on each perky little tit (if you could call those perky little tits of hers tits) received a vicious twist. Even big muscly Frank hissed at the savagery of it. The other boy looked like he wished the others would leave so he could masturbate, too. Bobby was reading something on his phone.

“You’re right, Evelyn, the insult there was that you would fuck the losing team, not that you’re the trophy whore for a bunch of knuckle-dragging neanderthals. Can’t sneak nothing  past you, unless it’s a case of chlamydia.” Her laugh turned into a squeal of alarm as the d8 popped free and skittered across the floor. Cindy had the discipline not to dive after it; despite how desperately she wanted to, such a move would have risked scattering the rest. (Except the d20. She still hadn’t earned that, but with dumb easy fuck toy behavior like that Bobby was right to withhold it from her.) It was Frank, actually, who stumbled over and grabbed it from under the kitchen table. His head slammed into the underside as he stood up. If it had been anyone else, Cindy would have invited him to use her for this act of chivalry. Instead, she merely licked her lips suggestively and sucked the die out of his hand, swirling it around her mouth with her tongue.

 “Gee, Cynthia, maybe someday I’ll dye my hair full black and lie to everyone about my implants so I can be as classy as you.”

“And maybe I’ll work up a fetish for flashing my panties to the dads of every dickhead at our high school on the sidelines. Then people would really respect me.” As Evelyn sucked the other cum-dribbling set of fingers into her mouth, Cynthia allowed herself a moment to gather the dice into a clenched fist, then positioned herself over Evelyn and gave her a hard slap in the head with each tit. Bobby looked up, intrigued, so she did a few more jiggly slaps side to side. “And do these feel fake to you?”

“Stop hitting me with those things!” Evelyn complained beneath her. She didn’t stop masturbating though.

“Then take it back!” Cindy wished she didn’t sound so pouty. Sort of. Pouty was slutty, and slutty was needy, and she was nothing if not needy.

Frank was recording them, she noticed. That made her laugh. That haughty slut Evelyn, former teen queen, caught  on video being smacked around by her enemy’s huge (and very real) titties. Cindy wrapped her jugs around the girl’s face, smothering her for a moment. The former high school cheerleader didn’t seem to notice, her fingers and their gaudy plastic rings busy working towards another orgasm. The girl probably hadn’t eaten anything but her own pussy juice all day.

With the bitch’s ears momentarily blocked, she whispered to Frank, “Send it to me!” She couldn’t wait to spread the link around on social media. Take the prissy cunt down a couple dozen pegs. Maybe she should see if she could get the boys to come on them first. That’d be hilarious.

Cindy had gotten off enough, especially lately, to recognize an authentic cry of orgasm, even if it was sent right into her tits. It wasn’t fair. Evelyn had everything.  If Evelyn wasn’t too cool for D&D and had any idea what dice like these were worth, she’d fuck Bobby into giving them to her in a second. Now she was coming while Cindy knelt there barely getting her boobs sucked? No fucking way! She flipped herself over, butt in the air, and treated them to a show of a real woman with real curves diddling her pussy like the cheapest easiest slut in the world.

At some point, Cindy picked up her face out of the dirty shag carpet and looked around. It was dark out. How long had she been finger-fucking herself? How could she have all six dice in her mouth and breathe that hard and not choke to death?

“Where’d everybody go?” she mumbled.

Bobby, half-asleep, jerked awake. “Oh, god. Hours ago. Remember, you let Frank and Landon take turns drumming the fight song on your butt?”

She did not remember, and in fact she forgot the second boy’s name the moment the sound of it died in the room. Oh, well. So some stupid assholes had played a childish game with her butt. Nothing new there. “Did… did Evelyn look embarrassed? Or…” She wanted to say jealous, but couldn’t. “Or anything?”

“She’s my friend, Cindy. Or, I guess a cheer buddy. Whatever. You can hate her all you want, but don’t expect me to.”

Cindy still hated her. She was pretty sure Evelyn had come more times, but Cindy came harder, which counted for more. She plucked the d4 from where it was stuck in the dried-up corner of her cheek. “Fine. Can I do anything for you? I got so caught up when I came home – to your home, I mean, not that it’s my home obviously, but… Ugh. Anyway, would you punish me? I should’ve paid more attention to you.”

Boddy flashed her a smile and nodded solemnly. “Sure, Cin. Go get the bondage gear on. You look cute in it.”

She didn’t have to work at all the next day. Those leather straps were all Cindy wore for days. When Evelyn came back the following evening, even she had to admit that she looked too fuckable not to enslave.

****************************************************************

Bickering and old treasure and pre-game jerking off behind them, the session properly began with a sidequest that was little more than a transparent excuse to dump a little more loot and XP on the party. A last holdout of Mokvinorg’s elite hobgoblins commandos found them. Cindy wasn’t the only one dubious about their methods, sneaking through the sewers yet finding their precise inn effortlessly, but so be it. They stole the party’s stash, along with the party’s packslut. Cindy was barely surprised they decided to kidnap her, and Sintheigha barely fought it this time. The DM made it clear they were packing a variety of magical gear, which was all the incentive Brent and Andy needed to track her down and rescue her, again. Cindy described Sintheigha’s grateful kisses in exquisite detail, and then demonstrated them on Bobby, who finally told her it was enough and they should get on with the session. Between a tracking mini-mission, the combats themselves, and then a pair of random encounters with a troll and a trio of rat swarms, most of the session was already over by the time they got back to an earnest discussion of next steps.

Andy snorted, but for once it was at someone other than Cindy. “It never gets old, listening to the DM argue with himself.”

Cindy wished she could point out that Bobby was only using Bregan and Eisheth to get them to make up their minds on a course of action, but there was no way she was about to risk coming off as confrontational. Better to be wrong, fuck up the mission and TPK the party and ruin the campaign than make the boys mad at her. She sat up straighter, chest thrust forward. “Maybe we just need to pick a side. What do you guys think? I’m happy to do whatever you want. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“And I’ll never stop hearing that sound byte rattle around my head,” mumbled Andy.

“Focus, man.” Brent’s warning was barely even veiled in referring to stopping Bobby from having Cindy get dressed in normal clothes. “So we have Bregan telling us we need to rescue as many of Koltron’s slave girls as we can before he sacrifices them like he tried to do with Eisheth. Or we can listen to Eisheth herself, and just kick in Koltron’s door and kill kill kill. Am I to understand those are the two paths your plans cover, Bobbers?”

“You can do other stuff. We might have to rely on some less refined encounter maps or whatever, but that’s fine by me. You guys are always free to do whatever you want. I’m not here to tell you that you even have to oppose Koltron in the first place.”

The idea of not going after the obvious enemy before them was dismissed out of hand. A discussion followed, mostly regarding how they could discover the best time to strike, to make sure they caught Koltron at home and kept him from escaping while they fought through his guards. Cindy was almost beside herself; they were even letting her have input! Like she was a full member of the team, almost – although she made sure nobody could think she was trying to take charge. She almost laughed at the thought of a weak, silly, horny little sexpot like Sintheigha calling the shots. She was sure Brent and Andy would have laughed, too.

Only suddenly, Brent stopped. “Or… hang on. Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. What if… No, I don’t want to say Koltron’s not a bad guy. He’s a slaver and a cultist and a traitor to his people. World’s pretty clearly better off without him.”

“Yeah, so let’s go put a claw to his throat, like I was saying. What’d I miss?”

“No, but like… this is bigger than him. He’s just the devil in front of us.”

Cindy realized she’d been leaning forward too long. If she wasn’t careful, the sweat from her underboobs was going to leave stains on Sintheigha’s sheet. “ How  do you mean?” She made sure to sound as if she were very, very interested in hearing his explanation even though she’d already picked up where he was going with it. Didn’t hurt to kiss ass all the time, though.

Andy seemed to  be picking up on it, too. “Yeah, I hear you. I mean, the quest isn’t one cult member. It’s the cult’s plan, right? If we kill Koltron, we might never figure out what these Nyarlathotepites are up to. And let’s be real, even with DPS as low as Princess Dildo Dagger’s over there, we’re not well-suited to taking him alive, and even if we did, our best Intimate is raw Charisma. Does Bregan have charm person ?”

Bobby nodded. “She does. Though remember if you’ve attacked him, he gets that big bonus to his save. +5.”

“Yeesh. So yeah, we’re shit for interrogation.”

“So,” Brent pursued, “maybe we play it smart and don’t charge in like a couple idiots? Something really fucking weird is going on, after all.” His eyes narrowed, looking to where Bobby’s image should be on his monitor. “I’d rather understand why than get the baser satisfaction of quick loot and XP.”

“I am fine with loot and XP,” Andy said.

“Come on, dude, you have to admit this is a pretty weird mystery. Aren’t you at least a little curious what gives, sacrificing innocent young women and all, to this Great Old One?”

“Great Old One? What, like C’thulhu?”

In the chat window, normally just a repository for dice roll results, a squid emoji appeared, entered by Brent. “Exactly.”

“How do we know Nyarlathotep is a Great Old One?” Cindy asked.

“I did some googling. It’s meta knowledge, but even in character I think some curiosity and paranoia are justified at this point. We have nothing on this guy’s motive. Usually you see a guy amassing sex slaves, you figure sure, that’s the end game, but for Koltron it’s only a means.”

Andy gave a grudging nod. “Shit, look at Sintheigha. She used to actually push back, try not to let herself get slutted around Hypheron . Look at her now. Volunteered to pose as a harem slave. Flirted her way into this psycho’s bed chamber. Submitted to a spanking like it was a slap on the wrist.”

Cindy shook her tits for them. Neither had ogled her in minutes, and she didn’t want them to forget she brought valuable assets to the table. These were a much more powerful weapon than anything she’d ever written on a character sheet.

“Eisheth speaks up, ‘We have nothing on this cult, and even if we found it, who’s to say they wouldn’t make us a better offer? Whatever they’re offering, it’s enough to seduce noble lord  and savage king . What happens when their masters dangle our dreams before us? The glue that holds us together is tenuous, at best. Can you truly trust one another when temptation sings its siren song? Do you have such faith in our collective will?’”

Andy’s voice adopted Jerom’s gravely nature. “So what do you propose then?”

“Kill. Kill them all. Whatever Koltron has been given, take it. Make it ours. Satisfy our bloodlust, line our pockets, and leave Hypheron behind.”

Bobby didn’t need to announce Bregan. They recognized his lilting attempt at a woman’s Irish brogue. “I know you don’t share my perspective, but I ask again what it is you seek. To profit from misery? To satisfy base urges? Or to do real good? These women in Koltron’s estate, we know what Koltron will do to them, the same as he would have to Miss Eisheth had we not interceded in the lair of Mokvinorg . He will make them sacrifices, vessels of his master’s will, or at best, use up their innocence and virtue until they have naught left but broken souls, and then not even that. You wish to do good, the chance is before you. Help them.”

Andy seemed to be paying close attention, but Brent’s eyes narrowed. “Those slaves won’t know anything about Nyarlathotep’s plan. Without skill or magic for interrogation, without even a reliable way of taking Koltron alive… We’re going to dead  end, and whatever they’re really after, they may well get it.”

“What I hear you saying is you want to solve a mystery but that we have no way to solve mysteries.” Andy rolled his eyes, then contented himself admiring Cindy’s boobs. She smiled gratefully.

Brent wasn’t to be deterred, though. “But look, But that’s not the only way to learn stuff. We have Stealth. A little Diplomacy, with the fighter who dumped Strength for Charisma over there. A few Knowledges , buffed with Skuf. Solid Perception, some Spellcraft if we find out they’re using magic, and all the Survival we could need to track them wherever they’re meeting up. We can  do this. We just have to deal with it the hard way.”

Andy picked up his phone and shook his head. “Look, my head’s not in it, and…” He glanced at Cindy’s chest again, licking his lips subconsciously. Maybe consciously. She didn’t care. “Since we got two weeks before the next session, why don’t we pick this up over text so you can plan?”

“Two weeks?” Cindy leapt to her feet, fighting down panic. “Why? What’s wrong? Can I help? Why?”

Two male heads slowly lilted to the side, taking in their first sight of her bare snatch in hours. Sheer proximity rendered the moisture dribbling out of it visible even through her mediocre webcam, beads of crystalline moisture against her heavily tanned skin. With their mesmerization paralyzing them, Bobby had to answer. “Next weekend is the weekend before finals for them, so they need the weekend to study. But the good news, we’ll be able to play in person the week after once they’re back in town for the summer!”

“Mm. In person,” Andy droned, though she thought he was trying to be funny. In any event, she made sure not to sit down. They’d had a very positive dynamic this session aside from a few demeaning nicknames (Cindyslut was her least favorite, she thought, but Princess Pricklepussy annoyed her more than it should. Still, she giggled with enough force to make sure her tits bounced, to make sure they didn’t pick up on the whispers of resistance choked deep down in her gut.)

“You’re… you’re not going to dress like that in person… Are you, Cindy?” Brent asked hopefully.

“Do you guys want me to? I don’t wanna be a tease, jerking you around online and then being a dried up stupid cunt in person. I’ll dress however everybody thinks is best.”

“We’ll add that to our discussion points on the text thread,” Andy said quickly, eyeing what she thought would be Brent’s place on his screen. She nodded. They wanted to talk over what whorish, degrading thing they wanted her to wear. Or not wear. Which was fine. She was so horny, she hated having to wear panties any more.

The session wrapped up, though she left her webcam running while she tidied up her things. So did the boys. Brent’s roommate could be heard demanding to know how much this stream subscription cost. She and Bobby shared a laugh before he switched off the TV.

“So… did I do good today?” Cindy asked from her place kneeling under the table in front of him. She’d had to wait for him to finish up his notes and brainstorming, which had probably taken a couple hours. No matter. This was important. More important than anything had ever been.

“Yeah, you seemed like you were finally getting into Sintheigha’s head in your roleplay. Glad to see it. Did you have fun?”

She undid his zipper and let his erection roll out through the gap and thump her between the eyes. Its sweaty, funky length immediately received a few passionate licks. “So much fun. I think the boys really like my outfit. And the roleplay with the judge was soooo good. My ass is still tingling a little.”

“I’m glad you had fun with it. That’s the point after all.”

He let her blow him in silence for a while. Silent aside from the wetness of her mouth, the buzz of her moaning echoing down his dick hole, the slippery noises of her pussy being teased mercilessly by the hand that wasn’t playing with Bobby’s balls. At last they tensed, and she pulled back to let him plaster her tan face back to its old pale state. Some of it hit the underside of the table, which she licked off for him.

“So, if I did good, do you, um…” Ugh, this was hard. He’d done so much for her, it felt like he’d handed her the winning lottery ticket and then still asked him to buy her dinner. “Do you think… Maybe…”

d20. Just ask for the d20,  she ordered herself. But that was laughable. Cindy couldn’t give orders to anyone, self included.

“You know,” Bobby said, as if she hadn’t been talking. “I was thinking about your d20, and how you could earn it.”

Without meaning to, she flopped down on her side, thighs wide, masturbating helplessly, a bitch in heat. “Please,” she whispered.

The boy continued as if her response had been entirely typical. “That’s assuming you still want it? I shouldn’t be presumptuous.”

Cindy launched herself at him, impaling herself on his reinvigorating cock with laser precision, a fuck toy on a string being dragged back to its resting position. One tit in each hand, hips swirling so he got to feel her ass on his thighs, lip to lip, tongue to tongue. “I want it. Oh fuck, I want it. I’ll do anything. Anything. Use me any way you want. Forever. Own me. I want it.”

Bobby chuckled around her frantic efforts to kiss him harder. “I’m not looking for a sex slave, Cindy. Taaake  it down a notch.”

She did. A notch meant still the most desperate fuck of her life, just without the cringey pleading. “How? I’ll do it. Please.” She limited herself to that. It was hard.

“Oh, I don’t have a concrete idea. I only brought it up to encourage you to think about it. I know you’ve been, well, affectionate lately, but it doesn’t feel right to take advantage of that in exchange for gifts. That’s… I dunno, awful close to prostitution, isn’t it?”

Instantly she assured herself that she would absolutely prostitute herself for it. Not just to Bobby either. Cindy would enthusiastically whore out her pussy, her tits, her ass to anybody who’d pay, all the money funneled through a pipeline over which she had no control, right into Bobby’s bank account. She’d make him so rich. Let him install a debit card reader in her cunt, and watch men swipe away.

But right, he’d said not  to do it like that. “So… then how? Anything, Bobby, anything,” she moaned.

“Anything? That’s awful  vague. For now, just think on it , yeah? And maybe by next session you’ll come up with something more specific. I really want you to earn it, because I can’t wait to give it to you. So I’ll try to keep an open mind, and maybe drop a hint here and there if I think of something I think you wouldn’t mind doing for me.”

She decided she’d need to learn to memorize his every word. What more could he want? He’d wanted to fuck her for so long, but he had that. Take a bullet for him? Gladly. She’d do that for free – if Bobby died, he couldn’t let her borrow the other six dice . If not earning it with her body, then what else did she have left? What else could she do?

Kill herself? Because if there was a way to do that and still get the d20, she would. Just to prove she wouldn’t hold anything back.

Objectively, her life didn’t seem to be going that well anyways.

Dice notwithstanding.

****************************************************************

The days waiting for the next session blurred together. Somewhere along someone sent her a link to this skanky fetish cheerleader outfit they wanted her to buy. Looked like it was meant to show the bottom of her tits and most of her ass, and crotchless panties. It was a betrayal of everything she’d ever fought for in her presentation. She capitulated immediately, clicking the buttons to buy four color variations of the thing, except two sizes smaller than they’d guessed. Who cared . Maybe showing Bobby she would do anything for the group would satisfy his inscrutable standards. Would she have to blow them? She probably should. Pigtails, that would be nice for them. Cheerleaders definitely wore pigtails sometimes. If Bobby had Evelyn over again, maybe she could ask her how to look like a fetishy jailbait whore. But not only as a jibe this time.

Her days dribbled by, the endless darkness of waiting for that d20 punctuated by the tiny bright lights of the occasional orgasm. Some of them were Cindy’s. Some of them. Bobby’s were probably the most. Frank and that one whose name she still couldn’t remember no matter how many times it came into or out of her mouth, plenty of them. Evelyn, too, but that was part of their game. Showing that preppy fucking rich bitch she could make her come so much harder, that she could smother her in puss, bury her in titties, running rings around the rings ringing in the hollow space in the evil cunt’s soul. It was OK that Evelyn made her come too sometimes because Bobby would like that, like that the two bitchy pieces of trim he’d never been able to fuck were less than sex slaves now, because slaves were people and they weren’t always even that. One time she woke up with Evelyn’s cunt on her face and an unknown dick in her pussy. Cindy just lie there, tongue out as firmly as she could hold it, and let them fuck her like she was asleep. Or a doll. Or a corpse. Yeah, so it was at least a little goth.

Arby’s, Arby’s never seemed to stop with the dicks and the cum. She thought Charlie might have fired her at some point, but she didn’t really listen unless a boy was telling her which hole he wanted. Customers came in on it, too, and she was surprised how many regulars she recognized thanking her and squeezing her ass as a thank you. Or to lord it over her, like they’d done something against her will, like she had a will to violate. Sometimes a line formed, and she wondered if Charlie were charging admission to fuck his pet slut. She tried to remember her pussy was a token of her appreciation for Bobby letting her fill that endless maw inside her with his dice, but sometimes that was what a boy wanted. She didn’t dare say no to boys any more, because one of them might stop her from playing.

Was the game still going? It had been so long since she’d gotten to roll the dice for real instead of just batting them around like the little sex kitten she was. Sometimes her dreams were about rolling them in the real world, attack rolls and damage. So much damage. She never made her saving throws, and the loot tables never gave her anything she wanted.

Now and then Bobby wanted to rinse her off so she wouldn’t cum up his apartment, even though it was already filthy and a little cum couldn’t really make it much worse. Then her fingers would tangle in the dried-up gobs in her hair, and she’d grant he might have a point. And she looked sexy wet, and she could spend a little time afterwards putting on lipstick, some makeup, putting the curls back in her fake white-blonde hair so she could look cute for him. Them. For someone, anyone really.

Once she came out of the shower and found Evelyn there doing her own makeup at the counter, wrapped in a towel. Taking her supplies out of Cindy’s bag, too. She almost killed her for it. That was what she used to look sexy for Bobby, and that bitch thought she could touch it?

Then again she wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. Maybe it was Evelyn’s, and Cindy had been the one stealing from her all along. She giggled at that, then offered to help Evelyn paint her nails. Black, she said. Because nothing said dark like spoiled, gorgeous ex-cheerleaders. Maybe she’d let some weakness slip, something Cindy could use against her so Bobby would stop inviting her over so much. Felt like she spent almost as much time there as Cindy after a while. More maybe, since Evelyn didn’t have a job.

“Those are… really nice rings,” she said, hoping her sarcasm didn’t show too obviously.

A shudder ran visibly through Evelyn’s body at the mention of them. “They’re perfect.” They were on her fingers, misaligned so that none of them touched, so she could feel each ring on the fingers beside it. “Bobby lets me wear them. He said maybe he’d give them to me to keep someday.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be something.” Why was it so hard to be civil to this worthless spooge mop? She squeezed the  fingers still and went back to painting. “None for the ring fingers, though. Kind backwards, isn’t it?”

A blaze ignited behind Evelyn’s eyes.

Cindy had been giving this girl shit since kindergarten. In fifth grade, when it was finally starting to become cool to “date” boys, Cindy (she’d been Cindy then, too, a year or so out from the brief tragic stint as Cynthia) had sat down right across from her and her would-be boyfriend Matt, agreed to be the cutest boy in class. Do your bra straps ever dig into your shoulders, Evelyn?  she’d asked, knowing full well the girl didn’t wear one yet. Not until the next day, when she’d damn well made sure the straps showed around her neckline. Still, watching Matt suddenly shift his focus from Evelyn’s face to Cindy’s chest had been chicken soup for her budding goth soul, as was notifying Matt she didn’t date elementary school boys. He’d picked up his tray and gone back to sit with his buddies.

The fire in Evelyn’s eyes that day was a candle beside today’s bonfire. Only this time, it made no sense.

“There’s only one sized for my ring fingers. Bobby says I have to decide which one I want it on before he gives it to me.”

“Oh. Well if you want it so bad, why don’t you just decide?”

“Because it’s so easy?” Evelyn snarled, then smiled at the little pink heart Cindy had painted atop the black on her middle finger.

“Isn’t it…?”

The girl rolled her eyes and tried to flip a strand of blonde hair over her shoulder. In the steamy bathroom, all it did was make her towel fall off and her tiny little titties to bounce a little. “If I tell him I want the right, then it’s a rejection.”

“Uh, of what?”

“The left is your wedding ring finger, or is that not where Satan’s butt bride wears hers?” She sneered, but held very still to let the salon time continue unabated. “But he doesn’t want me romantically, except to fuck and suck his dick and dance naked for him and to be the easiest little slut in the world for him.” She eyed Cindy. “Second-easiest, anyway. Plus he always says I ‘belong’ to my dad, like Bobby doesn’t have a perfect right to fuck me whenever and however he wants.”

Cindy pointed out that only the day before she’d come in wearing a crop top with the word “DADDY” cut off just below the nipples.

“So what? It was cute, and I had to wear something, didn’t I? Anyway, that’s why I can’t pick the right, ‘cause like, it would show him he’s right and that I won’t marry him and I do still belong to Daddy… err, my dad. But what if he wants me to make the first move? What if he wants me to go left and give myself to him, for richer for poorer, til death? Except then I’m making this huge ask of him. What if he doesn’t want me that way? I’d give myself to him, obviously, but I could drive him away by seeming like I’m asking too much. I told him he can always keep on fucking whoever he wants whenever he wants – even you, I guess, if he gets bored – but maybe he thinks I’m bluffing.”

Evelyn sniffled, blinking down a tear that tried to make a break for it. “I try and I try to show him I’m not jealous. I clap for him when he comes down your stupid throat, and still, I don’t think he really believes I’m not teasing. Like I used to. God, I was so fucking stupid and selfish and….” She made an animalistic noise of rage. “He could leave me. And I can’t have that.”

Evelyn seized one of Cindy’s nipples, pulling her close. “If he left me, he might take the rest back.” The tear broke free and snaked down one cheek. Luckily their eye shadow was tear-resistant, a necessity with as much time as they spent with dicks down their throats.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh.’” Evelyn shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand. But I figure things are really good right now. He’s letting me be close to him almost all the time, letting me show him how much I love his rings. So I’ll just ride it out and maybe he’ll decide for me. Or give me some clue what he wants me to say.”

“And your folks are cool with this? With their daughter being some chubby loser’s fuck slave?”

Evelyn sneered contemptuously, and Cindy wished for the millionth time the girl wasn’t so much taller than her. “Are yours ?”

“My dad’s not, how you say, in the public arena. They disowned me and moved on.”

“Yeah, well, lucky you. Mine won’t stop calling me and threatening to institutionalize me if I don’t get my shit together.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t understand. Nobody understands.”

Cindy didn’t understand the girl. Turning herself into this pathetic sniveling sex toy for some ugly black plastic rings. “White people, right?”

“Uh, you’re white. Just because you use that spray-on shit to turn yourself Mexican doesn’t mean you are.”

“Al menos no soy una prostituta anoréxica,” Cindy retorted.

“Aw, Cindy passed sophomore Spanish class! Good for you. And fuck you. I’m not anorexic, I just actually work out, you dummy thicc bitch. And me , prostitute? Who’s the one trading her sloppy pussy for some dice?”

“I… I wouldn’t,” Cindy lied. A big fat obvious glaring slutty lie. “It’s just Bobby still has one he hasn’t let me use yet.”

“Uh, OK, so why don’t you just buy one? I know you’re poor or whatever, but they can’t cost that much.”

“It’s a unique set. I don’t know where he got them.” She didn’t think it was on this planet. “But he said he’ll give it to me. I just have to figure out how to earn it.”

“Well you already gave up every hand and hole to the guy. What’s left? Paying him off?”

“You can’t put a price tag on these.” Cindy knew that, now. She could run a fire sale on the pieces of her soul, but not the d20. “I just have to think of something he’ll really like. Something to show him I appreciate him.”

“So go big or go home. I get why that hairy fucking snatch of yours isn’t cutting it.” Cindy grimaced; that cut deep. A fair criticism of the time a few days (or something) ago when she’d missed a pube. Bobby deserved a perfect porno pussy, and Evelyn was not letting her forget how bad she’d fucked up.

“Open to suggestions, especially if you’re offering daddy’s credit card.”

“What happened to not being able to put a price tag on it. ”

“You can’t! I was just reminding you you’re a rich bitch and I hate you.”

Another eye roll. “So… do something. I don’t know, kill for him , steal for  him, bear his love child, clean his apartment. I’d tell you to hook him up with the girl of his dreams, but, well, he’s already got me.”

Cindy forced a laugh as a pretext for smudging the nail polish a bit. “Yeah, because Bobby’s super into flat skinny cunts.”

“What, you think you’re his type? I mean, I guess maybe now that you made yourself look more like me.”

“Right, because that mural of a tattoo of the succubus on your back isn’t you trying to look more like me.”

“I only got that to show him I appreciated the second pinky ring!”

“Right, because a thousand dollar tat  is worth a two dollar ring.”

“Oh sure, and a five hundred dollar makeover is worth a cheap ugly toy for some dork-ass game?”

Every muscle in Cindy’s body tensed at once. She lashed out with the nail polish, aiming for a ring, but Evelyn was already on edge. The bitch pulled her hand back like her synapses were firing lightning bolts. “You touch these and I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Say one more slanderous word about the dice and I’ll rip them and the fingers they’re resting on right the fuck off and shove them up your–!”

The door to the bathroom swung open. Cindy no longer had a reflex to be shy when someone opened a door she was naked behind. It was Frank. “Hey, if you’re done making noise or whatever, one of you wanna suck me off? I gotta head home soon.”

The girls raced to their knees, but Cindy was closer. His dick had been out when he’d opened the door. There was no asking permission or fearing a lack of consent any more for Bobby’s guests. (It would almost certainly be the same when Brent and Andy came over, though Cindy hoped Evelyn wouldn’t be there to make her compete for their approval.) Even Frank’s request right then hadn’t been a request so much as offering a favor, letting the girls know they could drop whatever they were wasting their time with and get back to sucking boys off again.

Evelyn got the balls this time, and Cindy wasn’t gentle with the condescending smirk before she inhaled Frank’s dick.

Maybe she could kill for the last die. Bobby would be so much better off without a cunt like Evelyn around, and if he missed the pussy, well, she could supply that. Did he really want to get married?

Cindy could do til death do us part.

Evelyn moaned as her rings slipped inside her cunt. So fucking selfish. Cindy just hoped she got to pick whose death.

Chapter Seven

“–daughter of State Senator Mike Tewning, the most outspoken advocate for House Bill 241 which would expand funding for social services and educational opportunities for inmates and ex-felons. She was last seen on the fifteenth of this month wearing the outfit depicted in the image here. If you have any information regarding her whereabouts you should contact the police immediately. The family is offering a reward for any information that leads to the recovery of their daughter.”

“Terrible shame, Leslie.”

“Senator Tewning, as we’ve discussed in recent segments, is

“That it is. Our hearts go out to the family of Senator Tewning in what has to be a trying moment.”

“Next up, man versus… squirrel? Channel 8 has recovered video of local resident Marshall Babich in the fight of his life over… well, you’ll see, coming up after the break.”

Cindy didn’t bother looking to where the girl knelt worshipfully fellating her host. She’d have to crane her neck to look under the table, and that meant she wouldn’t be looking at her dice. Nothing was going to stop her from looking at her dice. Bobby had offered to host a bonus session. A solo  bonus session.

She’d come home from work, dripping in spit and cum despite it being a slow night. Bobby had greeted her with the offer at the door while Cindy finished discarding the uniform she’d been shedding even as she shuffled down the hallway outside. Neighbors? She didn’t care what they saw. Maybe she could fuck them, if they complained, to keep them from hassling Bobby over it. Maybe fucking them would make her an even more talented fuck toy for boys. Her boys. She’d earn her space at the table. There was no longer a recollection of a time when that hadn’t been the goal. For some reason, access to the dice depended on it. Had Bobby said that, or had she figured it out herself? Or was she guessing? No Bobby definitely never told her she had to. Pleasing the boys might be beside the point. If there was a point, besides the dice.

He hadn’t even made her rinse off first. That was sweet. She supposed that as haggard as she felt, she probably didn’t look it . Cindy had gotten so used to making herself over between fucks and sucks that sometimes she even forgot she had a dick in her mouth when she habitually slathered on a fresh coat of bright pink lipstick. The men never complained. Or maybe they did. Who cared . Work was harder and harder to tolerate, going all that distance from her dice day after day, stretching the emptiness inside them across all that distance. Would she even risk taking them with her if she could? They were so small, after all, easy to lose. Oh, who was she kidding. If she were allowed, she’d never let them away from her person.

More and more, she wished she could fill that emptiness in her somehow. Impossible, of course. The dark within was infinite, and she was practically nothing. You couldn’t fill infinity with nothing. She was pretty sure her and Bobby’s math teacher had said as much. Or maybe it had been trig. But that was obviously what she should  have been teaching them. Cindy hoped she died.

“Cindy…? You wanna roll me that d8?”

“Oh! Yes! Yes yes. Yes, please. Thank you. God, fuck me. Please? Thank you,” she murmured as she hastily clutched and dropped the speckled octahedron. “Two again,” she announced.

“Right. So it lands… here.” He set the die – just some die to serve as a marker, nothing special – on the grid. It was nice, leaving behind the VTT technology and getting back to basics. A tabletop game was best played on a tabletop, after all. Cindy studied the layout of the tokens, trying to discern some pattern in them, but there was no more a pattern  than there was to the lights behind the dice. Chaos. Senseless. Cindy envied Sintheigha, standing there in the heart of Koltron’s lair, watching… what had he called it?

“What you have long known as ‘reality’ is only a sad, paltry lie pulled over your eyes. There are places however, where we, the initiated, can peel back that veneer and penetrate the darkness behind it,” Bobby said, adopting a deep British accent as he almost always did for humanoid boss villains.

Sintheigha folded her hands meekly before her. Resistance had not served her well when his men came for her. So long as she exhibited deference, he had been gentle.

“Of course, there is no truth in this either. What you’re seeing now is no more real than what you saw before. Only now, the lie of it is exposed. A thing cannot be itself and also be… this, can it?” Cindy’s d4 in hand, Bobby acted out Koltron dragging his fingers through the darkness seeping into the chamber around her. She could picture it in her head perfectly, that statue that was everyone and no one looming over her, the glyphs carved into the rock under her feet. “You begin to see the world for what it can be. Fragmented lies, unknowable secrets, nonsense and chaos and madness. Ripe to be reclaimed from those irksomely noble forces fighting to urge it in the other direction.”

Bobby dropped the accent, returning to GM narration. “He drags a fingernail – the one I said was painted black, like your dice – across the air. Like before, the gesture doesn’t cut a hole where he pointed, but nearby. Wanna roll me a d4 for distance, and a d8 for direction?”

Simply picturing it, that darkness blossoming into existence all around her, was overwhelming. Her cheek planted on the table, Cindy snatched the d4 from Bobby’s hand in a flash and gave it a roll. It bounced and landed so close she could feel it against her eyelashes. “A two,” she announced as it pulled her in, through it, draining what little there was left of her. Without thinking, she slid her foot between Evelyn’s legs and toyed with her pussy using a toe, the nail painted cheerful pink with the bitch’s own polish. Not elegant, but having someone play with her pussy always made her pleasure Bobby harder, and if there was one thing Cindy still believed in, it was Bobby getting what he wanted.

The bitch was wet. She was always wet. The two of them both were; their leaky cunts had practically dyed the carpet in here. Fuck, Evelyn was pathetic. On her knees under a table, blowing a guy she was way too fucking hot for. A guy she’d ignored for the wallflower he was all through high school. Now he was GMing for Cindy like her mouth didn’t even exist. It did, of course. Bobby wasn’t shy or uncharitable about coming when they brought him to it. And for what? A bunch of cheap plastic rings and the flimsiest promise she’d ever heard of from that same inadequate boy. Were they really going to get married? It wouldn’t stop Cindy from fucking him if they did, not if she was Evelyn’s own maid of honor.

Cindy gave her a little kick in the ass, then resumed pleasuring her. It was a little harder than the one Evelyn had given her the night before while she’d been dancing for Bobby in the corner while the pretend goth nestled in beside him to watch another shitty rom-com and play another tedious drinking game. Humiliating, yes. But not as humiliating as what Evelyn was reduced to now.

Were they talking about her on TV? Cindy went back to pleasuring the bitch with her foot, a little extra salt in the wound of being another generically hot clickbait sob story. Would Bobby ever make Evelyn go back home? Cindy used to hope for it, beg for it, but as it became clearer that Bobby had uses for her, she’d given up on that. So be it. Suck that sparkplug of a cock like the pathetic toy you are , Cindy thought at her. Not that she was going to crane her neck to look down and gloat. She’d be looking under the table, and not at her dice.

Something made her think of her high school math teacher. She couldn’t remember her name, but she remembered her hair lip, and wished her dead. For some reason.

“Cindy…? You wanna roll me that d8?”

Oh god, she wished he would brand her, tattoo his symbol on her forehead so everyone would know she could never belong to another. That would be too obvious, though. Bobby – Koltron – had said that there was power in secrets. Cindy didn’t know anything about being powerful, but obeying meant a chance to roll a die. God, please fuck me , she thought. Or if she’d said it aloud again, her mumbles never reached her ears, not until they had a die result to pronounce. “Two again.”

It was so unfair she couldn’t fuck Bobby and play at the same time. He deserved it. After all–

“Cindy, I need you to stay with me, OK?” Bobby waved his hand at her, flashed a bemused smile. “I’m glad you’re excited to get your d20, but not until the end of the session, huh?”

Her body spasmed at the reminder of the prize awaiting her, on the brink of an orgasm he’d been edging her toward for hours now. She wished her pussy would quit doing that. Bobby wanted her to focus. Bobby wanted . “Right. Sorry. More stuff oozing in. Can… can  I touch it?”

Bobby nodded. “As Sintheigha picks herself up off her knees, Koltron doesn’t seem to object. Somehow, he doesn’t seem especially intimidated by her.”

Cindy giggled. How could he? She’d offered to blow him before he even had a chance to introduce himself. She still hadn’t asked if his people had needed to kill Skuf, Jerom and the NPCs to get to her. She’d only now thought of it.

Her six dice rolled around in her hand as she waved her hand through the air demonstratively. Only rarely did she let herself handle all six at once. It was too much. It took her out of the world in a way that was a little too real. Unreal? What was real?

“How does it feel?” she asked as Sintheigha, a strange chill running up her arm. Probably just malnutrition. She’d had some curly fries at the start of her shift while Charlie was warming her up, but after that, nothing but cum. It wasn’t filling, obviously, and the nutritional content was suspect at best. She’d had a lot of days like that lately, but it had helped trim up her waistline. Evelyn would never get the satisfaction of hearing her say it, but maybe she’d been onto something with that eating disorder bullshit.

“Make a…” Suddenly Bobby’s neck tensed, his face went a little redder, his doughy cheeks trembled. He was coming. Cindy knew the sight well. Evelyn moaned – not that guzzling the guy’s jizz was anything special, but she liked to show off – and Cindy made herself not kick her. Bobby didn’t like it when they disrupted each other at moments like that. Cindy simply played with her big tits and tried to coax a few more drops out of him. The boy had always loved her tits.

“Make a Fort save,” he tried again. Fortitude – whatever this stuff was she was going to have to try to save against, it was going to start by wrecking her body. Just as well. Sintheigha’s mind had never been much to begin with.

Cindy set her six precious dice down with a sigh. Probably just as well. Rubbing that many into her boobs at once was a bit too intense. She’d fallen asleep face-down with the d6 digging a cube into her right one the night (day? how long had it been since she’d slept?) before; she’d woken up humping Evelyn’s leg, and the sofa sort of, too. The little whory details of the dreams she couldn’t even remember any more, but that night there were no interruptions, nothing but the darkness. Even waking to Evelyn’s condescending smirk hadn’t stopped her.

She rolled the d20. The same stupid plastic shitty thing she’d been rolling for years now. The garbage disposal would get a mouthful with the fucking thing when she finally got her d20. When she saw the result, her head cocked to the side in surprise. Not even knowing how hard it was, she had expected she would fail. If this stuff in the air was anything like the stuff in her dice, how could she succeed? Yet there it was on the plastic. “A… a twenty. I save .”

Bobby’s head snapped back. “Really?”

She slid it across the table toward him, careful to show she wasn’t adjusting it. He squinted, then gave a nod. “Wow. Did not see that coming. So… hmm.” He stroked his chin. Evelyn crawled out from under the table to the sofa,

“What? Fort partial, still does  something if I save?” She braced herself. Whatever this stuff was, it was something primal. Cosmic.

“Hmm? No, no, it’s save   negates . DC 30, though. I just… huh. Well, fair enough.”

It was like the critical save cleared her head, a measure of old feistiness bubbling up from the depths. “30? Fuck, Bobby, I’m level 2! Good thing a natural 20 always saves; otherwise I’d need to roll a 26 – on a d20! –  to get there. This stuff’s friggin’ evil, all right. So what happens?”

“Your hand passes through it. It’s a little cold, but… Yeah. Nothing, um, happens. Shit.” He considers. “You know what? I'll tell you what. You’ve been a real trooper, letting me work in a bit of side material like this. I’m really grateful, Cindy. So if you want, you can go ahead and use my d20. I’ve strung you along for long enough, right? I mean, re-roll it obviously, but you may as well start using it. Heck, I probably should’ve let you weeks ago.”

Her jaw hung open, little noises coming out, but nothing close to words. Evelyn heard nothing anyway, already kneading her those pitiful little titties of hers, those obnoxiously perfect teardrops, kneading her six rings into her flesh. “B-but… I’ll fail,” she whispered. The moment the words formed, she hated herself for saying them. Here he was, giving her the one thing she’d wanted her entire life – the part that counted anyway – and she balked because it would take her worthless, pathetic character and make her more worthless and more pathetic?

“All right then. Koltron frowns; obviously he expected something, but–”

“Wait wait WAIT!” she interjected. “No, it’s fine, I just… I wasn’t thinking. I’m grateful! I’m so grateful. Please – let me roll it. Please?”

“It’s fine, Cindy, really.” Bobby smiled indulgently. “Anyway, Koltron shakes his head and says–”

“Bobby please! ” Cynthia (who the fuck was Cynthia?) launched herself at him, throwing herself at his feet. His pants were still around his ankles from the blowjob; she really didn’t know why he bothered putting them on, often as he indulged the girls. She kissed feverishly up and down his bare thigh, opening her eyes only once to peek at whether it was having an effect. Little by little, she was getting a rise out of him. She sprinkled Please’s between the kisses. It rose a little faster.

“All right, all right, all right!” he protested at last, laughing. “Go get my d20, Cin.” He pinched her butt as she darted back to where the tin rested. It took a couple slaps on the back of the container to get it loose from its spot in the foam container, but suddenly there it was, in her hand. She’d never before dared to touch it. It would take a sensitive scale to detect the difference, but Cindy swore she could feel the added weight in her palm compared to its smaller counterparts. The die rolled side to side, every little fleck inside catching the light just so.

“Bobby? C-can I…?”

He nodded. “Go ahead and roll, Cin.”

“No. I mean… can I…” She looked up at him, pushing all that endless, bottomless gratitude into her eyes. “Can I ride you, while I roll it for the first time? Please? It would mean a lot more if you let me, you know, thank you.”

Bobby shook his head with a grin like he was humoring a little kid asking for an extra thirty minutes past bedtime. “Fine, fine.” His chair slid  back, making room for her.

She stowed the die in her mouth as she crawled under the table to him. (Wasn’t this supposed to be a table top  game?) At his feet, she slithered up his body, dragging weighty breasts across his knees, his thighs, the thin cotton shirt that said The only thing we have to CHEER is CHEER itself!  in front of their high school mascot. She didn’t need help settling onto his dick. That was a reflex by now. The effort came when, after a few entreating bounces, she threw one long, tan leg over his head and pivoted to face the table. How did she even know how to do that? Her usually stoic GM humored her with a little moan at the new angle.

Arby’s! That’s where she’d been practicing that. It was weird to have fancy hooker skills and not remember where you learned them.

Bobby squeezed one fat tit in each hand as she wriggled her hips around his lap. That was good. He neglected them oftentimes. All those years of trying to get a look down the neckline of whatever black shit she’d been wearing, and now he’d gotten so much of her boobs in his face that he barely even played with them. A momentous occasion like this should come with her pussy wrapped around her GM, her perfect generous GM, her titties in his hands, his dice in hers.

Cindy craned her neck forward and let the d20 tumble down the length of her tongue onto the table. It rolled right over to the grid where Bobby had arranged his tokens and set pieces to make Koltron’s harem, right where all that nothing was leaking into the world.

Right where that little pinhead Sintheigha was about to suffer whatever came of rolling a 5.

“Do you know how energy drain works, Cindy?” Bobby whispered in her ear when she reported the result. Why was he whispering all creepy-sexy like that? Bobby never broke character, and he always spoke to make sure the whole table could hear him. It was jarring.

She fucked a little harder.

“Yeah, it’s… it’s... mm, fuck, right there… it’s…”

Bobby let work at humping out her distracted little orgasm while he went on. “So Sintheigha puts her hand into the void energies. Nothing actually happens… for a moment.” He kissed her ear as he murmured into it. She cringed a little. Why was he kissing her? Sucking on her nipples, sure. Hell, he’d never eaten her pussy before either but it was the sort of slutty thing she was always letting him do to her these days. It wouldn’t be weird. But kissing her ear? That was…

Yet he’d had his dramatic moment, and now he was moving on. “Then suddenly it sinks into you. All of it. The hole tears wider and wider. Part of you knows it only takes a few seconds, but it feels like it drags on for a thousand years, stretching your life out over eternity until it’s so thin that there’s nothing left of you, two-dimensionality that’s all the easier to fill because there’s nothing left inside you and then it is  the nothing inside.”

Bobby rubbed her clit. Or tried. He’d never been very good at it. To help him along, Cindy stretched out her arm until the tip of her finger touched the d20.

She came. She came so loud, so long, even Evelyn was startled, and she’d felt Cindy come when they were sixty-nining the other day for Frank’s amusement, come like a tidal wave crashing on the shore, killing a thousand hapless beach tourists.

“Anyway,” Bobby was saying to the blonde body still spasming on his dick, face and sweaty tits draped over the table. (Oh, was that  why they called it a table top  game? Was she  a tabletop game? She giggled.) “The stuff drains your life force, sucks out a little of who you are. Mechanically, it’s a ‘negative level,’ basically like losing a level. -1 to pretty much every d20 roll – skills, attacks, saves – and a little blow to your HP. As long as you don’t take negative levels equal to or greater than your actual levels, you’re more or less fine.”

Cindy nodded, her cheek sticking to the pages of Bobby’s Core Rulebook. “OK. So -1 to everything. No problem.” Like she didn’t know what a negative level was. Duh. She knew these rules by heart, though if it made Bobby happy to explain it, she owed him her feigned ignorance. And so much more. Thankfully, she was level two, only a couple levels behind the boys, so–

“And with a failed save, you take four of them.”

****************************************************************

Game day. Real  game day, the whole group. Cindy glowed with anticipation. It felt like ages since the last time she’d gotten to play. Hell, in person, it had been. They’d lost the last summer to covid, and with Brent and Andy off to college, it had been the one before that, after graduation, when they’d last gotten to sit down and roll dice together.

It was easy to hold a grudge about the way things had been the past couple months since Bobby had gotten the group back together. The boys hadn’t made it easy on her. Teasing her, demeaning her character, threatening to quit, threatening to kick her out… it had been rough, sometimes, and the mess she’d made of her personal life didn’t help. Disowned for being a vindictive brat, moving into her gamer buddy’s cramped, dirty apartment, earning her keep with her tits and holes. And of course all the drama at her former job (make that former jobs ), but finally…

Finally, it was time for everyone to come together. Cindy watched for them from the vantage point of the third-story apartment’s kitchen window overlooking the parking lot. Cindy practically skipped to the door when Andy’s car rolled up. Bobby was still getting ready, so she buzzed Andy and Brent up when they arrived.

“Hey, guys!” she gushed, throwing her arms around the two of them. They both stiffened a moment, probably some low-key homophobia about being in a hug with another dude, or perhaps surprised at the uncharacteristic affection from the ex-goth turned blonde beauty queen, but she didn’t care. Even though she’d been seeing their faces in miniature on Bobby’s TV screen every week, it felt weird seeing the new them. Brent had a much more stylish haircut, had ditched his dorky old specs for a chique new pair; Andy had lost serious weight since she’d last seen him, and traded in his douchey fedora for a plastic visor. It looked even more douchey somehow, but the greek letters on the rim obviously redeemed it for him.

She ended it with a big wet kiss on the cheek for each, then stood aside to let them get to the table. They shared awkward – but not displeased – glances, but then went to their usual spots. It was like old times, the boys on one side of the table, Cindy on the other, with Bobby’s place at the head. (They’d learned a long time ago that having someone at the foot just meant that player  couldn’t reach the combat portion of the map.) Cindy bounced happily into her seat.

“It’s so great to see you guys. I can hardly believe how long it’s been – two years, right?”

“About that, yeah, August before last.” Brent replied.

“Good to see you, too, Cynthia,” Andy answered. Cindy concealed a twitch at his misspeak. “Little less of you than we’re used to seeing I guess , huh?”

Brent swatted his arm. “Dude!”

“What? Elephant in the room, right? No sense pretending we haven’t seen what we’ve seen. Seriously, I had no idea you had all that in you. Gotta say, Bobby’s a lucky freaking guy.”

“I don’t know about luck, but I’ll grant he’s made some good investments.” Her smile was the definition of coy.

“Who knew the way to a girl’s heart was through the dice, huh?” Brent shook his head. “I have to say, when he showed us what he’d gotten for you, I said… well , I was skeptical.”

“You said he was fucking nuts is what you said.”

“I mean, come on! He tells us he’s got these special freaking dice, and we’re supposed to believe you’re going to react like he gave you a fistful of diamonds? I never knew you were into… you know. Material stuff, like that. Cool to see you got over that whole goth phase or whatever, though, caught up with the world.”

“I’m still getting used to the way I look in the mirror, but it’s growing on me.”

“Making something grow on me, too, girl.” Andy smirked, Brent rolled his eyes, and Cindy laughed. Fucking pig. But he wanted to fuck her, so she could stay at the table. Good enough.

“You don’t even know. It’s so weird seeing tan skin on my tatas. Not sure I’ll ever get used to it.”

“Can I see them at least? The dice, I mean,” Brent corrected quickly when even Andy’s eyes widened at his misapprehension.

“Yeah, your webcam was always pointed too high to see ‘em – not that I’m complaining. Speaking of, gotta say I’m sorry to see you went retro on the fashion.” He held out a sad hand in the direction of her plain white t-shirt. It was tight, and she was even wearing a bra. The time that had passed since she’d last bothered with underwear felt even longer than since she’d last sat down with the boys.

“Yeah, I know it’s not exactly bondage gear,” she said with a mix of a smile and a grimace, “but I figured for today, this might be a little more appropriate. I didn’t wanna freak you out or anything. Sorry, guys.”

“Hey, don’t apologize. You still look great,” Andy insisted.

Brent nodded his agreement, though had the class not to say it to her chest. “And hey, while we’re clearing the air and all, I just wanna say…” He cleared his throat, even gave an actual tug at his collar. Fuck, these boys were pathetic. It was even more embarrassing to have been bullied by a pussy like this. “Sorry if we were a little rough on you for a while there. No, not if. Shit. We were. Um, I don’t know if he told you, but someone…” He rolled his eyes at the pointlessness of being circumspect. “Bobby, he um, he gave us the impression that he’d like us to sort of, you know, haze you a little.”

“That’s not what hazing is, dude. When I was pledging, they made me pick up a cherry stem with my butt cheeks and–”

“If you tell that gross fucking story again, I swear to god!” Andy laughed guilelessly as Brent shook off the image and went on. “We figured you guys had had a fight, and I guess we sorta bro-coded our way into siding with him, even though… But yeah, we figured you’d quit and stay quit, or that he’d just call it.” He took a deep breath. “But then when you… you know. When we saw how you reacted, we thought maybe… I dunno. I guess I didn’t know what to think, and… I can’t speak for both of us, but I know I sort of fed off of…” He glanced at Andy, who at least had the decency to look abashed for his own abuses. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m glad it all worked out, but I’m gladder  it’s over and we can go back to the way things were.”

“I wouldn’t mind keeping a few of the new vibes in play,” Andy chimed in, waggling his eyebrows in reference to her skanky displays of the recent online sessions. Cindy played at being offended, covering her chest with an arm for a moment, then laughed it off. Ha ha, you want me to dress like a whore. Ha ha. She did laugh, though. Being treated like a whore the past month at work had made it easy to ignore. She’d miss that job.

Like that, the apology came to an end, Brent taking her playfulness to be an acceptance. “I’m just glad we’re all still cool. I don’t think I’m alone in pointing out this whole campaign has been by far the weirdest one we’ve ever done, right?”

Cindy nudged aside the bin they’d always used to hold random excess dice they’d accumulated over the years and squeezed Brent’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, it all worked out, right, ‘cause here we all are! I’m just so glad that, after everything I did, you guys are still letting me hang. I know I didn’t make it easy sometimes.”

Brent nearly flinched; he wasn’t used to having his hand squeezed by a hot, busty blonde, much less one who’d been a hot, busty goth the last time he’d seen her. Or maybe he was that taken aback by her expression of contrition. “Yeah. Cool. So you’re really not mad?”

His hand still in hers, she tilted her head to the side, a broad, pink-rimmed smile painting the stranger’s face he knew so well. “Do I look mad?”

Brent offered a smile. Andy was still ogling, though trying to look like he wasn’t.

“Hey, speaking of madness, where is the madman himself?” He glanced around the dingy studio apartment. “Don’t tell me he’s hiding in the fridge or something.”

“Oh, no, he’s in the bathroom. We figured you guys liked that bondage slave outfit so much, I talked him into wearing it,” Cindy joked . But as if on cue, the bathroom door swung open, and out stepped Bobby himself. The guys each stood to do that bro hug thing where a guy claps the other guy on the shoulder and keeps a fist between their chests when they bump for minimal gayness. Their GM fetched a ceramic dish of his mom’s famous taco dip from the oven; Cindy brought in the bowl of tortilla chips.

“I thought I smelled it, but I have this stupid stuffed up nose – it’s not covid, don’t glare – but fuck yeah, man!”

“Mom sends her regards,” Bobby said warmly as they dug in. Did he still have a mom? Cindy wondered. For a little while, it was just catching up in a way their online arrangement hadn’t properly allowed. How school was going, final exams, what college was like pre- and mid-pandemic. Neither of them asked about Bobby or Cindy’s jobs, but what would there have been to tell? Andy told them about the passing of his aunt, whom they’d all met and had mostly liked. Brent’s parents had moved the cat’s litter box to his bedroom during his absence, which was causing some domestic strife. They complimented Bobby on the apartment, which they’d gotten a video tour of when he moved in during their freshman year, but had never been able to visit. Cindy opened up only a little, explaining how she’d gotten in a fight with her parents and Bobby had been there for her, and how amazing things had been since moving in here. Nobody brought up the slutty outfits and sluttier behavior, taking the crimson in the couple’s cheeks as a sign of their guilty bliss. She laughed it off and assured them that if they’d seen half the stuff she’d done in this apartment, she’d have to charge them a subscription fee.

Finally, two hours and one pot of taco dip later, it was time to play. At last, as Brent and Andy retrieved freshly produced paper character sheets and other supplies of their own, Cindy retrieved her dice tin from the coffee table. The fervor to see them had by then subsided.

“Neat,” said Brent. Andy made a face that basically said yeah, sure, why not.

With that, Bobby ran the recap and set the stage for the day’s game.

“Wait, Sintheigha’s gone again ?!”

“Didn’t we even get Perception checks to notice?”

Bobby regarded them with commiseration. “I rolled them for you, but she disappeared during the night. Sleeping is a -10, and neither of you even has the skill trained.”

They grumbled a little, but either they’d had their fill of bullying her, or were too big of cowards to do it to her face. “Okey doke, so let’s add ‘find Sintheigha’ to our quest roster. Again,” grumbled Andy sourly. “But I mean, we have no leads, no note to say if she left on purpose, no clues if she got tooken–”

“I’m sorry, ‘got tooken?’”

“It’s a thing, dude.”

“It makes you sound like an idiot.”

“Your saying that makes you  sound uncultured.”

Bobby let it go on a minute before cutting in, “So you guys have had two whole weeks to think about what to do about Lord Koltron and the cult of Nyarlathotep. What’d you guys come up with?”

Brent held his hands up calling for a pause. “What about Sintheigha?”

“What about her, dude? I say again, we have no leads except the obvious. Either she tried to solo this Koltron thing and got nabbed, ‘cause she’s level 2 and built like a belly dancer, or else he thought his harem was one hottie shy of his dreams and came after her. Either way, this isn’t that complex. We’re fourth level, which means I’m just shy of my first dragon disciple level. Let the XP flow, yo.”

“What about Bregan? She said, I dunno , like maybe our attacking  would only play into Koltron’s hands.”

Andy snorted, his visor jerking down his forehead for a moment before he could fix it. “Bregan can spout off her hippie peacenik bullshit all she wants, but we know exactly what we’re gonna get storming Koltron’s compound. Beat down his goons, kill the lord himself. Then we’ll have all that evidence Sintheigha already found in there before, so we don’t even have to worry about legal repercussions for killing a nobleman from the local muckity  mucks.”

Brent stroked his chin. “It feels too… obvious. There’s no why , you know? Like yes, this guy doesn’t seem to have a great attitude toward women, but – no offense to the woke among us – that’s pretty small potatoes for our usual villain. There  feels like there’s so much hidden here that I don’t understand.”

“What, we have to find a portal to hell in a guy’s basement before we off him? What’s wrong with wasting a guy just for having a bunch of sex slaves? Shit, or being a cultist, take your pick.”

Brent turned to Cindy. “What do you think? I know your character’s not there, but you’re still part of the party.”

She glanced to Bobby . “I’m… I’m not supposed to say. But I have full faith and confidence in both of you.”

“Who is this CR 14 temptress and what did she do with Cindy?” Brent quipped. Bobby and Andy laughed. Cindy smiled and gave his calf a brief rub with her foot.

“So guys. You still have Bregan, and I’ll say this: Sintheigha’s still out there somewhere, or else I’d have let Cindy roll up a new character. Moment of decision – whatcha gonna do?”

Security was elevated on Lord Koltron’s estate. His men ringed the place, and once they fought through that, more hobgoblins waited inside along with a few minion beasties to spice things up. With only three party members, it was a fairly brutal onslaught. (Not that Sintheigha would have been able to help much, she pointed out apologetically.) Bregan expended all of her healing bursts and all of her spells except a couple level 1’s keeping Skuf and Jerom fighting.

Andy fiddled with his dice, rolling them at random. Cindy had forgotten about that annoying old habit of his. “So yeah, Jerom’s checking out that big door you described. I know Koltron’s rooms upstairs had the intel, but the security was way thicker down here. You said there’s nobody in the harem?”

“Just a big empty room full of cushions, translucent curtains, and a little pool with a fountain. There’s no clothes, no footprints, not the scent of incense. By all appearances, nobody’s ever used the place. It’s not what Eisheth described, certainly. The only thing to show anyone’s even  been in there any time recently is one of Sintheigha’s daggers in the middle of the floor.”

“Fuck, I knew we shouldn’t have let Eisheth run off. Well, whatever. Something’s still messed up here. So you said there’s this dark, sparkly energy on the door – hey, kinda like your dice, eh Cin?” Her fist clenched around them possessively, but Andy only laughed it off. “So yeah, can I make any kind of check to get rid of it?”

A Religion check was adjudicated; Bobby gave them the results. They weren’t thrilled. It was a magical ward, and without any way to dispel it – which they didn’t have, and wouldn’t for several levels yet – the only way was to have someone set it off. They had no summons to use for fodder, and in their usual style, had taken no prisoners. It was down to the three of them or it was nothing.

“We’re sure she’s worth it?” Andy asked. It wasn’t clear if it was a habitual dig at Cindy’s worth or a tiresome reminder of Sintheigha’s habit of being taken captive. She fought to keep her free hand on the table. She couldn’t get at her pussy through these jeans anyway.

“We’re going,” Brent declared. “It’s only a game. Worst case scenario, party wipe. Been a while, but no biggie. Right?”

“Should I take that to mean Skuf volunteers to trigger the trap?” asked Bobby.

Andy snickered. “Dude, we have Bregan. She’s depleted anyway – let her do it.”

“If you think it is the only way,” answered Bregan’s voice.

Andy watched Brent for his sentiments; he was always less willing to treat NPCs like expendable resources, but in this case, he conceded that Andy’s analysis was astute, and if she agreed… “I know you always say there’s a piece of you in all your NPCs, man. God knows this chipper little peacemonger is more you than most.”

“Eh, Bregan’s more high school Bobby. Modern softspoken sex fiend Bobby is all Koltron.” Andy laughed. Bobby gave him a considering  look, then nodded.

“Anyway, yeah, Andy’s right. We can fight and she can’t be much more help , so… I think your girl here is taking one for the team.”

“I abide by the will of the group,” was the response, the accent so thin that it might not have been Bregan at all. What followed was just Bobby. “At your urging, she steps forward, a look of firm resolve in her eyes. She pauses to look back to the two of you–”

“Oh man, this bitch is so  dead,” Andy mumbled giddily.

“–and reaches through the black stuff to grasp at the handle of the door. For a moment nothing happens, and then all of the dark energy is sucked inside her, like she’s a sponge. She stumbles back for a moment, and you can see the darkness running through her veins. She shakes her head like she’s trying to loose  something in her ears, but finally turns back to you. ‘It’s open.’”

“Oh man, she lived? Boo.”

“Are you OK, Bregan?” Brent pressed.

“Let us proceed below. Koltron awaits.” Bobby didn’t need to point out that there was a darkness in her voice now that hadn’t been there before.

“Hells yeah! Recasting my Shield spell,” Andy declared.

As Skuf, Brent narrowed his eyes at the GM. “I thought you didn’t like getting your hands dirty, Bregan.”

In that half-hearted Irish brogue, Bobby answered, “I don’t. Lucky for me, I found some friends only too happy to do it for me, eh?” The narrator voice  resumed. “The door is open now, and you can head down. It’s not lit, but Skuf’s Light spell still works. It’s dimmer though, like something is squeezing down on it. That’s 50% radius for the main light and the dim.”

“Gotcha.”

“The steps spiral downwards, a broad stone staircase. The walls are slick with grime, and the floor is gritty underfoot, faint stains just visible. And a smell, too.”

“Like Bobby’s apartment - HEYO!” Brent hushed his companion acidically, though his eyes darted around Bobby’s grungy dwelling suspiciously.

“The stairwell ends at another set of double doors, though unlike the last set, these stand open. Because of the angles, you can’t see more than a few feet into the room until you’re inside.”

Cindy whispered, “Go inside.”

The boys shared an uncomfortable look. “So… we go inside?” Brent asked anxiously.

Andy nodded. “We go inside.”

****************************************************************

“I really have to go?” Cindy whined. Whining was her default tone, any more. On the most important day of her life, she ought not to feel that way, but she did. “I’ll miss half the session!”

“Don’t be like that. You’ve done really good so far, Cindy! You kept your job, kept making it work. Like I asked. Just one more shift, all right? I bet they’ll even let you off early.”

“You think they will?”

“I think you’re persuasive, and beautiful, and brave, and I don’t think any manager would be able to say no to you. In fact, I believe so hard that I’ll be waiting for you, right here, in time to pick you up for the session. Time enough even to take a shower first, even. You know you’ll need it.” Her nametag  was in the center cup holder. He picked it up and pinned it to the shirt of her Arby’s uniform. Cindy didn’t even register that the pin had stabbed into her breast. It didn’t bleed, though. “Go on. Work hard, try to have fun, and remember: the dice are yours now. Yours to roll whenever you want. OK?”

As if she could forget. Bobby had assured her over and over since their solo session that they were hers now, but she still didn’t feel like she had earned  them. The tin in her pocket felt like it weighed a hundred thousand pounds, yet carrying it made her feel lighter than air. It made no sense, but she was more comfortable that way. The things that made sense were hurtful. Terrifying.

She kissed Bobby goodbye and made her way into work. It was an opening shift, but on Saturdays the stores would no doubt be slammed as usual. Inside, she made her way to the back and clocked in. Patrick and Paulie were on this morning, and Charlie would be in once the doors opened since Mr. Oleander, the owner, still hadn’t approved hiring a new assistant manager to replace him. Paulie sneaked a feel of Cindy’s ass as she sauntered by, but she reminded him that opening was a three-person job, so he’d have to wait for his break for a turn.

The smells of grease warming in the fryers, seasoning salt on the opening batch of curly fries, beef juice trickling down the blades of the meat slicer… It all reminded her of something. Somewhen. She hadn’t done openings for weeks now; Charlie got better money out of her pussy evenings and closing. She’d made a special request for opening today. Game day. Brent and Andy would be coming over in only a few hours. It was hard to imagine Charlie letting her go early, but whatever. She had her dice. Game day would be fun, but it wasn’t what mattered.  Ultimately Cindy didn’t care where she was, what she was doing, if her dice were with her. Although Bobby had said they were hers now, it wasn’t like he couldn’t take them back whenever he wanted. She still hadn’t earned them yet, not really. She’d only had to let Charlie fuck her ass in the breakroom to earn being reassigned to the early shift. Stupid on Charlie’s part, really – she’d let him do that and more for less than nothing in weeks past, as a favor to her even, but pretending she might withhold it had somehow motivated him. It made no sense, but that was to be expected.

Old routines saw her through her brief time doing her normal old job. More than casually brushing her butt, her boobs, against Paulie and Patrick. Lifting her work shirt to flash her tits in the doorway of the manager's office every few times she passed it on her way to the drive-thru window. Bend at the waist, lift with the tits – which was to say ask one of the boys to do it, then paw at their crotches needily while they did her work for her.

Around 10:45 she got her first special order. “Cindy, got a request for a number 22 with extra special sauce,” Charlie’s voice announced into her headset. The boys grinned at her, though then Patrick did a double take at the line forming and grumbled something about being under-staffed. Cindy licked his neck and made her way downstairs to the break room.

Was it still the break room? It once had been. When Cindy was working, employees didn’t take breaks in here except for the once-per-shift ride. It didn’t look very relaxing, most of its perimeter rimmed by stacks of boxes filled with grease and food packaging and soda machine refills. The old meat slicer sat in one corner, sidelined but not discarded when it grew too loose, the blade oscillating too freely to safely cut the meats . Some kind of brackish ooze had leaked onto the floor in one corner that filled the whole place with an invitingly sordid stink.

The customer was already waiting for her, standing nervously in front of the long plastic table for employees to take their meal at. It was the same make of table Bobby used for their game, coincidentally, though his  had a white top and this one was mottled tan. Might’ve used to be white, she supposed, before years of Arby’s had seeped into it. Either way, Cindy’s top came off, and once the strange man paused for air amid sucking awkwardly at her bare tits, she got her sturdy black work jeans off and bent over the tabletop. The other dice, the d4, d6, d8, the two d10’s and the d12, all remained in her jeans pocket. The d20, though, she kept in hand. No way she was about to leave that lying around this filthy fucking sty.

“Are you gonna give it to me, mister?” she asked needily. Was it sincere? She didn’t really know; that was just what she said sometimes, the same rote utterance she’d used a couple minutes earlier to ask if some lady at the drive-thru wanted to try their new spicy prime rib cheesesteak.

He gave it to her. She whimpered and moaned as she came. That happened for her far more easily than it did for the customers, and with the dice in her pocket by her right ankle, every orgasm was the burning freezing ecstasy of drifting through outer space in the full blast of the sun’s rays.

Experimentally, she gave the d20 a roll.

5.

Was 5 significant somehow? It felt like it had to be, but she didn’t know what it could mean. Five inches? Could be true. Five dollars Charlie charged him? Sounded way low, she was pretty sure, but maybe he got off on that. Cheap whores seemed to appeal to guys more than expensive ones, she’d learned, getting what one pays for be damned.

Cindy was dressed and halfway up the stairs to resume her shitty boring orgasmless job when another special customer was shown in. Some guy her dad’s age with skinny legs and a fat gut who wanted to fuck her tits. She lubed up with the bottle of hand lotion she used to use for… what was it? Oh, right, lotioning her hands. The guy was too tall for her to do it kneeling, too fat do it with her sitting in a chair, too heavy to mount her on the flimsy table, so she used her clothes as a pillow and lay there on the orange-tiled floor, moaning encouragingly as he pumped his cum across her tits.

His roll came up 11. Eleven minutes? Could be. She had amazing tits. Customers told her that all the time. “Those titties are worth every penny and then some, darlin’,” said the man. Case in point. A southern accent? 11 states away?

Charlie took his turn. 7. That one she thought she knew. 7 weeks her senior at the restaurant. He used to rib her about her inexperience, long after the gap had become meaningless. He was quick, a hasty pump and dump, and told her to just hang out down here even if there was a pause. There was already a line forming. For a moment he studied her nametag  still clinging to her right tit, but shook it off and retreated upstairs to usher in the next customer.

Another stranger, this one actually pretty hot. That was fun. She didn’t get to fuck hot guys very often. 10. She laughed, but when he asked why, she had nothing. He wasn’t that  hot. “It just feels so fucking good,” she moaned, mostly honestly, and stepped up her pace. It was over too soon, but the guy felt bold enough to give her his number. Cindy thanked him, then wadded  it up and threw it haphazardly. The little scrap landed in that puddle of gunk, where it belonged.

Oleander, the store’s owner, came by then. Earlier than usual. Did he check her hours before stopping by? 16. Did he own 15 other Arby’s? Did she remind him of his sixteen-year-old daughter? Was this the sixteenth time he’d come by to fuck his “slut of the month” as he liked to call her? He told her he’d only come in on business, but had been pleased to find her; he’d hang out in the office today, give her a little personal supervision. Cindy thanked him, sucked his dick clean, and waited for him to get bored of leering and go.

Next, the fifth grade teacher that had taught across the hall from hers in elementary school. 4. That… that wasn’t right. Not that the dice were ever wrong! She took a quick break from her blowjob to grab the d6 and add it to the pile. (When had she seized the others?) The d6 said 5. Better. Her dizziness clear  up in time to take an audible blast of cum on her tits. “Thank you, come again.” He laughed. Right. That would have been a good joke.

Some total stranger. 11 again. “Are you… Jesus, I… oh my god…” He turned and ran. It had been a few shifts since one of those, where they heard somebody else order the 22 special and parroted it out of curiosity. What did they expect? Drugs? Maybe drugs. Dealing drugs out of a back room at Arby’s probably made more sense than finding some hot blonde whore letting her manager pimp out her pussy. Which only showed how little sense anything made. Cindy empathized. There was a brief lull after the man left, so she got dressed, let the cum that hadn’t dried already soak into her shirt, into the crotch of her black work jeans as it oozed out of her cunt. Meanwhile she stared at the dice. That filled the time so much better than her phone used to during her breaks.

Paulie got his break, and off went the clothes at a snap of his fingers. Paulie liked to play the field a bit; the man had fifteen minutes and liked to squeeze the most out of them. She started bent over the table, sucking his dick while he admired the variant view of her ass. Then he humped her face a bit, pulled her lips – the face lips, not the normal ones – and rubbed his cock against her teeth. That was a new one, but kinda hot. A footjob to finish, which probably owed an assist to that oozy gunk on the floor for how smoothly it went. She told him it was lotion so he didn’t get pissy.

Only once he left did she remember to roll. 12. One higher than last time. Of course.

The next guy she only somewhat recognized, though he was apparently a repeat customer because she heard Charlie lecturing him not to go so hard on her ass this time. Had he really reamed her hard enough that Charlie… No, wait. This was the guy who’d spanked her so brutally it had left a welt. Bobby had made Evelyn kiss and make better, though of course having that goth gutterslut’s lips on her helped not at all. 3. He’d already counted nine, so that wasn’t it. He got to thirty, her ass beet red, before Charlie stepped in to break it up. Charlie, 7, spanker 3… Three times seven was… No. Hmm. Whatever. Math wasn’t going to give her any answers, because it had rules so it was only another lie.

Quinn, some deadbeat junky who’d been a couple years ahead of her in high school. A friend of a former friend. 19. Almost.

Charlie again, the greedy pig, though he thanked her for doing such good work on Mr. Oleander. “Asshole’s camping out in my office for you,” he griped. She apologized and gave another roll from one hand into the other palm. 6 this time. Sixty-thousand dollar salary? 7 before, 6 now. A countdown, maybe. Finally someone who just wanted her to fuck them. He sat down on a crappy metal chair at the table and let her ride him. Face to face, today. He liked to kiss her, the perv. It couldn’t be considered romantic considering he shoved a thumb up her ass and motorboated her right after, laughing. Someone had taught her that humor was simply the contradiction between expectation and reality. Cindy cackled.

A woman. Was this her first woman? It seemed pointless. She’d never needed to please a woman for dice, for a place at the table. Andy and Brent were boys. Bobby was a boy. Cindy told her to get the fuck out. The woman recoiled like she’d been struck and ran out crying. 17. Madness.

She danced for some twenty-something dude she didn’t know. Just danced like a slut, shaking her T&A by turns. He didn’t even want a lap dance, just sat in a puddle of hers and Charlie’s cum in that same chair and watched her, jacking off. 13. Unlucky. She nearly pulled a muscle trying that one move, so maybe, yeah.

Charlie came in to give her shit about turning away that lady before. “Oh, I didn’t know I have  to do chicks, too. My bad.” He looked like he wanted to give her more of a lecture, but her ass was still red from the guy he’d let beat on it, so he left it at that. He’d probably be a cool manager if she still had a normal job here.

What time was it? Was Bobby waiting?

18, rolled before the two boys even came in. She knelt on a chair – a different one, without cum on it – and one fucked her face while the other fucked her pussy. Then they swapped. Kinda gross. Were they eighteen? She guessed they had to be. Charlie wasn’t that  fucking brave about renting her pussy out. The second round, they both pulled out and had her get on her knees and jerk them both off, one fist each, pumping them onto… well, mostly the floor, but some spritzed on her thighs and even a bit on her titties. That  was pretty  hot that they wanted to try that hard. Cindy rubbed the d12 around her clit and got off two more times thinking about it before the next guy came in.

She recognized him. Definitely a regular. Nobody with a name or a story, though. Just some guy. He stroked her hair a bit. Whatever. Then it was bending over the table once again getting railed from behind. Did he care that there was already those boys’ cum in there? And Charlie’s, and… Shit, she forgot who else had fucked her pussy that day. Not even the faces stuck in her memory. Whatever. It made a boy happy. Two boys if you counted Charlie. She rolled the d20 carefully towards her body so it didn’t fall off the edge, landing right in the wedge between where her tits were squashed down on the cold plastic table.

20.

Critical.

Cindy came like  a head-on collision between a pair of freight trains. Charlie rushed halfway down the basement stairs at all the screaming, but seeing that she was apparently enjoying herself, he locked the door and turned up the muzak over the intercom. The break room had decent sound insulation, but she remembered a couple years ago when Fat Rog – this skinny kid who was obsessed with performing spontaneous pullups – tore down a ventilation duct. Sound-proof, it was not.

Still tingling – no not tingling, still fucking coming , fucking coming like she’d just critted Koltron with her dagger right in his evil black heart – she bucked the guy off. Before he could regain his balance she was on him, mouth pressed hungrily to his, pursuing him until their bodies thudded against a stack of boxes. Some of them fell noisily. Some of the soda bags must have gotten punctured somehow, because suddenly she could feel the sticky black syrup pooling around her toes. His shirt came off easily, like any man flattered at being summarily stripped by some hot horny Arby’s whore. Arby Barbie, Evelyn called her, the  bitch. The man was a fuzzy mother fucker all right. Her arms around the man’s neck, she leapt on him, thighs locking on his hips, lowering herself back onto his shaft.

A fucking 20. FUCK!

She was screaming the whole time, one endless, effortlessly elicited orgasm flowing endlessly through nerve endings frayed from far too much pleasure. Charlie didn’t intervene this time. The guy sputtered nervously even as he tried to pretend he was some badass who fucked like this all the time. He finally tried to silence her with his mouth over hers.

Moron. A handful of his chest hair caught in her talons. She ripped back, and as he gasped in shock and pain, she spat her beloved d4 – Sintheigha’s dagger – right down his throat.

Cindy held on as long as she could with him thrashing around trying to unseat her from her mount. The d20 fell from her hand in the midst of it all, but she didn’t even need to look. 16. Good luck knocking her loose with that Ride check, dipshit. His face was turning purple as he fought in vain for air, fought in vain against the shrieking banshee bearing him down to the ground. If only Andy and Brent could see her now. Drenched in sweat and cum and syrup and at least a few less definable things, they would beg her to join their party. Maybe even promote her up from party  pack mule.

Finally, a new crest of orgasms dropped her from her steed as it fell to its knees. She felt empty. That made her smile. Her pussy, emptiness itself but everywhere flecks of white. The man lumbered to his feet, chest heaving, and lunged at the table belly first, not even seeming to care that his cock – not unimpressive, especially considering his circumstances – was mashed between. The d4 remained lodged in his throat like a caltrop in a horse’s hoof.

Her d20 was nearby, she noticed. Cindy launched it by pressing down on it with a toe. She screamed again in sheer ecstasy as it stopped early, trapped in the pool of syrup that had spread across half the room now. Diet Coke by the smell. Another 16, she knew. The man backed up, prepared a second self-Heimlich. At the appropriate moment, Cindy gave him a hard shove. Off-balance and dizzy from lack of oxygen, he lurched wide around the table and slammed face first into the thick cold steel of the old meat slicer.

Even with that to brace him against, it wasn’t easy for a girl of Cindy’s modest musculature, holding this weak , terrified body upright.

Cindy kept screaming as she went through the familiar motions. She really was too nice to boys these days. Her old goth self would never have volunteered to do the suffocating man’s screaming for him.

****************************************************************

Andy and Brent looked back and forth between them, then back to the layout of the chamber beneath the harem, a simple round room with a weird glyph scrawled on the center in dry  erase marker. Per tradition, they used dice from the bucket to represent actors. A big red boss d6 for Koltron; a pink one, from the set Bobby’s parents had gotten for her when they’d furnished the group’s first supplies years and years ago, for Sintheigha; a yellow d12, a familiar stand-in for mini-bosses, to represent Eisheth beside her; and a series of mundane black and white ones for all the void rifts opened during Cindy’s solo session. His hand-painted Diablo statuette sat in the back to represent the enormous, many-tentacled statue that loomed across the room, poised as if in the midst of reaching to grasp all of the room's occupants. Brent and Andy had chosen dice for their own PCs, followed closely by a green d8 standing in for Bregan.

Brent couldn’t help glancing at Cindy, at where her nipples heralded her arousal through the two layers of fabric covering them. “They’re… naked?”

“Oh don’t go reaching for that scented hanky just yet, Mildred,” Andy grumbled, elbowing him. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”

“Koltron’s not naked,” Cindy reassured them. Brent could phone in comfort with male sexuality if he needed to, but Andy was the original no-homo dude-bro.

Bobby took charge of the room again. “Let’s get back in character, guys. The women are each lying on their backs, facing the ceiling of the room, lost in the haze of darkness as if transfixed by something within it. Something red, so dark it’s almost black, is splashed across both bodies, though neither appears injured. Whether it’s blood, or some paint for whatever ritual is taking place, you can’t say. The statue is some sort of dark stone with points of luster inside it, and every time you glance away and look back, it’s like it’s moved subtly, though you can’t pinpoint how.”

“Solid ambiance, GM meum.”

Brent added, “The shifting makes sense, too – from what I read online, Nyarlathotep was a shapeshifter, took many forms, sometimes simultaneously, though some speculated he could also inhabit the bodies of his faithful. Wouldn’t surprise me if we found out he’d been acting as more than one NPC along the way. Eisheth, obviously, at the minimum.”

“Thanks,” Bobby replied to Andy. He had no words for Brent. “So Koltron is there, wearing what you’d expect someone of his station to be wearing. He watches the three of you approaching calmly, obviously not surprised after all the ruckus of your approach. ‘Greetings, friends. I began to think I’d overestimated your willingness to play my little game.’”

Brent sneered. “Some game. We just overwhelmed dozens of your minions, cultist . I doubt any of them had much fun being on the losing side.”

“Yeah, maybe next time I’ll try playing something a little bit more dangerous, like challenging my six-year-old-niece to a hand of Uno.”

The taunt earned an approving smile from both Bobby and Brent. “Brave words, from brave adventurers. Truly, my compliments. I thought I might lose you any number of times along the way, but the two of you soldiered on with admirable sticktoitiveness.”

“That is so not a word.”

Bobby ignored him. “And now, here you are, yet I wonder… do you even have the least idea what you’re doing here?”

“Stopping your ass, you slaving, murdering scumbag,” Skuf retorted.

“Fair, fair. It’s not inaccurate to assess that I may have… taken a few liberties with the ladies along the way. Not that I recall them complaining, mm?” Cindy sucked in her lower lip bashfully. “Although, if what I hear from your companions is any gauge, it seems the two of you might not exactly be up to the chivalric standard yourselves.”

Even Andy looked a little stung by the meta accuracy of that critique. Cindy wished she could blow them, jiggle her titties for them, to remind them they hadn’t done anything wrong. Everything they’d done had brought them to this point, after all.

“Still doesn’t mean you can kidnap her in the middle of the night. You let her go–”

Andy cut in urgently. “ And  give us her stuff back.”

“Seriously?”

“What? She was carrying almost all of our loot!”

“Anyway, let her go – with her slash our stuff – and we’ll consider taking you alive.”

Koltron – Bobby – stroked villainous moustaches. “An intriguing opening offer. So we are negotiating, then?”

“No. Give her back. No other options on the table.”

“Very well. Sintheigha… go.”  He waved towards the apartment’s door.

Cindy’s head snapped to Bobby, staring pleadingly. “No! What? You can’t make me go now! Please! I wanna play! Please let me stay! Please!”

Bobby shrugged. “There you have it. It seems your companion rather likes  it here. Perhaps that ambiance you so admired?”

The boys glared at her by turns . “Compulsion, eh? A cheap trick, Koltron. Release her from it. Now!” demanded Brent.

“Is it compulsion to offer someone what they want? Surely you have the means to detect if I have used magic on her. By all means. Inspect.”

Andy shook his head. “Fine. I’ll cast Detect Magic.” He moved his token into range, then adjusted so he could catch Eisheth in the area, too, just in case. It put him right on the edge of the strange symbol drawn across the center of the chamber floor, but not quite on it.

“Okey doke. You can sense magic from all the void rifts, obviously – a mix of transmutation and necromancy – but on the women, nothing. Koltron has less than you probably expected, just a powerful aura of illusion.” Cindy didn’t point out that Bregan was lurking conspicuously out of the area of effect. Dumbasses.

Andy conveyed the findings in character, then Koltron went on. “So perhaps I could make a counter-offer. This girl, Sintheigha. You find her desirable, yes? Who could blame you . Perhaps  she even means something to you beyond the merely carnal.” He glanced to Andy  directly. “Perhaps not. In any event, there  is my offer. You desire her. I give  her to you.”

The moan of anticipation that leaked out of Cindy’s throat was accidental, but impossible to miss nonetheless.

“Right. You’re going to ‘give us’ our own party member. You can’t counter-offer with the exact thing we demanded, asshole.”

“Let me be clear. She belongs to me now. But you have endeared yourselves to me, these past weeks, and so out of that sentiment, I offer you the use of what’s left of her. No questions asked, no limitations. That body could be yours, at last.”

Cindy found herself nodding, silently pleading with them to agree.

“We’re not… I mean, obviously we can’t just… you know… uh, rape our own party member.” Yes, he was sitting across the table from the body in question, but Brent’s reluctance was pathetic even so.

“I consent! I consent!” she cried.

Koltron smiled unctuously. “You see? Believe me, she’s wanted this for longer than you know. I can’t tell you how much Sintheigha longs to be with you. Goes on and on about it, she does .”

Andy shook off the obvious temptation. “We’re not morons. Yeah, shurkadurr , let’s all just take off our armor and let this prick shank us while we’re helpless, a’hyuck !”

“Your ‘armor’ is spells, dragon disciple, and the skald’s a mere chain shirt – and I with no weapon, at that! But have it your way. I shall withdraw, give you your privacy. There’s nothing left for you to disrupt here, so have free reign of my lair as well, friends.”

Andy, at least, caught Cindy mouthing please  at him. The boy looked more bewildered by the moment. “Pff - and let you escape?”

“Supposing I meant to escape, fleeing would still result in the forfeiture of my estates, my meager fortunes, to say nothing of becoming a wanted fugitive when you at last tire of your sport and get around to showing the world what you have learned. And in exchange… this young woman will give you everything you could ever want.”

“But…”

Koltron nodded sympathetically. “Supposing she is inadequate to satisfy you both, I’ll throw Eisheth into the pot as well. Poor dear has had an eventful day – ‘twould be a charity to give her an opportunity to unwind a bit.”

Brent looked to Andy for support, but saw his friend was already leaning the other way. “Dude, no!”

“C’mon, live a little! Cindy’s into it. Eisheth’s got  a hot token, kind of a dark, trashy hot. Tits aren’t great, but hey, theater of the mind.”

“You’re really thinking about letting this shit-stain go?”

“Why not? Like you said, we don’t know shit about this, and it’s not like we walked in on him sacrificing virgins or something. Sure he’s a creep, but it's a little hypocritical for me to be getting into the creep-slaying business, dig?”

Brent shifted in his seat. “Still, this is… I dunno. This doesn’t feel weird to anyone…?”

In one smooth motion, Cindy took off her shirt and rose to her feet. She’d shed her jeans long since, squirming out of them while they fought off the minions. Her bra and panties matched her bleached blonde hair and toothy smile, white against deep bronze skin. Where it wasn’t red.

“We could LARP it, if you want,” she said softly. Live action roleplay was something the lot of them had mocked since forever. Yes, their hobby might be on the fringes of geekdom, but at least they weren’t LARPers. For this, though…

“Holy…” gaped Brent.

“Fuck…!” finished Andy.

“Is that… Jesus, you’re even wearing Sintheigha’s paint?”

“When did you take your pants off? Did I fucking blink or something?”

“Are you two fucking with us?”

“God, you are so much hotter than I ever thought you were, Cin.”

“When my girlfriend said we should take a break for the summer, I don’t think she figured I’d be doing this  in the first twenty-four hours!”

“Do it, Brent dude. Fucking do it. Do her , I mean. You can have shotgun .”

Bobby interjected in Koltron’s voice. “I’ll leave the two of you to… think it over. Bregan?” He stood, reaching across the table to move Koltron’s token out the chamber door, then Bregan behind him. He spun the green die, then drew a thick line across the door to indicate the door was shut. Then a slash, to show it was sealed from the other side. Neither uttered a word of protest at his departure. As for Bregan’s apparent betrayal, well, she was a small sacrifice for this.

Bobby walked to the apartment door. Finally, as it opened to the dimly lit hall, they reacted.

“Dude! Are you leaving?”

“You said you wanted privacy.”

Andy was already taking his shirt off while Cindy worked on the more taciturn Brent’s. “Fuck, man, I barely get what is going on right now, but this is… this is fucking tits, man. Literally, fucking tits.” He squeezed Cindy’s breast, letting out a whoop when she permitted it. “Your girl here is a goddamn national treasure. If this is part of the game, then it’s the best fucking game you’ve ever run.”

Bobby performed one of his trademark small scale cheers. “Thank you. Both of you. I did it for him, but since you played your part, he’s decided to reward you.”

Brent’s face was sandwiched in between Cindy’s tits. She moaned in very sincere delight at finally getting to earn her place at the table. “Play with me.”

Andy shook his head in bewilderment. So much was happening so fast, and none of it made any sense. “Him? Him who?”

Bobby snapped his fingers. “And if you want Eisheth, she’s done, too.” Andy’s jaw dropped as Evelyn Tewning, his all-time masturbatory favorite, the hot bitchy cheerleader he’d loved to be scorned by since forever, rounded the corner. She was wearing her cheerleading uniform. The boy slapped himself, unable to believe this was real, but as a newly dark-haired Evelyn shed her uniform – the same LARPy paint job on her skin, too, he noticed after a moment of gaping – he had no choice but to accept that it was happening, real or not.

“Leave the skirt on!” he blurted. What was going on with her ring finger? It was like the thing had a bunch of miniature tires stacked on it. He squinted. No, just a bunch of plastic rings, piled on from the base to the tip. Weird. “Sorry, you just look… fuck, exactly like I remembered. You’re perfect.”

Evelyn stopped undressing immediately, but glanced at Bobby. “Thanks. I stopped by home this morning on some errands and picked it up while I was there. He said you’d like it.”

“My fuckin’ hero, dude.”

“Don’t mention it. Evelyn, you be nice to these guys, OK? Remember what you promised.”

“I’ll never forget. Thank you.”

Cindy pulled the crotch of her panties aside and slid Brent’s cock inside her, forced his hands on the big round tits he’d helped teach her to flaunt. She had to admit, they might look even better with a boost from the bra. Whatever. Brent could decide how he liked them. “Thank you, Bobby.”

“You’re sure you don’t want a piece of this, Bobby? Fuck man, we don’t mind sharing.”

“No bad deed should go unrewarded,” Bobby said with a smile at his two friends. A leer at his gamer buddy, his cheer buddy. “To think, I almost didn’t believe him when… Anyway, I can’t take them with me where I’m going. They’re yours now.”

“What? Where are you going?”

Bobby left. None of them ever saw him again.

****************************************************************

The orgy ran on well into the night. The girls never grew tired. There was nothing left in them to tire. Cindy had no idea what Evelyn got out of it, but for her part, she had friendships to earn. Friendships that would give her endless more opportunities to roll her dice in years to come. If she had years to come. Nothing was ever certain.

It was going on midnight  when finally the boys, spent, retired to the sofa to recuperate, though neither had the resolve to stop the girls from kneeling at their feet and fellating their semi-flaccid cocks in tandem, glaring at one another out of the corner’s of their eyes. Cindy knew it wasn’t possible to blow them both at once, but that didn’t give Bobby’s fuck toy of a wife the right to horn in on her boys’ dicks.

“What do you say, ladies? A little Netflix and chill while my boy and I work up to round… what  are we on? Forty?”

“Feels like forty.” Brent shared a tired laugh as Andy switched on Bobby’s TV.

“… bizarre series of events in this usually quiet small town. Again, for viewers just tuning in, multiple deaths have been reported in two fires. The first this morning at the home of Senator Mike Tewning, who has been in the news this week for the disappearance of his daughter Evelyn Tewning.”

“Uh… isn’t that… what?”

Brent shushed him harshly as the news man continued. “His body was discovered in the home, though Channel 8’s sources tell us that he may have been attacked, possibly killed, before the fire even began. We’ll update that situation as reports come in. As for the senator’s daughter Evelyn, police have confirmed that the suspect taken into custody earlier today in association with her disappearance has died by apparent suicide in his cell at the county jail, though details are yet to be disclosed.”

The man took a long breath, recovering from having to report so much, with so little. “Oh, Frank,” murmured Evelyn between bobs. “He’d be so proud.”

The female anchor stepped in as footage showed an enormous fire, flames shooting dozens of feet above the roof. The sky was blue, so this was clearly earlier in the day. “A second fire occurred across town at an Arby’s restaurant in what firefighters have told Channel 8 reporters was a massive grease fire that engulfed the entire building in mere minutes. They are still trying to reach the building’s lower levels, but so far only one body has been discovered. We have just been told that it is that of local business owner and beloved philanthropist Sampson Oleander, owner of the restaurant and more than a dozen others throughout the region. Initial reports indicate that his body was found locked in the manager’s office, though no word yet on whether foul play is suspected.”

“Is that the one where you worked?” Andy whispered. Cindy didn’t answer. He was just starting to get hard again.

“Related, police and firefighters are still looking for any trace of Travis Gallagher, Jr., whose car was found abandoned in the restaurant parking lot. If you have seen Mr. Gallagher, please contact the authorities right away.”

As the boys’ eyes popped wider and wider, the male newscaster came back on screen, his rehearsed, professional empathetic grimace in tatters, an expression of horror in its place. “As of this hour, it is unknown whether there is any connection between the two incidents. Police haven’t announced any suspects as yet , though… God. I… Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these tragedies.” His head hung low, shaking.

“Do either of you know anything about that?” Brent asked softly.

Reluctantly she let his cock slip out of her mouth, stroking it vigorously while she answered, “He was trying to cure cancer. That’s what he told me when I got home. Guess he must’ve gotten too close, huh.” She chuckled, and resumed her slow but passionate blowjob.

“He… Gallagher? Or… who?” When Cindy didn’t answer, he looked to Andy, still trying to focus through Evelyn’s enthusiastic display. “Should… should we call someone?”

“Don’t you want to play with us?” Cindy asked pleadingly, shaking her tits around his cock.

“I don’t think whoever did all that would like it if you called,” Evelyn observed evenly, only slightly slowing the topless cheer routine she was performing for an exhausted Andy.

“I bet, if you wanted, Evelyn would join us for our next game,” Cindy pointed out.

Evelyn scowled. “I’m not into that dork  shit. I’ll stay and pleasure you, in case he ever comes back, but… no thanks.”

Cindy snickered. “You’d like it, bitch. It’s like Lord of the Rings.”

That was all it took. Evelyn fell to her knees, ring finger reflexively buried in her twat. “Let me play,” she whispered.

“Let me play,” Cindy entreated.

“What the hell is even going on?” asked Brent as he arched his neck back and came on his gaming buddy’s face.

“This is insane,” Andy protested, feebly, as Evelyn crawled into his lap.

Cindy playfully rolled her d4 and shared a meaningful look with her GM’s bride. The goth slut nodded back.

“Let’s play.”