Bo thought for a moment, realizing that Max had smiled at her without really smiling at her. He’d been angry with her without really showing her that anger. He’d looked at her with lust but not love.
Not that I want that love,Bo instantly thought.Not that. But what does it take to get this man to react? To really react? To show all those emotions I know are just under the surface he shows to the world?
Not sex, she knew. They’d had sex twice now, and both times he’d expressed his enjoyment of both the act and her without giving any hint as to how he really felt about anything.
Max Fitzroy was like a puzzle she couldn’t quite help herself from wanting to solve. He reminded her of one of the flowers in her garden, a stubborn one that never bloomed, no matter how much water and light you gave them. You had to learn their moods first. Had to watch how they responded to the sun. You had to be patient and gentle in the right places.
She had a feeling Max was the same, and that if she pushed too hard, he’d retreat behind that cool, impenetrable exterior of his. However, if she tended to him just right, he might finally reveal what was under all his reserve.
And that thought made something inside her twist that she wasn’t ready to name.
He was still staring at her, looking quietly thoughtful, and Bo shifted again, leaning against her doorway. “Umm, did you want something, Max?”
He seemed to come back to himself with a start, clearing his throat and standing taller.
“I just wanted you to know that I’ll be out this evening.”
His words were screamingly polite given the things he’d done to her just the night before, and Bo blinked at him. “Okay.”
“I’m performing this evening. A private concert.”
“Oh,” she replied, before the meaning behind his words hit her.
Oh.
“I’ll be back late,” Max continued, and his eyes met hers, searching for understanding. “Will you be up?”
She took a deep breath. “If I’m not, you can wake me.”
He nodded, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Okay.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, mirroring his pose. “Okay.”
* * *
What did one wear to a middle-of-the-night, planned sexual encounter?
Bo puzzled over this question after her evening shower, still wrapped in her towel, with her hair pulled back into a wet ponytail. So far as she could tell, she had several options. The first was to wear nothing. Naked was where she would end up, after all. She could save both Max and herself some time by stripping off before climbing into bed. She could make it easy for him and show that she was still on board with this whole regular sleeping together arrangement they’d devised. Not that making it easy for him appealed. Strangely, teasing Max a little turned her on. She liked teasing him, liked antagonizing him . . . and very much liked how he reprimanded her for it afterwards.
Naked was out then. Briefly, she considered some of the lingerie she owned. The matching sets of barely-there lace, with bras that pushed her breasts up and stockings that elongated her already long legs. Her ex-boyfriend had loved that.
She didn’t think that Max would though. The first time they’d slept together she’d been covered in sweat with an old vest on, and Max had looked at her like he’d found the lost treasure of Atlantis. Max, with his chino shorts and messy hair and inexplicable attachment to a combination of socks worn with sandals wouldn’t be the type to care whether her bra matched her underwear, Bo realized. In fact, she had a distinct feeling Max might even be turned off by such an obvious ornamentation of her body.
There was always the robe again, Bo thought, before discounting the idea almost immediately. Her robe had borne the brunt of their sexual escapade the night before. She’d had to scrub it out twice with washing detergent and it was still hanging in the garden even now, drying out. That just left her normal pyjamas then. They weren’t the sexiest things in the world, butthey were functional and would do the job so that Max could get on and do his.
Bo pulled on the light cotton garments, before brushing out her hair and climbing into bed. She lay there, wide awake, wondering how she would ever get to sleep, or whether she should even try. Max was performing at a private concert, he’d told her. What time would that finish? Nine? Ten? If so, that meant he’d be back at around midnight. Midnight was fine. She could wait up until midnight. She’d waited up later than that to get Taylor Swift tickets. She’d waited up later than that to see a SpaceX rocket pass in the UK skies. Both of those nights had ended in disappointment and with certainly far fewer orgasms. She could wait till midnight.
A knock on her door later woke Bo from a dreamless sleep, and she turned on her pillow towards the noise. She grabbed her phone from the side of her bed where it was charging and rubbed at her bleary eyes, struggling to believe the time on it.
03.14 a.m.
Three in the morning? Max was waking her for sex at three in the flipping morning? What the actual, actual fuck? Bo was tired now, interrupted from what she was certain an Apple Watch — if she ever had the money to buy one — would tell her was a cycle of deep, important and reparative sleep. Groggily, she stumbled out of her bed, going to her door and opening it with a small degree of peevish affront. From her doorway, Max looked at her with warm eyes. He was wearing a purple T-shirt so bright it nearly hurt her eyes and those damn beige chino shorts again, and suddenly all Bo could think — even in her sleep-deprived state — was how she couldn’t wait to strip both offensive garments from his body.
“Max!” she blurted out. “It’s three in the morning!”
“Is it?” Max blinked, looking around him at the dark night sky. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew it was late—”
“Late? No, late is like, 11 p.m. to 1.30 a.m. Three a.m. is pretty much early morning. My boss will already be up buying flowers. Bakers are getting bread ready.” A thought crossed her mind. “And there are people who run at this time of the morning too.”
