Hard Bargains Read online

  ‘I can stay inside you if you like,’ he says, ‘until I’m hard again.’

  I smile back up at him to show that this is a very good idea indeed.

  ‘So what’s it like being married to Meredith?’ I ask, fishing for some chinks in her armour.

  ‘Oh, no, neither of us are married,’ he says back, unperturbed. ‘She’s a friend I know from the outside world.’

  ‘What, so you don’t even work for our company?’

  ‘God, no. You think I dress like that out of choice? It was a cunning disguise to ensnare you. Meredith and I met at a fetish club. I am teaching her how to be a true dominatrix. I think she’s starting to nail it, don’t you?’

  None of this surprises me as it should. He’s not a nerd at all. I knew it!

  ‘So why are you wearing a wedding ring?’ I ask, quietly.

  ‘That was her idea. She’s wanted you for ever. She thought the only way you’d let her bed you was if you thought you were scoring some kind of victory into the bargain. She guessed that you cuckolding her husband in front of her eyes was the ultimate lure. I must say, I can see why she wants you so much.’

  His smile is too friendly to get mad at, the bright eyes too adorable. What’s more, I can feel his cock pulsing and starting to thicken inside me once more, and that will be enough to drive all the indignation and humiliation away. I’ve been royally had, there’s no denying it. And these two, I know, are going to keep on having me.

  Three of a Kind

  Casey Lorne

  ‘Do you really think Sofia would play strip poker with us?’ Farhan was talking, too boisterously, to my boyfriend, Shawn. The cabin walls were not insulated and I could hear the conversation from my favourite place to read, the cedar chair on the back porch.

  ‘She’s not uptight about things like that,’ Shawn replied. It was an accurate statement. In both my freshman and sophomore years at the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California, I’d participated enthusiastically in the First Rain Naked Run, my breasts jiggling with every footfall. It’s a tradition that students brave the arrival of fall weather by streaking through the quad outside Porter College. This is the semi-tropics, of course, so the bravery has more to do with the doffing of clothes than withstanding the slightly cooler temperatures.

  I met Shawn at UCSC – we both joined the orienteering club – and our relationship has thrived for nearly two years. Our home towns are only about 50 miles apart north of Seattle, so we grew up having many common experiences. The sexual chemistry between us started out strong and keeps getting more intense. Finding a guy who shares your porn preferences is a sign from the goddesses that you are meant to be together for a long time.

  Some people might not think of us as conventionally beautiful, but we like each other’s bodies immensely. Shawn has pale skin with freckles on his arms that continue all the way up to his shoulders. I enjoy twirling the strands of strawberry blond hair on his chest when we are lying naked together after sex. My complexion is more of the Mediterranean variety and my hair is black like coal. I’m busty but short, needing to stand on tiptoe to reach five feet.

  Shawn’s family owns a cabin deep in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula, accessible only in good weather using forestry service roads. For an unusually dry two weeks at the end of June, we had it to ourselves. Farhan and Geoff, my love’s best childhood friends, took advantage of the long daylight hours to drive up on a Friday evening and planned to stay until supper the next day.

  I’m a lark, not a nightingale, so I was already suppressing yawns by the time the boys arrived. We’d hung out a few times as a group and got along pretty well. Washington State, which Farhan and Geoff go to, is a more conservative campus than Santa Cruz and I enjoyed teasing them with tales of our sexual hedonism. My experience is that guys who were raised in semi-rural circumstances sometimes behave like they’re caught between the age of chivalry and modern egalitarianism, not sure which approach to take in the company of an uninhibited woman.

  ‘Our guests want to play cards,’ Shawn said when I joined the trio in the cabin. The natural light had started to fade so I’d given up on Venus in Furs and headed inside.

  I feigned a stern tone. ‘You mean they want to see me naked. I heard you talking about strip poker.’

  Farhan and Geoff were quiet, perhaps thinking they were about to receive a lecture. I waited a beat before smiling.

  ‘It’s late for me. I could last for a short game, but that wouldn’t give me much time to enjoy looking at your bare asses.’

  It is important to be accommodating as a host and sending the boys to bed disappointed would have been bad manners. Happily, I came up with an alternative plan.

  ‘How about we make the stakes that the losers have to spend the entire day tomorrow in their birthday suits?’

  Of course they would accept. Hormones and male pride get mixed together and the outcome is predictable.

  Geoff was the one who took the bait. ‘That’s going to be a long time for you not to be able to wear anything. Are you sure you won’t get cold?’

  ‘I appreciate the concern, but I’ll be warm on the inside. If we keep playing until there’s only one winner, the worst-case scenario is that I’ll spend the day ogling two naked boys – and it could be three.’

  Time to reel in the fish: ‘Of course, we could set it up so that it’s guys against the girl.’

  The friends exchanged hopeful glances. ‘What do you have in mind?’ Shawn asked.

  ‘I play one hand and you play the other as a group. First one to win five times gets to put on clothes tomorrow. The losers spend the day with their cocks hanging out for my pleasure.’

  A few minutes later we were sitting around the kitchen table, me on one side, the boys on the other. We agreed to play five-card draw, allowing one round to improve and a maximum discard of three. Shawn seemed a bit jittery, managing his nerves by fiddling with the deck he’d taken from the cupboard. ‘Are you guys absolutely sure you want to go through with this?’ He directed the question to his buddies.

  ‘Let’s play,’ Farhan said decisively.

  Shawn gave me the deck and I immediately dealt two hands. Farhan and Geoff looked over their friend’s shoulder as he picked up their cards. They seemed satisfied with what they saw.

  My hand contained only mismatches: no pairs and no obvious path to a straight or flush.

  ‘We’ll just take one,’ Shawn said, placing a card face-down on the table. I gave him a replacement from the top of the deck.

  When I said I was taking three, the boys looked pleased. I kept a queen and a 10 because they were my highest cards.

  The action done, Shawn revealed the source of the confident male grins: two kings, two jacks and a 5.

  I flipped my hand onto the table. ‘Three 7s for me,’ I said. ‘That gives me the early lead.’

  Geoff crooked his neck in disappointment. Farhan nodded wisely. ‘You were lucky. Usually two pairs are strong enough to win.’ He had a talent for mansplaining.

  Shawn gathered the cards back into a pile and shuffled them. He idly cut the deck several times then started to deal.

  I picked up another mediocre hand. ‘Three cards again,’ I said, getting rid of some of the garbage.

  While my boyfriend passed cards in response to my request, Farhan was whispering to Geoff. I guessed that meant they had no obvious play. Shawn isolated three cards together in his hand and looked for consensus, but Farhan shook his head. ‘Throw these,’ he said, pointing out his choices. After a glance to determine Geoff’s opinion, Shawn acquiesced. He discarded three cards and took three.

  It was my turn to show first. ‘I’ve got a set of ducks.’ Using the fancy poker lingo for three 2s would be fair warning to the boys I was no amateur.

  Shawn laid out an inadequate pair of 9s which he quickly scooped back into the deck. I beamed at his friends. ‘If it’s any consolation, you won’t have to worry about tan lines when we go swimming tomorrow.’

 
‘This is a long way from over,’ Geoff said. ‘I for one am looking forward to seeing the tits that made Santa Cruz famous.’

  ‘If you’d asked me I’d have shown them to you. Instead you’ve made me play for my honour.’

  Shawn handed the deck over and I divided it into two halves. My attempt at shuffling wasn’t very impressive: for people with small hands, wrapping thumbs around the edges of the cards is a gargantuan task.

  I pretended that I’d done the job well and dealt.

  Thanks to another strong draw – this time I received three 10s – I won a third consecutive triumph. None of my opponents looked like they were having much fun, but the expression on Farhan’s face was particularly sour.

  ‘Sofia could be cheating. She barely shuffled last hand and getting three of a kind all the time is highly suspicious.’

  ‘It’s true I keep an ace in my panties,’ I countered, ‘and I’m not afraid to use it.’

  Shawn interrupted. ‘How about I deal for both teams?’

  I narrowed my eyes at my boyfriend. ‘You know I’m not cheating.’

  ‘If Shawn deals and you still win, we won’t have any excuses,’ Farhan said.

  ‘Fine.’ The sun had nearly set and I was ready to crawl into bed. Letting Shawn handle the cards wasn’t going to impair my ability to win the game.

  If I’d produced a fourth consecutive three of a kind, Farhan might have started recruiting people to join a strip poker truther movement. Instead, the hand I received from Shawn left me just one card away from a straight, needing either a 3 or an 8. My draw, a king, was a blank and the boys won their first hand with a pair of 10s.

  They celebrated by bumping fists, which was weak, like when hockey players mob each other after finally scoring late in the third period of a blowout.

  That lonely victory turned out to be the pinnacle of their happiness. I locked up the next hand with a set of 5s, beating jack-high. The boys were mostly quiet after that, resigned to their inevitable defeat.

  They hardly reacted when I finished the game by turning over three aces.

  ‘I trust you’ll be gentlemen and I won’t have any trouble collecting on the bet,’ I said, getting up from the table. ‘It’s sleepy time for me.’

  Farhan was stoic but Geoff seemed genuinely sad. Shawn kept his eyes down, looking at neither me nor his friends.

  In the bedroom I changed into my summer nightie and slipped under the covers. The noises of the darkening forest seeped through the open window, lulling me into a gentle slumber. Shawn climbed into bed some time later and I woke momentarily as his body melded to mine in a warm embrace. He was already attired in the same outfit he would be wearing all day tomorrow.

  Morning arrived with the lemony scent of the coast Douglas fir drifting on a southerly breeze. As usual, I was the first one conscious, eager to feel the early warmth of the sun as it peeked through the gaps in the bulwark of trees. I put on jeans and a sweatshirt and quietly slipped out of the cabin, grabbing a cranberry muffin and a bottle of apple juice on my way. Ocean storms can arrive on the mountains without much warning, but this day seemed likely to consist only of clear skies and summer swelter.

  Tall yellow cedars and western hemlocks form canopies above the inland forests of the Olympic Peninsula, casting shadows over an undergrowth of stunted shrubs and wildflowers. The terrain is ideal for rambling, just heading off into the wilderness and pretending to get lost. At my height it is easy to duck under any low branches.

  Since I was a child, I’ve loved to start the day with an adventure in the woods. My mother taught me how to read the trees so I’d always be able to find my way home. Wind from the sea brushes the peaks toward the east while the thickest growth is always on the south, the side that catches the most sun. Most people know that moss prefers shade but it is important to look for it a few feet off the ground. In damp conditions, the whole base of a tree is likely to be covered in a green velvet coat, not just the bark on the north.

  Sometimes I wander for miles, but I decided this morning to stay in familiar territory. The erotic potential of the next few hours, to be spent in the company of naked men, infiltrated my imagination, affecting my ability to concentrate. Would they be shy, strategically clasping their hands to obscure my view of their secret treasures? Would they be bold, presenting their gorgeous cocks for my enjoyment without hesitation? When they felt the intensity of my gaze, would the lust emanating from my body become contagious, causing thick erections to rise from their pelvises?

  I stopped when the cabin came back into sight, breathing deliberately to calm my rushing pulse. Greeting the objects of my desire while in a flustered state was not part of the script I had written in my head. I wanted to be cool, like last night – personify the myth that all women regard naked male bodies as comedic, not sensual.

  I didn’t just walk in the front door as I normally would. Instead I knocked, hoping to create more tension. ‘Make your selves indecent, boys,’ I announced. ‘There’s a lady about to enter the room.’ After waiting several seconds, I turned the handle and readied for the treat of full frontal male nudity.

  Only Shawn was actually living up to the deal we’d made before the game. His friends were both wearing shorts. ‘We know,’ Farhan said before I could object. ‘It just felt weird for us to be waiting around undressed when we weren’t sure when you’d be coming home.’

  He promptly stood up and pushed his lone item of clothing to the floor. He was the largest of the trio, a former fullback who’d played on his high school’s football team. I watched his shoulder muscles flex as he bent over to gather the shorts from under his feet. If he had turned around, I thought, the scene would truly have been spectacular, his ass cheeks parting slightly as he stretched.

  Farhan straightened nonchalantly, perhaps accustomed to being naked in front of other people after many group showers in the locker room. A narrow line of dark hair descended from his belly to his pubic bone. Below that I saw evidence of trimming: the mansplainer was apparently also a manscaper.

  His broad bronze thighs were beautiful.

  Geoff took advantage of the distraction to undress sneakily. When my eyes tracked him down he was huddled in a chair, his hands folded over his lap. I decided I should give him a moment to get accustomed to the situation.

  ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ I smiled my satisfaction at the nudists in front of me. ‘We should have lunch soon and go down to the lake. I hardly had any breakfast.’ I turned and went into the kitchen.

  Geoff wasn’t tall but had a lanky aspect, skin and bones, with a narrow waist and long legs. His light-brown hair was clean-cut but he kept whiskers on his chin to hint at some nonconformity. I hadn’t seen all of him yet, but what I liked best so far were his nipples, broad circles that were rosy with distinct points. Would they become even more noticeable if stimulated? In the name of science, I’d be willing to take on that research.

  I put some fixings on the counter and called the boys to make sandwiches. Some girlfriends do more than the minimum in the kitchen, but I save my finest work for a different room. According to tradition (and probably Google Maps as well), the stomach is the way to a man’s heart. I discovered while wooing Shawn that the alternative prostate gland route will get you there in half the time.

  My fancy meal of peanut butter and honey with a banana on the side was already on the table, so I settled down to enjoy some dinner theatre. Geoff provided most of the entertainment by trying to make his sandwich one-handed while using the other to obstruct my view. It was not something he was accustomed to doing and sometimes he forgot his strategy, the gates opening only to be slammed shut a few seconds later.

  His nervousness may have helped my nerves to settle. I heard the erotic hum of the situation but it was turned down low enough that I could function without seeming distracted. The boys probably thought I was enjoying their predicament because it gave me an opportunity to tease them. The power-exchange aspect appealed to my sense of humour but it w
as my limbic system that really whirled in response to the nudity around me.

  Over lunch we talked about our lazy plan for the rest of the afternoon: walk down to the lake and settle on the dock for sunbathing along with the occasional cool-down swim.

  ‘I would help you boys clean up,’ I said after finishing my last mouthful of banana, ‘but I don’t have time because I have to go cover myself up in a bathing suit.’ I marched into the bedroom and noisily closed the door.

  Putting on clothes that are just going to get wet is ridiculous. I don’t bother when Shawn and I have the place to ourselves. In front of Farhan and Geoff, I might have left my panties on (at first) but definitely wouldn’t have encumbered myself with a top. The bet forced me to make concessions, the most annoying of which was cramming my boobs into a Spandex prison. I could find bikinis that fitted fairly well if I was going swimming in a place where nudity wasn’t an option, such as a church, but my combination of petite, squishy and busty wasn’t meant for a one-piece. I had an old one that would have to do. The more skin I covered, I reasoned, the more the boys would be aware of their nakedness.

  The climate of the Olympic Peninsula changes every few dozen miles. Lush forests that receive an annual average of 12 feet of rain transition into arid zones suited for prickly pear cactus. As storm clouds move inland from the ocean, they collide with the mountains and the cooler temperatures at high elevations cause drizzle that can last for days. The eastern slopes are much drier and melting glaciers provide the surface water that rushes through river valleys and gathers into small lakes.

  One of these drainage pools sits at the edge of the property Shawn’s family owns.