Don't Split the Party - Act 02

CW: impregnation

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"Okay," Mei said, glancing down at her notes. "You're able to follow the gnolls' trail - they're not very good at cleaning up the path of blood and gnawed bones behind them."

"We should go carefully," Rick said.

"I'll scout ahead," Sophie said.

"Carefully?" Tegan asked.

"Carefully," Sophie agreed. "I'll roll stealth." She tossed a d20 onto the table, then glanced at her character sheet. "Twenty-three."

"You're sneaky," Mei said.

"We're not too far off, though," Tegan said. "Just in case."

"You worry too much," Sophie said.

"You don't worry enough, you brat," Tegan replied.

Sophie grinned but didn't respond. Rick sighed and glanced at Tegan, who wore a long-suffering yet eager smile of her own. Rick thought back to the adventure where they'd tracked down an assassin in the elven princess' palace, and Tegan and Sophie's in-character sparring had bubbled over into out-of-character sex. Even now, a month later, it wasn't entirely clear what of their fighting and passion was in-character and what was out.

Of course, he was in the same boat. While Sophie had been going down on his girlfriend Tegan, he'd been holding Mei close as she rode his cock, and watching her come apart, and filled her with his seed. She'd been in character as the princess, and she'd asked him to stay in character too, so he'd done exactly what a barbarian who felt a duty to expand his tribe would have done.

"Alright," Mei said, taking a sip of lemonade. "You're up ahead. Roll perception."

Sophie nodded and picked up the die.

***

Stray peered through the underbrush, keeping her head low to avoid the gnolls' attention. She knew her companions weren't far off, but if one of the gnolls found her it would take them a moment to arrive. Tan'ka, the half-orc paladin, would worry terribly if Stray was foolhardy. Stray wanted her to worry a bit - because she was cute when she worried - but not too much, and it wasn't easy to calibrate.

The gnolls were a powerful distraction, though. They were all bloodied from the caravan they'd slaughtered and devoured, and the smell was repulsive. Most of them were clustered around their leader and the large sack it carried over one shoulder. Stray leaned forward, her curving horns brushing against the reeds, as she tried to make out what they'd stolen.

The sack shook as the gnoll pack lord threw it to the ground. Stray's heart skipped a beat as a young woman came into view from within the sack, staring fearfully up at the beasts that surrounded her. Before the gnolls could act - to sacrifice the woman or eat her or whatever evil they had in mind - Stray put two crimson fingers to her lips and gave a sharp whistle. She grinned, as the gnolls looked up and tried to spot her; she'd make them regret it soon enough.

***

"Twenty-one for initiative!" Tegan said.

"Alright," Mei said. "You go first. Raf is up next."

Tegan nodded. "I charge the pack lord." She rolled again, one die bouncing close to the table's edge before landing on a twenty. Sophie and Rick oohed, and Tegan grinned. "And I divine smite him, too. Thirty-one damage."

"Oof," Mei said. "He's had better days. Raf?"

"I run in and go into a rage."

Mei nodded. "The gnolls rush at you, swinging their bloodied flails...Raf takes nine damage and Tan'ka takes eight. Stray is up next."

***

All of Stray's friends were beautiful, but there was a particular beauty in watching Tan'ka during a battle. Her eyes glowed with holy light, and she roared a battle cry that practically shook the earth around them. She wove through the combat as her divine sense guided her. Stray did most of her best work in silence and darkness, but it was inspiring to see someone bring the light to battle all the same.

A gnoll burst out of one of the nearby huts, a glimmering crossbow in its scarred hands. Seeing Tan'ka and Raf, it took careful aim, waiting for the moment to strike.

Stray leaped forward and plunged both of her daggers into the gnoll's back, silencing its cackling laugh. As it slumped to the ground, though, two of its fellows caught sight of Stray and rushed at her.

***

"This is why it's good to have your friends around," Tegan said. "I got you."

"You're beating up the pack lord," Rick said. "I'll help her."

Sophie grinned at Mei. "I think I get why you like to be the damsel in distress sometimes. It's nice."

Mei grinned back. "I'm the GM," she said. "I'm the damsel and the distress."

"Touche," Sophie said.

"For what it's worth, I don't think you're in distress either," Rick said. "You just need a hand."

***

Raf snarled as he leaped into the fray, his axe biting into a gnoll's neck and sending it spinning into oblivion. The gnolls closed in around them, and without a word he moved in close, his back to Stray's back, his axe at the ready.

Stray's fear faded away as the beasts darted in, trying to find a gap in their defenses and finding only death. As long as Raf was behind her, she didn't need to watch her back; she only needed to watch his. A gnoll rushed at her, swinging a flail above its head, and she caught it in the throat with a thrown dagger before it could reach her. She could hear Raf's battlecry behind her and feel the splash of blood as he protected her, just as she protected him. She laughed, as she felled two gnolls that rushed at her at once. One day she would die, but until then she hoped she could live as gloriously as she was in that moment.

As the last gnoll fell at her feet, she turned to look at her friends. Tan'ka had felled the pack lord with hardly a scratch, and she was kneeling to help the woman who the gnolls had kidnapped. Raf was bloodied and panting behind her, his muscular chest rising and falling as he caught his breath, his eyes gleaming with victory. She met his gaze, and before she could think about what she was doing she had her arms wrapped around him and her lips were seeking his.

***

The first time their gaming group had ventured unexpectedly into kissing, Tegan's feelings about it had been complicated - she'd kissed Mei before they'd discussed it with their partners, and the excitement had been tinged with guilt. This time, though, her excitement was unalloyed by anything else. Sophie was cute, and Tegan felt a sort of pride at her boyfriend's moves. Then Mei spoke, and Tegan was pulled back into character.

***

"Is this...normal?"

Tan'ka grinned at the girl she'd rescued. "Yeah. As soon as the battle's over we kiss the cutest girl we can find. Or Raf - he's cute too."

The woman blushed. "But. Um, what if there isn't one?"

Tan'ka looked closer at the girl. She was a human, somewhere in her early twenties if Tan'ka's estimates of human ages could be trusted. She had long hair the color of autumn, freckles across her cheeks and nose, and shy, curious eyes.

"You mean, what do I do if I finish a battle and there isn't a cute girl there?" Tan'ka asked.

"Yeah," the girl said softly.

Tan'ka smiled, lifting the girl's chin with two surprisingly gentle fingers. "If I ever find out, I'll tell you."

The girl blushed. Human blushing was such a lovely thing, and one that as a half-orc Tan'ka could only appreciate secondhand. It was amazing that humans had ever learned to lie at all, when their embarrassment and their arousal were so visible.

"I...I need to get home," the girl said. "My parents will be worried half to death."

"We'll get you where you need to go," Tan'ka promised, her grin broadening. "But it's getting late. How about we find an inn - there's bound to be one in the village back near the elven forest, and you can decide how many beds we need?"

***

"I thought we were going to get one more combat encounter in before we started kissing each other," Mei sighed.

Tegan had knelt in front of her while she was flirting, and Mei had closed the GM screen to avoid spoiling anything from the campaign. Tegan hadn't kissed her yet, but the promise of the kiss and of more to follow was as thick and sweet as honey.

"Rescuing girls does derail me," Tegan admitted. "But how about this. I take you upstairs, and we keep roleplaying, and we continue the campaign tomorrow morning?"

"Fuck," Mei whispered. She glanced over at Sophie, and saw her give Rick the crooked grin that she loved so much. She wondered briefly if she should remind Sophie to be careful, since birth control wasn't normally a concern for them. Sophie was a big girl, though. She'd be practical, or she'd be horny, and no matter what she decided Mei would be there for her.

Mei looked back at Tegan, still awaiting her response.

"Yes please," she said.

Tegan smiled. "As you wish."

***

"The gnolls are dead," Tan'ka told the innkeeper. "And we burned their camp. You should have no more trouble from them."

The girl - Emmie, she'd said - glanced back at Tan'ka before turning to the innkeeper. "And we need two beds for the night."

The innkeeper raised a bushy eyebrow, but made no objection. "We have two rooms left," he said, "and you're welcome to them."

Stray let Raf walk into the room first. She'd been watching his back for a while, in one sense, but she took the opportunity to see it in a new way. The candlelight danced across his tanned skin, the muscles moving effortlessly beneath the surface, and she grinned in anticipation.

He turned to face her, already wearing his own smile. "I have to admit, I didn't know you felt this way."

"About men, or about you?"

"Either."

She shrugged, then reached for the buckle that held her leather armor in place. He watched eagerly as she lowered it, leaving her wearing nothing on her chest but her underclothes.

"Sometimes you don't know until you get there," she said, reaching behind her back to unlace her top and pull it off. She lowered her arms, letting him take in the sight of her crimson skin, her bare shoulders, and the tantalizing swell of her breasts. "You just have to go where your heart wills."

He nodded, taking his eyes away from her chest and meeting her gaze. "I follow you," he said, and it was an agreement and a promise.

In the next room, Emmie stood near the edge of the bed, fidgeting with her hands. She'd seemed nervous but excited, and Tan'ka had figured that doffing her armor would help one way or another. She reached down to pull her undershirt up over her head, and was rewarded by a soft gasp as Emmie caught sight of Tan'ka bare chest.

"I..." Emmie looked away, blushing. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"That's alright," Tan'ka said. "Do you want me to show you?"

Emmie bit her lip, then nodded definitively.

"Alright," Tan'ka said. She gently reached down and lifted Emmie's blouse and undershirt off, then untied her skirt and pushed it down along with her underclothes. Tan'ka traced a hand down Emmie's shoulder and onto her bosom, marveling at how her blush spread beyond the profusion of freckles up high and onto the pale skin below.

"Let me start, alright?" Tan'ka said. Emmie nodded, and Tan'ka guided her back onto the bed. Emmie opened her legs, and Tan'ka climbed up between them.

"Tell me if you want to stop," Tan'ka said, then kissed her side, just above the arc of her hip. Emmie managed to nod, then the kisses moved down, and all thought of stopping vanished.

***

"Are you getting distracted?" Sophie teased.

Rick grinned and kept watching Tegan go down on Mei for a moment before looking at Sophie. "We're sharing," he said. "If I'm not supposed to look we ought to find a different bed."

"You can look," she said. "I just like to tease you."

Rick leaned closer, running his fingers through her hair and brushing his nose against hers. They'd ditched their clothing on the way into the bedroom, and looking at Sophie's face instead of her delightfully curvy breasts would have been a challenge if she didn't have such a cute smirk. "What if I look at you the whole time?"

"Then I'll tease you for ignoring your girlfriend," she grinned.

He kissed her, and he could almost taste the playful smirk on her lips. For her, the kiss was a part of the dance, something to twirl past as you moved, rather than fall into. She drew back, grinning, and reached a hand down to caress his cock, his breath catching as she slid his foreskin back. He wanted to keep bantering with her, but he didn't know if his lips or hers would be otherwise occupied in a moment.

"What if I divide my attention perfectly and stay in perfect control?"

She laughed, and pulled him close so that she could whisper in his ear, his cock brushing against her thighs.

"If you're in control, does that mean you knocked Mei up on purpose?"

Mei didn't hear any of this out-of-character banter, or much of anything else. She had her hands buried in Tegan's hair, and her legs wrapped around Tegan's shoulders, and thinking about anything else was beyond the realm of possibility. She was trying to play the role of Emmie, experimenting for the first time with a girl and with an orc, but Tegan's tongue was provoking reactions that required no embellishment.

She was so different from Sophie, too. Sophie loved to pleasure her, to tease her with words and fingers and kisses until she fell apart. But where Sophie danced with provocation and desire, Tegan was wrestling with pleasure, and she had it in a headlock. She'd wrapped both of her muscular arms around Mei's legs, and she refused to let up or even let Mei squirm too far. They were so different, and they were both beautiful; she wanted them both to get her off but it was clearly Tegan's turn.

"Listen," Mei gasped. "This is lovely, but how are we supposed to banter when your - oh - tongue is occupied?"

Tegan shrugged, her shoulders brushing against Mei's thighs, her pace unchanged.

"Banter really gets me off, though," Mei gasped.

Tegan grinned, and she paused long enough for Mei to smile back.

"You look like you have a mustache," Mei giggled.

Tegan shook her head, then released her grip and moved up. "You're as bratty as Sophie, you know that?"

Mei looked over at Sophie, eager to inform her of the news, but saw that she was distracted. She'd have to tell her later. There was a lot they needed to talk about later, when they weren't so horny, but Sophie's pleasure was too beautiful to interrupt.

***

Stray made such wonderful faces.

Raf had noticed this before - the way she stuck her tongue out when she was picking a tough lock, the way she smiled and sung along to the songs in the tavern even before she'd had any ale, the way she rolled her eyes when Tan'ka signed them up to rescue people for next to no pay but grinned about it afterward. Every expression he saw brought him closer to knowing her, the vibrant smartass that she was.

He'd never seen these expressions before, though. Her eyes rolled back as his cock slid inside her, and she bit her lip as they sought the right rhythm. She met his gaze hungrily as they fell into it together. He was truly lucky to learn such secrets, to see a side of her that only Tan'ka had known before.

He supposed that she was learning a secret or two as well. She grabbed his ass and pulled him closer, grinning at his sudden intake of breath, and he couldn't help but grin back.

"You're taking an awful risk here," she said.

"I think I know who's worth taking risks for," he said.

"Well, you should be careful unless you want a tiefling child," she said, a frown briefly crossing her face.

He reached up, his fingers smoothing the worry lines in her brow and tucking a bit of her dark hair behind her left horn. "Do you?"

"Well, I don't have as much choice there."

"You have as much choice as I can give you," he said. He looked down, watching as her lips opened to take him in, watching her chest rise and fall as their breathing quickened together. He didn't want to pull out, but if it kept her from frowning like that, he would.

She was smiling when he looked back up, though, and peering into his eyes as though she could see something amusing there.

"You make such a pretty face when you're thinking about cumming in me."

He laughed. "That should not be the deciding factor."

Her smile grew sharper. "You want to decide by how pretty my face is instead?"

He groaned, and leaned in to give her a kiss that meandered like a mountain stream. "That's a terrible idea."

"I knew you'd like it."

In the next room, Tan'ka had moved up to prop herself on her side next to Emmie. Tan'ka grinned as her fingers explored where her tongue had been exploring moments before, sliding between Emmie's lips and inside her before darting out to caress her pearl. She'd wanted to be able to talk to Tan'ka, but words were elusive, as if Tan'ka was chasing them as well as Emmie's pleasure.

"How do you do this?" Emmie gasped after a moment.

Tan'ka shrugged. "I know how to do for myself," she said, "and then you tell me how you like it."

"I didn't know I liked this before, though" Emmie said. "I thought I just liked boys."

Tan'ka chuckled and kissed Emmie on the cheek. "Boys are nice sometimes too," she said. "But girls won't get you pregnant."

Emmie moaned. Tan'ka got the distinct impression that if she had been capable of knocking Emmie up, she might not have said no. She wasn't fighting her pleasure, not trying to deny it like some girls did - she was giving it the reins and letting it ride.

"Girls can get you off, too," Tan'ka said. "And that's what I want to see, Emmie."

"Yes," Emmie gasped, her eyes wide and desperate. "Please."

***

"See," Tegan said. "All the banter you can eat."

Mei moaned next to her as Tegan's hand caressed her wet lips, refusing to let up. She'd wanted the ability to reciprocate, and yet she'd fallen into character, and Emmie had gotten overwhelmed by being with a girl for the first time. That was at least a portion of why she was gripping the sheets.

And yet, Mei realized, Emmie might be a quick learner.

Tegan grinned as Mei reached over to caress her hip. The touch started out gentle and exploratory, caressing the line of her hip and the muscles at the top of her thigh. Slowly but surely they migrated down, though, gliding across Tegan's bush.

"You're gonna bump my wrist," Tegan said.

"That's alright," Mei sighed. "You're so strong, I'm sure you'll be fine."

Tegan narrowed her eyes. "Will I, now."

Mei smiled, and for all of the brattiness she was capable of, she looked sincere. "I'm trying to make sure of it."

Tegan was not the sort who instantly turned into a puddle when she was caressed. Still, Mei could see Tegan's beautiful abs stiffen as her fingers reached Tegan's cleft, and feel the way her breath caught as she traced her fingers up and down.

"Like this?" Mei asked.

"I think you know," Tegan said.

"Yeah, but Emmie is doing this for the first time," Mei said, "and she needs someone to teach her." She grinned, and Tegan sighed even as she felt herself grinning back.

"Well," Sophie purred up at Rick, "what is my face telling you?"

Rick reached up to caress her cheek, admiring the beautiful line of her smirk. "It's telling me you're happy," he said. "But I've made you happy before."

"Not like this," she said, her uneven grin widening as her hands slipped back and caressed his ass. "I love it when people lose control. You see things in their faces that they've never shown you."

Rick grinned. He looked down, following her arm and watching her slender fingers hold him as they moved together. His skin was hot, and he could feel himself sliding closer to the edge, Sophie's words spurring him on.

"Like when you knocked Mei up," Sophie said. "I could see how much you wanted her. But beneath that, in the moment you lost control, I could see how much you wanted to please her."

Rick closed his eyes. She was right, which made her teasing all the more effective. He wanted to make Mei happy, and he wanted to make Sophie happy too. But he'd seen Sophie's expressions when she'd first slept with Tegan, and being in control wasn't the only thing that made her smile.