Call

"Call," I said, pushing another thousand in chips into the center of the table. No way was he going to beat my three ladies with a kicker to help break a tie.

I burned a card and dealt the turn.

It was a two of clubs. Pretty useless for anyone.

There was no betting left to be done since Mike was all in, so I immediately burned a card and dealt the river.

Eight of diamonds.

I was still feeling awfully confident when I turned over my pocket cards to reveal three of a kind.

Mike looked dejected.

Ha!

I knew that was a damn hard hand to beat. I could see the faces of the guys in the room, saddened by the fact that Emma would be removed from their prize pool, perhaps permanently.

I looked into Emma's face and could see her smiling hungrily at me. God, I was finally going to get to make love to her. She had promised me I would never get to fuck her. I had known what she meant. When the two of us have sex, it won't simply be a fuck. We will be making love, committing everything to our relationship and sealing it with sex, not just using sex as a form of entertainment.

And I was ready for it to happen, finally.

I actually was reaching to pull all the chips over to me as Mike dejectedly turned over his cards.

And then looked up to smile at me.

I looked down at his cards. Nine of Spades. Jack of Clubs.

Shit!

I’d been so focused on those two queens that I’d ignored the possibility of the straight with the ten and the eight. If we’d been betting on the River, I would have considered the possibility for sure as I would have had more time to think about it. But straights tend to be pretty rare. I’ve crashed and burned trying to get them way more often than I’ve actually had them, so it hadn’t registered with me in the few seconds I’d spent looking at the cards.

I was sure I had won.

I still hadn’t lost, of course. In fact I was still ahead by a couple of thousand chips, but that had been a bit of a nasty blow. I’d gone from having a huge lead, verging on insurmountable, to only barely having a lead.

The real problem, however, was that I spent the next three hands in a stupor. I’d been thinking about how much I was going to enjoy taking Emma to bed. The roar from the guys that filled the room as they suddenly realized that Mike had won the hand and was still in it had been almost deafening.

I knew going in that everyone was hoping I’d lose, but it still felt like a slap in the face to hear how excited they were that Mike had won that hand.

My three hands of sulking were rather costly. By the end of them, Mike had regained the lead in chips. He’d also regained the lead in confidence. It's hard to beat Mike in poker when he is feeling that confidence. Within six more hands, I found myself being the one down to around 1000 in chips.

The excitement in the room was palpable.

Mike dealt a hand and Emma came over and gave me a hug. I thought she was trying to encourage me a little, but instead she leaned in to whisper in my ear.

"Hear that sound?" she said. "It's the sound of claws being sharpened."

Then she walked over and directed Mike to move his chair back from the table and then sat on his lap, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, then looking at me and smiling. I could easily recognize that smile. It was the one she used when she wanted to see me squirm.

It worked.

"He's going to save me, guys," she announced to the room as she looked at me with that evil little grin. I felt the claws coming out already. The implication was clear. She needed Mike to rescue her from the dread of only being able to have sex with me.

She had sent a clear message to the room. Mike was her hero for keeping her in the Prize Pool. It was a sentiment shared by everyone else in the room, except me. I knew, however, that the message she had sent was really only meant for me. She wanted me to know that Dark Emma was ready and waiting to pounce. She was showing me the claws that would be engaging as soon as I lost.

When Mike won the next hand, she kissed him, long and hard, her fingers wrapped in his hair to hold him tight against her kiss. This generated a combination of cheers and cat calls from around the room, but felt like a punch in the gut to me.

I feel like I need to make a clarification here. I want to make it clear that I was trying really hard to win. I had decided to do this only because I knew I was okay with both outcomes, but I knew going in that I had to play to win. There was no difference between trying to lose and just picking the option where Emma still got to be with other men. At no point during the night did I ever feel like trying to lose, even though I knew that I would be okay with the outcome if I lost.

Which I did.

It was really never even close after the hand played out where I thought I had won. The shock of that one lost hand put me in a hole from which I would never recover.

When Mike won the last hand, the room erupted in applause. Everyone was super excited that Emma would still be available for them to keep fucking. Everyone in the room gave him high fives, exulting that he had managed to keep me from winning and taking her away from them, from making her my own.

While they were doing that, Emma snuck back over to me and once again whispered into my ear.

"I love you, Isaac," she said to me, "but it is Dark Emma's turn to come out and play. I hope you're ready."

That message made my heart soar at the same moment it filled me with dread. It was the first time she had ever used the words 'I love you', which sounded heavenly to hear. But, of course, as is nearly always the case with Emma, there was delicious irony in those words. It was apropos that the first time she told me she loved me would be in a sentence where she was telling me to prepare myself against the teasing that was about to ensue as she readied herself to be fucked by someone else.

She walked back over to Mike and hugged him excitedly.

"My hero," she declared, "saving me from the boredom of monogamy."

She pulled him in to give him a kiss that lasted for well over a minute and involved a lot of tongue. The guys in the room began chanting.

Mike!

Mike!

Mike!

Mike!

Mike!

He was everyone’s hero in that moment and he was loving it. It certainly didn’t hurt that he got a deeply passionate kiss from Emma as a reward.

“Okay you two,” Ryan said, interrupting their embrace. “You’ll have to pick Emma as your prize to go any further than that.”

Then he stood up on a chair.

“Congratulations to Mike for winning The Game tonight, and a hearty thank you from everyone for keeping our Prize Pool intact. So now the question is, who are you claiming for your prize tonight?”

Mike looked over at me. I could see the questioning look in his eyes. He was a good friend. He wanted to gauge how I might feel about what he was about to do.

I smiled at him and shrugged. I found myself actually really glad it was him.

“Emma,” he said definitively.

The whole group joined in another great cheer.

“Oh,” Emma responded, “the knight in shining armor wants to fuck the damsel in distress, does he?”

Laughter and cheers came, once again, from the group.

“Well,” she continued, “I’m not sure the king would approve of his knights taking advantage like that, but this damsel sure as hell does. I’ve been wanting to look inside that armor all night.”

She kissed him again and I watched Mike slide his hands onto that perfect ass, knowing that it would be his for the evening, and not mine.

As the remaining guys began selecting their partners for the evening, Emma led Mike over to me by the hand, then she grabbed my hand and led us out into the hallway.

"You were so, so close, Isaac," she said to me. "you almost made me yours. But now your best friend is going to fuck me yet again. How many times do you think he is going to get to have me before you ever get a crack at it?"

I looked at Mike. He was avoiding eye contact with me. He was really unsure about the dynamic between Emma and myself, not at all sure how I could be turned on by it. I wasn't sure either, but as I watched her drag Mike down the hall and into the very room where she had taken me earlier to kiss me and tell me she was ready to be all mine, I could feel the incredibly hard lump in the front of my pants. I don't have any idea why it turned me on, but goddamn did it ever turn me on.

Let the skydiving begin!