The people and events in this story are of course fictional. But the dice rolls are real. I did not choose numbers to advance the plot or to create excitement, irony, or drama. I wrote the pre-game conversations and tried to establish the characters first, and then I actually rolled the dice, and tried to imagine how my characters would carry out the resulting tasks. Any apparent coincidences are exactly that--coincidence.
The rules for both the male and female versions of the game are also up on Literotica. But it's more fun to play the game than to read the rules.
* * *
The four couples had been friends for several years: Alan and Barbara, Jerry and Elaine, Bill and Penny, Fred and Susie. They were all in their thirties and all still in reasonably good physical shape. They all had middle class or even upper middle class occupations. They met for dinner in restaurants and at their various houses. In the summer months, their favorite spot to meet was Alan and Barbara's house. Alan and Barbara had no children, and they had a secluded back yard pool where the group gathered nearly every weekend.
The skinny dipping had begun on a dare, late one night when most of them were about two sheets to the wind. They found that they enjoyed it and began to skinny dip regularly, soon enough in daylight and not just after dark. Then they escalated to remaining nude after they got out of the water and as they ate burgers and more on Alan and Barbara's pool deck. They confined any overt sexual contact to interactions between spouses. But there was a bit of accidentally-on-purpose bumping and touching in the water, and that was beginning to happen more often.
Fred and Susie had begun experimenting with BDSM that summer. They hadn't gone very far, because they hadn't told the others, and Susie wasn't ready to appear naked on Alan and Barbara's pool deck with stripes or bruises. But they both liked what they had done so far, and they both wanted to do more. Exposure was surely coming.
One night as the group ate and drank, naked on the pool deck, Fred somewhat hesitantly said, "I ran across something that you guys might be interested in." When the group encouraged him to go on, he said, "Well, do any of you know the website Literotica?" Jerry said he had heard of it but hadn't looked at it. Susie knew, because Fred had told her, but she didn't say anything. None of the others knew anything about it.
Fred explained. "Ordinary folks, amateurs really, send in erotic stories, and Literotica posts them on the web. The stories cover the gamut. Some are really well done, just super hot. Some are pretty awful. Most are in between, but on the whole, they're pretty good. Some are about romantic relationships and vanilla sex, and some cover just about every variant sexual practice and fetish you can think of. Some are pretty realistic; many are kind of exaggerated from what anyone would really do; and a lot of them would be completely impossible anywhere in the real world."
Elaine interrupted. "So you think we'll all be interested in some amateur porn site with no pictures?"
"No," Fred replied. "Well, you might be interested, and some of the stories do count as porn. Well, probably a lot count as porn. They offer some other pornographic stuff for a price; I think that's how they pay for running the site. And they do have some pictures. But that's not the point.
"The point is, what you might find interesting--or maybe not--is one particular story that I just saw on Literotica. But it's not exactly a story. It's the rules for a game called Center of Attention. I thought it sounded pretty hot. We're already comfortable naked together, and playing this game would sort of be the next step. Should I tell you about it?"
Elaine clearly remained skeptical. The three men were interested but tried not to appear too eager. Barbara didn't say anything. Susie knew what was coming and tried to be encouraging. "I at least want to hear about it," she said. And Penny spoke up. "I'm interested," she said. "Playing games naked could be fun."
"Well, it's kind of kinky," Fred said. There's a male version and a female version. You pick one person to be the center of attention. It starts out with just kissing and stuff, but it eventually gets into BDSM and threesomes. The center of attention is the sub, and everyone takes turns, rolling the dice to see what they have to do her. Or him. Everyone gets naked by the end, and everyone gets to come. The women can come over and over. Well, I guess they can always come more than once, but this game may make that pretty likely." He wasn't sure whether this was true, but he hoped it might arouse more interest among skeptical wives.
"We can change the rules if it gets too difficult, and there's no full intercourse with anyone but your spouse. I could send the rules to all of you, and we can see what everyone thinks."
Some of the group were hesitant, and some seemed eager. No one clearly said no. After some back and forth, they all agreed to look at the rules, and to discuss it on Alan and Barbara's deck the following weekend.
* * *
The partied again the following Saturday. After dinner, all of them nude and with drinks in hand, they gathered to discuss the game. Some of them had done internet research on BDSM. Two of them had learned for the first time that crops don't just grow in fields, and what a crop is in a BDSM context. Everyone was at least interested. It sounded hot. They got that pain in sexual contexts could be arousing and somehow associated with pleasure. Or so a fair number of people seemed to say.
But nearly everyone was also fearful. "So sexualized pain can be arousing, at least for some people. But what if it turns out not to be arousing for me," worried Barbara. Some of the others shared her worry. "And what if it's just too much," asked Elaine. "Some of those dice rolls call for 25 strokes with a whip or a cane--or even more. That sounds awful." Same-sex contact was an issue for several of them. Penny and Barbara both worried about licking pussy, and Alan, Jerry, and Bill worried a lot about sucking cock and possibly getting fucked in the ass in the version of the game with a male sub.