Chapter 27: Chat's Wild Card
The air in the common room was stale with the scent of old pizza and anticipation. Mark leaned into his microphone, his voice a low, conspiratorial thread woven into the background hum of the computer fan. On the main screen, the livestream chat window was a frenetic blur of emotes and usernames.
“Listen up, folks,” Mark said, his eyes glinting in the sickly blue glow of the projector. “The Whispering Woods have ears. You got your knight. But the Empire isn’t stupid. Their retribution is coming. Tonight… we’re doing something different. Democracy Mode is active. Every ten minutes, the chat votes on an NPC action. A plot twist. A new side quest.”
A collective shift ran through the room. Jake straightened. Ryan cracked his knuckles. Sarah’s playful smile tightened into something sharper. Emily, still riding the fading tremors from the hallway and the electric focus of the last session, felt a new kind of thrill—a vulnerability. The audience wasn’t just watching anymore. They were reaching into the game.
“The captured knight, Ser Arlo, is secured in the sanctum,” Mark narrated, his words painting a picture of glowing runes and shadowy pillars. “But his silence has been noticed. Scrying orbs are lighting up across the Black Iron Empire. A squad has been dispatched. They’re tracking the sanctum’s energy signature. You have maybe an hour of game time. What is your plan?”
The party erupted into logistical debate—wards, misdirection, preparing an ambush. Emily remained quiet, her fingers tracing the edge of the leather choker at her throat. She was Ember, the conduit, her power spent on the initial binding. In the game, she was vulnerable. The thought coiled in her stomach, hot and tight.
Clink. Clatter. Dice were rolled. Wards were established by Lyra. Brask set brutal traps. Vex scouted the perimeter.
Mark’s timer pinged. “Chat vote,” he announced, his voice devoid of its usual narrative flourish. He read from his screen. “Option A: The Empire squad is larger than expected, flanking the party. Option B: A corrupted beast, drawn by the sanctum’s energy, attacks the prisoner directly. Option C: The Empire squad uses a psychic pulse, disabling the party’s magic-users first.”
He let the votes tally on screen. The room watched, breath held. The result flashed.
“Option C wins. A psychic pulse. Brutal, efficient.” Mark’s voice dropped into character. “A silent, invisible wave expands from the woods. Ember, Vex—you feel it first. A needle of ice driven into your temples. Your connection to the weave… snuffs out. Like a candle in a vacuum. You are magically inert. For the next hour in-game, you cannot cast.”
Sarah hissed, rubbing her temple as if she really felt it. Emily just went very still. Her power, her defining feature, gone. She was just a girl in a robe now.
The game spiraled from there. The party, suddenly handicapped, scrambled. Brask and the fighter, Jake’s character, formed a frontline at the sanctum’s mouth. Lyra tried to reposition. But the chat, hungry and guided by the fetishistic comments scrolling past, steered the Empire’s tactics with cruel precision.
The next vote forced the squad to split the party, using illusory sounds to draw Brask and the fighter away from the sanctum, leaving the magically-shackled Ember and Vex alone with the bound prisoner.
The vote after that had the Empire soldiers not attacking, but capturing. “They want the conduit alive,” Mark narrated, his eyes finding Emily’s across the table. “They have silvered manacles that disrupt life energy. And gags soaked in essence of silenceweed.”
“Fuck that,” Jake muttered, rolling a desperate perception check for his fighter to hear the deception. He failed.
In the narrative, it happened swiftly. Two Empire agents, sleek in black leather and featureless helms, melted from the shadows of the sanctum. Vex put up a vicious, physical fight, but without her magical tricks, she was overwhelmed. A sap to the back of the head from Mark’s description, and she was down.
Ember stood before the bound knight, Ser Arlo, who watched with furious, helpless eyes. She had no spells. She turned to run, but a manacle snapped around her wrist. The metal was cold, unnaturally so, sapping the warmth from her skin. Another clamped on the other wrist behind her back. The click of the lock was deafening in the quiet room.
“They force a leather gag between your teeth, Ember,” Mark said, his voice a soft, relentless murmur. “It tastes of bitter herbs and mildew. You can’t speak. You can’t cast. You are led, shackled, into the woods.”
The fantasy was vivid, claustrophobic. Emily’s breath came faster. She could almost taste the gag. Feel the cold metal bite into her wrists.
Mark nodded to Ryan. “Brask, you’re the captor. The silent, hulking one.”
Ryan stood up, his large frame suddenly dominating the space. He loomed behind Emily’s chair. “Arms behind you,” he grunted, his voice low, slipping into character.
Emily’s heart hammered against her ribs. She slowly brought her arms behind the chair back. She felt Ryan’s big, rough hands take her wrists. Not hard, but firm. Then the cold clasp of metal—not real manacles, but a pair of heavy-duty cable ties Mark produced from a dungeon master’s kit of props. They zipped tight with a plastic scrritch, binding her wrists together.
The restraint was immediate, profound. A limit. A surrender.
Next, the gag. Sarah moved this time, pulling a clean roll of vet wrap from her bag. “Open,” she said, her eyes locked on Emily’s. It wasn’t a question.
Emily parted her lips. Sarah wrapped the soft, self-adhering bandage around Emily’s head, between her teeth, four, five, six times. It muffled sound, pressed her tongue down. It tasted of nothing, but the act of it—the submission, the silence—was everything.
Mark’s narration continued, a dual-layered thing now, describing the dark woods, the rough handling by the Empire agents, while Emily sat bound and gagged at the table, her world reduced to the sensation of plastic digging into her skin, the stretch of fabric across her mouth, the eyes of her friends—and the thousand unseen eyes of the chat—upon her.
She was captive. Utterly. And a shocking, shameful wave of arousal pooled deep within her, hot and slick. Her struggles in the chair weren’t entirely for show. She twisted, testing the bonds, the muscles in her arms and back standing out. A muffled sound escaped the gag.
The chat went wild. The votes came faster.
A new option bloomed on the screen, bolded by dozens of identical usernames. Mark’s eyes flicked to it, and a slow smile spread beneath his beard. “The psychic pulse disrupted more than magic. It scattered the party. Brask and Lyra—you’re together, cut off from the sanctum, with Empire scouts between you and the others. You hear the clank of armored boots on the gravel road. Closing in.”
Ryan, still standing behind Emily’s chair, let his hands fall from her shoulders. “Where’s the cover?” he grunted, slipping back into Brask’s blunt pragmatism.
Mandy—Lyra—bit her thumbnail, scanning an imaginary terrain. “There’s a merchant’s wagon overturned ahead,” she said, thinking fast. “The cargo’s spilled, but the undercarriage is a hollow. We could wedge ourselves in there. If we’re quiet.”
“Do it,” Mark said, but then he held up a finger. “The closet by the laundry room. It’s tight, dark. That’s your space under the wagon.”
A beat of hesitation hung in the air. Then Ryan shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling. He offered a hand to Mandy. “C’mon, rogue. No squeaking.”
Mandy took his hand, her smaller one disappearing in his. She shot a glance at Jake, who was watching from his seat. He didn’t look angry. He leaned back, a curious, faint smile playing on his lips as he watched her be led away by the large, quiet centaur-player. Mandy caught that look and held his gaze deliberately, a subtle arch in her eyebrow and a cock to her hip.
They squeezed into the narrow, dark closet beside the humming water heater. Their bodies pressed together in the confined space, shoulder to chest, hip to thigh.
The door shut, plunging them into a blackness smelling of dust and stale linen. Ryan’s breathing was a heavy, warm rhythm against Mandy’s forehead. Her back was against a stack of cardboard boxes; his front was a wall of solid heat. They stood frozen, listening to the imagined boots on gravel Mark described through the door, a shared fiction made palpable by the pressing dark.
“They’re passing,” Ryan whispered, his voice a low vibration in his chest.
Mandy didn’t answer. Her mind was on the game, but her body was reporting more immediate data. The rough denim of his jeans against her thigh. The hard, distinct ridge of his erection, trapped and pressing insistently against the zipper, was nudging her lower stomach. She felt a sharp, unwelcome twist of heat in her own belly. This was Ryan. Quiet, hulking Ryan. The thought was absurd, and that made it worse.
She tried to shift, to create a fraction of an inch of space. The movement only made the denim grind more firmly against her. A silent, sharp gasp caught in her throat. Her nipples tightened painfully against her thin cotton shirt. She was supposed to be Lyra, a professional, focused on survival. But all her focus had collapsed into the awareness of that thick, confined pressure.
In the main room, Emily sat bound, the plastic ties a harsh reality on her wrists. Mark’s narration of the Empire soldiers dragging Ember through briars was a distant buzz. Her own imagination, feverish and unleashed by her restraint, hijacked the story.
She pictured the closet. She saw Mandy’s small frame pinned. She imagined Ryan, all that quiet intensity, his big hands finding Mandy’s hips in the dark. She saw his cock, freed from his jeans, heavy and hot, slapping against Mandy’s stomach before he guided it down. Emily’s own stomach clenched. Her breath hitched behind the gag. Her nipples, bare under the velvet robe, became hard, aching points against the fabric.
The fantasy was visceral, urgent. Would they behave? Or would the dark and the forced proximity win? The not-knowing was the hottest part. The idea of their silent, fumbling betrayal of the game’s purpose, a secret within a secret, made her cunt throb.
A low, aching need overrode everything. She was already soaked from Sarah’s earlier, clinical touch. Now, helpless, she gave in to it. She began to move, a subtle, desperate rock of her hips. The chair’s hard wooden seat pressed against her naked pussy as she ground down. The velvet robe provided a frustrating, teasing barrier, but the pressure was direct, solid. She chased the sensation, her movements growing less subtle, a slow, shameless rub against the unyielding wood.
Mark saw it. His eyes dropped to the rhythmic shift of her body in the chair, the parting of the robe. He didn’t stop narrating. “Grayam,” he said, his voice cutting to Jake, “you hear a muffled cry from the west. A familiar voice. Vex.”
Jake’s head snapped up. He’d been half-watching the closet door, a faint line between his brows. Now he was back in it. “I go. Fast.” He rolled for stealth. The dice were kind.
“You find her slumped against a blighted oak,” Mark murmured. “One of the helmed agents stands over her, a curved blade poised. You have one action before he brings it down.”
“Tackle,” Jake said, without hesitation. “Low and hard.”
The mechanics dissolved into Mark’s description of the collision, the crunch of armor on roots, the furious tussle in the dirt. Jake’s fighter, Grayam, prevailed, driving his own dagger into a gap in the agent’s helm. Silence reclaimed the imaginary clearing.
In the room, it was just Jake, Sarah, Mark, and the sound of Emily’s quiet, strained breathing through the gag as she moved against the chair. Sarah, who had been playing unconscious, opened her eyes. She sat up from where she’d been slumped in her seat.
She looked at Jake. Then, slowly, deliberately, she shifted her gaze to Mark. It was a challenge, a declaration. She pushed her chair back and stood up. The narrative was theirs now.
She walked around the table to where Jake sat. She didn’t say a word. She simply climbed into his lap, straddling him, her back to the table facing Mark. Jake’s hands came up, hesitant, settling on her waist.
“You saved me,” Sarah said, her voice low and thick, but her eyes were locked on the Dungeon Master. “My hero.”
Then she kissed Jake. It wasn’t tender. It was hungry, possessive, a performance with a single, avid viewer. She ground herself down against him, letting him feel the heat of her through her jeans. Jake, shocked for a second, melted into it, his hands tightening on her.
His mouth opened under hers, a silent gasp tasting of energy drink and consent. Her hands came up, fingers tunneling into his hair, pulling just enough to tilt his head back. She broke the kiss, her lips wet and gleaming in the projector’s glow.
“You saved my life, Grayam,” she breathed, the name a deliberate blur. Her hips rolled again, a slow, circular grind against the growing hardness in his jeans. “A dark cleric doesn’t forget a debt. This is how Vex pays.”
She leaned back, just enough to reach for the hem of her own shirt. In one fluid motion, she pulled the soft fabric over her head and tossed it aside. Her breasts were small, high, her nipples already tight and pointed in the cool, buzzing air. Jake’s eyes dropped, his mouth slightly agape.
“Watch,” she commanded, her voice dropping to a husky register meant for him, for Mark, for the silently screaming chat. She placed her hands on his shoulders for leverage and began to move in earnest.
This wasn’t the subtle rocking from before. This was a performance. She arched her back, letting her tits sway above his face as she ground her clothed pussy down onto his denim-covered cock. The rough fabric of her skirt bunched up, riding higher with each undulation until the black lace of her panties was fully exposed, a dark triangle stretched taut over her mound. She matched a rhythm only she could hear, her eyes sliding from Jake’s stunned face to Mark’s calculating gaze.
“The honor is returned,” she purred, lowering herself so her nipple brushed his lips. “Suck. It’s part of the ritual.”
Jake obeyed, his tongue laving the stiff peak, his hands sliding from her waist to clutch her ass, kneading the flesh through the skirt. A low groan vibrated from his chest. Sarah threw her head back, a theatrical moan filling the room, but her eyes were open, watching Mark.
The closet door clicked open.
Ryan emerged first, his face flushed a deep red, his breathing uneven. Mandy followed, her clothes disheveled, a strap of her tank top slipped off one shoulder. Her lips were swollen. They both froze, taking in the scene: Emily bound and gagged, her body still subtly writhing; Sarah topless, dominating Jake in his chair.
Mark simply lifted a finger to his lips, a gentle shush. He pointed at the two of them, then gestured toward the performance.
Guilt, sharp and hot, flashed across Mandy’s features. She’d been in a dark closet with Ryan, his thick cock pressed against her, her own body betraying her with a damp, aching need. Now, seeing Sarah’ brazen display, that guilt curdled into something else—a competitive hunger, a desperate need to prove she hadn’t been affected, or perhaps, to prove that she had.
Ryan looked away, jaw tight, but he didn’t leave. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a statue of conflicted arousal.
Mandy stepped forward. The jealousy wasn’t for Jake. It was for the freedom, the fearless ownership Sarah exhibited. She moved to the side of Jake’s chair, her hand resting on his shoulder. Sarah watched her, a challenge in her smirk.
“He’s a hero,” Mandy said, her voice softer than Sarah’s, more intimate. “He deserves a proper tribute.” Her fingers trailed down Jake’s chest as Sarah continued to ride the bulge in his jeans. Mandy’s other hand went to her own waist, popping the button on her jeans, easing the zipper down just an inch. She didn’t strip. She offered a glimpse, a promise of what the closet might have held.
Sarah’s grin widened. She increased her pace, the wet spot on Jake’s jeans darkening, the scent of her arousal beginning to cut through the basement’s stale air. “You hear that, Grayam?” she panted, her performance now including Mandy. “Two maidens. One knight. How does your code handle that?”
Jake could only moan against her breast, his hips lifting to meet her grinding, his world reduced to sensation and shadow. Emily watched, her own movements against the chair ceasing, her entire being focused on the tableau. The plastic ties cut into her wrists, a painful anchor to reality as fantasy unfolded without her. Saliva soaked the gag in her mouth. She was captive in every way, and the throbbing between her legs was a brutal, shameful counterpoint to her bonds.
Emily’s will became a physical thing, a silent scream that pulsed from her bound form. She stared, unblinking, at Sarah’s back, at the sweat-slick skin between her shoulder blades. Further. The word wasn’t spoken; it was projected, a desperate, hungry command from the conduit who had none left. Take it all.
As if she’d heard it, Sarah’s rhythm on Jake’s lap hitched. She leaned forward, her mouth leaving his skin with a wet pop. Her eyes, dark and electric, found Mandy’s over Jake’s heaving chest. A current passed between them, erasing the last vestige of hesitation.
Mandy’s hands, quicker than thought, went to Jake’s belt buckle. The rasp of leather and metal cut through the humid air. Jake groaned, his head lolling back against the chair, as Mandy undid his button and zipper. She didn’t ask. She just shoved her hands inside, pushing his boxers down, and pulled his cock out into the open.
It was thick, flushed dark red, and wet already at the tip from his own excitement. It stood straight up, trembling slightly.
Sarah slid off his lap, landing on her knees on the stained carpet between his legs. She didn’t break eye contact with Mandy. “Come here,” she said, a curl in her smile.
Mandy joined her, dropping to her knees beside Sarah. They were shoulder to shoulder, faces inches from Jake’s straining cock. The smell of him, musky and urgent, filled the space.
“Ladies first,” Sarah murmured, but it wasn’t a concession. It was a dare.
Mandy didn’t need another. She leaned in, her lips parting, and took the head into her mouth. She swirled her tongue around the swollen crown, collecting the salty bead of precum. A shudder ripped through Jake. “Fuck, Mandy,” he choked out, his fingers tangling in her hair.
Sarah watched for a three-count, her own breath coming fast. Then she moved, her hand wrapping around the base of his shaft, claiming a portion for herself. She leaned in, her mouth meeting Mandy’s where her lips encircled him. For a second, they shared him, a wet, impossibly intimate kiss around the shaft, their tongues brushing against each other and his skin.
Then Sarah took over, swallowing him deeper, forcing Mandy to adjust her angle. They found a rhythm, not perfectly in sync, but a filthy, alternating pulse. Sarah would take him deep, her throat working, then pull back with a slick gasp, letting Mandy lick and suck at the head. Then Mandy would yield, and Sarah would plunge down again.
Their faces were slick with saliva. The sounds were obscene: wet sucks, guttural chokes, Jake’s broken litany of “oh god, oh fuck, yes, right there.”
Between passes, they kissed. It wasn’t tender. It was a frantic, messy exchange of spit and the taste of him. Mandy would pull back, panting, and Sarah would capture her mouth, her tongue licking the flavor from Mandy’s lips before diving back down onto his cock. Their hands groped, Sarah squeezing Jake’s balls, Mandy kneading his thigh, their free hands finding each other’s bodies in a clumsy, heated exploration.
Mark’s narration had died. The only sound from him was the soft, deliberate click of a mechanical pencil. He watched, a historian documenting a sacred, profane rite. Ryan, against the wall, had one hand shoved in the pocket of his jeans, his knuckles white, his gaze fixed and burning.
Emily watched, her body screaming. The ache between her legs was a live wire. She ground herself against the chair, the velvet robe now soaked through and clinging, a pathetic, inadequate friction. The gag in her mouth was a dam holding back a torrent of pleas and curses. She was nothing but eyes and need, a vessel of pure, furious voyeurism.
Jake’s control shattered. “I’m gonna… shit, I’m gonna come,” he gasped, his hips bucking up off the chair.
Sarah pulled off, her lips glistening. She looked at Mandy, a wild gleam in her eyes. “Together.”
They positioned themselves, mouths open side-by-side. Sarah’s hand worked his shaft in a brutal, fast stroke. Mandy’s tongue flicked over the head.
Jake cried out, a raw, broken sound. Thick ropes of cum shot out, painting Mandy’s cheek, streaking across Sarah’s chin and lower lip. They took it, their mouths open, their tongues darting out to catch what they could. It pooled on their skin, white and stark in the neon gloom.
They didn’t stop. As he pulsed the last of it, they kissed again, hard, smearing his release between their faces, licking it from each other’s skin with low, satisfied hums.
The room was silent except for the ragged symphony of their breathing. Jake slumped, boneless and spent. Sarah and Mandy stayed on their knees, connected by a filament of saliva and spent desire, their faces a shared, glistening canvas. Ryan pushed off the wall, the movement tense, and walked to the fridge for a water, his back to the room.
Mark finally spoke, his voice cutting the silence like a blade.
“The psychic pulse fades,” he said into the microphone, his eyes on Emily. “Your power returns, Ember. The silvered manacles… they feel brittle. The gag in your mouth turns to ash. You are whole. And you are pissed.”
He leaned forward, the narrative snapping back into place with vicious force.
“What do you do?”