The game of strip poker...

The porch light cast amber hexagons across the deck where six old friends circled a weather-worn picnic table. It was the last weekend of summer, the air still thick with lake humidity and mosquito song, and someone—probably tipsy Marisol—had produced a deck of cards from her straw tote and suggested strip poker “for old times’ sake.” Laughter had answered, nervous and bright, because they had played this game once before, senior year of college, when bodies were stories still being drafted. Tonight, ten years later, they were revisions of those earlier drafts, softened or sharpened by real life, and the idea felt both childish and suddenly, electrically adult.

Caleb, who had flown in from Denver and still smelled of airport coffee, watched as Marisol shuffled with carnival flourish. He had desired her once, openly, clumsily, and everyone had known it. She had married someone else; he had married and divorced. Yet here she was, barefoot on the cool wood, her painted toes flexing as she dealt, and here he was, unable to stop looking at the way her sundress straps slipped down her brown shoulders as she leaned forward. He told himself it was nostalgia, nothing more dangerous. A deeper part of him, one he’d silenced through a year of lonely, quiet weekends, recognized the lie. What he felt was the old, specific hunger, polished to a sharper point by time and the quiet desperation of his empty apartment.

Across from him, Priya watched the cards fly with a surgeon’s focus. Her motivation was simpler, a clean line: curiosity tipped with a desire to disrupt the predictable script of the weekend. Back in the city, her life was a series of controlled, elegant spreadsheets; here, she wanted to see what happened when the columns didn’t add up. Lexi, Rowan’s wife, had her own stakes. She loved Rowan, but their marriage had settled into a comfortable, athletic partnership—hikes, runs, synchronized orgasms. She craved friction, the spark of the unpredictable, and her boldness was a deliberate probe into the static between them. Jonah, Marisol’s husband, played the affable host, but his eyes held a possessive gleam that wanted to test its boundaries, to own not just his wife but the admiration she inspired. And Rowan, the lucky one, saw the night as a game within a game, a chance to prove his luck wasn’t just about cards but about life, to collect experiences like trophies.

They set rules quickly, half-whispered, half-chuckling: five-card draw, single swap, loser of each hand removes one article. Shoes didn’t count; jewelry did. No one suggested stopping at underwear, and no one asked what happened after. The unspoken hovered like the moth beating against the lantern overhead.

“Remember the last time?” Lexi said, her voice a low thrum. “Priya cried because she lost her favorite earrings in the lake.”

“I did not cry,” Priya corrected, a sharp, playful edge in her tone. “I issued a series of very justified complaints about your terrible shuffling. They were turquoise. From Santa Fe.” She said it like the provenance mattered, a detail that painted her as someone who collected beautiful, specific things.

First hand: Caleb lost his sock, peeled it off with theatrical resignation. Everyone mocked the safe choice. The rough-hewn grain of the pine deck was cool and slightly splintered under his bare foot, a grounding sensation. Second hand: Jonah, Marisol’s husband, lost his watch, a heavy silver piece that clunked against the table. “There goes the time,” he joked, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Third hand: Rowan, always lucky, grinned as Priya sighed and slid off her linen overshirt, revealing a black bralette that turned her small breasts into soft, shadowed mysteries.

“Always the strategist, Priya,” Rowan said. “Wearing the tactical underwear.”

“One must be prepared for all contingencies,” she replied, her wit dry as gin. The game found its rhythm, the alcohol its level. Caleb noticed how Jonah’s eyes tracked the hollow between Priya’s breasts, how Lexi watched Jonah watching, a small, knowing tilt to her head. The night itself seemed to inhale.

By the time the bottle of mezcal was half gone, shirts were scattered like flags of surrender. Marisol’s dress pooled at her waist; she kept it there, a belted skirt, breasts bare except for dark nipples lifted to the night air as if offering themselves to the moths. Caleb tried not to stare and failed. She caught him, smiled without cruelty, and used two fingers to push a stray curl behind her ear, the gesture lifting one breast higher. He felt the tug in his groin before he could disguise it. He saw a flicker in her eyes too—not just nostalgia, but a question, a ‘what if’ that had never been answered.

Lexi dealt the next hand. She was lean, runner’s muscle under olive skin, her boyish chest braless under an open chambray shirt. “Ante up, doctor,” she teased Caleb, who had kept his jeans and nothing else. Her voice was a challenge. She’d been the one to suggest the lake house reunion, pushing for it with an insistence that Rowan had found odd. Now Caleb wondered if this was the friction she’d been seeking all along.

He lost again. Fingers trembling not from cold, he stood, unbuttoned, and let denim slide. The table went quiet. His boxer briefs were gray cotton, tented visibly. He did not cover. Pride, or something hungrier, held his hands at his sides.

“Looks like Caleb’s enjoying nostalgia,” Jonah murmured, voice thick. A laugh rippled, but it was softer now, breathy.

“Or just appreciating good company,” Caleb shot back, the first real bit of verbal sparring he’d managed. He sat, hyper-aware of the way the bench pressed against his bare thighs, the tiny imperfections in the wood imprinting on his skin. The next hand felt charged; cards snapped like ice cracking. When Priya lost her skirt—she wore nothing beneath but a lace thong—Rowan’s intake of breath was audible. Lexi reached over and, without asking, hooked a finger under the waistband of Priya’s thong and snapped it gently. Priya’s lips parted. The sound was playful, but the look she gave her best friend’s husband was raw invitation.

“Easy, tiger,” Priya said to Lexi, but she was smiling, arching her back slightly.

Caleb watched Marisol watch them. Her pupils were huge. She shifted on the bench, thighs pressing together, dress still bunched at her hips. Jonah’s hand rested high on her bare back, thumb stroking the knobs of her spine. Caleb felt the moment tilt, like a canoe about to spill.

Rowan lost his shorts next. He wasn’t wearing underwear. His cock sprang free, half-hard, curving against his abdomen. He made no apology. Lexi leaned over and kissed the tip, a quick, almost polite brush of lips, then sat back as if she had simply claimed a poker chip. The table exhaled a collective breath that felt like the word finally.

Jonah laughed low. “House rule amendment,” he said, his voice taking on a theatrical, game-show-host quality that was uniquely his. “Loser of any hand… has to kiss someone else’s choice. Winner’s discretion, no vetoes.” His eyes flicked to Caleb. “Agreed?” No one disagreed. The stakes were no longer just fabric; they were agency, direction.

Cards flew. Caleb won, miraculously. He looked at Marisol, at the sheen of lake mist on her collarbones, and heard himself say, “Jonah. Kiss Rowan.” It was a dare, a retaliation, a test of Jonah’s own smug rule. Jonah’s eyebrows rose; Rowan’s grin turned wolfish.

“Well played,” Jonah said, the bravado momentarily faltering. Then he shrugged, the affable host embracing the chaos. The two men leaned across the corner of the table. Their mouths met, tentative, then certain. Jonah’s hand found Rowan’s neck, thumb brushing jaw. When they parted, both were fully hard. Marisol made a small, desperate sound, a gasp she tried to swallow.

The game dissolved into kissing first. Lips sought proximity over clothing barriers. Priya crawled onto the table, kneeling amid scattered cards, and pulled Lexi up to meet her. Their kiss was slow, open, tongues visible in the lantern light. “I’ve wanted to do this since you beat me at tennis this afternoon,” Lexi whispered against Priya’s mouth, a confession that was all her own.

“Poor loser,” Priya breathed back, and then moaned as Lexi’s teeth grazed her lower lip.

Caleb felt the pulse in his ears drown the cicadas. He stood, moved behind Priya, and pressed against the cleft of her ass, still lace-covered. The delicate pattern of the lace textured his skin through his boxers. She ground back without breaking the kiss.

Hands began to claim territory. Jonah palmed Lexi’s small breast, thumb flicking a nipple like testing a volume dial. Rowan, still seated, drew Marisol between his knees and mouthed at her navel, fingers hooking into her dress belt and tugging so the fabric slid to the floor. She stepped out, naked except for a silver moon necklace that brushed her sternum. Caleb saw her glance at him, checking, asking. He nodded once. Something unclenched in her shoulders; she threaded fingers into Rowan’s hair and guided him lower.

Caleb wanted to watch, but Priya turned in his arms, pulled his mouth to hers. She tasted of mezcal and lime salt. Her hand slipped inside his boxers, fingers cool around hot flesh. He groaned into her mouth. She stroked once, twice, then withdrew, teasing, and pushed the waistband down. His cock sprang free, slapping gently against his stomach. She looked down, bit her lip in exaggerated deliberation. “A respectable offering, Doctor,” she quipped, her wit persisting even here, then sank to her knees on the deck boards. The first swipe of her tongue along his underside drew a hiss that felt torn from his spine, a sound lost in the chorus of other small gasps and sighs.

Across the table, Lexi had stretched Marisol backward over Jonah’s lap, the women kissing upside-down, a champagne waterfall of hair. Jonah’s hand moved between Marisol’s thighs, fingers disappearing into dark curls. Rowan watched, stroking himself slowly, eyes hooded. Every breath carried the small wet sounds of pleasure, the creak of wood, the distant slap of lake water against dock pilings.

Caleb tried to hold back, but Priya’s mouth was merciless, tongue swirling under the head, hand cupping balls with feather pressure. He tugged her up before he lost control. “Not yet,” he whispered, his voice ragged. He wanted inside her, but more than that, he wanted the whole night inside him, every overlapping desire, every secret finally voiced in the language of touch.

They rearranged like magnets flipping polarity. Someone produced a blanket from the day’s picnic; it unfurled over the deck like a magic carpet, smelling of grass and old cotton. Bodies lowered onto it. Marisol caught Caleb’s wrist. Her fingers were warm, insistent. “Here,” she said, guiding him down beside her. Jonah settled behind her, spooning, cock nestled in the cleft of her ass, but his hand extended, palm open invitation to Caleb. Caleb took it, interlacing fingers across Marisol’s ribcage. The three of them breathed together once, twice, a strange and profound synchronization. Then Marisol lifted her top leg, hooking it back over Jonah’s hip, opening herself. The night air kissed her inner thigh, raising goosebumps. Her eyes locked on Caleb. “Come find me,” she murmured, and it was both an invitation and an answer to a decade-old question.

He slid forward, Priya’s hand still on his cock, angling him. The first press into Marisol was slow, furnace-hot, slick from Jonah’s fingers. She gasped, a sound like a match striking. Jonah’s hand tightened over Caleb’s knuckles, a pulse of shared heartbeat. Caleb thrust shallowly, feeling Jonah’s hardness against his shaft through the thin wall of her body. They established a rhythm, Jonah rocking her back, Caleb meeting her forward, a seesaw of friction. Marisol’s mouth sought Caleb’s neck, biting softly, then his ear: “I always wondered,” she confessed, voice breaking on a thrust. “Now we know.”

The knowledge was a physical thing between them, a completed circuit. Caleb felt a surge of something more potent than triumph—it was belonging, a righting of a cosmic skip.

Beside them, Lexi and Rowan had turned Priya onto all fours, Lexi beneath her in a sixty-nine, Rowan entering from behind. Priya’s moan vibrated against Lexi’s clit; Lexi’s hips bucked. The blanket bunched under knees. Rowan’s gaze kept drifting to the trio beside them, watching Caleb sink repeatedly into Marisol, watching Jonah’s hand slide down to cup Caleb’s balls with startling intimacy. Rowan’s thrusts grew harder, as if the sight poured gasoline on his spine. “Fuck, look at them,” he grunted, and the words were less for anyone else than a vocalization of his own voyeuristic fuel.

Caleb felt the climb, inevitable, a coil tightening in his belly. He slowed, wanting to extend this impossible convergence, but Marisol whispered, “Don’t you dare leave me hanging,” and rolled slightly, disengaging. Before he could protest, she twisted, facing Jonah now, guiding Caleb to re-enter from behind. Jonah kissed her deeply, then looked over her shoulder at Caleb. His expression was stripped of its earlier theatricality, raw and focused. “Together,” he said, voice rough.

Understanding flashed: Jonah wanted to feel Caleb inside her while Jonah took her ass. The logistics were clumsy, breathless, hilarious for a moment—laughter spilling like coins as they adjusted angles—then suddenly perfect. Marisol bore down, groaning long and low as both men filled her. They held still, feeling the tremor of adjustment, the incredible, tight heat, then moved, a careful counter-rhythm that made her sob with pleasure, her fingers scrabbling against Jonah’s back.

Caleb’s world narrowed to heat and pressure, to Jonah’s ragged breath matching his, to Marisol’s hand clawing back to anchor his hip. Over her shoulder he saw Lexi come, mouth open silently, Priya’s tongue flicking through spasms. Rowan pulled out, stripped off Priya’s thong, and entered her in one slick thrust, his hands on Lexi’s breasts as if using them for leverage. The tableau blurred into one organism, pleasure feeding on itself.

Marisol came first, a sudden, violent clamping that forced both men to still, riding the aftershocks that shuddered through her. When she relaxed, boneless and panting, Jonah whispered, “Switch.” The word was a catalyst.

They unfolded, a slow, wet disentanglement. Caleb found himself on his back, the blanket rough against his shoulder blades. Marisol straddled his face, lowering herself, offering Caleb a front-row seat to her spread cunt swallowing her husband. The musk soaked Caleb’s tongue as he licked her clit, tasting both of them, salt and iron and sex. Above, he felt Priya’s mouth return to his cock, then disappear, replaced by the hotter, tighter grip of her cunt as she sank onto him in one fluid motion. She rode hard, palms on his chest, using him to chase her own crest. “Yes, just like that,” she chanted, her usual precision shattered into breathy fragments. He was surrounded by wet, by skin, by the slap of bodies. Someone—Lexi—leaned over and kissed him, sharing the taste of Priya from her lips. The kiss tasted like gratitude and stolen secrets.

As Priya’s ride grew frantic and Jonah’s thrusts into Marisol became shorter, harder, the careful configuration began to fracture. Rowan, having brought Lexi to another climax with his mouth, knelt back, watching the tangle of bodies with a restless energy. He reached out and ran a hand down Caleb’s flank, a casual, possessive stroke. Caleb flinched, then leaned into the touch, the simple acknowledgment breaking another barrier.

It was Lexi who catalyzed the final shift. Slipping out from under Priya, she crawled to where Jonah was pounding into Marisol. She placed a hand on Jonah’s lower back, then slid it down, over the curve of his ass. “My turn,” she said, not a question but a statement. She looked at Caleb, her eyes bright and feral. “Trade you.”

Jonah, without breaking rhythm, nodded, a gruff sound of assent. In a messy, beautiful tangle of limbs, they swapped. Caleb pulled out of Priya, who whimpered in protest until Rowan moved in to fill her. Lexi guided Caleb to her, pushing him onto his knees and turning to present herself, gripping the deck rail for support. As Caleb entered her from behind, he saw Jonah now taking Marisol from behind, while Priya, on her back, drew Marisol’s head down between her thighs.

The night shed its last pretense of order. They traded partners again, indiscriminate, guided by touch and proximity and greedy hands. Caleb took Lexi against the deck rail, her breasts cool from the night air, her gasps fogging in front of them. Rowan knelt behind Jonah, fucking him slowly while Jonah jerked himself, eyes glued on Marisol and Priya sixty-nining on the blanket below, moonlight slick on their moving skin. Every orgasm triggered another ripple; boundaries dissolved like sugar in coffee. A bottle of water was passed around, spilled, laughed over. The cool liquid traced paths through sweat-sheened skin, a momentary shock that only heightened sensitivity.

Later, Caleb found himself on his back again, Priya riding him while Marisol kissed him, her taste still on his lips. Jonah was above Marisol, his cock in her mouth, his hands gentle on her cheeks. Lexi crouched beside them, her fingers working in circles on Priya’s back, then dipping lower to where Caleb and Priya were joined. “Everyone wins,” Lexi sighed, and it was the truest thing anyone had said all night.

Caleb’s second climax built at the base of his spine while he pumped into Lexi, who had shifted beneath him again. She reached back, a finger pressing between his cheeks, a surprise spark that shot him over the edge. He came with a shout muffled against her shoulder, thrusts stuttering. She followed, her body squeezing him in rhythmic pulses, then spun and dropped to taste them both off his sensitive cock, gentle now, almost worshipful.

Afterward they collapsed in a heap, limbs sorted by exhaustion rather than plan. Someone dragged another blanket from inside; bodies tucked against bodies for warmth. Caleb found Marisol’s head on his chest, Jonah’s hand on his stomach, Priya’s foot hooked over his ankle. The lake breathed beyond the railing; a loon called, lonely and satisfied. The wood of the deck, now warmed by their collective heat, felt like a living thing beneath them.

He waited for awkwardness to creep in, for shame’s chill. None arrived. Instead, what settled was a humming contentment, the sense of a circle closed. They had started as kids daring each other out of clothes; they ended as adults who had learned that skin was only the first layer removed. Caleb pressed his lips to Marisol’s temple. She smiled without opening her eyes. “Next summer?” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep and satiation.

“Next summer,” he agreed, voice rough, already mapping the months between, no longer a void but a corridor leading back to this. Around the table, cards lay scattered like abandoned constellations. The game had ended, but the winning—everyone’s, shared—was still pulsing in blood and satisfied flesh, a secret they would carry glowing back to separate cities, a promise to return to this lake, this porch, this easy nakedness where losing had taught them every way to win.