Page 25 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
The transformation had been instantaneous. Total.
Maybe that’s how Napoleon felt, I thought, the first time he read Einhard’sLife of Charlemagne: shut the book, looked up, and decided to conquer Europe.
The photographer blinked. Twice.
He glanced at me, as if to check whether there was a hidden camera, then back at her. He wasn’t sure if he’d just been insulted in poetry form or hit with some revolutionary new seduction tactic.
For a heartbeat, he looked on the verge of laughing. Nervous laughter, maybe. Embarrassment.
But instead, his eyes flicked toward his friends, searching for an anchor, someone to drag him back to reality.
They, however, wore the exact same expression:
Eyebrows raised. Mouths slightly open. Eyes glued to Tess.
Masks of disbelief. Or maybe fascination. Or maybe they were just wondering if a destructive goddess with a sense of humor had just walked into the bar.
In the end, the man cracked.
A smile.
Genuine? Maybe.
Definitely awkward, but tinged with fascination.
And in that moment, I knew—for better or worse—the game had begun.
He was about to speak—probably something rational—when Tess cut him off with the solemnity of a medium in trance:
“You have the same eyes as the opium poet who left me. Long ago. I won him back by reciting Neruda while standing over an open grave.”
The man lifted an eyebrow, startled but polite, wearing that diplomatic half-smile people get when they’re caught off guard and don’t want to ruin… whatever this is.
He opened his mouth again—maybe to ask if it was a quote, maybe to check if this was a psychology test—but Tess sliced in once more:
“May I sit?”
The three men—him in the middle, his friends on either side—instinctively shifted to make room. But she didn’t move.
She’d already calculated it. Sitting there would’ve left her boxed in by the guy on the edge, and worse,it would’ve put her with her back to the room. Which would leave him in the dominant position.
Unacceptable.
So she extended a hand toward one of the outer friends, with the choreographed grace of a noblewoman requesting gallantry.
He, confused but willing, took it.
And Tess lifted him.
Literally.
With a small flick of her wrist and a sorceress’s smile, she urged him up.
He obeyed, like a tourist lured into a dance without realizing he’d just been drafted into a choreography.
Tess twirled him lightly, slipped into his seat with the sleight-of-hand of a stage magician—and a second later was exactly where she wanted: at the blonde’s side, with the whole room before her, in full narrative and visual control.
The friend she’d spun and I were left standing like two extras who’d missed their cue.
