“Max is all about exposure,” I complain. “The minute I let my guard down he starts to push. I’m afraid to tell him anything in case it’s used against me in some twisted way in the bedroom. When we were in the limo on the way to his place, after hotting it up in the boxing ring, I mentioned I like strawberry jam. Guess what? He decided to have a midnight snack—Makayla and jam.”

Amanda snorts a laugh. “I told you at the beginning he was the kind of man who needs boundaries. If you don’t set limits, one day he’ll push too far.”

“He already did.”

Giselle returns with Amanda’s aesthetician, Lulu, and two pots of what I assume to be boiling wax. She takes a seat beside me and puts the boiling wax within spilling distance. “I’m not so sure about this,” I warn her.

“It’s a little uncomfortable at first,” Amanda admits. “But we’ll be talking, so after the initial shock you won’t notice.”

“I won’t notice when she pours boiling wax on my most intimate area and then rips it off?”

Giselle chortles and then whips off my paper privacy sheet. She takes one look at my nether regions and slaps a hand over her mouth.

“Eeek.”

Eeek? Is that a French word?

“Don’t you trim?” she asks, her face a mask of horror.

“Of course I trim.” I bend forward to check out the situation down below. Neatly trimmed. Why all the theatrics? My thicket didn’t scare Max away.

Giselle jumps up and disappears behind the privacy screen. “Lulu, darling, I need your shears.”

Shears? My body tightens and I imagine Giselle hacking away at my lady garden with a giant pair of clippers, a wicked smile on her face.

She returns a moment later with a small pair of scissors and proceeds to snip off a few curls.

“In America, we call those manicure scissors,” I inform her, in a clipped voice.

“In France, we call this une épaisse tignasse.” She taps her scissors on my freshly trimmed mound.

I scowl at what must be an insult, although it sounds sexy when she says it. I should learn how to speak French.

Giselle sprinkles baby powder between my legs and then stirs her pot of wax with the zeal of a witch over a cauldron. I hear a ripping sound from behind the screen, and Amanda exhales loudly.

“I’m not into pain,” I say to no one in particular.

“From what you’ve told me, I don’t think Max is either,” Amanda answers. “Just light bondage and domination stuff. He definitely has control issues.”

“Amanda!” I shriek. “The stuff I told you on the phone this morning is PRIVATE.”

“We’re in an estrogen enclave. If you can’t get good advice here, where can you go?”

Giselle raises an eyebrow as she paints hot wax over my mound. “Sounds like your man likes la BDSM.”

I hiss in a breath at the initial burn, but it quickly fades to a tingling warmth. I manage to unclench my teeth to answer, “I wouldn’t know. We never discussed la BDSM. But I don’t think he’s into that lifestyle, or if he is, he didn’t mention it. I didn’t see any dungeons or whips or crosses on the wall. I think he’s just…very dominant and…adventurous in the bedroom.”

Giselle presses white strips over the wax and pats them down. “You like to be adventurous in the bedroom?”

I shift around the table and scowl at the partition hiding Amanda from my wrath. “I don’t really know. I’m not as experienced as Amanda.” I shout the last few words.

Amanda just laughs. “If you keep going out with him, you will be.”

Giselle checks her watch and tests the wax. “You like to give the man control?”

“I don’t like to be bossed around.”

“But in the bedroom,” she persists, “do you like the man to be in charge?”

My body tenses. “I’m not really comfortable discussing this with a stranger.”

Giselle pats me down below and chortles. “Do you allow strangers to touch you here?”

She touches me there. I guess that means we’re friends.

“I don’t know if I like him to be in charge even in the bedroom. I have issues with controlling men. I’ve never actually dated one before. I usually go for easygoing, even-tempered, B-type personalities.”

“Yawn.” Amanda fakes a yawn to go along with her insult. “Her boyfriends were so boring. Even she got bored of them. She would text me an hour into her dates and beg me to have an emergency so she could escape.”

“Nice. Thanks for sharing. Lucky me to have such a discrete and understanding friend.”

Giselle tugs on the edge of a white strip and I wince. She raises a painted eyebrow. “If it didn’t hold some appeal, you would have run away screaming.”

“I did run away. I didn’t scream because I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”

“You can scream now.” Her voice is calm, reassuring.

Riiiiiip. Brain freeze. Pain. Someone screams. Me. I just screamed. “You…you…horrible woman,” I shout at Giselle.

Everyone laughs. “Is that the best you can do?” Giselle taunts.

She rips again. I roar. “Rah.”

“Rah?” Giselle lifts an eyebrow. “Like a baby tiger?”

“That’s all you get. I have manners.”

Amanda laughs. “He wanted her to talk dirty. But she was too shy.”