Game Changer

by Max Sebastian

  But then Hanna said, ‘Have you guys ever played poker before? Come on—everyone ready for the next round?’

  Us guys all looked at each other with questioning expressions, until it hit us that the game wasn’t over for the night after all. Huge relief at that, and then the pistachio shells were being divided up again.

  Hanna said, ‘Hayden—you were out first that round. So you have to lose a piece of clothing.’

  ‘What?’ Hayden said, a touch surprised.

  ‘Come on,’ my wife smiled wickedly. ‘We’re all having fun here, right?’

  I looked at Jake, who shrugged as though to say, why not?

  ‘And if you lose, you’ll take something off, too, right?’ Hayden asked Hanna, and started peeling off his t-shirt to reveal his ripped chest, toned by the regular gym sessions he’d kept up since his college football days.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what happens when one of us loses all our clothes?’ Jake asked.

  ‘He—or she—is out of the game,’ Hanna said.

  ‘Hey—you have more clothes on than me,’ Hayden protested. ‘I could have put on a sweatshirt too.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Hanna grinned smugly. Had she been planning this all afternoon? Ever since she’d come out from her siesta dressed as though there was a leak in the window, or the boiler in the basement wasn’t heating up the place nicely.

  My guess was that she’d been thinking about my surprising new sexual fantasy ever since our morning’s conversation about it, and had come to the conclusion that if I had an open mind on the matter, some kind of sexual game between all of us might just be the easiest way to pass the time this week.

  Well, she was the only woman here. Hayden griped about the unfair advantage, but we didn’t let Hanna’s apparent clothing bonus worry us too much. We played on, and were a little more clever, and a little less reckless. And would you believe it, Hanna was the first one that round to lose all her chips.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, pulling her hooded top off over her head. ‘Plenty of time yet.’

  I felt my heart rate pick up a little as we watched her pulling off her hooded top. My wife, taking off her clothes in front of my friends. Wow. It was just so unexpected. She’d always been very demure, respectful in front of my friends before. Early on, she’d wanted to impress them, and not embarrass me. Later, she just rarely socialized with my friends, and when we did both go out she was on her best behavior because she just didn’t know them all that well.

  Underneath her hooded top, Hanna was wearing a dark blue tank top that gave a nice idea of the shape of her chest, although it was also fairly obvious she was wearing a bra—a black one—beneath. Jake and shirtless Hayden were watching her closely as she removed her hoody, and it seemed that for once it really wasn’t impolite of them to stare—or to check out another guy’s woman. Tonight one of them might be sleeping with her.

  I have to admit a strange sense of arousal at the way they looked at her. It wasn’t just pride. It was a sense of taboos being broken, expectations being shaken, of my pretty, confident, yet usually fairly conservative wife being naughty, wicked, dirty. After dropping her hooded top by her side, she looked over at Jake, and then at Hayden, before glancing at me, and there was real fire in her eyes. Wow. This was going to be some night.

  ‘You’re going to force us to strip naked, and then at the end of the night you won’t sleep with anybody,’ Jake said as the cards were dealt for the next round.

  ‘Nobody’s forcing anybody to do anything,’ Hanna said dryly, finishing up handing out the cards. ‘You don’t have to play—you could go for a walk instead if you like. Or go upstairs to sleep.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Jake grinned. ‘This is the only game in town, right? I’m just saying... you’re keen on an eyeful of us, right? But that’s as far as it’ll go.’

  Everybody pushed in their ante.

  Hanna laughed. ‘You think it’s in my interest to sleep alone tonight?’

  Jake nodded as though her answer had been totally predictable. Gazing at his hand as though he was trying to silently calculate exactly how good it was, he said, ‘So you’re saying you’re likely to blow the game? If you’re winning at the end, you’ll take a dive?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said.

  We went around, and Hanna folded. Hayden groaned at her caution, and pushed half of his pistachio shells into the middle. ‘You’re going to hand victory to hubby here, aren’t you?’ he accused her, picking up on Jake’s conspiracy theorizing.

  Hanna laughed again, ‘Jesus, would you look at you guys? Just wait and see, huh? Open your minds.’

  Jake called, and I raised the bet, with Hayden matching my stake but Jake subsequently folding. At the end, I had the stronger hand with two aces, Hayden had been almost bluffing.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ Hayden told her, ‘You have an interest in helping Thad to win.’

  ‘An interest?’ Hanna raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You said it yourself, you don’t want to sleep alone tonight,’ Jake concurred with our friend.

  ‘And that,’ Hayden said, his argument energized, ‘means there’s half the people at this table trying to get Thad a win.’

  Hanna looked over at me and rolled her eyes playfully. Then she gave me a naughty little wink, which was just about as hot as anything she’d done all night in my view, as it seemed to suggest that she was joking with me about how Jake and Hayden had totally the wrong idea here. And that seemed to suggest that in her view—as in mine—the real victory tonight would be if she slept with Hayden or Jake, rather than any other option.

  ‘Okay,’ Hanna nodded, ‘So let’s change the rules. If I win, I get to choose who I sleep with tonight. Does that sound better?’

  Jake and Hayden shrugged, seemingly defeated. In their minds Hanna would automatically choose to sleep with me that night if she won, which wouldn’t increase their chances of pulling off the marital upset. I looked over at Hanna, and the fire in her eyes that sent excited-terrified shivers down my spine, and I got the feeling that if she had the choice of sleeping partner that night, considering what we’d talked about that morning, she most likely wouldn’t be sleeping with me after the game.

  Jesus. Could this really happen?

  I felt my manhood thickening up again at the thought that it might—that at some point I would be sitting there at the table with one of my friends, watching the other one escorting my own wife upstairs.

  Chapter Five

  Anyway. I won the hand, I won the round. Hayden ended up taking off his shoes, arguing with a flirtatious Hanna along the way as to whether he ought to remove one or both of his shoes, before it was decided that items like shoes and socks would count as one item.

  ‘You just can’t wait to see my dick,’ Hayden told Hanna, as though he was gently insulting her for forcing him to lose both his shoes at once.

  However, Hanna just giggled and said, ‘That is true enough.’

  Her answer made Hayden catch his breath at her audacity. Jake glanced over at me with an inquiring expression that seemed to be asking me whether my wife was really for real, whether I’d slipped her some mind-altering drug, or whether she’d simply snapped because of the sheer tedium of this trip.

  I simply smiled back at him and shrugged.

  The next round, I lost my shoes. Jake was complaining because he wasn’t wearing any shoes, and from his calculations he hadn’t lost yet and was still level-pegging with me for number of clothes being worn, with Hanna up on all of us.

  ‘I’ll let you go put your shoes on if you kiss Hayden for thirty seconds,’ Hanna giggled, and both Jake and Hayden made retching sounds at that suggestion.

  Hanna lost two rounds in a row, taking off her own white tennis shoes and her leggings, and Jake started feeling better about his chances. That left Hanna wearing her tank top and skirt, along with white socks and underwear.

  Then I lost another round, so off came my shirt.

&nb
sp; ‘You know, it’s not so bad for you,’ Hayden pointed out to me. ‘You strip naked, you’re only sitting there in front of a bunch of guys—your friends—and your wife. Not exactly terrifying.’

  I chuckled. He was right in a sense—my own stripping did not concern me at all. I was more interested in how much clothing my wife would lose in front of my lust-fueled friends. And, of course, what would happen after the game. I said to Hayden, ‘But I’m the one who might have to see his wife go spend the night with another guy tonight.’

  My point couldn’t be beaten in this particular debate.

  Hanna said to Hayden, ‘You’re always complaining, you know that?’

  ‘I’m just pointing out the way it is,’ Hayden protested, and as though distracted, lost the hand of cards right then and there.

  ‘Look at the clock,’ Hanna said. We all did. It was nine o’clock already. Where had the time gone? ‘Nine o’clock. You guys might all have an inferiority complex, but you see how much time this little game of ours is eating away?’

  Hayden moped, ‘I do not have an inferiority complex.’

  But our little glance at the clock did seem to clear up any lingering complaints about this game. Jake and Hayden might have had doubts as to whether Hanna would really sleep with one of them—and whether I’d really let her—but there could be no doubt that she was removing her own clothing item by item as the game progressed.

  After Jake finally lost a round—and his socks—we saw Hanna drop another two rounds, so that we saw her lose her socks and her tank top. Surprisingly she had yet another tank top on underneath, but nevertheless the feeling was that she was really playing this game, she was really stripping when she lost. If things proceeded accordingly, Hanna was going to be exposing herself at the very least tonight.

  She certainly didn’t seem all that great at poker.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you want a rule change,’ Jake said dryly as Hanna dropped her tank top beside her. ‘You only have to lose clothing every other round you lose, right? Because you’re the only girl at the table.’

  Hanna grinned, and shook her head, ‘I don’t need a rule change. What makes you think I’m not just hustling you?’

  Jake laughed, ‘Because you wouldn’t be asking me that if you were. And hustling doesn’t work in strip poker.’

  As though to prove himself wrong, Jake went ahead and lost the next three rounds in fairly quick succession, to his increasing consternation. It left him in his boxer shorts, and he only escaped nudity because he happened to have a white t-shirt on under his checked button-down shirt.

  When Hayden then lost, and his pants came off to leave him also in just his boxer shorts, the feelings of resentment seemed to start returning, since I was sitting there having merely lost my shoes.

  ‘You’re gonna ruin tonight, dude,’ Jake shook his head at me, though his smile was one of amusement. ‘We’re counting on you to take a dive, here.’

  ‘He’s defending my honor,’ Hanna said.

  ‘I thought none of us were worrying about honor here,’ Hayden pointed out. ‘Because... you know... we really do have to find a way to get through this week.’

  ‘And because what happens within these four walls stays within these four walls,’ Jake added.

  ‘You’re just both losers,’ I threw back at them with a broad grin. ‘You can’t handle being beaten like a useless donkey.’

  I wasn’t particularly good at poker. The cards just seemed to fall my way that night. I wasn’t bravely bluffing my way through to picking up all the pistachio shells each round, and keeping my clothing to myself. It’s funny because the longer we played, the more comfortable I felt with the idea of Hanna actually doing something wicked that night—that the secret would truly stay among us four, that Hanna wouldn’t suddenly find herself wanting to divorce me to run off with whichever guy she slept with that night, that it would just be a huge turn on for me, even if I was sleeping on the couch that night, or in the bedroom of the winner. I started groaning internally whenever I won a hand, or a round. It seemed to me that I wanted to lose, I wanted Hanna to be with someone else, to see what that was like.

  The cards just kept going my way and others had to strip, while I was closer to the ‘reward’ of getting to sleep with my wife. But isn’t that the way? You only win if you’re not really trying to win. You’re less likely to win if you’re really desperate to win.

  With Hayden and Jake both sitting there in their underwear, I realized what I really didn’t want was to lose them from the game, and have it come down to me versus Hanna.

  I enjoyed watching Hanna lose the next round, and have to decide whether to lose her tank top or her skirt. She chose the tank top, peeling it off to reveal her flat stomach, her shapely breasts contained only by her black bra. My friends also enjoyed watching her lose her tank top, and the sense I got—especially from Jake—was that seeing her lose her clothes might be the only real treat they received after their long night of hopefulness.

  It was about that point that I kind of figured that I really wasn’t going to shake the good fortune at cards that night. When the next couple of hands went my way, it seemed almost proven in my mind. I felt an odd sense of disappointment.

  And Jake looked across at me groaning as I held a hand of Aces and Jacks, and he said: ‘Could it be that the master has finally been dealt a lousy hand of cards?’

  I looked at him, and despite what I held, I nodded sheepishly and folded right there on the spot.

  It was a eureka moment for me. I know, it sounds stupid—all night, I could have folded any time I liked, and taken my fair share of losses. I just don’t really think like that, I guess. Or, perhaps I thought I’d be found out if I faked some losses. Somehow, I could handle my friends thinking that I was being somewhat forced to accept my wife sleeping with someone else that night, for everyone’s sanity. It seemed humiliating to me if they started to realize I actively wanted her to sleep with another guy.

  But here I was, in a strong position, almost controlling the game. I realized if I was actually in control, I needed to start using that control to start throwing the win toward one of my friends.

  And so I started to fold when I had strong hands—and when, on occasion, I had vaguely lousy cards, I started to bluff ineffectively.

  ‘You know, I think I know your tell,’ Jake said to me when I was caught out for the third time bluffing with nothing much in my hand.

  We all looked at him.

  ‘When you’re bluffing, you have this... I wouldn’t call it a tic... but it’s like you can’t stop scratching under your ear,’ he said.

  In truth, I had a little bug bite there. But I was willing to deny his observation and then make use of my supposed ‘tell’ to try to signal to everyone when I was bluffing. It was a good route to failure for me.

  I lost my socks. Then I lost my shirt. I could have lost three rounds in a row and really drawn level with Hayden and Jake, except that Hanna managed to lose a round. Now we were all focused on her, because she had the choice of skirt, bra or panties to remove. She stood up, blushing faintly but apparently enjoying the feeling of three men being so attentive toward her.

  She stooped slightly, and to our collective surprise, reached under her skirt to remove her panties.

  ‘I still say you’re hustling us,’ Jake grinned, and I saw he was sitting a little awkwardly, and realized he had to be finding it increasingly difficult to hide his physical response to my wife’s slow stripping since he was sitting there in only a pair of boxer shorts.

  ‘I’m guessing Thad’s going to win,’ Hanna replied to Jake with a flirtatious smirk. ‘So I don’t really have to hustle you or anyone.’

  Hanna put her panties right there on top of her pile of clothing on the bench next to her, and even though they were fairly ordinary black panties—she hadn’t thought to bring sexy underwear on this trip, since she’d assumed we would be skiing all week, rather than playing strip poker—it seemed like a bold, sexy
move. Flaunting it in my face, or perhaps the guys’ faces, that she was available that night to whomever won the game.

  Well, Hayden and Jake were starting to win the game. I lost my pants next, leaving me in just my underpants, the same as the other guys. Yes, I purposefully folded, but that was what I was going for.

  I had to make it look real, though. Like I was trying to win. I took another round with two pairs, and Hanna lost the round with some reckless all-in bets.

  ‘Now she’s trying to lose,’ Hayden joked, but Hanna gave a reasonable impression of someone a little nervous and upset at losing and facing the prospect of having to cheat on her husband.

  She looked over to me, though, silently asking whether I was still all right with all this, whether I was still enjoying the evening, enjoying this sudden plunge into my fantasy. I nodded and smiled, as reassuring as I could. Then she removed her bra, doing her best to bashfully conceal her bare breasts with her hands once she’d done so, although her hard little nipples bore witness to her enjoyment at exposing herself in front of three lust-filled guys.

  Then Hayden was out. It felt like a loss to me, it felt like my fault even though Hanna won the round. Now there was a lot less of a chance that Hanna would have to sleep with someone else. I was, by that point, increasingly certain that if Hanna won she would choose to have me sleep with her. It felt like a stretch to suddenly decide to sleep with another guy so soon after first discovering my little kink.

  Hayden stood up and said, ‘Well that’s it, huh? I guess I should say good night to you folks.’

  And Hanna had to demand, ‘No, no, get them off—you know the rules. And you have to sit here with us until the game is over.’

  Hayden was about to complain, but he looked at Jake and I, and the two of us nodded our support for Hanna. ‘Rules are rules, dude,’ Jake said.

  Hayden smirked, and hooked his fingertips into the waistband of his boxer shorts. He said to Hanna, ‘Are you sure about this? Because once you’ve seen it... you’re gonna regret not being able to choose this for tonight.’