Breeding the GameMaster

It was driving Laina crazy. And what was worse, was that he was seducing the guys away from her. Every joke he made, every sneak attack he landed, every trap he disabled, every puzzle he solved, hell,everything he did was met with a laugh, a cheer, a high five, or applause. And it all just made Laina angrier and angrier. Even the small speech he made in character as the group entered the final cavern, preparing to face down a massive, acid-leaking hydra, all about how he had only ever thought of himself as a thief until he met the party, and until they made him want to do more with his meager and immoral life...just before bravely picking up a dagger and leading the charge into the final battle of the night...

God, she couldn't fuckingstand him.

But now...now, with the big bad still fighting hard, and with most of the party incapacitated, and with only Brian and Sawyer still standing,now she had him.

Laina held up a twenty sided die to her eye.

"This," she said, "is your god for the next thirty seconds." She pulled it into her fist, then shook her hand slowly, blowing seductively across her knuckles.

Brian, who had taken off a few layers of clothing to reveal a gray t-shirt and long, lean arms, put his hands behind his head.

"I'm ready to die," he said. He tossed his head towards Laina. "Go ahead, Game Master...or is it Game Mistress?"

"Just regular 'Mistress' will suffice," Laina replied coolly, watching for his reaction.

"Okay, well...punish me, Mistress!" He grinned like an idiot, waiting for the diceroll. The others at the table chuckled awkwardly, each of them undoubtedly thinking about what their shared mistress had done to them individually.

Laina paused before her roll. "I may be convinced to spare you," she said coyly before putting an edge into her voice. "But only if you beg me for mercy."

Brian laughed -- not the polite, getting-to-know someone laugh he'd started off the evening with, nor the one-of-the-boys laugh he had developed as the night went on. No, this laugh was the bastard offspring of genuine surprise coupled with the arrogant mirth of a tall, good-looking guy who always had everything in his life go his way.

Laina had never hated him more than in that moment. She was going to enjoy destroying him...first, in the game, and second, in real life. She immediately called into her mind the punishments she'd meted out to the weaker men who'd been her customers over the years...and in a split second, upped the cruelty as she saw herself in her mind's eye doing the same to Brian.

A cruel smile twisted her red, red lips. But just as she was about to toss the die, sealing the fate of not only Brian, but the party as a whole, he stopped her.

"I'd like to use my ring," he said.

A hush had fallen over the room as everyone waited to see the outcome of Laina's now-paused die toss. But now that silence had become deafening as everyone picked up on the rage aura that was emanating from the game master.

"What?" Laina said.

"Oh, my Ring of Interruption," Brian said, pointing to his character sheet. "It says here that I have one."

Laina paused, then relaxed somewhat.

"Fine," she said. "You can take an action before the hydra's attack, but nothing complex. You can drink a potion...which you don't have...or take a partial movement...which doesn't matter, because the hydra can reach you anywhere...or-"

"Or read a scroll?" Brian said, again scrolling his finger down the length of his sheet. "Like a Scroll of Chickenmorph, for example?"

Laina scoffed. "Chickenmorph can only transform the target if they have fewer than twenty-five hit points total. The hydra has way more than that."

"Actually," Brian said, "it goes by current hit points. Not max hit points."

Laina shook her head. "That doesn't even make sense. All other morph spells go off of total hit points -- why would this be any different?"

"Actually, all the bird-morph spells go off of current hit points," Brian said coolly.

Laina nodded, malice oozing from her as looked into Brian's cool, challenging gaze on the other end of the table. She smacked her hand down on theOubliettes & Oni playbook, then slowly slid it in front of her, opened it up, and flipped through the pages until she got to the spell descriptions.

She read the entry for Chickenmorph. Then she paused. Then she read it again.

"Fuck," she said quietly. She looked up and saw Brian flashing her a shit-eating grin. "Fuck!"

"Um...what does that mean?" Donnie asked.

"It means," Laina said through gritted teeth, "that as the toxic hydra rears up to strike at Gildoyle, there's a loud bang and a puff of smoke accompanied by a tempest of feathers. In in the monster's place now stands a small, brown and white..."

She ground her molars back and forth. "...chicken."

"Holy shit," Nick said, clearly impressed. Lars grabbed Nick's shirt.

"Holy fucking shit," Lars said. Nick turned towards him, and the pair of them called out in unison. "Holy fucking shit!"

The group started to cheer, but Brian quickly held up a hand. "Hang on, hang on," he said, then turned to Sawyer.

"Hey, Whitewash."

Sawyer was so absolutely shocked by the group's turn of fortune that he didn't even mind the nickname.

"Yeah?"

"It's your turn, bro," Brian said. He nodded towards the gameboard, where Laina had reluctantly -- and angrily -- replaced the massive hydra figurine with a small, brown stone representing the chicken it had turned into.

"Kill that motherfucker."

Sawyer looked at Laina, a mixture of excitement and fear in his eyes. Laina gestured to the gameboard.

"Okay," Sawyer said. "I'll attack it with my Wand of Godflames."

Laina closed the rulebook disgustedly, then folded up the cardboard screen she used to hide her notes and dice rolls from the players.

"Yup, you kill it," she said. "Fried chicken for dinner. Whoopee."

The table erupted in cheers. Donnie looked like he had tears in his eyes. Sawyer was doing a drum roll on the table with the palms of his hands. Lars and Nick were chanting "Holy shit, holy shit," over and over again, shaking each other on every syllable.

Brian, meanwhile, was giving Laina that huge, shit-eating grin that made her want to toss the table and ban each and every one of these fucking nerds from her store for life. But in the next instant, she pushed through her rage and into the cold, calculating mindset that she knew would result in him broken and begging at her feet.

"Really impressive guys," she said, all traces of anger having disappeared from her as she clapped for the group. "But a little sneaky." She gestured between Sawyer and Brian. "You guys said he'd never played before, but-"

"Oh it's true," Brian said, picking up a twenty-sided dice and rolling it between his fingers. "I've alwayswanted to play, but never had anyone to playwith." He tossed the dice up into the air, caught it, then spread his hands. The object was nowhere to be found.

"But that didn't stop me from memorizing the core rulebooks. Or listening to people play on podcasts. Or spend way too much time looking atOubliettes & Oni memes." He reached behind Sawyer's ear and produced the twenty-sided die with a goofy flourish.

"Ta-da!" he said.

"Well..." Laina said, trying hard not to be impressed by this bug that she was planning on crushing beneath some very, very sharp high heels. "God damn."

The group trickled out of the comic shop over the next thirty minutes or so, loudly congratulating each other on their insane upset against the hydra, and cheerily recounting their favorite moments from the evening. Finally, Laina, having returned from hauling two large trash bags to the dumpster out back, realized that she and Brian were alone.

It was time for her to begin what would be avery long process of payback. She flared open the collar of her polo shirt, readjusted her chest, and sauntered over to where Brian was examining the wall of comics.

"So," she said coolly, "I think you owe me for crashing my game tonight."

Brian laughed. "Is that so?" he turned around, seemingly oblivious to the massive cleavage right in front of him. "I think you oweme for making it better."

Anger started to rise up in Laina, but she was able to push it back down. She knew it would be almost impossible to take control of him if she didn't have control over herself. So instead of blowing up, she crossed her arms, pushing her breasts up even further, and leaned back against the glass display case that also served as the transactions counter.

"Made it better, huh?" she said, tilting her head and widening her eyes. "So, do you want to give me some tips..." She put a little mischief into her gaze. "...or maybe...your tip?"

Brian laughed. He moved deeper into the store, examining some hand-painted figurines atop a display for a wargaming miniatures setup.

"Do I really strike you as one of the bitch boys who only come here to simp for you? Fighting each other to lick the lint from between your toes?" he asked. He leaned down close to one of the figurines -- a tall, slender, sharp-eyed sorcerer, with one upraised hand painted as if it was being actively consumed by flames.

"Well...yes, actually," Laina laughed, following him deeper into the shop. "I mean sure, you seem a little more confident than the rest of them, but beneath the surface..."

"Hmm," Brian said, moving on to explore the small library ofOubliette & Oni books next to a six-foot tall cardboard cutout of a buxom demon girl about to cast a spell on the shop.

"You know, I used to work in finance," he said. "Quantitative analysis. But unlike the rest of my cohort, I was actually good at explaining all of our high-end math to our traders. So I rolled with them a lot of the time."

He picked up a huge tome calledThe Game Master's Bible and flipped through it casually. "I don't drink. I don't play golf. I don't watch sports. I think anyone spending five hundred dollars on a steak should be committed, and that anyone spending thirty thousand on a watch should be put on trial in the Hague. And I have no interest in running my own hedge fund." He slammed the book shut, then pointed it at Laina.

"I had nothing in common with any of those guys. But you know what? I was their fuckingking. And yet I left it all behind, right at the true launch of my career, to go and get a PhD in mathematics. You know why?"

Laina was trying to think of some wise-ass thing to say, but words were failing her. Brian put the book back with the others.

"Because I dowhat I want,when I want." He walked towards her, and Laina could feel...for lack of a better term...energy...flowing out from him, and for a second she could have sworn that he caused the lights to flicker.

And then he was in front of her, a finger hooked through the silver ring on her neck and pulling her commandingly forward. She half-shuffled, half-stumbled over to close the gap, and realized how dry her throat was.

"And I dowho I want...whenI want," he said. He pulled her neck ring slowly, bringing her face towards his. She closed her eyes...she tilted her head...she parted her lips...and then...

Nothing. She could feel Brian's presence pulling away from her. His finger slipping free of her collar, and she found herself gasping with a hand pressed against her chest, her heart pounding quickly beneath her palm as a needy ache throbbed between her legs.

She opened her eyes. Brian was even further into the store now, back by the game table where he had, to some extent, humiliated her earlier that evening. Laina swallowed hard.

"Fuck," she whispered. It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel fluttery like that...not since high school, probably, where a very public rejection had led her to swear an oath to never be on the weaker side of the equation with anyone ever again. And seeing as how she surrounded herself with socially awkward, sexually repressed men, it was fairly easy to hold fast to that oath.

But this guy...thisfucking guy...

"Are you happy?" he called out from the game table. He had picked up some character sheets and was leafing through them.

Laina laughed awkwardly. "Uh...okay, are we having a heart-to-heart now? Should I find a couch to stretch out on?"

"Maybe I used the wrong word," Brian said. He picked up a few of the dice, swirling them around in his hand. "I should have said...are you 'satisfied'?"

Now Laina's laughter was genuine. "Am I 'satisfied'? That's got to be the least subtle thing I've ever heard."

"This, coming from the woman who just asked me if I wanted to give her my 'tip'?" Brian replied with a raised eyebrow and a grin.

"Okay, okay, maybe I misjudged you abit," Lain replied. "I was just testing you. Trying to see how flustered you'd get."

"I mean...that shit doesn't fluster anyone, does it?"

Laina gestured to the empty chairs around the table. "I mean, you see the kind of guys I'm dealing with. Come on."

"True," Brian agreed. He tossed the dice on the table, then laughed. "Holy shit," he said, pointing. "Do you see this?"

Laina walked over. "What?" The three twenty-sided dice had come up as 3, 5, and 18. The numbers didn't seem to have any meaning or significance, but when she turned to say so to Brian she realized he had moved closer to her once more. And once more, she could feel energy radiating out from him, a sensation that was both heavy and electrifying at the same time. He was looking down at her intently through his thick-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes intense and enveloping. He leaned down towards her face once more, his eyes closing, and his lips curling in a cocky grin.

As much as she wanted that kiss, Laina's old habits and patterns of thinking were already kicking in. A little gremlin somewhere far back in her mind told her that it washer turn to walk away from the kiss. Get him back for before. Makehim work for it, makehim beg for it.

Bit by bit, Laina felt herself being pulled out of his spell. His face was mere inches away, and she was ready -- ready to get him back. She told herself to wait for it...wait for the perfect moment...

But before she could pull away from him the way he had to her...

"Nnnnn, fuuuuck!" she moaned. Two pairs of thumbs and forefingers had reached up to her chest and pinched at the perfect spot, somehow managing to find the nipples she hid beneath the thick bra she wore to support her girls.

"Oh look at what I've found," Brian said gleefully. He took a small step backwards, pulling on Laina's nipples until she was forced to take a half-stumble, half-shuffle forward as she had before. This time, however, she was mewling like a kitten, rubbing her knees together as she tried to keep at bay the wetness that was starting to swell between her legs.

"Ohfuck," Lain swore. "FUCK!" She looked up at Brian with anger flashing in her eyes.

"Let go of me," she said through gritted teeth. Brian looked at her as if looking at a child that had threatened him over a new set of rules that the little one didn't like. Then he pinched a little bit harder, expertly twisting both hands in opposite directions.

Laina shuddered and her eyes rolled back into her head. It had been a long time since she had allowed anyone to play with her nipples. It was one thing to ride the faces of the various members of her nerd harem, grinding her clit against their eager and clumsy mouths until they finally managed to eke out an orgasm from her. But her nipples were just so sensitive -- they felt just so mindmeltinglygood -- that there was no way that she'd let those subs anywhere near them.

But Brianwasn't one of those subs. He wasn't like them at all, not even a little bit. And something about that realization made Laina melt even more, made her want to pleasehim instead of the other way around. And as soon as she recognized that desire, she was disgusted with herself...which somehow made her more turned on than she had been in a long, long time.

Brian said something, but Laina didn't hear him. Finally, he released her nipples, which were now throbbing, and stepped around the other side of the table. Laina, meanwhile, had put both hands against the side of the game table for support, and was trying to get her short, shallow breaths under control.

"No answer?" Brian asked her. She looked up at him, confusion in her eyes along with the fluctuations of lust. He nodded understandingly. "I asked...are you 'satisfied'?"

"I don't..." Laina began, but her throat was completely parched. She grabbed her water bottle from the head of the table and sucked down the last few anemic drops that had collected at the bottom.

"I don't even know how to answer that question," she said. She reached up palm her nipples, thinking that she could calm them somewhat, hoping that she could curb the ongoing sensations that were making her weak. But they were now so stimulated that even just brushing them made the situation worse.

"Shit," she muttered. She took a swig of air from the water bottle, then looked around for one that still had something left in it. But before she could find one, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her forward.

"What-" she began, but then Brian's mouth was on hers, their tongues dancing for a second before he allowed a stream of water to flow from his lips to hers. It was warm, and it tasted like him, and she sucked it out of his mouth as if she had never had anything as delicious before.

Laina swallowed the rest of the water, but they kept on kissing. A second later, he took her lower lip between his teeth and bit down slightly. She moaned into his open mouth, partially from pain, partially from pleasure, but the pleasure strode to the forefront as Brian's hand slid up her waist to cup one of her heavy breasts and squeeze it slightly.

Then he slid free of her, raising an eyebrow and smirking as he drained his own water bottle. He swallowed this mouthful instead of kissing it into her. And when he was finished, he gesture to the rest of the shop.

"This is impressive," he said. "Really. I mean, sure, you use your sexuality to get nerds to overpay for their addictions...speaking of which, Sawyer's playing in the game for free next month."

Laina laughed. "The fuck he is," she said, but Brian didn't even seem to hear her.

"It's impressive. Really. It's hard to keep any brick-and-mortar business going right now. But you've managed to do so, and I honestly don't believe that it's just because every week you have simps shoving cash in your cleavage." He paused. "Metaphorically speaking."

Laina gave him the finger.

"But..." Brian said, picking up some dice and clacking them together in a loosely closed fist.

"But...what?" Laina asked.

"Isn't it tiring?" he asked. "Being the boss all the time? Having to plan out the store layout, make the purchasing decisions, follow trends..." he pointed to the table, dice, map, and figurines. "Creating and running these games. And let's not forget about your...out of work hours."

"I like it," she said. She looked him hard in the eyes. "All of it."

"I bet you do," he said. He tossed the dice back down on the table and stepped around it towards her. She froze, unsure of what to do, unsure of how to react. It had been so long since she'd been on the defensive -- inany aspect of her life -- that she had no playbook to work from.

And still, Brian came closer.

"It must be...exhausting...to have to be the shot caller all the time," he said, sliding closer to her. "To have to make the decisions. To have to define the scenarios, whether it's on the game board or in the bedroom."