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My cheeks flush as adrenaline, nerves, and arousal spike in equal measures, making my whole body feel electric and alive.
God, I fucking missed this feeling.
“Are you referring to what we commoners call ‘strip poker’?” I ask, arching a brow as I pluck the ace of hearts from his hand and smoothly incorporate it back into the deck with the other dropped cards.
Dax chuckles, Chase snorts a laugh, and Linc’s grin broadens.
“Yeah,” he says, pretending to consider it. “I do think that’s what it’s called.”
I have a sudden vision of me, still fully clothed, surrounded by four completely naked boys as I whoop their asses at poker.
Yes, please. I’ll take that.
“All right.” I shoot him a challenging look, and his eyes heat. “You’re on.”
River counts out chips while the five of us decide on the basic ground rules—namely, that everyone except the winner of each hand will have to remove one article of clothing each, that they get to chose which article of clothing it is, and that anything paired, like shoes or socks, counts as one item.
“I’m starting with pants. Pants first, boxers second, just so you all know,” Chase declares, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs with a smirk.
Dax throws a poker chip at him, and we all banter and talk shit as I deal.
It’s actually been a really long time since I played poker like this, in a relaxed game where the stakes aren’t about money and it’s more just for the fun of the actual game. It’s been a long time since I played with friends.
Or more than friends.
I kick River’s foot under the table to get his attention, and when he turns to me, I quirk a grin at him. “Promise not to cheat?”
He smiles back, running a hand through his ash-brown hair. “I won’t if you won’t.”
I laugh. “Well… let’s just see how it goes.”
My heart feels lighter than it has in a long time, happiness and excitement creeping in to fill the spaces that’ve been occupied by nothing but fear and worry for weeks.
As we start to play, it feels like getting back on a bike. I’m not relearning the game, but I’m relearning the idiosyncrasies and tells of the four boys around me. We’ve only played together once before, but I learned their styles pretty well that night, and they haven’t changed drastically since then.
Chase still plays too aggressively, betting more than he should and calling when he shouldn’t just to liven things up—or maybe he really is that eager to get his pants off.
Dax is too easy to read, his poker face way too transparent to do him any good. When he has a bad hand, the whole fucking world knows it.
Lincoln and River were the two who gave me a real run for my money last time, and I have a feeling that’ll be the case again tonight. I watch Linc’s face sink into impassivity as he holds his cards, although there’s a gleam in his amber eyes that makes me feel warm all over. And since River and I didn’t actually agree not to cheat, I keep an extra close eye on him.
I win the first round. And Chase wasn’t kidding about the pants. He doesn’t even take off his fucking shoes first, just tugs his jeans off over them. He’s wearing a pair of dark blue boxers, and the muscles of his thighs flex as he sits back down, a languid smile on his face.
The other guys all took off something easy, and while Chase was wrestling with his clothes, Lincoln pulled out a little plastic baggie from his back pocket and rolled a joint—he must’ve grabbed it when he went to get the cards and chips.
We play our next hand as we pass the joint around, and the combination of the weed and the poker make me feel like I’m floating, happy and untouchable and in control of my goddamn life for once.
Another round in, River and Dax are barefoot, Linc is shirtless, and Chase is down to just his boxers, shoes, and socks. He was bluffing about taking the boxers off second, and it was probably his best bluff of the night—the rest have been atrocious.
Maybe River decides it’s unfair to let me keep all my clothes on, because he starts playing more aggressively. And whatever he’s doing to cheat—whatever he did last time too—I can’t quite figure it out. I’m counting cards, but River wins the hand, and the boys all grin widely at me as I make a show of deciding what to take off.
I go with shoes because maybe I’m a little bit of a coward, but when River wins again, I decide I could use a little help turning things around. So I tug my shirt over my head, and the way the oxygen seems to go out of the room lets me know I have the boys’ attention. My bra is dark purple satin and lace, but you’d think it was made out of spun gold the way it draws their gazes.
They’ve all seen me in less than this—Linc and River have seen me in way less—but there’s something about the slow reveal that makes me feel more exposed. And it sure as shit doesn’t help that the four of them are all d
own to their last few articles of clothing.
We all get sloppier, our play less cutthroat, as our attention shifts away from the game itself and toward the anticipation of what will be taken off next.
