The Handbook_A Contemporary Teacher Romance

  You want to have lots of sex with lots of women, I reminded myself. So snap yourself out of it and stop lusting after this one! Put her firmly in the friend category and stop thinking about what she feels like on the inside.

  I forced my attention back to my menu, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on reading any of it. Instead, my mind kept floating back to images of Nikki naked on my bed, looking up at me with those sensual eyes of hers while I thrust inside of her again and again.

  “Earth to Derek,” she said, suddenly pulling me away from my lustful thoughts.

  “What?” I asked, albeit a little too grumpily.

  She motioned to the waiter who somehow had appeared next to our table without my ever spotting him. It was as if the air had just spat him out.

  “Do you know what you want?” Nikki continued, prodding me to speak.

  “Oh,” I said as I glanced back at my menu, feeling suddenly embarrassed that I was so clearly off my game.

  “He’s a little slow,” Nikki said to the man, sounding like she was apologizing for that fact. “Probably need to give him some more time. That, and English is his second language.”

  “English is not my second language!” I demanded, a smile already taking my lips. “But my dining partner here has a smart mouth.”

  The waiter nodded but looked completely uncomfortable, as if he had no idea how to react to us. “Very good, sir,” he finally said.

  “Nik, do you know what you want?” I asked as I faced her.

  “Yes, my darling,” she answered, throwing me completely for a loop. “I would like the salmon, please,” she said as she faced the waiter and he dutifully wrote her order down. “And I would love it if my husband over here would stop spending so much time with my best friend.”

  I felt my stomach drop as I glanced at her and caught her huge smile. The waiter, meanwhile, said nothing but kept his gaze strictly glued to his notebook. So the little minx wanted to play, did she? Well, then, we would play.

  “If my dear wife would stop running up the credit cards and saying she has a headache every night, maybe I wouldn’t need to spend so much time with her best friend,” I finished as I faced Nikki with an expression of victory. Her eyes were wide and she was doing her best to hide a giggle which she turned into a cough. I glanced back at my menu before looking up at our waiter, who was now a very pronounced shade of red. “And I will have the filet, please. Medium rare.”

  “And your side, sir?” he asked, as if Nikki’s and my conversation were nothing out of the ordinary.

  I glanced over at Nikki and found she was still wearing a huge smile. “Brussel sprouts,” I answered as I closed my menu and handed it to him. “Because those are Jill’s favorite.”

  “I should just stand up and walk out of here right now,” Nikki answered, her voice wavering as she did her best to conceal her smile.

  “I will be back to check on you both when your food arrives,” the poor waiter announced as he nodded quickly and then hightailed it out of the room.

  Nikki exploded into a round of giggles and I couldn’t do much to keep from laughing either. “We are going straight to hell for that,” I said as I shook my head.

  “But wasn’t it fun?” she asked, a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

  “Too much fun,” I answered as the words echoed in my mind.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Femme Fatale Handbook

  Part Two: Putting all of this to use

  Chapter Ten: Make Him Need You

  In this chapter, we will discuss the fact that you have to make your target think he needs you, that he can’t live without you. You have to make him equate you with his own sense of happiness. Play on the fact that every man feels as if there is a part of his life that is lacking. Of course, he will probably never admit this to you, but it’s true nonetheless. People wear masks around other people in an attempt to make it seem as though they want for nothing and are completely happy with their lives. Think about Facebook. The difference between someone’s real life and the life they pretend to have on Facebook are usually night and day.

  The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to be 100 percent satisfied with one’s life—it goes against the laws of human nature. Humans are never happy with what they have. They are, instead, forever reaching, looking for something, wanting whatever it is they don’t have, and they are never satisfied. He might think he’s happy and content with his life, but you need to show him that he isn’t. You must stir a need within him. You must make him aware of an emptiness in his life and then position yourself as the antidote to that emptiness. Make him feel like you are the one thing that can make him feel whole again. You are the one thing that can relieve him of his boredom or cure him of his loneliness.

  Not sure what it is that he’s lacking in his life? Look at his personality and pinpoint his insecurities. Every man has them. Let me repeat that—every man has insecurities. Some just do a better job of covering them up. It’s your duty to uncover them. Any of his insecurities are fair game. Find them, and once you do, focus on them—make them seem bigger than they really are and then project yourself as the solution to whatever problem he has. Present yourself as the answer to his lack of excitement or adventure. Present yourself as a break from the norm. You are the drug, and you must make him become dependent on you.

  ***

  NIKKI

  “So, how’s it going?” Dani asked me as we jogged through MeadowLane Park which was just down the street from sorority row.

  “It’s going really well,” I answered truthfully but then sighed, something which wasn’t easy given the pace we were keeping. I started to slow down to a walk as Dani followed suit beside me. “Well, it is and it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked as she faced me with concern.

  “Well, I mean that I think it’s working on Derek’s side. He can’t seem to take his eyes off me, and he seems to look for any excuse to hang out with me.”

  “Okay,” Dani started, looking at me with confusion. “Both of which sound like they should be categorized in the good column? Am I missing something?”

  I nodded. “Yes, you’re missing the fact that I’m totally falling for him.”

  She started to shake her head. “You can’t do that,” she insisted.

  “I know,” I answered, sounding annoyed because she was just affirming what I already knew. “But it’s not exactly easy to stop myself, is it?”

  “You have to!” Dani insisted as she faced me with an earnest expression. “You can’t lose control, Nikki. Not when you’ve gotten this far with him.”

  I nodded as I took a deep breath. “So how do you talk yourself out of having feelings for someone?”

  “You focus on all the ways he’s not good for you,” Dani answered. “You keep telling yourself as many times as you need to that you aren’t falling for him. You tell yourself to keep your cool. You remind yourself that you’re a femme fatale and you want to stay that way.” She took a deep breath.

  “Maybe,” I answered with a quick nod. “I guess that’s all I can do.” Then I faced her as I stretched my arms up above my head. “Because I don’t know what else to do.”

  “You nearly threw your game that night when you got drunk and you came on to him,” Dani reminded me, her tone dead serious. “But luckily you followed Jane’s advice and you were able to get back up on the horse after it bucked you off. And it seems you were even able to use what could have been a really bad situation to your advantage. You don’t want to throw all of that away, Nik.”

  “He calls me Nik now,” I pointed out, shaking my head because I knew I shouldn’t have felt giddy over that fact.

  “Who cares?” Dani demanded. “Who cares what the hell he calls you? Don’t get in over your head—not until he offers you what you want,” she continued.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what do you want from him?”

  I shrugged as I thought about it. “A relationship,
I guess?”

  “Okay, so until he offers you a relationship, you continue to play the game,” Dani said, but then she started shaking her head. “I’m not sure that’s even a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t me wrong, I really like Derek, but I’m not sure he’s someone you should get attached to. He just doesn’t strike me as boyfriend material.”

  “Why?” I asked, genuinely curious and downcast at the same time.

  “Why?” she repeated, clearly at a loss. “Because he’s a playboy! You’ve heard all the rumors about him. He’s not someone who will ever settle down, or at least not for a long time. All he does is break hearts, Nik, he doesn’t make them.”

  “Dude, you should work for Hallmark,” I said with a smirk. “He breaks hearts, he doesn’t make them? That’s good shit, Dani.”

  “I’m serious,” she insisted.

  “I know you are, and I also know you’re right,” I admitted as I breathed out deeply, feeling my shoulders slouching.

  “Think about his reputation. Think about all the girls he’s banged and then left them on their sorry asses. Do you want to be one of those?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. “Definitely don’t want to be banged and left behind on my sorry ass.”

  “So stop letting yourself get carried away with romantic feelings you have no business feeling. Pull an overnighter reading The Femme Fatale Handbook if you need to beef up your defenses.”

  I cocked my head to the side as I considered it. “Not a bad idea, actually.”

  “You’re in the home stretch, girly,” Dani continued. “As I see it, you’re going to have Derek eating out of your hand pretty soon.”

  “To what end?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he’s eating out my hand, doesn’t that mean he wants a relationship with me?”

  “Maybe,” she answered, looking at me as if she failed to see my point.

  “So, wouldn’t that mean that I won?”

  She started shaking her head emphatically. “No. You win when you continue to play him, when you continue to hold the strings.”

  “Cleopatra got into two long-term relationships all while still pulling the strings,” I pointed out.

  “Okay, good point,” Dani ceded. “But you’re not Cleopatra.”

  “Ugh,” I grunted, but I couldn’t argue with her.

  “You’re still in training,” she continued. “And you’ve got a long way to go. So keep your legs shut tight and don’t let Derek’s penis between them.”

  “You have such a way with words,” I said with a smile I really didn’t feel.

  ***

  I knew Dani was right. Everything she said was on point. And even though I also was fairly convinced that I could wrap Derek around my finger if I wanted to, I couldn’t say that feeling brought me any sort of warmth. The truth was that I liked him—like really liked him. We had so much fun together and he made me laugh. And he was hot. Insanely hot. And I totally wanted to have sex with him. Like more than I could remember ever wanting anything ever.

  And the fact that I couldn’t was bumming me out. But Dani was right—I didn’t want to sleep with Derek and wake up dumped the next morning. Because I did value our strange friendship or whatever it was. I valued our laughs and talks and our interactions with each other, and if that was all this was ever going to be, well, that would have to be good enough for me. It was good enough for me.

  So why wasn’t I texting him back? I glanced down at my phone as I lay in my bed and sighed. His last text stared back up at me.

  Hello, McFly? You there?

  I couldn’t bring myself to respond. And it wasn’t that I was playing some game, aka the part of the femme fatale who was ignoring him. I just didn’t want to respond. I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to get my hopes up on Derek. I didn’t want to get even more attached to him than I already was.

  And what was more, I wanted him to stop pursuing me because his constant attention was making this whole situation even harder on me. The truth was that I wanted things to go back to how they’d been in the beginning—when I knew him to be nothing more than an egregious flirt and I didn’t take him seriously. I wanted to go back to a time before I’d seen inside him—into a part of him that he kept walled off. A part that was kind and sweet. The part of him that had caused him to put his arm around me when we’d walked past Brandon. It was much easier dealing with Derek when I thought he was just one dimensional.

  So I didn’t text him back. And I didn’t answer his texts or his phone call the next day or his multiple texts and phone calls the day after. I shouldn’t have been too surprised when he came by the ZTS house the following day. I was sitting in my room, watching a cooking show and waiting for Dani to get back from getting her nails done. There was a knock on my door, and when I opened it, I found a very pissed off Derek standing there, staring at me.

  “You better be dead,” he started as he glared at me. “Or, at the very least, maimed to the point of near death.” He looked me up and down. “But you appear to be neither.”

  I laughed because I couldn’t help it. “Yeah, I’m not dead. I’m sorry?” I asked with a shrug.

  “I can see that,” he answered as he pushed the door open and stepped into my room, taking stock of it quickly before he closed the door behind him.

  “Apparently you aren’t very familiar with sorority houses,” I started.

  “I’m very familiar with them as I’ve spent a lot of time in various sorority rooms,” he answered, his tone like ice.

  His response didn’t faze me. He was angry and he was lashing out at me. That much was obvious. “Hmm, well, I find that hard to believe, because if you were familiar with sorority houses, you’d realize we have a rule where we aren’t allowed to have guys in our rooms.”

  He waved me away with an unconcerned hand. “That is an outdated and stupid rule which I guarantee you every girl in this house has broken … repeatedly.”

  I laughed and shrugged because he was right. And, furthermore, I knew I wasn’t going to get rid of him so easily.

  “So, what’s going on with you?” he demanded as he looked at me. “You’ve been ignoring me for three days.”

  “I’ve just been busy,” I responded as I dropped my attention to the hemline of my sweater and pretended extreme interest in it.

  “Busy doing what?” he demanded as he took a step closer and I took one back.

  “Oh, you know,” I started with a shrug.

  “No, I don’t know,” he insisted. I made the mistake of looking up at him and found him staring at me with his arms crossed and an angry expression on his face. As soon as our eyes met, I swallowed hard.

  “I’ve, uh,” I started but found the words failing me.

  “You realize summer classes start in four days, right?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “And we haven’t reviewed all the lesson plans in their entirety.”

  “I figured we could review them as we go,” I responded. “I mean, we’ve already gone over all the information for the first two weeks.”

  He didn’t respond right away but stared at me, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “Are you seeing someone?” he asked finally.

  “Um, what?”

  He took a step closer to me and I felt my heartbeat start to race in my chest. “Are you dating someone?” he repeated. “I was trying to figure out why the hell you would completely stop talking to me, and that was the only reason I could come up with.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do—” I started.

  “Is some guy telling you we can’t be friends or hang out anymore?” he asked, his tone suddenly angrier as if the thought was sending him into a fit.

  “No, Derek,” I started.

  “Then why the fuck aren’t you texting me back?” he demanded as he took another step closer to me so no more than a few inches of air separated us. By now my heart was pounding and I found I couldn’
t look him in the face. “Why, Nikki?”

  “Um,” I started.

  “Look at me,” he ordered as he reached forward and tipped my chin up, held my face so I couldn’t drop my attention. “Why did you go silent on me?”

  “I, uh, I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?” he asked with an angry laugh. “What does that even mean?” he continued as he shook his head and dropped his hands back to his side. I immediately dropped my gaze to the ground but then forced it back to his face. And that was where I made my mistake.

  He was beautiful. His dark eyes were so full of anger and hurt that I wanted nothing more than to reach out to him and run my fingers down the side of his face and tell him how I really felt. But I knew I couldn’t do that.

  “I,” I started and then took a deep breath, trying to still my heart.

  But I wasn’t able to finish my sentence. In one fluid motion, he bridged the distance separating us, gripped the back of my head, and brought his mouth down on mine. I was shocked for maybe a split second before hormones started flooding me and I felt myself melt into him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pushed myself into him, opening my mouth so I could feel and taste his tongue. He groaned as he gripped me and pulled me into him, even closer than I had been. So close that I could feel his erection pressing into my waist. And then thoughts of him naked, of me naked, began swarming my head like an upset hornet’s nest. I could imagine him thrusting into me, feeling my wetness. I could imagine looking into his eyes as he took me. God, I wanted him. I wanted him so badly, it hurt.

  “No!” I insisted as soon as the thought of where this was headed raced into my head. I pulled away from him and then placed my palms against his chest, pushing him away another few inches. “We can’t do this.”

  “You want this as much as I do,” he insisted, and I found I couldn’t answer because I was panting. I did want him. God, I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anyone. But I couldn’t give in to these feelings. I wouldn’t give in to them.