“No way is this ending in a tie. There will be a winner,” she said.
“We could use Bo Peep’s goldfish,” I suggested.
Dani shook her head. “No, Tristan took those with her.”
I lifted the glass, tossing back the contents, knowing the sooner it was gone, the sooner I’d get my senses back. The sooner I could stop letting my dick drive my brain. I inhaled just as she said, “Strip poker it is, then.”
And I nearly died coughing.
She smiled the wide smile she and all her siblings had been blessed with from their Italian heritage, but on Dani, it looked like a rainbow. Color. Light. Something you never wanted to forget.
“You okay there, Otter?” she asked, rubbing her finger along the table. She was bluffing. My eyes lingered on the finger before going back to her face.
“Challenge accepted,” I said, knowing she’d back down.
She glanced at her finger on the table and then back to me. “Goddamnit,” she swore as she realized the tell I’d picked up on.
She stood, went to the door, and came back with a pair of flip-flops she put on her feet as she sat down. If she was drunk, she was holding it well; there’d hardly been a sway to her body as she’d done it.
“Your deal, Pretty Boy.”
I laughed. “Pretty Boy?”
She shrugged.
“You cheated. You put on shoes,” I said. “As you were so quick to point out, you’re the better player. I’m the one who should get extra clothes.”
“I have on five items, including the flip-flops. You have on eight unless you’re wearing your boots without socks,” she retorted, chin raised.
I took her in, counting items as I went. Bra. Tank top. Flip-flops. Yoga pants…shit. I swallowed hard. That meant there was nothing under those yoga pants. Just parts of her body I wanted to touch with my mouth and my tongue. Places I was sure I could touch and make her gasp my name in a different way. Pretty Boy. Otter. Whatever the hell she wanted to scream.
Just thinking those thoughts had me sobering up. We needed to stop. We were playing with a fire neither of us could afford. One that would likely end with one or both of us burnt to a crisp.
I picked up my sunglasses I’d left on the table earlier and put them on.
“Now I have nine,” I said. I wouldn’t let either of us get completely naked. We’d get down to the swimsuit level of nudity, and then I’d call it off. Check and mate.
She smirked and took the cards as I dealt them out.
I lost five hands to her two, because let’s face it, the thought of Dani naked was more of a distraction than almost any man could withstand. I lost my glasses, both boots, and both socks. She lost the flip-flops.
She hadn’t realized her eyebrow tell, and when I folded, she smirked. “I won. Take something off.”
“That doesn’t count. I folded.”
“I won. That means you lost. You have to lose an item of clothing,” she said, as she finished the last glass of whiskey.
“You didn’t set those parameters before we began.”
“This isn’t a mission, Otter. This is strip poker. Everyone knows the rules,” she said as she shuffled the cards. She was back to using two hands instead of the one-handed shuffle she’d done earlier.
“I haven’t played a lot of strip poker,” I told her.
Her mouth dropped. “Wait, like, not a lot or never?”
I shrugged.
“Oh my God, you’re a virgin.”
I snorted. “Not hardly.”
She laughed, the sound running through my veins stronger than the whiskey. “Not like that, Pretty Boy. A strip-poker virgin. I should have put on another ten items. Virgins always have beginner’s luck.”
She winked at me, and it went straight to my balls. Jesus. If I won, she’d be naked, and I knew for a fucking fact, a naked Dani would be my undoing. I’d never be able to resist her. Mac would kill me. Tristan would hate me even more.
I won the next hand, and she lost her tank top. She was down to two things, and my palms went sweaty in a way they never did on a mission as I took in the tall, dark-haired beauty in front of me. She was like no one I’d ever been with before, and I’d had my fair share of women. Like many of my teammates, we had a hard time settling down.
Many SEALs didn’t tie the knot until they retired, because they didn’t want to put someone they loved through exactly what Tristan had gone through—was going through. I was never going to retire, so there was never going to be a forever after for me. If I’d had any doubts, my limited ability to hold on to a relationship with Angie and Tristan’s sad face had erased them.
I lost the next round. Too many thoughts and not enough concentration. My belt fell to the ground. When I lost the next round also, I pulled my T-shirt over my head, and her eyes lingered on my scar and then traveled down my chest as if she was memorizing every tattoo.
“We should stop,” I said as my head cleared more, leaving the alcohol behind us. I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. We’d been playing for hours.
“Bawk. Bawk. Bawk,” she said as she dealt out the cards again. “Thought you said SEALs never quit.”
The dare in her voice, the push on my button that was raw from having my buddies, my brothers, walk away, made me pick up the cards she handed me.
I took two, and she took one. She dealt the flop. And even if we’d had something to ante with, neither of us would have. She dealt the turn, and there was an expression on her face I wasn’t used to. Something she was debating inside.
The river card came, and I had a pair of queens. Not anything to get overly excited about, but when I turned them over, she sighed dramatically.
“Well, damn,” she said.
Her eyes
