Page 25 of Heartbreak Kings
I had to bite back a retort. I loved the idea of getting to know our little reporter better, but even if she was both polyamorous and submissive by nature, it felt like Blake was jumping the gun a bit. Maybe he was more eager than he was letting on.
Jude sighed. “That’s even assuming we can talk her out of hating our fucking guts after tonight.” I could see the guilt in his eyes. He was headstrong, a little sexist, and could be a bit of an ass, but the role he had played tonight had fit like an iron maiden.
“Well, we can try it.” Marcus panned his eyes around. “I just don’t think it should be Blake or me who approaches her first after this.”
Blake protested at once. “I am certain I can get back on her good side. She’s already attracted—”
“Not without help, you can’t,” Nathaniel cut in, voice a little sharp. “Any trust or goodwill you had built with her is gone. We can say the same of Marcus.”
“Nathaniel has a point.” Marcus’s face was a mask of guilt. “I invited her here. It must feel like I drew her into a damn ambush.”
“This was our idea, not just yours,” I reassured quietly. Though Sabine might not see it that way right now. “We must be careful, especially if we’re trying to feel out whether she would date more than one of us at once.”
Then I studied the others. “Who should approach her first?” Not Jude, I thought immediately. His overacting had probably pissed her off in ways she wouldn’t get over quickly. But I didn’t say it out loud. He clearly felt bad enough.
“You,” Nathaniel offered.
I gaped at him. The idea delighted me, but as usual, Nathaniel’s motives weren’t clear. “Well, I will not say no, obviously, but why?”
Nathaniel shrugged. “I am too introverted. Blake, Marcus, and Jude have made poor initial impressions. That leaves you.”
“Oh,” I remarked, outwardly calm, but my heart pounded. I examined the others. “If everyone else is all right with it, I’ll go.”
Jude sighed and nodded. “I need some more time to figure out how to unfuck her view of me anyway.” The glare he shot Blake clarified that he was still pissed off.
Marcus peered at me. “Do what you can to repair the situation, all right? I know it won’t be easy.”
I shrugged and smiled, the wheels already turning in my head. There was the powerful temptation to let the others suffer the consequences of the terrible impression they had made and court Sabine on my own. The Gentlemen and I had shared a few women before, and we had parted with them on good terms. We had kept the drama down and focused on pleasure and had been scrupulously honest about our intentions. But everything up to now had been casual, with nothing at stake emotionally.
But we’d approached Sabine under false pretenses. Even if I cleared the air, she’d always remember what we’d done tonight.
I finally turned to Blake, who seemed frustrated. He had gotten his leadership called into question tonight a lot more than he was used to. That, on top of the dinner situation blowing up in our face, had to sting his pride. But despite his dark expression, he finally shrugged. “Don’t screw it up.”
I nodded, biting back a sarcastic comment. We had dealt with enough contentiousness for one night.
Chapter 10
Daniel
My fatheronce told me that romancing women was an art, not a science. If your actions had no passion behind them, if there was no honest emotion beneath your interest, many of them could feel it. Once they sensed you were insincere, they took it as a great insult, and most times, that destroyed your chances with them.
I had joined in with the others in deceiving Sabine, despite my father’s warning. And it had turned out exactly as he had predicted. She might not have sorted out exactly what was going on, but she had known we were playing games. That was why she had left. And now, she had a recording full of consequences for us if we crossed her again.
Hours later, I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. The sprawling old fraternity house had a variety of bedrooms on its second and third floors. My room was small by Blake’s standards, but I could have fit my whole Berlin apartment into it. The ceiling had little plaster decorations on it shaped like swirling vines. My eyes traced them as I made my plans.
I wasn’t just courting her. I was going to mend fences and lay the groundwork for all of us to court her. Not to mention, trying to feel out whether she would be into being in a relationship with all five of us before we proceeded too far.
The next day, after getting Sabine’s class schedule from a stiff and resentful-eyed Blake, I sat in on one of her classes, ignoring the lecture as I watched her.
I felt a little like a stalker doing it this way, but since I didn’t have her phone number and wasn’t sure which dorm room she was in, it was my only way of approaching her.
Besides, I wasn’t sure, after last night’s theatrics, that it would have been smart just to show up at her door.
I judged Blake and Marcus a little for the time they had spent following Sabine around campus, looking for the perfect opportunity to get her attention. I wanted to look as trustworthy as possible to her, and following her around half the day—especially if she was keeping an eye out for us—was the opposite of trustworthy.
Sabine was as lovely as ever, even dressed down for classes in jeans and a nice sweater. Her bright, dark eyes were full of life and intelligence, even if a little sunken from her unpleasant night. Her skin was so smooth that my fingers flexed as I imagined running them over the curve of her cheek.
She also looked tired and wary, as if she had already been fending off people today. Or maybe she hadn’t recovered from the mess last night. I hesitated, wondering if I was approaching her too soon. But the longer I waited, the harder it was going to be to catch her interest.
