Page 112 of Just Between Us

Slowly, she lays her cards down one by one. A four and a jack. I stare at her cards and then at her. My girl was holding a fucking four of a kind and knew it. Color me impressed.

Jackson stands to give Cassie a round of applause while Austin tips his head back, laughing. A grinning Cassie drags my chips her way and starts counting.

“Twenty. Forty. Eighty.” She pauses to stack them neatly. “One forty. Two hundred.” Another pause, eyes flicking up to mine, lit up and dancing. “Three twenty. Four hundred and sixty.”

Dusting her hands together, she looks at me and shrugs. “I catch on quickly.”

The drive home is quiet all of thirty seconds before I cut a look her way. “All right, spill it. Tonight wasn’t your first poker night, was it?”

Cassie tucks one leg beneath her in the passenger seat. “College. A group played in the common room. I mostly watched at first.” She looks at her nails, the picture of innocence. “And paid attention.”

“Paid attention,” I repeat.

“Mm-hmm,” she hums all sweetly.

I tap the steering wheel, letting this new information land. “Cassie.”

“Liam.”

“You hustled me.”

Cassie tips her head back and laughs, this unguarded sound that fills the whole cabin of my truck. She sounds so happy; I can’t help but laugh with her.

“You had it coming. Someone needed to knock you down a peg or two.”

“Well, see, now we have a problem,” I say, a brilliant idea already forming.

“What’s the problem?”

I suck in a breath through my teeth, like it pains me to say it. “I need a chance to win that back.”

“Is that so?”

Nodding slowly, I cluck my tongue. “This time though, you’ll wear a lot less clothes when I win.”

Cassie is alreadycross-legged on the floor, waiting, when I drop down across from her, deck in hand. My eyes sweep up once, then back down, eager to have her naked beneath me, cause we both know that’s how this will end.

I talk while shuffling the deck. “Five card draw. Whoever loses the hand takes something off. Socks count as two separate items.”

She looks down at her T-shirt, athletic shorts, and socks, and then at what I’m wearing.

“Do you have a belt on?”

I lift my shirt to reveal the leather belt at my waist.

“Take it off. Then we’re even.”

Making a show of it, I raise onto my knees and unbuckle the belt, slowly sliding it through each loop and drop it on the floor. “We’re still not even.” Cassie tilts her head in confusion. “Are you wearing a bra?”

With pursed lips, Cassie reaches beneath the back of her shirt, then up one sleeve and then the other. Dangling a lacy black bra from one finger, she leans forward and drops it into my lap. I swear this woman is trying to kill me.

“Happy?” she asks.

“Very. I’ll be happier when you’re naked. Now, let’s play.”

Cassie picks up her cards while a mask of total blankness slots into place on her face. This woman. I look at my own hand. It’s decent enough.

“How many?” I ask.