Azzie & Rowana Read "Beast of Burden" by bartolimieu07, Part 1

The wind blew over the plains of Mordor, as it had every night for thousands of years. No fell beasts rode that nightwind now. Only owls and night hawks, drones and the occasional black helicopter. In their pre-fabricated Hobbit hole, the ex-Ranger Rowana rubbed oil into the soft, swelling midsection of her Urak-Hai bride. Azzie, for her part, had turned on the interdimensional connection of the Matrix, to have a glimpse into erotic worlds outside their own.

"'Beast of Burden,' by bartolimieu07," she read. "You ready?"

One oil-slick finger traced the dark line that ran up from Azzie's crotch, over the mithril tracings beneath her skin, to the sensitive little green nub. She gave the hood a pinch. Not hard, just enough to make the greenskin gasp.

"Sure," Rowana said. "Why not?"

Meanwhile, unknown to Madison, what sort of investment has taken place?

"The opening chapter," Azzie said after a moment. "Does a decent job of introducing the character of Maddie. It has absolutely no hint at petplay, sex, sexual subjugation, or anything actually relevant to the worldbuilding of this story. Which makes it feel like there's something missing. Like, the word 'investment' is used in the leading question, but there are no investments mentioned anywhere in the text."

"Calm before the storm," Rowana said, her hands gliding up the sides of the taut green gravid gut. "But definitely just that. Little actual set-up because things are being left open for multiple paths. Speaking of which, first choice. Marcie & Gina went for the first option, so I'm thinking—intern. Always been a little curious at how the wageslaves do it."

Your mom and I saw there was a paid internship open at Gadsden and thought it'd be best to sign you up.

"This is supposed to be the slower branch," Azzie said. "So I'm not expecting immediate enforced nudity or a name badge nipple piercing. Yet."

I mean--Yes, I'm technically an intern, too, like a lot of other people working for Gadsden, but it's not quite the same thing.

"A few red flags," Rowana admitted, as she rubbed her oily hands beneath Azzie's aching breasts. "Slow build-up. I can appreciate that."

Weird though. I haven't seen anything from her all day.

"I've had enough wholesomeness and am prepared for her parents to sell her into sex slavery now," Azzie announced, as Rowana's fingers reached her nipples. Pregnancy had made them bigger and a deeper, darker green.

"Be patient," Rowana said. "I'm sure we'll get to the plot soon, but this isn't a jump-straight-to-the-sex story. Maybe it's more immediate on other branches, but I don't mind a bit of development."

I'm almost positive his eyes are fixed on the spot where a hint of cleavage pokes just above the neckline of my dress.

"I think I would be more into this if she was in the padded chair getting brainwashed into being a good corporate sex service drone already," Azzie said with a pout.

"Patience, precious," Rowana sighed. "Good things come to those who wait. Or, in this case, quite possibly very bad things."

I have no idea what my parents might have done to get me this job in the first place. I shouldn't just throw it all away like that.

"I want back and checked," Azzie said. "We have no idea what Gadsden, the multinational with tens of thousands of employees, actually does."

"I was not expecting the donut-feedee kink scene, brief as it was," Rowana admitted, her hands now sliding between her wife's cleavage, keeping the green skin soft and supple. "And that feels like something from a very different story."

"Let's be real. I can't say for sure what this job of yours is supposed to entail, but from the way you're describing it, you could very well be asked to do even more degrading things in the future." He licks his lips. "And if that happens...well..."

"I can't tell if the boyfriend is in on it or just perverse," Azzie said. "But it feels out of place. Like something that should come later, after something more blatant. Or maybe the family should be leaning on her harder to put up with stuff because the financial situation is worse than she thought. Or there's a whole wedding or continued college tuition at stake."

I'm startled when she casually cups both of my tits in her hands, weighing them like a pair of cantaloupes at the supermarket.

"In general," Rowana said, lifting and hefting Azzie's cantaloupes, "I would recommend starting out with softer language like 'breasts,' and working the way up to 'tits.' It helps to subtly escalate things."

"The sudden escalation is a problem," Azzie admitted. "I was hoping something would happen, but we're going from 'hello, new intern' to 'drink my spunk' in a very short time frame. And Maddie is surprisingly cool with it, which is not really in character. If she were a closet submissive, or if they had been manipulating her, it would be more explicable, but it feels like this ratcheted up very quickly and not in a cool way."

"Agreed, the kink pacing is off," Rowana said.

"Maddie...I should be honest with you. I'm jerking off right now, imagining the whole scene. I can't help it!"

"Okay, so boyfriend is part of the problem, but not part of the problem," Azzie said. "Honestly, I was expecting more revelations about the parents or what sort of intern program this is by now."

You know that cows aren't supposed to talk to people.

"I'm going to assume that this has to do with the cowgirl path we haven't read," Rowana said. "And I'm going to further assume this explains some of the weird pacing issues. This is actually a sex slave universe tale and several important elements were probably previously explained in other paths and aren't present here because bartolimieu07 either figured everyone had read the previous paths or they're in their head and they forgot to put them down on the page."

Azzie scowled.

"I was going to say that it kills the slow-burn setup to go straight to cowgirls, but introducing legalized slavery at this point does raise the stakes and finally make Maddie aware of her situation," the pregnant Urak-Hai said. "But yeah, this isn't our kink. I was a slave. I want Maddie to escape and lead the rebellion, maybe start by killing her parents."

Rowana gave her wife a comforting squeeze. "You will never be a slave again. I promise you."

Son of a bitch! The collar shocked me!

"The thing about BDSM, it's all consent-based. A game you play, a role you slip into. Nobody actually owns you. It isn't legally binding. Everyone's an adult about it, they understand it's a kink," Azzie said. "Actual slavery isn't kinky, it's scary. Not in a horror movie scary way, but in a this-is-too-close-to-reality way. I guess I say I like my slave kink fiction to have at least some kind of freedom of choice," Azzie said. "This...doesn't. She's just a victim."

I needed this badly, after all the crap of the last few days.

"I get that the boyfriend is here to have a character Maddie can talk to, but he is absolute shit at it, and this irks me," Rowana admitted, tracing circles on her wife's swollen stomach. "Don't take this as a critique of the writing, exactly, but if the point of boyfriend was to piss us off, congratulations. It is working."

"A staggering amount. Life-changing. And more to come. I don't know if you knew, honey, but we were this close to having to sell the house. But now that isn't going to happen."

"I still want the parents to die," Azzie said. "And I think I can blame that on the writing. This feels like something where Maddie needs to be able to make more choices to stay in her situation than she has shown, and for that she needs more information sooner. It's a very different story if she's persisting in her sex slavery to help her family out, or because she has a submissive kink, versus being sold to the company directly with no choice in the matter."

"It does feel like the rules for this internship haven't been well established, and even if they're being slowly established over time, there needs to be more awareness," Rowana said. "I think the ambiguity is part of what I don't like about it. Which might be the writer's intent."

"What the fuck is this, ma'am?"

"I guess I'm comparing this to a women-in-prison movie," Azzie said at last. "In those films, we have a rather quick establishment of the situation. Freedom has been restricted, other people are in charge, rebellions are punished, subservience is expected, sexual gratification happens, and the subject either gets to like it or escapes. This isn't following the normal flow of events. We don't get enough anger or enjoyment. Shit happens to Maddie, and Maddie experiences it, but it's not a nice and clean escalation or anything particularly sexy."

I feel conflicted. I've never been attracted to other girls. That said, I doubt Deirdre swings that way either. This isn't about attraction; it's about asserting power. And I can't deny the thrill that runs through me at being helpless and controlled, the same background throbbing that wettened my pussy during the spanking. That throbbing spikes in intensity when I feel a tongue brush against my clitoral hood before pushing slightly against my inner lips.

"It's degrading," Rowana said firmly. "But not in a way that I personally find sexy. Like, it's using the tropes and language of BDSM without actually going through any of the consent issues, which means it just comes off as torture porn where people aren't being honest about what they're experiencing."

"The lesbian sex scene isn't badly written," Azzie said. "But the situation makes it difficult to enjoy. This needed more build-up and probably less legalized sex slavery. I can't jill off to this."

"Is it weird to say that if there was at least a mind control component, it would be less bad?" Rowana said. "If grading the AI prompts involved pornographic images and made her horny or submissive, that would be something. Instead, it just feels pointless. Like, it seems like Maddie is being geared up to be the company bicycle, but not in a way that makes sense. She isn't being forced to diet or exercise to stay attractive; she goes home every day to her family, but she never tries to run away and doesn't seem to be taking much inspiration to return to work every day because her family is happy. This corporate sex slave intern program does not feel very well thought out and is based entirely on Maddie being an incompetent loser who starts to get into it."

Working hard or hardly working?

"Mission accomplished, bartolimieu07," Azzie said. "I have known the brother for two sentences and want him to die in a fire."

"I specialize in...girls like this," he says. "Though not usually ones so talkative. You have her records?"

"I'm all for a bit of medical horror, but this feels like something that should have come sooner," Rowana said.

"Is it weird that our main complaint isn't that we don't like the whole story, but we think bartolimieu07 hasn't laid it out well?" Azzie said. "Like yes, everyone involved is terrible, but it's a petplay/sex slave story, so we kind of assumed that going in. The writing of individual chapters and characters isn't bad; when we complain we hate certain characters that's a subjective response, not a critique on the writing. But it does feel like this whole thing should have been outlined better, or the worldbuilding more defined."

"Yeah, we keep emphasizing the pacing. It's not that we learn things when Maddie does, it's that a lot of things feel like they don't exist until Maddie is told about them or experiences them. It's a first-person story where we don't get a lot of introspection or thinking through situations; she's got submissive tendencies, but there's no backstory to support it and little in the way of meditation on them except in the moment," Rowana said. "I think there's a vague outline in bartolimieu07's head and some key images, but this needed more time to bake. And, as we've stated repeatedly, not really our kink."

Like...my virginity, sir. One way or the other, I don't expect I'll be keeping it for long. Better to spend it on my terms, while I can, with someone I truly love.

"I think the complete acceptance of this situation by everyone is part of what makes it so fucking annoying," Azzie said. "No one blinks at her being a second-class citizen, we still don't know if she was sold outright or if her parents realize shit is happening, her boyfriend enjoys his girlfriend being a corporate whore, and yet the people taking advantage of this do so in half-assed ways."

"I think literal imprisonment has the advantage of being able to imagine an escape," Rowana admitted, her hands resting on Azzie's thighs. "This isn't even normal corporate imprisonment. There is no contract signed that we can see. Maddie doesn't get warned about what might happen to her parents if she doesn't obey. It's really not a well-thought-out corporate sex intern program, and that lack of thought is more upsetting than if she were literally imprisoned by some sadists."

"Theft...of...corporate property."

"I know that was a half-assed joke, but it would have more meaning if her virginity had been stated as actual corporate property," Azzie said with a frown. "Like, imagine if this wasn't a perverted internship and she just imagined it was because she was a huge sub, and this was a mental game where she got deeper and deeper into it, not sure how far it would go? That would be more interesting."

"We review the stories we have, not the ones we want to have," Rowana reminded her wife. "If we wanted to read that story, we'd write it ourselves. The big green-titted Orc intern that likes to get abused by her scarred, older female boss..."

Have to be up early for work tomorrow.

"There should be more pathos in that statement," Azzie said. "Or excitement. There's no emotion in it whatsoever."

My fingers only encounter a neat tuft of hair and the wet warmth of her slit. "You feel that? You know what to do. But don't let me come. At least not yet."

"Again, this isn't bad writing," Rowana said. "It's bad plotting. For all the talk about clearing up her relationship with the company, it's still just metaphors and shit. There is a time for bluntness. She's a sex intern. She needs to know whether the company owes her or if she'll get to the end of the summer and never have to call people 'master' and 'mistress' again. We can't feel the bars of this cage, and that is fucking pissing me off."

Her fingers kneaded almost painfully into Azzie's thighs.

"Good to see you again! Having fun?"

"This is the kind of creepiness that is 100% intentional and would be better if, again, the parameters were better established," Azzie growled. "Like, if she bit his cock off right now, would she be in for a paddling? Internship canceled? Family has to pay back the money? An electric shock and some attitude adjustment? We don't fucking know!"

"It is what it is," my dad sighs. "But my family is finding ways to make do. As I'm sure you're well aware."

"There's a financial domination angle to this which would be appealing if that was the core of the story," Rowana said. "If Maddie was doing this just for the family, or because she was a secret submissive slut, or some combination thereof. But this has not been established. We still don't know if she's been officially sold yet!"

"It's not a bad chapter," Azzie said. "I know we keep emphasizing that the writing isn't bad, but given how much we hate the fucking plotting and the lack of characterization, we need to make it clear that this is much better writing than the majority of stories on CHYOA. It just isn't something we enjoy."

Now that's the way to swallow cum, I think. No muss, no fuss.

"This is another point where, if there wasn't the whole ambiguity about whether or not Maddie was a willing sex slave, this would have more impact as a moment. It's difficult to enjoy moral degradation when you can't tell whether or not she's being a willing participant," Rowana said.

Finish changing into your uniform.

"This is a whole scene," Azzie said. "And it's not a bad or even unexpected scene. But the impact falls a little flat. It doesn't feel earned. We keep bitching about the pacing, how scenes don't feel like they happen in the correct sequence, and I think that's a large part of it. There's no build-up to 24/7 nudity. There's no breakdown of morality, there's no screaming shit fit, there's no threat, and there's not really any reaction. Enforced nudity has its place in these kinds of situations, and that is to either have a woman empowered in her sexuality or surrender power along with her clothes. It's a part of the process, but it doesn't feel like this is working."

"Part of it is that Maddie is the only one doing this," Rowana noted. "In a women in prison movie, at least, you have other women as part of the intake group, so there's at least somebody else who can screw up or rebel and you can see what the consequences are, and the protagonist can choose to obey so as not to suffer them. Here, there's barely been any consequences, and less thought about them."

I want to burst into sobs, but I'm too tired to cry. The emotional weight of the last half hour has squeezed every reservoir of spare energy from my body.

"I am struggling to give a shit," Azzie said flatly. "There isn't any investment in this character being embarrassed yet. That hasn't been well established. This feels more like a filler chapter so they can put off explaining things even longer."

"Even as a slow burn...yeah, this feels like filler. I think part of the problem is that there are a lot of things that should have built up to this, from chapter one. After the whole cowgirl scene on the farm, there should have been internet searches about the new law, general awareness that the world had changed, something. But she's coming at this like she's the only one in the world it's happening to and everybody is just okay with it," Rowana said. "Which, honestly, would make it fine if she was okay with it too. The fact that she chooses now, after all the sucking and spanking, to finally start having a hissy fit, feels way too late."

"It had to be someone. Once we'd decided to move forward. You or Ava. Your father and I chose the fairest approach we could. We flipped for it."

"This is why it's okay to cut ties with your parents," Azzie said.

"I don't feel brave, master," I say. "Just numb. My life is over."

"Honestly, suicide would be a good option in this scenario," Rowana said. "Seriously, fuck this entire storyline."

"We kind of knew going in what to expect," Azzie said. "But we are not handling it well."

"I know it's a visceral emotional reaction, and the story is set up to elicit a certain amount of finality and hopelessness," Rowana said. "But again: it's the fucking acceptance that kills me. Fuck her entire family."

"Mm hmm. I read about it a few days ago. Some startups have begun training girls as ponies and using them to carry people around downtown and the riverfront. Mostly a tourist thing."

"There's a certain porn logic that has to be accepted in most of these stories. People just accept things," Azzie said. "But actual slavery is one of those things I have a hard time with."

On the upward slopes of my boobs are the results of all that time and effort--two brand new tattoos, surrounded by raw, reddened skin. They're the same design, about two inches on either side--the Gadsden logo in all its turquoise and coral glory, depicting two swirling hands clasping each other over a nondescript sphere. I've been properly marked as company property.

"It feels weird to have a moral objection to porn on CHYOA," Rowana said. "But yeah, all the sexiness has drained out of this."

"She should bend over the desk there and look back," Scott says to Deirdre. "Yes, like that. Nice! The frightened look is a good touch! Very vulnerable, very waiflike. Now could she try a sultrier expression?"

"This isn't a personal strike against bartolimieu07," Azzie said. "We all have our kinks. We all understand others don't always share our kinks. But I don't like this situation and feel the lead up to this situation I don't like was not handled well."

"But hey, if your intent was to get us upset, you succeeded," Rowana added.

"No, Maddie, I don't," she says softly. "I love you. And I'm trying to help you. And...okay, maybe having a little fun along the way."

"I knew this was coming and I still hate it," Azzie said. She closed her eyes. "MADDY'S SUBMISSIVE SEXUAL FANTASIES WERE NOT WELL ESTABLISHED EARLY ON AND IN NO WAY SUFFICIENTLY TO JUSTIFY HER FUCKING BEING SOLD TO A GODDAMN CORPORATION AS A WHORE."

"Speaking from someone in a cyberpunk dystopia, we get the whole corporate slavery thing," Rowana said. "But we've had centuries of steadily declining rights to get culturally adjusted to this whole fucking thing. This just happened three years ago. And it's not being fought against. Maddy isn't fighting against it. But she's not enjoying it either."

"Ah, yes...your boyfriend. Some people were really upset about that whole business. Of course, they didn't punish you since no one had actually forbidden you. It would have given away the game."

"I'm sure there are people on the website who will get very into this," Azzie said. "Don't get me wrong. There's more sex, and more detailed sex, than a lot of stories. People enjoy the whole sex slave angle as a fantasy. We're just the wrong ones for it."

"Oh, Madison," she gasps as she's coming down from her high. "If I could, I'd take you home...chain you to my bed..."

"Is it weird that the idea of just one person being a sadistic slave-owning piece of shit feels better than her entire life being surrounded by people who would be better off as fertilizer?" Rowana said. "I think it's the whole societal angle that is most appalling to me. Part of the reason I don't like free use stories, either. I feel like if someone wants to open themselves up to being used, that's hot, but the moment where they have no choice in the matter, it ceases to be sexy and starts to be sexual assault."

"In either case, I need to pee," Azzie said, pushing herself up out of Rowana's lap. "And you need to change your tampon. We've come this far, so we'll finish this story. As far as it goes."