SHB11 leaned in his direction, a little, tilting her head down. His heart picked up its pace as she surrept.i.tiously 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 h.e.l.l. 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 cl.u.s.ters of smokers lingering about, which gave Prime a bit of an excuse to maneuver them into even a bit more isolation.

"I like it that you don't smoke," he said. "Makes a woman's mouth taste like an ashtray."

"I could never," she said, smiling. Her green eyes glinted in the moonlight. "Hurts your sense of smell."

"You smell good," said Prime. He leaned in, brushed her hair aside, and sniffed her slowly from shoulder to ear. "Mmmmm, really good."

She smiled and made no effort to stop him.

"Smokers or not, so many people have lost their sense of smell in this modern world," he said. "We're so artificial now, like machines, not the animals we really are. Animals, you'll notice before they mate, will always smell each other. We're hardwired by evolution to respond to certain, fundamental things, in the nose and in the gut. Our noses know, so to speak, and tell us things we need to know about the world."

"That's so true," she said. She started to say something else, but stopped as his hand slid up the back of the neck into her hair.

"There are a lot of things like that that we humans have forgotten. You'll notice how lions, when they mate, bite and pull and claw at each other. Here," he said, pulling her hair downward so her face was tilted up toward his. "Like this."

"Yes," she whispered.

"The best, most sensitive places on the body are hidden places, like the nape of the neck where your hair starts, and like the inside of the elbow, the back of the knee . . . "

Prime traced his fingers along some of those places as he spoke. "Places like those have millions of little nerve endings, sensitive little guys, all signaling for the release of endorphins when properly stimulated."

Anastasia seemed entranced, giving him what the community called doggy dinner bowl eyes, just the way she was supposed to be at this stage in the game.

He took her arm, bent it a little, and erotically bit Anastasia on the inside of her elbow, slowly closing his mouth and bringing his teeth together.

She shivered.

"Right?"

"Yes," she said. "You understand very well."

"But do you know what I love best?" Prime asked. He pointed at the side of his neck. "A bite right here. This is where the jugular vein is most exposed, and since so many s.e.xual fantasies involve submission and vulnerability, it just floods the brain with endorphins."

He waited. About half the time the girls didn't do anything and he would have to instigate. The other half of the time they were game, but usually the first attempt was lame and he would insist on showing them how it was done.

In either case, a pa.s.sionate make-out usually ensued with minimal effort.

Anastasia reacted more positively than most.

She jumped him, wrapping her legs around his waist, grabbing his hair, and devouring his lips and neck with her hungry mouth.

Prime staggered back a step against the brick wall, pleasantly overwhelmed.

And then there was no thought, only l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion.

Eventually Prime realized that they weren't kissing or biting each other any more, that he was thinking again. At least a little. In the cool night air their breath formed little wisps of mist around their faces. h.e.l.l, Anastasia's upper chest was flat out steaming.

"Anastasia!" came a voice calling from the front door of the Den. Her family was leaving.

It took Prime a moment to process that something was going on, so lost in the moment he had been.

That hadn't happened in a while.

"I must go now," she said to him. "Meet me at Muir Woods tomorrow at 1 pm. We will have a picnic, yes?"

Prime tried to re-engage his brain to think through the logistics. Logistics could always ruin the most perfect pick up. He fumbled for his cell phone so she could put her number in.

"No, no, no," she said. "I don't have a phone. Just meet me tomorrow. You will be there, yes? Tell me."

"Yes," he said to her as she backed away from him, his head full of the raw feelings of pa.s.sion of the last few minutes. "Yes."

"Good," she said.

Prime stood there steaming in the moonlight as Anastasia and her family walked away together.

His mind eventually fully kicked in and he remembered that he had students to supervise. Time to go to work.

Work . . . workshop . . . tomorrow . . . s.h.i.t.

Prime looked at himself in the bathroom mirror the next morning.

Jesus Christ, he thought.

Most of his neck was a bruised mess and where he didn't have bruises he had scratches.

Anastasia had done a real number on him. How had she done that?

The thing was, he hadn't had feelings like this for a girl in years. Rationally he knew he was thinking like your average frustrated chump. AFCs put p.u.s.s.y on a pedestal and gave women all the power in relationships, and ironically, while women liked that they did not find it attractive in a man.

Prime checked his watch and decided he didn't have time to shave properly or do anything about the superhickeys. He didn't even own a turtleneck.

So be it.

He finished dressing and went downstairs to eat breakfast before the boot camp recommenced at 10 am in the mansion's living room.

Sage was already there, working on a bowl of Fruit Loops. "Wow, dude! She chewed you up, didn't she?"

"I guess she did," he said, smiling, as he went to make some bacon and eggs. "Not an impossible set, just a dangerous one."

"Yeah, well, I guess so. The crazy chicks, you can have them. You should have at least gotten laid for your trouble."

"I will," said Prime.

"No way. You're going to see a crazy chick like that again?"

Prime cracked a couple of eggs into a pan and started scrambling. "Sure. She's super hot."

"She was hot, but she wasn't that hot. And did you see the guys in that group? I haven't seen that many mon.o.brows in the same place, ever. You said they were all family. She's probably got it, too, and plucks daily."

"So what? You get your chest waxed," Prime said.

"Touche."

What was real, what was fake, it all got blurry. Was Sage a hairy-chested man hiding, or a smooth-chested man making himself over to reflect his true self-image? Almost every pick-up artist made themselves over, down to going by names that were really just reworked CB handles. Sage was wise, spicy. Prime was number one. Go by a name for enough time and it becomes part of you.

Prime had been born Jonathan, but hadn't ever seen himself as a Jonathan. Another artificial label, a name. Animals didn't give them-selves names. They knew what they were.

Prime carried his food over to the table and joined his friend. "I'm going to have to miss a few hours this afternoon."

"Got a doctor who will see you on a Sat.u.r.day?" asked Sage.

"No. I'm going to a picnic."

Sage noisily crunched on his cereal for a moment. "I don't think so, Jon. This is a business. These guys aren't paying for you to screw around with crazy chicks on their time."

"It isn't that big a deal. We move my sessions to late afternoon. Move the story telling stuff first."

"We have it in the order we have it for a reason. The British guy, Nigel, he flew over here from London because he wanted body language lessons from the famous Prime. They pay us thousands of dollars because they want us, the Better Man Program, to give them our undivided attention for a few hours. There are a hundred other guys as good as us, just without the rep, ready to take our place if our graduates leave here without real changes in their lives."

"I know."

"So, be professional."

It was his own d.a.m.n fault, Prime knew. He'd double booked. He hated making promises he couldn't keep, and if he hadn't been so p.u.s.s.y-drunk he wouldn't have done it in the first place.

"If I skip meeting Anastasia," said Prime, "I may never see her again. I didn't get her number."

"Cripes, Jon. You got oneitis already? Go out and f.u.c.k ten other girls and you won't remember this one at all. There's always another girl."

Too true, and that was their code. There's more fish in the sea. No need to get needy. No need to compromise to score with any one particular girl. No need . . .

Prime took a bite of bacon. This girl had unleashed something inside him in a way no girl ever had. He knew not only what we wanted to do, he knew what his gut insisted that he do.

"There's a difference between you and me, partner," Prime said. "You make up your rules and follow them to the letter, like a computer, and I admire that. It makes you successful, and it has helped us develop our boot camps. You're the brains here, no doubt, and you define professionalism."

"Thanks, but you're a professional, too," said Sage.

"I am, but I'm not perfect. I have to listen to my heart, my gut. That's who I am. That's what I have to do."

Sage finished his bowl, carried it to the kitchen, and tossed it into the sink with loud clanking. He gave Prime a look, but didn't say anything.

Prime hated the pa.s.sive aggressive s.h.i.t. He could read Sage's thoughts and his friend was just too chicken to voice them.

"I have a case of oneitis," Prime said. "So what? That's my problem. The students won't even miss me. If they do, promise them I'll give them each a free follow-up coaching call in a couple of weeks, Okay?"

Sage's posture shifted ever so slightly. That was it. He really wasn't worried about Prime. He was worried about the business.

"Okay. But just be careful out there and remember that she's just a girl."

Prime rubbed at his raw neck. Was she?

Muir Woods not only sported some giant wood, it wasn't the smallest park in the world. Prime wondered how he was going to find Anastasia. Logistics could kill the best pick-up, and he didn't even have a phone number for her.

He'd only been wandering around for a few minutes when she found him.

"Jon? I knew you wouldn't disappoint us."

Us? He turned and there she was, with her whole entire family.

Well. He only wanted to sleep with her, not the whole pack of them. Still, he had enjoyed their company and if that was how it was going to be, that was how it was going to be.