Potential trouble: how do they react when they get told no? Do they understand or insist? Here, the novels go either way. Some of our fictional bad boys will take care of the problem for you, like a Drazen from C.D. Reiss’s Songs of Submission series. Got a work commitment? Not anymore, I’m now blackmailing/handling/am your CEO. Family member died? I chartered you a jet to the funeral and it will take you to my private island afterwards.
In my limited experience, these reactions (and bank accounts) are not nearly common enough IRL. The other way a fictional bad boy goes when confronted by a no is the insistence route. They know what you really need to relax, to get your mind off work, to deal with your grief, is multiple orgasms, which they will happily provide. Because they are super good in bed, remember? In real life, we have an awful lot of consent issues to unravel before that’s going to be a good idea.
And don’t even get me started on the disappointment that comes — when you don’t.
What I think we really want in a real life bad boy is the passion of a rockstar, the alpha men envy and the looks that will cause grandmothers everywhere to clutch their pearls because if that guy chose us? It means we’re even badder than they are. We’re the ones who tame the beast, to reveal the heart of gold that was beneath the ink the whole time.