Prime’s partner got laid like a rock star, but beyond that similarity, he was not at all like Prime. Sage peacocked, wearing outrageous fancy clothes and even make-up (always accompanied by the perfect cologne), while Prime threw on the same jeans, leather jacket, and cowboy boots night after night. Sage worked and taught pick-up using a very mechanical system and was a great believer in the concept of “fake it till you make it” while Prime often improvised his pick-ups, and believed that if you made yourself into a quality guy the women would follow naturally. To top it off, Sage was a sushi-eating vegaquarian to Prime’s carnivorous ways.
HB7.5 was prattling on in response to a question he’d asked her about whether it was infidelity for a girlfriend to make out with a girl, and normally he would have cut her off, but he had just spotted Sage.
His partner, sporting a white suit and hat tonight, was approaching a large group, a mixed seven set, lounging around a fireplace at back. From a technical point of view, Sage looked good at first. He went right in and engaged the whole group, drawing everyone’s attention. Nice body language, good kino, touching three of the group within the first fifteen seconds. Still it was all for naught. Prime saw that the attempt was doomed, as the group’s body language shifted to lock him out.
Engaging a group of seven people all at once in a noisy club was not an easy thing to do, but a task well within Sage’s capabilities. Sometimes failure wasn’t your fault—you engaged particular individuals or sets who were not open to being approached by strangers—but this was rare. Almost everyone liked to talk with the coolest guy in the place, the life of the party. Almost everyone.
The girl he had just met continued to jabber on like they were old friends, allowing Prime to take a closer look at the set. Three men, four women, all attractive, both older and younger than him. He paired off the couples based on their seating arrangement and body language. The single girl in the group, well, she was breathtaking when he focused on her. Perfect cheekbones, beautiful smile, and huge eyes. Superhot babe, an eleven on the ten-point scale. SHB11 possessed a raw sexuality dancing in her model-quality features.
SHB11 was worth the risk of failure.
Failure was only certain when you didn’t try.
As Sage was patting one of the guy’s shoulders on the way out and trying to make his failure to hook the set inconspicuous to observers, Prime was telling HB7.5 that he’d needed to go say hi to a friend and was making his own departure.
As Prime made his own approach he passed by Sage. He smiled at his friend and gave him a quick high-five.
“Impossible set, man,” said Sage.
“Nothing’s impossible,” said Prime.
“Then show me how it’s done, Professor Prime.”
Prime just grinned at him and moved toward the fireplace.
He didn’t bother to open the set properly, the way Sage had done. Prime just bulled his way through to the fireplace and said, “Excuse me,” as he squeezed in to sit down on the bricks between SHB11 and one of her friends. “This fire looks awesome.”
It wasn’t exactly textbook. As an approach, he deserved points for placing himself next to his target, but that was about it. He had no doubt that Sage had tried three variations on textbook approaches and had failed with all of them, so why not?
“Chilly out there tonight,” he said, leaning back toward the fire.
There was an awkward moment as they evaluated him. He’d just invaded their space with a barely plausible excuse and they were trying to figure out if they were cool with that or not.
Prime gave them the moment, soaking in the heat. It was a little chilly outside tonight, that was the truth, and he felt no shame in taking the seat he had now.
He was a bold man who broke the rules and rarely felt fear, but at that moment, suddenly and surprisingly, despite the heat, the hairs on the back of his neck rose up. He felt . . . vulnerable.
That was odd. He’d set aside his approach anxiety years ago and just didn’t give a crap anymore how anyone received him.
There was something different about this group.
SHB11 leaned in his direction, a little, tilting her head down. His heart picked up its pace as she surreptitiously sniffed him.
Well, that was different. He didn’t move and held his position.
Everything relaxed then and his hairs settled back into place.
“I like your T-shirt, man,” said one of the guys in the group. Prime pegged him as the alpha member of the group. He was the oldest and the biggest guy there, and it seemed that he had now won the AMOG over without much effort. How had he done that? His shirt?
What shirt had he thrown on today? Oh, yeah. The one that said Meat is murder . . . tasty, tasty murder. It was Gaucho Grill day.
“Thanks,” Prime said automatically, using it to launch into one of his set stories. He raised his voice and engaged the whole group. “Tonight I hit my favorite restaurant, a Brazilian churrascaria. When the Brazilians barbeque they don’t slather on that goopy sauce like they do in the midwest. It’s just salt and meat, you know? Natural and honest, and tasty as hell. My place here is awesome, and they have everything. Every cut of beef all served on swords, pork, sausage, sometimes even ostrich. Oh, and chicken hearts, done the way I used to enjoy them in Rio.”
“You were in Rio? What were you doing there?” SHB11 asked.
“Yeah. I was there studying jujitsu, but I probably spent more time on the beach.” He went on about the views from Copacabana Beach, and the time used his martial arts training to rescue cute Israeli tourists from a mugger. It wasn’t his best story, not by a long shot, but it let him drop some interesting displays of higher value without too much bragging, and he could feel out a group with this stuff. Sometimes he turned off the hippy types, way too common in San Francisco, but pick-up wasn’t about scoring with every girl you met. It was about finding out who you were and what you wanted and being able to get it when you found it. Hippy chicks were not for him, SHB11 or not. Sage could take those.
“Chicken hearts?” SHB11 said, licking her lips. “Love them.”
A show of interest. Excellent. Prime smiled and gave her a quick hug. “You’re my kind of girl, aren’t you. Wait a second,” he said, pushing her away, “can you cook?”
“No,” she answered, giggling. “But I can eat.”
Hook point. He was in.
Her name was Anastasia, and she was not only a hot girl, she was a cool girl. Her group was . . . odd. The AMOG, it turned out, was her father, Yuri, and her mother was there, too, Elena. The others were an aunt and uncle and her older sister and husband. Not your usual clubbing set, but when you found a SHB11, you didn’t question the circumstances. Many of the hottest girls didn’t go out to bars at all and you had to find them at supermarkets or the gym.
And if they went out with their family and that was how he found them, that was how he would game them. Romancing a girl in front of her parents was not something he was afraid to attempt.
Prime chatted them all up and everyone was smiling and feeling good and comfortable with him. Time to isolate and escalate, or he’d just be that friendly guy they met that time. He also realized that he felt a bit strange. Not drunk—he didn’t drink when he was working or sarging—but warm and light headed, and the air was pregnant with a musky scent.
“I was cold when I came over, but now I’m more on the toasty side,” he said, standing up. He held his hand out to Anastasia. “Catch some air with me.”
She glanced away from him, a nonverbal check with the parents, and then took his hand and let him lead her out.
They got looks not only from Sage and the boot camp students, but quite a few other envious guys in there.
It didn’t bother Prime one bit.
Outside there were a few clusters of smokers lingering about, which gave Prime a bit of an excuse to maneuver them into even a bit more isolation.