Game Changer Read online

  I was thankful, then, that Hanna lost again, and this time had to remove her skirt. She managed to unfasten the thing and whip it out from under her with just a slight lifting of her butt from the seat—allowing her to avoid standing up to strip. It meant she was able to largely conceal herself, and what lay between her thighs beneath her dark but sheer pantyhose. None of us were bold enough to challenge her on it, even considering the fact that she had earlier refused to allow me to conceal my hard-on when I had stripped to full nudity. I think none of us wanted to anger her in case the night came down to Hanna choosing with whom to spend the night.

  Anyway. So, here it was: Sudden death. Anyone who lost a round would be out of the game instantly. My heart was thumping ferociously as I watched. I trusted Hanna, and I felt confident that all this really was just a game, a diversion to help us all through the abominable tedium of the vacation. I knew it was paranoia that made me worry about her falling for Jake. In this final round, when I caught sight of Hanna checking out the impressive bulge in Hayden’s briefs for a moment or two, I even started to wonder if she might form romantic attachments to him instead, if Hayden won over Jake.

  Hanna lost the round, though only just. We had to debate whether a flush beat a straight, and Hayden’s flush came out on top so that he claimed her remaining pistachio nut shell chips. I felt some relief that I would not have to face Hanna choosing who she slept with that night, and choosing Jake over her husband.

  Again, she tried to strip without standing up. And yet to remove her pantyhose, to peel the thin black nylon down her legs, she had to push the chair back from the table—and this afforded us a stunning view of her full nudity anyway.

  I stifled a gasp as I laid eyes on her newly hairless pussy.

  I saw Hayden’s jaw drop as he laid eyes on it, too. Only Jake seemed to take the development calmly, merely smiling lustfully at the sight of her sweet, freshly shaven sex. Jesus. It was completely free of any hair, not even a narrow landing strip left behind. Had she shaven her pussy especially for him? I’d never seen anything like it—she’d never done anything like that for me. As much as I enjoyed the eroticism of a little fuzz down there, the sight of her like that was just so different—and so unlike the Hanna I thought I knew so well—it really hit me hard.

  It almost made me forget the fact that Hanna losing out now confirmed that I definitely would not get to spend the night with her that night.

  ‘You okay, buddy?’ Hayden asked me, apparently sensing that I might be upset that my wife would definitely be in someone else’s bed again for a night.

  I shrugged, ‘It’s the game, isn’t it?’

  I got pity from him, and a little mischievous smirk from Jake, but after a few moments I was back to feeling excited for the night. I felt a strange kind of pressure inside me that I now knew my Hanna would be sleeping with—and fucking—someone else that night, and yet it also felt to me as though the tension inside me would merely make it extra special when I did finally get to sleep with her myself. By that point she would have been extra wicked, she would have been twice as unfaithful, she would be even sexier to me than ever.

  The final round saw Jake versus Hayden. It was seriously tense. I looked across at Hanna, and though she was trying to conceal it, I strongly suspected that she was hoping for a Jake win. It made me feel a little sick to my stomach, but I told myself that she was only hoping for more time with him because she felt more comfortable going with a guy she’d already been with. I was quietly pushing for Hayden, of course, though I couldn’t show my support in any obvious way because of how it might be taken by the other guys. Jake might think I had a grudge against him after his night in Hanna’s bed. Hayden might think I harbored some kind of bisexual feelings for him or something.

  It seemed like the longest round of all. Like an epic Wimbledon final, the points went this way and then that, with Hayden grabbing a load of pistachio shells from Jake before Jake then won them back and then some, and vice versa.

  Then, finally, here it was. Hayden was betting strongly, and yet Jake was keeping up. They both went all in, and then they both laid their cards on the table.

  And I gasped.

  Chapter Eleven

  Yeah, you probably guessed it.

  Jake had won a second night with my wife. I was kind of hurt, kind of horrified—and yet still, that dark side of me was somehow ecstatic. My hard-on was back in force. Now that the game was over, I felt confident about hiding it with my pile of clothes again—and across the table I saw Hanna pulling on her bra again, shortly followed by her skirt as she became a little modest again, particularly compared to the previous evening’s nude march upstairs with Jake.

  Jake stood in his boxer shorts and roared, victorious. I didn’t hate him for winning—of course he would try for another night with Hanna, if he could. And he had been perfectly allowed to do so. I did try to assess how Hanna responded to Jake’s victory without looking as though I was scrutinizing her too closely. She was, plainly, delighted that Jake had won. She let out a squeal before remembering to contain her excitement in case it offended Hayden or myself.

  She was happy. But was she already in love with him?

  My heart strings were being tugged all over the place. My stomach was being squeezed and shoved and prodded all over the place, while a cloud of butterflies seemed to be attacking from within. I had never, ever been so nervous in my life. Even before my driving test.

  Hayden threw his hands up and gave a loud, exasperated sigh, as though he’d kind of expected to lose, and that he’d been wrong to hold out hope of any other outcome from tonight’s game. Did that mean he sensed Hanna’s affinity for Jake, too? I wondered.

  He said simply, ‘I’m out. Good night.’

  And then he was on his feet, grabbing his clothes under one arm, sullenly shuffling toward the stairs and away. He hadn’t even removed his briefs, that final forfeit for the losing man, and it seemed that unlike the previous night, no one was going to bother enforcing the rule. I didn’t care if Hayden got naked or not. It was only Hanna who would be interested in the guy getting his big dick out for her to see for a few moments, anyway, and she was clearly too absorbed in the fact that Jake had just won a second night with her.

  Hayden was a forlorn figure as he went upstairs, seemingly totally excluded from the party. I found myself watching him go, feeling sorry for him to the point where I was almost distracted from the way Hanna and Jake now came together, like lovers reunited after an enforced break, Hanna completely naked and Jake in only his boxer shorts.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Hanna said, beaming brightly from ear to ear as she pressed her forehead against his, a move that seemed so totally romantic and affectionate that it felt like my heart was being shredded to watch.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you I was good at poker?’ he said, his smile as broad as hers as their hands clasped together, and then their bodies came together, and then their lips came together.

  I stifled another gasp.

  They were kissing, passionately, right in front of me. Had they forgotten I was there? When I’d first discussed the strange fantasy I had with Hanna, the idea had been to watch her with someone else. Was she testing that idea now? Was she seeing if I wanted to watch this?

  ‘Well you’re hard now,’ I heard Hanna saying quietly before sniggering, and then Jake was chuckling too.

  Wow. I could see her almost bare breasts crushed against his chest, her stiff nipples would be pressing against him and making her libido crazy. I saw them slipping each other the tongue as they kissed, and the way she grabbed his ass as she held him, I knew she was clamping herself against his hard cock, feeling how hot he was for her.

  Their chemistry was so obvious, so powerful to watch. It was absolutely terrifying to me—and yet the most arousing thing I’d ever seen.

  I sat still, feeling incredibly awkward to be there, and yet so turned on. At least I could hold my clothes in front of my erection by now. I thought they had to k
now I was there, that any moment they’d excuse themselves and head upstairs for another night behind closed doors. But they didn’t seem to notice me. They continued making out passionately for what seemed like ages.

  Then, at last, I cleared my throat, thinking that if they weren’t going to excuse themselves, then I would excuse myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to watch—oh, I did. I suspected that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to handle what I saw— based on how I felt about them simply kissing—but I did want to watch nevertheless. Even so, Jake was one of my best friends. I feared that it would be forever awkward between us if I watched him fuck my wife and he knew I was there watching.

  I cleared my throat, and the two of them broke apart, surprised to find me still there.

  Jake said, ‘Oh... uh... sorry, man. I didn’t realize—’

  He was blushing. Hanna was blushing. Yet they still held each other close, as though they needed to use each other to conceal their most personal naked parts from my sight.

  ‘Hey, Sweetie,’ Hanna said, her face full of pity for me, and yet at the same unapologetic because I’d known what losing the game would mean. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Uh... yeah,’ I said, attempting to sound bright and breezy and not at all downhearted about what was going on in front of my very own eyes. ‘I was just going to... you know... say good night... get out of your way...’

  For a moment, I wondered if Hanna might make even a half-hearted offer to call off her anticipated night of adultery. She didn’t. She did say, ‘I love you,’ which was something, and the more I thought about it later, the more significant it felt to me. She turned to me slightly, and I could just about see between her legs—enough to remind me that she’d shaved her pussy for him. God.

  Had the evening’s poker game been a complete set-up? I supposed it would be hard to do, but the two of them did have a 50% chance of Hanna getting to be with Jake, assuming she would have chosen him if she’d won the game.

  I tried to shake off my feeling of paranoia, of a conspiracy developing behind my back.

  Jake just said, ‘Thanks, man,’ as though I’d just done him a solid.

  I gave a slight nod to him, which might have been interpreted as me confirming this was all right, that I would be able to walk out of here and just forget about it all, and at the end of the vacation forget that anything had happened at all between my wife and another man. I guess part of me was all right with it all—that devilish side, the kinky side, the side that wanted her to cheat on me, that wanted her to be naughty and sexy and completely liberated—but the part of me that had remained quiet, shocked, flustered by the reality of my wife eagerly cheating on me under the same roof, that part of me was reeling right now.

  Because as I walked out, toward the stairs—moving to claim my bedroom as my own for the night even if my wife wouldn’t be coming with me—I felt certain that Hanna was developing, or had already developed, some feelings for Jake.

  It was both agonizing and, I couldn’t deny it, deeply sexually exhilarating.

  *

  Upstairs, I turned into my room—our room. Whatever. I’d been shut out of my own bedroom the night before, unable to access anything from my own suitcase, unable even to brush my teeth since my stuff was in here. Not tonight. Hanna could sleep in Jake’s room tonight.

  I felt downhearted for a little while. The fear of losing Hanna to Jake simmered into a nervous refrain, but at the same time I was tired. It felt as though adrenaline had kept me going through the card game, and now that it was over my body was going through some kind of withdrawal. It reminded me just how little sleep I’d gotten the night before.

  I waited, wondering if Hanna and Jake were going to come upstairs. I wanted to go to the bathroom to get ready for bed, but I didn’t want to finish up using the facilities only to come back and find myself shut out of my bedroom again. But Hanna and Jake didn’t seem to be coming upstairs.

  I took a risk, used the bathroom. Maybe I’d turf them out of my room if they slipped in while I was away. I didn’t need to, as it happened. They didn’t come upstairs.

  On my way back to my room, I passed Hayden’s room, his door open a crack. I could hear him snoring away, sound asleep.

  Back in my own room, I closed the door behind me, shutting out the world. The wooden walls of the chalet and the way the double bed was wedged into a fairly small room, surrounded by what looked like IKEA furniture, made it feel like I was in a burrow, maybe hunkering down for hibernation.

  I perched down on the bed, feeling the tightness in my chest strengthen, my heart beating a little more forcefully as though my blood had thickened. My body was reminding me that my wife was downstairs, fooling around with another man. Perhaps even falling for him. I tried to ignore the anxiety, though I could feel the nervous energy eating away at my sleepiness, even if it couldn’t dispel my fatigue. The angel on my shoulder told me that I’d wanted to see what it would be like for Hanna to be unfaithful—and that even if it made me nervous, it was a huge turn-on. The devil on my other shoulder said I was losing my woman, that if I didn’t go right down there and take her away from Jake, that I’d soon find her wanting a divorce, demanding the freedom to move in with him.

  Maybe the angel on my one shoulder was a devil, maybe the devil wasn’t an angel. I couldn’t tell which was the more morally correct approach by then.

  I lay down in the bed, and I really wasn’t sleepy anymore. Tired, but not sleepy. I looked up at the ceiling and breathed deeply, trying to calm down. I could smell Hanna’s perfume. There was also an odd mustiness that hadn’t been there when Hanna and I had been sleeping here together. It took me a moment or two to figure out that the room reeked of sex. The bed reeked of sex.

  Jesus. If I hadn’t been thinking about it before, I was now: Hanna had spent all night the previous night fucking Jake in here. The sheets, the pillows had to be saturated in their sweat, their come. It was dry by now, but as I put my nose to the sheet beneath me, my senses were nearly overwhelmed with the confirmation of my theory.

  I could even detect the faint essence of Jake’s cologne in the sheets.

  Well, now I was rock hard once again, with no hope of ever getting close to sleep for a few more hours. I stroked myself a while, breathing in their smell even as I imagined them fucking downstairs—perhaps on the couch, perhaps on the kitchen counter, perhaps up against a wall. Maybe I’d sleep if I came.

  But the more heated I became, the more I dwelled on the thoughts about what exactly Hanna and Jake were getting up to downstairs. My brain was not going to let go, and neither, probably, was my erection.

  Were they just fucking down there? Or were they professing their love for each other, plotting a quickie divorce so that I might be put out of the picture altogether? My whole body was quivering with apprehension and fear.

  I had to know.

  Quietly, I slipped on a pair of gray sweatpants and an old white t-shirt with a faded Coca-Cola logo on the front, and then went back to the door, opening it a crack. I stopped still. Outside, I could hear Hayden snoring, and the wind howling outside the chalet—but nothing else. No sounds of fucking from downstairs. I tried to tell myself that it meant Jake and Hanna were probably just watching TV together, making a late-night snack.

  I even wondered, half-heartedly, if they might have broken up. Maybe they’d decided that after one night of rampant sex it was best that they refrain from repeating it, for fear that they might start having feelings for each other. Maybe something about Jake annoyed Hanna to the point where she didn’t want to sleep with him again, even if she was permitted to by the rules of our ridiculous game.

  The trouble was, I couldn’t believe anything like that. Not the way Hanna and Jake had been looking at each other during the card game, when they thought they were unseen by others.

  No. As I slipped out into the hallway, which suddenly seemed so cold compared to the small, snug hideaway that was my bedroom, I felt certain that Hanna and Jake were downstairs i
n each other’s arms, discussing how they might engineer to end my marriage. I was half right, as it happened.

  Chapter Twelve

  I crept down the hallway toward the stairs, doing my utmost to avoid any places where I knew there were particularly creaky floorboards, poised and ready to stand up and act as though I was simply heading downstairs to get a drink from the kitchen, if anyone came up the stairs, or if Hayden’s snoring stopped.

  Painfully slowly, I descended the steps, holding tight to the walls where the creaks were less likely.

  The first thing I heard was the television. To hear it made the chill in my chest thaw a little. Could it be true, that they were simply watching TV together after all? Perhaps they’d found a movie being shown in English with Slovakian subtitles. However, I soon recognized the serious gravelly tones of the older male TV presenter even if I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, and I knew for a fact that neither Jake nor Hanna could be paying any attention to that particular news broadcast. A few more steps down the stairs and I could hear Jake’s and Hanna’s voices. At the bottom of the steps, I could hear the characteristic wet sounds of two people making out.

  I peered around the corner of the hallway at the bottom of the steps. If they were on the couch, then they were lying down, where I couldn’t see them since the couch was facing away from me. Across from me, not too far away, was the island that divided the kitchen area from the rest of the open-plan living area. I felt certain I could probably crawl over there super-quietly, and if I was lucky I would not be detected. Then I might be able to sneak a few looks around the far corner of the island to see what Jake and Hanna were doing.

  I eased forward half a foot, my head moving out of the cover of the hallway wall—and was very nearly discovered.

  Jake and Hanna were not on the couch at all. They were over on the window seat, Jake leaning up against the wall on one end, Hanna sitting in front of him, between his legs. He had his arms around her, and she was able to turn her head to him so that they could make out.