THIRTY-FIVE
The Femme Fatale Handbook
Part Two: Putting all of this to use
Chapter Fourteen: How to Make the Spell Last
So you’ve successfully landed your target, what happens now? Maybe you now find yourself in a relationship or maybe you’ve gotten whatever it was that you wanted from this guy and you’re over it? Well, first things first, congratulations! You’ve done well. Now I know you’re probably wondering how to keep your happily ever after? Good thing you asked, because this is an important question.
Now that you’ve snared the object of your affections, your seduction doesn’t suddenly stop. You must continue to do all of the things you were doing in order to win his affections the first time around. Just because you find yourself in a relationship, etcetera, doesn’t mean it’s time to stop caring. On the contrary! If you want to keep him, you have to school him on how not to take you for granted and you have to school yourself on how to make sure he doesn’t grow bored with you.
If you’ve decided you got whatever it was you wanted from him and you’re ready to part ways, you’re in an easier boat. Simply cut all your ties and do it quickly. The longer you both hang on, the uglier the situation will get. If, on the other hand, you want to keep him, read on!
- Fight against the natural urge to stop trying. If you’ve been acting a certain way with him up until now and you stop trying as hard, he will think you’re manipulative and that you only acted the way you did to get what you wanted. This could definitely backfire, so resist the urge to relax! The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to continue doing what you were doing—continue to make him feel special, all the while keeping him on the edge of his seat by maintaining your mystery and intrigue. Even though he might have captured you in a relationship, that doesn’t mean he owns or controls you. You are still an independent, femme fatale who answers to no one, save yourself!
- Don’t forget to keep the mystery! There’s a famous quote that says “familiarity breeds contempt,” which is the idea that once someone knows you intimately well, they view you in a negative light. I believe this to be true, and I also believe it is spurred by boredom. As an example, I want you to consider video games. They usually appeal to men, right? I’ve seen boyfriends spend hour upon hour, day after day, trying to beat a certain game. They become obsessed with it. And guess what happens once they conquer the game? They never play it again. Don’t become the beaten game! Continue to shroud yourself in mystery, otherwise the familiarity between you both will lead to dullness. Just how do you maintain the mystery? Continue to keep him guessing, don’t suffocate him by constantly being available—absence really does make the heart grow fonder because it allows you both space to miss each other. Don’t ever let him think he has you figured out. That will signify the beginning of the end.
- Resist the urge to take things more seriously now that you’re in a relationship. Remember how you won him over in the first place! It was through a fun, charismatic, mysterious and playful persona. Just because you’re now in a relationship with him, that fun side of your personality shouldn’t disappear! Instead, encourage those parts of your personality that he fell in love with and you’ll find you stay a happier person when you’re focused on spreading happiness. Never become the nagging girlfriend—that will put the final nail in the coffin.
Most of all, remember the road you took in order to reach your final destination. It is a road that you can travel more than once—back and forth repeatedly. After all, you are a seductress, a femme fatale, which means you hold the cards—all the power and the control. You make your own destiny and it is up to you who you bring along with you for the ride.
***
NIKKI
TWO WEEKS LATER
“What about this?” I asked Dani as I held up my pink bikini.
“Yeah, that’s good, bring that,” she answered with a quick nod.
I threw the bikini into my open suitcase and turned back to raiding my closet. Yes, I was packing my bags for a trip. A trip that just happened to see me traveling to Thailand with the man of my dreams, my best friend and Luke.
“Dude, you better hurry, they’re going to be here soon,” Dani said from where she was lying on her bed, highlighting the sections of The Femme Fatale Handbook that she wanted to revisit later. She was taking this seductress stuff pretty seriously. Her bags were already packed and waiting for her patiently beside her bed.
I glanced up at the clock and swore because I still hadn’t packed my toiletries. “Ugh, I’ve gotta hurry and I still haven’t even looked through my box of makeup and bathroom shit.”
Dani sat up and put the handbook in the drawer in her bedside table as she headed for my side of the room. She reached down underneath my bed and pulled out the box in which I kept my bathroom items. “I’m going to pack up all your toiletries so you concentrate on your clothes,” she said as she smiled up at me. “And good job waiting so long to do this, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled in response.
“You’d think you could have taken, oh, I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes away from Derek so you could have started packing earlier? I swear you two are like adolescent rabbits!”
She was right. Derek and I were like adolescent rabbits. I’d never had so much sex before in my life, but I wasn’t complaining! I glanced down at her and laughed. “Yeah, we’re pretty gross, aren’t we?”
“No, you’re cute,” she responded as she waved me away with an unconcerned hand. “And to think you were so freaked out that he was going to lose interest in you!”
I sighed as I remembered the panic I’d experienced the morning after we’d had sex. I’d been completely freaked out for no reason at all because Derek was even more attentive and loving now, two weeks later. Our relationship had deepened into the most incredible sexual and loving friendship that I could have ever hoped for.
I didn’t get a chance to respond to her because I was interrupted by a quick knock on our door. Dani stood up, dropping my bag full of toiletries into my suitcase, and then opened the door, revealing Derek standing in the hallway. Luke was right beside him. Derek smiled at Dani, giving her a hug as he walked into our room and his attention shifted to my opened suitcase where it sat on the bed.
“You still aren’t finished packing?” he faux yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. “Nik, we’ve gotta be at the airport in an hour!”
“I know, I know,” I answered as I threw the pile of clothes beside the suitcase into it and then struggled with the zipper. Derek shook his head and walked over to me, giving me a kiss before he pushed me aside and zipped the thing up himself.
“Hi, Nik,” Luke said as he walked into the room and Dani shut the door behind him. I walked over to him and hugged him as Dani handed me my carry-on. Luke, meanwhile, walked across the room and gripped each of her bags.
“We are all packed up and ready to go!” Dani nearly sang. “Thailand, here we come!”
“I’m so excited!” I said as I turned to face Derek, who was already holding my suitcase and starting for the door. “I have a bunch of brochures for us to look through on the plane so we can decide what we want to do once we get there, and I went ahead and made an outline of all the things that I think look the most interesting. Just to make it easier on everyone,” I added with a smile as the four of us emptied into the hallway.
“She’s a planner,” Dani explained to Luke with a shrug as I turned around, remembering to lock our door. When I turned back again, I found all three of them facing me, and I suddenly found myself beaming from ear to ear.
“This is going to be a trip we will never forget, I can just feel it,” I said with a rush of excitement. And I really meant it.
The End
Thank you for reading The Handbook and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, don’t forget to join my mailing list at to be the first to know whenever I release a new book!
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