Page 20 of My Best Friend's Sister

E L E V E N

- Madeline -

It was clear from the start that the guys underestimated me, just as I expected they would. But after twenty minutes, when they finally realized I wasn’t going to ask them what every hand meant, they figured out I’d played before.

That’s when I really let the smack talk begin to flow. I didn’t particularly want to call attention to myself that way, but it was the only way I could hide how much I was bricking it in my prettiest panties. My lucky third-date panties.

I wore them specifically to cheer myself up today, but they didn’t give me the edge at work I’d hoped for. Naïvely, I thought they might boost my confidence or help me glow from the inside out hard enough that Crecia might actually get my name right. But as it turns out, their subtle charm didn’t work on slave-driving egomaniacs… Unless her way of showing me she cared was tasking me with taking the price stickers off shoes with Goo Gone all day, in which case she loved me like the daughter she never had.

She didn’t give me the task just to wreck my manicure, though. It was for an article about how biased customers are towards brands and whether consumers can even tell the difference between knock-offs, lookalikes, and the real McCoy. On the plus side, she let me read the accompanying article on my lunch break, which made me feel slightly more involved in the project. The most interesting part was about how the writer surveyed people in the street and discovered they were willing to spend four thousand percent more for a pair of sunglasses if it had a designer logo. Madness. Completely reinforced my belief that overpaying for sunglasses, flip-flops, and T-shirts is for tools that don’t know how to sniff out a bargain.

Speaking of logos, Pete and Tanner had lost quite a few of theirs. Pete was the first to run into a string of bad luck (as he called it), but it was obvious to me from the start that his game was the weakest. He folded as soon as it was time to take his boxers off, which surprised me even more than the shamrock tattoo on his left pec. I think he would’ve kept playing until he was naked, but Quinn said if Pete’s balls touched our kitchen chairs it would be the last time they ever touched anything again. Tanner, following close behind, had just stripped down to his Calvin Kleins, revealing a toned runner’s body that left me wondering if he was lean and lanky all over. Perhaps I’d find out soon enough if things kept going the way they had been.

To my right, Quinn had only lost his shirt, but it took all my concentration not to stare at the notches along the outside of his stomach muscles, which appeared to be some new kind of abs I’d never seen before. Whatever they were, they looked hard to the touch, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to run my fingers over the narrow dips between them. Thank God he still had his jeans on because my body was already bubbling with a billion indecent ideas.

When I first sat down, I thought this would be fun, but now that I was seated at a table between my brother’s two hottest, half-naked friends, a strange sexual tension had filled the room that I wasn’t prepared for. I hoped it was in my head, but there was something about Tanner’s mischievous side smile that made me think I wasn’t the only one having the occasional dirty thought.

Luckily for me, I had more articles of clothing on than the boys did when we started playing, but my advantage didn’t last. I’d already lost my scarf, my watch, the polka-dotted suit coat I was wearing over my lace-trimmed black tank top, all three of my earrings, which the guys let me count separately, both my bracelets, my necklace, and two rings. I lost the next hand, too.

Three pairs of eyes settled on me as I unhooked my bra and wiggled it out from under my tank top. “What?” I asked innocently as I hung my sexiest bra on the back of my chair. “We never made rules about the order?” I felt Tanner’s eyes fall to my hard nipples and hoped they weren’t too obvious beneath my thin tank top. Or if they were, I hope he wouldn’t interpret my anxiety as arousal. Or was that exactly what I wanted? Not because I was into Tanner, but because every time he looked at me, Quinn’s jaw turned to stone, and that did do things to me… Things that were as surprising as they were delicious.

Tanner shuffled and dealt the cards while a strange silence replaced the light-hearted smack talk that had come so naturally when everyone was more fully clothed. I dragged my cards off the table and stole a glance at the leather belt hanging off the back of Quinn’s chair. It was brown and faded, like he’d had it a long time. Unlike the rest of his clothes, which all looked like they’d been plucked straight out of last month’s GQ.

Quinn lost the next hand, stood to pull his jeans off, and didn’t even crack a smile when Tanner offered to stick some chips in his boxers in exchange for a lap dance. Meanwhile, I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the loud V of his obliques, which pointed to parts of him that didn’t bear thinking about. I failed to divert my eyes before he caught me staring, though, and my cheeks burned when his heavy gaze landed on me. He tossed his dark jeans on the couch without looking away, and my skin flushed from head to toe as if I were allergic to his attention.

Pete groaned. “Jesus, get a room why don’t you?”

My eyes darted over to him, where his soft, frat boy body was leaning back in his chair. My tongue wanted to spit something snappy, but every defensive comment that came to mind seeming weak and unconvincing.

“You’re blushing your face off,” Pete said as Quinn sank back in his seat.

“I think I’m embarrassed on Quinn’s behalf because of those socks,” I said, willing my cheeks to pale.

Pete leaned to the right and looked towards the bottom of Quinn’s chair. “Those are some gay socks.”

Tanner looked under the table next.

“Speaking of gay,” Quinn mumbled, rolling his eyes as his boxer-clad friends snuck peeks under the table.

“Those aren’t as bad as his Scooby socks,” Tanner said. “Or his Tweety Bird Cubs socks, which are my personal favorite.”

“You clowns are just jealous that my Toy Story socks have more personality than you do,” he said. “Now can we finish this, so I can take your money and move on with my Friday night? I have better things to do than sit around with you guys in my underwear.”

“Maddy’s still in with a chance,” Tanner said, matter-of-factly.

“You’re not, though,” Quinn said, dealing the cards.

I tried to win with three of a kind on the next round, but the boys out-bluffed me. “Shit,” I mumbled as I stood up, my body erupting in goosebumps as I wiggled my underwear down beneath the fabric of my blue skirt. When they finally fell from my knees to my ankles, my heart rate doubled instantly.

“I’m fucking out of here,” Pete said, standing abruptly. “When James finds out you sat here and watched his little sister strip, he’s going to have your heads.” He pulled his shirt back on and yanked it down fast so his face popped through the head hole. Then he reached for his jeans and wriggled into them by hopping on one foot at a time.

“And when he finds out it was your idea?” Tanner asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Whatever. I never thought things would go this far.” Pete lifted a palm in my direction. “No offense, Maddy, but I’ve seen quite enough.”

I stepped out of my underwear and reached down to grab it, stealing another quick glance at Quinn’s socks as I balled my panties in my fist. Much to my amusement, they were even funnier than I realized. Sure, I registered right away that they were Toy Story socks, but I hadn’t properly appreciated the print, which showed Woody and his girlfriend on her horse, jumping through heart-shaped lassos.

I was biting back a smile when I slid onto my chair again but flinched when I heard the slam of the front door. When my eyes popped open again, I caught Quinn and Tanner having some kind of staring contest that involved neither words nor looking at me. Until they both did the latter at the exact same time. “What?” I asked, suddenly feeling less like a poker player and more like prey.

“I plan on winning this game, Maddy,” Quinn said, as if he were giving me one last chance to back out.

“So do I,” I said, extending my balled fist towards him in my biggest bluff yet. “I was just going to ask if you’d blow on my panties for good luck?”

Something animal clouded over his eyes, and I could feel the energy of his restraint. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell exactly what feeling he was restraining. Annoyance? Arousal? Impatience?

“I’ll blow on your panties,” Tanner said, making me realize the inappropriateness of what I’d asked.

I wanted to explain that I hadn’t meant to be so crude, that I was merely making a reference to when girls in Vegas blow on your dice. But I was stunned by the fact that I’d made the weird tension in the room even thicker. I spun around, my breath shallowing as I tucked my underwear in my jacket pocket.

After that, Tanner shuffled and dealt in silence. The three of us studied our cards in silence. And we took turns looking for tells in each other’s faces in silence. But when Quinn finally met my gaze, the electricity in his blue eyes was anything but silent.

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