Laurent licked his lips, looking around, but no help was coming from the other people who just stared, waiting for him to react. “N-Nao helped me choose. And King said they were very slutty.”
Jake laughed out loud. “Oh, man… Yeah. They’re very slutty.”
“I think he doesn’t know what that means,” Martina said, gently patting Laurent’s arm.
“Like a prostitute, Laurent,” Beast said and took a big swig of his beer. “Nao is lovely but her taste? Questionable.”
Martina burst out laughing and hid her face in her hands.
Laurent grew roots into the floor at the shame of it, and he now realized why he’d attracted so many slaps on the ass if that was indeed how he looked to everyone around him. That had not been his intention. His face grew so hot it felt like a lighthouse amongst the sea of people around them.
“She said I look sexy,” he tried without much energy, doubting himself more by the second as Beast’s blue eyes drilled into his naked chest. Did his clothes really invite men who would pay for pleasure?
Jake have a slow nod. “You do. I’d do you.”
Martina laughed even louder and almost choked on an alcoholic drink she was sipping. Beast tapped his fingers against the glass and alternated between keeping his eyes on the beer and glancing at Laurent.
“I do not sell pleasure,” Laurent mumbled, defeated beyond belief. So Beast hated how he looked. Beast hated him. This had to be the worst night that had ever happened in 2017. No. The worst thing was that Beast was fed upon by his own father, a man who he should trust, and Laurent wasn’t allowed to intervene if he didn’t want to be spirited away to 1805. Just thinking of it choked the life out of him.
“You sure?” Martina laughed and pulled out a banknote, waving it at him. “I’ll give this to you if you show us your lovely ass.”
Beast hissed and looked away, as if even the thought of seeing Laurent naked disgusted him to no end.
So much for trying to make amends. Had Knight set him up for this failure on Beast’s behalf? “I have to decline,” he mumbled and walked off quickly, afraid the sting under his eyelids would intensify if Beast gave him one more hateful glance. He’d come here so proud of his new, sexy outfit, yet now he wished to disappear into his empty, cold room.
He shouldn’t have tried to become something he wasn’t. Maybe he just wasn’t born to be sexy? At least in this day and age, he wasn’t a servant bound to a master by a contract that in his time basically meant Mr. Barnave owned him for a fixed period of time.
He found himself a spot in a corner, by a table no one sat at, and hoped to disappear in the shadows despite his skin still scorching from Beast’s scrutiny.
He wondered if he should flee to his room when someone waved his hand in front of Laurent’s face. “Are you new here?” asked the man. Just slightly taller than Laurent, he wasn’t nearly as intimidating as the bikers, and red-rimmed glasses suggested he was slightly eccentric.
Laurent took a deep breath and held out his hand. “Laurent. I’ve been around for a while.”
The man shook his hand. “Bob.” He looked Laurent up and down. “And you look fuckin’ sexy.”
Laurent dared a smile, assessing the man in a new light.
Chapter 15 - Laurent
Bob turned out to be a fantastic fellow. They soon moved to a quiet corner with piled-up pillows where they talked over drinks that made Laurent’s mind slightly fuzzy. He suspected the glasses contained some kind of spirit, only much sweeter than he was used to. Bob even brought him a straw to sip through, and like many of Laurent’s favorite things in 2017, it was made of plastic.
With the party spinning around them, with loud music and with the lights so dim, Laurent finally relaxed, enjoying the closeness of a masculine body when Bob pressed against him to whisper into his ear in a way that sent tickling sensations all over Laurent’s body.
Could this night perhaps end up in kisses? Bob wasn’t dashing like Fane had been, or breathtaking like Beast, but he had a nice smile, he was masculine, made Laurent laugh. What more should he hope for when he was so inexperienced?
“When I saw you from across the room I was shocked you were alone. A guy like you rarely is,” Bob said.
Laurent smiled widely. “I don’t have much luck in that area. I seem to always say the wrong things.”
Bob grinned, leaning even closer, and Laurent stirred in surprise and excitement when Bob rested his cold beer bottle against Laurent’s bare stomach. “I can’t imagine that. You talk like a prince.”
Laurent laughed at the chill and the droplets of water drizzling down his skin. “Maybe they sense I don’t really have the right breeding.”