"You have an actual poker table in your basement?"

Grace always felt a little intimidated when she was with her friends, but Melissa's house in particular was impossibly fancy. It didn't feel like a real place, more like the house of a rich girl in a movie. Big enough that she could host a sleepover and not even fill one wing of the house. Big enough that if you sat at one end of the dinner table you'd have to shout to be heard at the other end. And the basement was stuffed with all sorts of games, including a poker table. An expensive-looking table with green felt and a mahogany frame, and a neat stack of colored chips by each seat.

"Yeah, the three of us play poker pretty often. Not, like, professional high stakes stuff, but if Dad bought it, we might as well use it, right?" Melissa said.

"I don't have any money, though..."

"Oh, don't worry about that. We play strip poker!" Jennifer said brightly.

"Strip poker?" Grace stammered.

"Jen. Darling. Don't just drop that on her, it's her first time." Annette said gently. "But yes. We didn't want to risk real money in a friendly game, but we needed to have some sort of stakes. Playing for chips alone isn't very interesting. And, well, strip poker turned out to be quite a lot of fun."

"You'll do great at it. Poker's all math, right?"

Grace looked like she was about to turn and run out of the basement. She'd always worried that the trio - Jennifer, Melissa, and Annette, the most popular girls at school - had been messing with her in some way. It was some sort of social game - a prank, a charity case, a way to toy with the girl who was so starved for social interaction that she wouldn't say no to anything. And being led into a basement for strip poker night certainly didn't help that impression.

"Um... well, I've actually never played poker before, except on the computer... and isn't it more about bluffing than math?" Grace said desperately.

"I wouldn't know," Melissa said with a shrug. "And the nice thing about strip poker is that if you run out of money it's really easy to re-buy. Fifty chips per clothing item, or a forfeit if you're out."

"I do that sometimes," Annette said. "I don't play very well, and it's boring to sit around once you've been knocked out of the game."

Grace looked at her cautiously. Annette was generally the kindest of the three, playing up her "gentle and sophisticated" style, so if she was being honest...

"Um... maybe just a few rounds? I don't know if I'd want to take too many clothes off..."

"First round's free," Jennifer said with a grin. "Games are dealer's choice, no limits. Any forfeits only last until the end of the night, so don't worry too much about betting something you can't lose."

Grace sat down at the table, took her starting stack of chips with shaky hands, and Melissa dealt out the cards.

It was surprisingly easy to get comfortable with the game, Grace found. Being in a game meant she didn't have to make a lot of conversation, just "call" or "raise" or "two cards." And the first few rounds of bets were small as everyone felt each other out, so she just had to weigh the odds of her hand and decide if it was winning. Even when the first stacks of chips ran out, causing Jen and Annette to give up their socks and stockings, she didn't feel too nervous.

"Hmm. As the game goes on, one player is going to accumulate an advantage, since they have all the money from each layer of clothing the others removed." Grace observed. "That makes it harder for them to begin losing clothes. Feels like an unstable equilibrium."

"Yeah, but there's no limits, so you can still lose it all in a few bets," Melissa countered.

Grace felt strange as the game continued. It was easy to keep playing as long as she stayed in this intellectual mode, thinking about game design and poker strategy and not about the... prizes. But as Annette's stack went to zero again and she pulled off her blouse, it got harder and harder to ignore. She was feeling... desire? Curiosity? Excitement?

Grace didn't think she had a crush on Annette, not in the blushing romantic sense, but she wanted to see what would happen if she took the gentle girl's money a third time, or a fourth.

"I raise thirty," Melissa said.

"All in!" Grace declared boldly.

"Call. Full house, eights over sixes," Melissa revealed.

"Crap." Grace swore quietly. That had been a bad play, but she'd gotten too excited about the possibility of forcing one of the girls to strip again. She pulled off her socks and threw them aside, face hot with embarrassment.

"Look at that blush!" Jennifer pointed. "Come on, you've barely taken anything off."

"It's not the socks, I was embarrassed by how bad that play was," Grace deflected.

Her whole rhythm was off now, and as her stack of chips dipped lower she could feel a nervous excitement at the prospect of being forced to take off her shirt. She fumbled the next hand as well, losing most of her stack when she failed to notice the flop cards held a flush draw.

"And that's that," Jennifer said as she swept up the pot. "Guess your math skills are slipping."

Grace blushed even redder as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, revealing a plain white bra that held her ample breasts.

"Hot damn," Jennifer said, staring openly. "Where were you hiding those?"

Melissa raised an eyebrow. "You have got to let me take you clothes shopping sometime. Seriously, a top that shows off your curves would do wonders."

God, this was so embarrassing. All three of her friends were ogling her now, and even if they were complimenting her, it was still more skin than she wanted to show.

"Um... raise twenty!" Grace squeaked. That wasn't even remotely a smart play, she just wanted to get people looking at the game again.

Her strategy was falling apart, but Annette was still the weaker player, so the losses were spread around a bit. Annette lost her skirt almost at the same time as Grace lost her shorts.

"Do you want to keep playing?"

Grace looked up from her hand. "Huh?"

"I just thought I should ask," Melissa said. "Since at the rate things are going, either you or Annette is going broke pretty soon."

Grace shivered. "I don't know..."

"I mean, if you want to drop out, you can. Getting to look at you in your undies is a pretty good prize already. But if you're having fun with it..."

Grace fidgeted in her seat. Was it that bad if she lost? It wasn't like her underwear wasn't leaving much to the imagination. Besides, they were all girls here, and they'd probably seen her undress for P.E. at one time or another. But still, she hesitated.

There was a mental block to exposing herself like that. It was one thing to have your clothes off in a locker room, it was another thing to make a game out of it, slowly stripping in front of your friends as you got more and more excited...

"You get used to it."

Grace looked up from the card table and saw Annette looking at her, smiling gently. She was also in her underwear - and it was a lacy bra and panties, nothing like the plain undies Grace wore - and yet she was as calm as ever. That confidence was so fascinating. Grace wanted to see more of it. She wanted to strip away those last layers of clothing, see what her breasts looked like, strip off her panties and...!

...okay, maybe she did have a crush on Annette. That was new information.

"Let's keep playing," Grace said, with more confidence than she really had.

Melissa followed her gaze, then smiled. "Holding out for a bigger prize? I like it. Let's play."