“I’m your best friend. Of course you’re going to keep telling me about that kind of stuff.” Willa sat back, and Bo could tell she was thinking. “You know, maybe hewon’twant you out of the way. If you’ve had sex once already . . .”
Bo shook her head, shutting down that train of thought immediately. “No. It was a one-time thing, trust me. It happened because it was 3 a.m., hot and neither one of us had anything else to do. I got the distinct feeling I’m not his type, and he’s definitely not my usual type either.”
“Not your type?”
Bo thought for a moment. When she remembered Max, it was the feelings he’d elicited in her body she recalled first. The coiling tension in her belly, the tightness of her skin, the way her body had seemingly ached to be filled by him and him alone. When he’d first slid inside her, relief had washed over her, her need for him fleetingly sated by the presence of him at the core of her desire. He’d begun to move though, his movements precise, hard and fast, and with each thrust her need had returned, until she’d been a panting mess beneath him.
Yes, when Bo remembered Max, it was the image of her naked body wrapped around his like a vine, gasping her pleasure into his ear, which struck her first. She never really put him, his looks or his personality into that equation.
“Not my type,” she said again, more slowly. “For one thing, he wasn’t really, well, you know I like my men to be tall and . . . and I guess—”
“You like a hot piece of beef,” Willa cut in, saving Bo the trouble of talking it through. “You forget how many of your ex-boyfriends I’ve met. They were all the same. Tall, beefy, chiselled . . . and completely devoid of personality. Like Oliver.” Willa wrinkled her nose. “He was the worst.”
“Hey!” Bo protested, but Willa only shrugged.
“It’s the truth. He was the worst, and the rest weren’t much better. They’re all good-looking, well-cut idiots in muscle tees, Bo.”
Bo flushed a dull red. “Not all of them.”
“The ones I met? Yes, they were.”
Bo opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Willa wasn’t wrong. Not about Oliver, and not about the others either. Her cheeks burned even hotter with mortification when she realized just how predictable her usual ‘type’ was. Broad shoulders, a strong jaw, perfect hair. Men who looked like they belonged on the cover of a fitness magazine with headlines aboutwhey powder and macro-nutrients printed above their perfect faces. Men who treated sex like cardio and conversation like the cool down.
She hated that her mother would have approved of them all.
Beauty had always been a kind of currency in her mother’s world, something to be displayed, maintained and measured against others. Bo had grown up steeped in it, with constant lessons on how to sit, smile and sparkle. Her job was to be noticed and admired. Somewhere along the way, Bo had mistaken that attention for affection, and attraction as equalling worth. Somewhere along the way, she’d learned to chase only the men her mother would approve of. The ones who looked good on her arm, even if they never really saw her.
Even if she wasn’t attracted to them in the first place.
“Let me get this straight,” Willa carried on in Bo’s silence. “You’re saying this nephew of Sir Geoffrey, this Mr 3 a.m. . . . you’re saying he wasn’t good-looking but brainless?”
“He wasn’t brainless. Definitely not,” Bo replied without faltering. Max had spoken with such self-assured confidence that she’d instinctively known he was clever.
“Good-looking though?”
Bo chewed on her lip. “Well . . .”
“Come on, Bo, you slept with him. You must know whether he’s good-looking or not.”
Bo only frowned though.
“What was he out of ten?” Willa persisted.
“Out of ten?”
“Yeah. If you had to score him, what would he be?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never . . . never, well, scored men likethatbefore.” Bo wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with this. Max hadn’t been her type, sure, but nor had he been unattractive to her. If he had been, she certainly wouldn’t have climaxed as hard as she had as many times as she did with him.
“Everyone does it,” Willa assured her. “It’s easy. Look, I’ll help you. You start at ten and rank downwards from there.”
“Rank downwards? Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Willa replied easily. “When it comes to men, I’m always serious.”
“Well, what’s a ten then?” Bo asked with a frown. “I can’t rank anyone downwards if I don’t know what I’m going downwards from.”
“Oh.” Willa thought for a moment. “Okay. Let’s say a ten is like a combination of Jacob Elordi in hisSaltburnera and Jinu fromKPop Demon Hunters.”
