Chapter 277: 277 | The Thigh-Highs Stay On
She came back harder the second round. Her neutral game was actually excellent, the greatsword’s range making approach dangerous and her shield timing almost perfect. But I’d played against this archetype for years in another life, knew the rhythm of heavy characters down to the frame data. She swung. I weaved. She committed to a read. I was somewhere else entirely.
I took three more stocks across the next two rounds. Aurora lost two more. The score wasn’t even close.
Aurora removed her right sock and then the cropped sweater, revealing a black sports bra underneath that clung to her torso. "This is bullshit. You’re a smurf."
"I just have good fundamentals."
"You have previous life experience with fighting games and you didn’t tell us." She jabbed her controller at me accusingly. "That’s basically cheating."
"Not my fault you chose a character with three approach options."
Addison had removed her tank top after her second stock loss. The black bra she wore underneath was lace, the kind that looked expensive and probably came from a specific shopping trip I’d been present for. Her pale shoulders and the curves of her chest drew the eye in ways that were becoming a serious distraction from the gameplay.
Which, I was beginning to realize, might have been the entire point.
The next round started and things changed.
Aurora leaned against my left shoulder, her bare skin warm through my shirt sleeve. Her hand rested on my thigh in a gesture that was absolutely not accidental, her thumb making slow circles that kept pulling my attention from the screen to her fingers and back.
Addison shifted on my right side until her hip pressed against mine. Her hair fell across my arm, soft and smelling like vanilla and whatever shampoo cost way too much at stores that played music too loud.
My spear character whiffed a combo. Aurora’s fire mage caught me in a juggle. First stock gone.
"Take something off, milk boy." Aurora’s voice had dropped into that register she used when she wanted something and knew she was going to get it.
I removed my left shoe. Addison snorted.
The next exchange went worse. Every time I tried to concentrate, Aurora would lean closer and breathe something against my neck, or Addison would shift her weight and her leg would press harder against mine and the warmth from her bare skin would spread through the denim of my jeans. My inputs suffered. My timing degraded. Spacing that had been perfect three minutes ago became sloppy because half my brain was processing the physical proximity of two very attractive women in very little clothing.
I lost another stock to Addison’s counter. The one Aurora had warned me about. The one I should have read coming from a mile away except Addison had chosen that exact moment to stretch her arms above her head, and the motion lifted her lace bra just enough to reveal the lower curve of her breasts and my eyes went somewhere they shouldn’t have and my character walked directly into the greatsword.
"Oops," Addison said.
I removed my right shoe.
"They’re playing dirty," I announced to the empty room.
"We’re playing to win," Aurora corrected, her hand climbing higher on my thigh.
The next three rounds were carnage. Not game carnage. My carnage. Aurora and Addison had apparently coordinated their assault without a single word, because they stopped fighting each other entirely and focused every projectile, every combo, every well-timed counter on destroying me specifically. Aurora pinned me between two fire walls while Addison’s greatsword came from above. I lost three stocks in ninety seconds.
Jacket gone. Shirt gone. Left sock gone.
I sat on the couch in jeans, one sock, and boxers, flanked by two women who had somehow turned a party game into a coordinated seduction operation.
"You’re teaming," I said.
"We’re not teaming," they said in unison.
"That response was literally synchronized."
Aurora’s fire mage hit me with a fully charged projectile. Stock gone. Right sock off.
Addison’s knight caught me in another counter. Last stock of the round. I reached for my jeans button.
"Wait." Addison set her controller down. "Before that."
She stood up from the couch. The movement was casual, unhurried, like she was getting up to grab water. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her bike shorts and started pulling them down.
My brain activity flatlined.
The shorts slid down past her hips, revealing black lace panties that matched her bra. Her thighs were toned and pale, the skin marked by two small combat scars near her right knee that caught the warm light from the string lights outside. She stepped out of the shorts and kicked them aside.
She stood there in a black lace bra and matching panties, her black and purple hair falling around her shoulders, the lollipop stick still protruding from the corner of her mouth. Thigh-high black stockings I hadn’t noticed she was wearing because the bike shorts had covered them started just above her knees and clung to the shape of her legs all the way up to mid-thigh where the lace tops bit gently into the soft skin there.
Time dilated. The living room shrank to a single focal point.
"Lost two stocks earlier," she said, voice flat and unbothered like she hadn’t just detonated a psychological weapon. "Paying my debts."
She reached for the top of her left stocking and started rolling it down.
"Stop."
Addison’s hands froze at the lace edge of the stocking. Her violet eyes snapped to mine.
"The thigh-highs stay on."
The room went very quiet. Aurora, who had been reaching for a chip from the bowl on the coffee table, stopped with her arm extended like someone had pressed pause on reality. Her green eyes moved between me and Addison with the sharp awareness of a woman watching something she’d been engineering for weeks finally ignite.
Addison held my gaze. The lollipop clicked against her teeth once. A flush crept up from her collarbones, spreading across the pale skin of her chest and neck in a way she absolutely could not control. Her pupils expanded, the violet contacts doing nothing to hide the dilation happening behind them.
"That’s not how strip rules work," she said. Her voice came out different. Lower. The aggressive rasp that usually dominated her speech patterns had softened into something that sounded almost vulnerable.
"My request. Not a rule." I set the controller down on the coffee table without breaking eye contact. "The stockings stay on."
Two seconds passed. Three.
Addison released the lace edge of the stocking. Her hands fell to her sides. The flush on her chest deepened.
"Fine," she said, and the word carried enough subtext to fill a novel. "But you still owe me three coffee jellies."
