One Night On The Virgin's Terms (Mills & Boon Modern) (Wanted: A Billionaire, Book 1)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘Please...please...please...’ She didn’t care that she was begging. She didn’t care that she was thrashing beneath him like a paper boat in a storm-tossed sea.

  ‘Come for me.’ Louis’ voice was husky. ‘Don’t hold back. Don’t be frightened of it. Let it take you.’

  He slipped his hand between their bodies and slowly caressed her moist and swollen flesh. The delicious sensations came from far-off places in her body, gathering to a feverish point in her female centre. And then they exploded in a shower of sparks and tingles and spasms that carried her to another plane of existence. An exquisite existence of sheer mind-blowing, planet-shifting ecstasy. It was bigger and better than anything she had experienced before, the monumental force of it almost terrifying. How could her body split from her mind in such a way? How could her body contain so many nerve endings? So many pleasurable settings that fired with such heart-stopping intensity?

  Louis kept moving within her, taking his own pleasure with deep thrusts and guttural groans until, finally, he tensed all over and then gave one last shuddering groan as his orgasm hit. Ivy held him through the storm, feeling completely undone by the way his body responded to hers. So powerful, so potent, so primal and passionate. She moved her hands up and down his back in smooth massaging movements, listening to his breathing quietening, enjoying the relaxed weight of him lying over her.

  ‘Am I too heavy for you?’ His lips moved against the sensitive skin of her neck where his head was buried, and she shivered.

  ‘No...’ She gave a long blissful sigh and stroked her hand over the taut shape of his buttocks. ‘If anyone had said a few weeks ago I’d feel comfortable with a naked man sprawled over me after making mad, passionate love to me, I would have laughed. Or fainted.’

  He leaned up on one elbow, a smile tilting one side of his mouth, his eyes dark and lustrous. He traced his finger from her chin to her sternum and then back to her lower lip, teasing it with a feather-light caress. ‘It’s good you feel comfortable with me.’ His smile slowly faded and his gaze grew serious. ‘But neither of us can get too comfortable with this arrangement. The time limit still stands.’

  Ivy had to work hard not to show her disappointment. She was conscious of her every facial muscle, of trying to control the micro-expressions that might betray her emotions.

  The time limit still stands.

  He wasn’t budging from his rules on their fling. In spite of the fabulous sex, in spite of their friendship and the increasing closeness she felt was growing between them, he was determined to keep things temporary.

  ‘I know.’ She gave a little forced laugh. ‘Just think what Ronan would say if he knew we were having a fling. Or Mum.’

  The frown between his eyebrows deepened. ‘Yes, well, all the more reason to stick to the rules. I don’t want anyone’s expectations raised and then dashed when our...fling ends.’

  His slight hesitation over the word ‘fling’ made her wonder if perhaps a part of him—a secret, well-buried part—was already compartmentalising his involvement with her as something completely different from his normal flings. He rolled away from her, got off the bed and disposed of the condom in the bathroom.

  Ivy used the opportunity while he was in the bathroom to wrap herself in a plush bathrobe. His bathrobe that contained the tantalising scent of him on its soft fibres. It completely swamped her, but at least it covered her nakedness. But it wasn’t really her physical nakedness she was most worried about covering—it was her emotional nakedness. The raw hope filling her heart more and more each day that he would come to love her. A hope that refused to give up even though it was hanging by a silken thread.

  She desperately hoped he would want more than a scratch-an-itch fling. That the chemistry between them would prove to him that what they’d experienced together was special, unique, something to be treasured and not put aside as a distant memory.

  Louis disposed of the condom and gripped the edge of the basin in front of the mirror. He looked at his reflection and wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. A man who was seriously questioning if he’d done the right thing in sleeping with Ivy. Not because he didn’t enjoy every moment of having her in his arms—he did. Too much. Way too much. So much, he was finding it harder and harder to think of their involvement as a fling. As a casual fling, like any other he’d experienced. It wasn’t and it could never be. It was in an entirely different category. Not just because he was her first lover. Not just because the sex was so fulfilling and mind-blowingly pleasurable and made his body hum for hours afterwards. But because it was Ivy. Sweet, cute, adorable Ivy, with her dimples and her curls and her curves and her funny little bunny twitch.

  But one day, in the not too distant future he would have to see Ivy move on with someone else. Someone who would give her the things she wanted—love, marriage, babies, commitment for a lifetime. And she had every right to want those things. She deserved no less than wholehearted commitment and love.

  His gut twisted like writhing snakes. One day, he would even have to attend her wedding or think of a very good excuse not to accept the invitation, thus hurting her, her mother and her brother in one fell swoop. God, how had he got himself into this mess? A beautiful mess he didn’t want to end.

  Not yet.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IVY WANDERED OUT to the salon, still dressed in Louis’ bathrobe, where there was a huge bunch of pink roses wrapped in white paper and tied with a black satin bow resting on the coffee table. There was a box of chocolates from a Parisian chocolatier next to them, as well as a flat, rectangular black velvet jewellery box.

  Her breath stalled, her heart tripped, her stomach flipped. Flowers. Chocolates. Jewellery. Gifts a man in love gave to the woman he adored. Hope spread throughout her chest, lifting her spirits, sending a burst of happiness through her.

  But then a doubt slipped into her mind like a curl of toxic smoke wafting under a door, slowly but surely poisoning her fledgling hopes. For all she knew, he might buy all his lovers gifts. Consolation prizes, trinkets to remember him by when their fling came to its inevitable end.

  She wanted more than memories. She had been trying to ignore it from the first time he’d kissed her, but she could ignore it no longer. Her love for him had been in the background for so long, she hadn’t recognised it until it had moved to centre stage. The passion he awakened in her had turned a spotlight on her emotions. Emotions she had shied away from at first, keeping them in the shadows in case she got hurt. But they were out of the shadows now, spreading light over all her self-delusions, revealing the truth at the heart of her involvement with Louis. She loved him. She wanted him, not just during a fling, but forever.

  Louis came out from the bedroom and she turned to face him. He was still naked, apart from a white towel wrapped around his lean hips, and his hair looked as if it had been recently combed with his fingers.

  ‘Are these for me?’ She pointed to the items on the coffee table, keeping her expression neutral... Well, as neutral as she could, which wasn’t saying much.

  ‘Who else would they be for?’ His tone was guarded, as if he sensed the undercurrent of tension in her face and body that she was so desperately trying to hide.

  Ivy turned back to the coffee table and leaned down to pick up the roses, lifting them to her face to breathe in the sweet fragrance. She put them back on the table and turned sideways to look at him again. ‘You don’t have to buy me gifts, Louis. You’ve spent enough money helping my mother without going to any more expense on me as well.’

  He came further into the room to stand on the other side of the coffee table. ‘I have plenty of money, and if I want to spend it I will.’ His tone had a clipped edge, as if he was annoyed at her attitude to his generosity.

  Ivy elevated her chin, locking her gaze on his inscrutable one. ‘I don’t want you buying me hideously expensive gifts. I don’t need compensation for when our...fling
is over.’

  A savage frown divided his brow. ‘Compensation? Is that what you think this is?’ He waved a hand at the gifts on the table between them, his grey-blue eyes glittering with something that very much looked like anger. Good, because she was angry too. Furiously angry that he was paying her off. Softening the blow with fancy gifts when all she wanted was his love. Not his money, just his love.

  Ivy arched her eyebrows in a haughty manner. ‘Isn’t it?’

  He muttered a swear word in both French and English, his hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck, as if to relieve sudden tension. He dropped his hand back by his side, every muscle in his body rigid. Unyielding. As though he was putting up a physical barrier as impenetrable as his emotional firewall.

  ‘No. It is not that at all.’ Each word was bitten out, his mouth set in a tight line. ‘The flowers and chocolates are to thank you for coming with me to Paris. The jewellery is for your birthday—I thought I’d give it to you early in case I don’t see you on the day. If you want to read anything else into it, then fine, go right ahead.’

  Ivy’s anger deflated like a pricked party balloon. ‘Oh, Louis, I’m sorry. I almost forgot about my birthday.’ He had made her forget everything but how wonderful it was to be in his arms. And how, within a matter of four impossibly short days, she would be out of them and alone again.

  He shrugged one broad shoulder in a dismissive manner. ‘Forget about it.’ His tone was gruff, offhand, but she could read a thread of lingering hurt in it too.

  She stepped around the coffee table and placed her hand on his leanly muscled forearm, meshing her gaze with his screened one. ‘I’m sorry for being tetchy when you’ve been so generous. Forgive me?’

  He made a soft grunting sound and wrapped his arms around her and brought her close against him, his head resting on the top of her head. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’ His deep voice reverberated against her cheek where it was resting against his broad chest. She wanted to stay there forever, just like this, in the warm, protective shelter of his arms.

  After a long moment, Ivy tilted her head back to look at him. ‘Can I open my present now?’

  He smiled and gave her bottom a playful pat. ‘Go for it.’

  She slipped out of his arms to pick up the jewellery box, holding her breath as she flicked the little gold latch and opened the lid. Lying on a cream velvet bed was a pink diamond pendant on an exquisitely fine white-gold chain with a matching pair of droplet earrings. ‘Oh, my goodness...’ She stared at them in amazement, struck by their beauty and his thoughtfulness. ‘They’re just divine. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Do you want to try them on?’

  She gave him a rueful smile. ‘I’m not sure they’ll be shown off to their best advantage while I’m wearing your bathrobe, as expensive and luxurious as it is.’

  His grey-blue eyes smouldered. ‘There’s an easy solution to that.’

  He reached for the waist ties of the bathrobe and slowly, deliberately, untied them, all the while holding her gaze in an unwavering lock. Then he slipped the bathrobe off her shoulders, his eyes hungrily travelling over her naked flesh. The garment fell to the floor at her feet and he took the jewellery box from her.

  ‘Turn around.’ His commanding tone made a shiver run up and down her spine, so too the brush of his fingers as he fastened the pendant around her neck. He placed a warm, firm hand on one of her shoulders to turn her back round. ‘You’d better put the earrings on yourself.’

  He handed them to her and she slipped them through her pierced earlobes. ‘How do I look?’

  His gaze swept over her again. ‘Ravishing.’ He placed his hands on her hips and brought her up against him. She was left in no doubt of how ravishing he found her—he was as hard as stone—and her lower body responded with hot little flickers of lust. He brought his mouth down to hers in an incendiary kiss that set off fireworks and bombs in her blood. Heat raced through her system, molten heat that made every cell in her body throb and ache with rampaging need. He deepened the kiss with a silken thrust of his tongue, calling hers into intimate play, teasing, cajoling, captivating her senses until she was whimpering with delight.

  Somehow his towel fell to the floor, but she couldn’t remember if she’d tugged it off or he had. All that mattered was it was off, and she could feel him rising against her belly, the velvet and steel of his form inciting her to even greater dizzying heights of arousal. Her body was slick, her legs trembling, her spine loosening.

  ‘I want you so damn much.’ He growled against her lips, his hands moving from her hips to cup her breasts. He brought his mouth to each breast in turn, licking and circling each tightly budded nipple with his tongue. The sensations rioted from her breasts throughout her body on intricate networks of sheer pleasure.

  Ivy grasped his head in her hands, bringing his mouth back to hers. ‘I want you too. So much it’s like a pain.’

  His eyes gleamed with erotic promise, his lips tilted in a smile that sent another wave of heat through to her core. ‘Then let’s do something about that, shall we?’ He picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom, placing her on the bed and coming down beside her.

  Ivy waited with bated breath as he reached past her to get a condom. He applied it and came back to her. He stroked her from shoulder to thigh and back again, his eyes smoky with lust. ‘I think we’re going to lose that dinner booking. Do you mind?’

  She linked her arms around his neck and smiled. ‘Not one little bit.’

  As it turned out, they didn’t lose the dinner booking, in spite of the mind-blowing sex they’d shared. Louis was nothing if not ruthlessly efficient when it came to giving her pleasure. Her body was still tingling and her lips still swollen from his passionate kisses.

  Later that night, Louis sat opposite Ivy at an intimate table in the window of the restaurant a short walk from his apartment. The current of electricity between them seemed to have followed them to the restaurant. Every time she glanced at him, she felt the zap and crackle of energy pass from his gaze to hers. When he reached for her hand across the table, her inner core spasmed with a pleasurable ache.

  Ivy picked up her champagne glass and took a sip, conscious of Louis’ gaze steadily watching her. She put her glass back down. ‘What are you thinking?’ It was a bold question to ask but the mood seemed right. Their earlier lovemaking had shifted something in their relationship. Or maybe it was she who had shifted. She felt more confident in her sensuality, more at ease in expressing herself sexually.

  His eyes darkened. ‘You can’t guess?’

  A shiver coursed down her spine and sent a soft flicker to her core. ‘You’re not the easiest person to read but I’m guessing you’re thinking about what happens after dinner.’

  A slow smile spread across his face and he reached for her hand across the table and held it in his. ‘Those diamonds look fabulous on you. The colour reminds me of your cheeks when you blush.’

  Ivy touched one of the droplet earrings before placing her hand back in her lap. Her other hand tingled where it was encased in his. ‘I’m not sure what Millie is going to say when I come home wearing diamonds from a high-end jeweller. Did I tell you she’s a jewellery designer? She lets me wear her stuff for free.’

  He pulled his hand away and picked up his glass of champagne, his expression difficult to read. ‘They’re a birthday gift, that’s all.’ He took a sip of his drink and placed the glass back on the table with a little thud that seemed to serve as an underline to his statement.

  Ivy chewed one side of her mouth. ‘Are you cross with me?’

  He sighed and gave a forced-looking smile that faded almost as soon as it appeared. ‘No. It’s just I don’t want your friends to get the wrong idea about us. I would have preferred they didn’t know about our...arrangement.’

  ‘Well, I get that, but what am I going to say to Ronan or Mum when they se
e these?’ She touched the pendant hanging around her neck.

  His mouth tightened. ‘I’ve bought you birthday presents before. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Book and cinema vouchers aren’t quite in the same league as diamonds, though, are they?’

  Louis picked up his glass and drained it, placing it back down again with a heavy sigh. ‘Just for the record, I don’t give my ex-lovers diamonds, or any other jewellery when it comes to that.’

  ‘Maybe that’s my point.’

  A frown settled between his brows. ‘And your point is?’ His tone was guarded, and his gaze had ‘keep away’ written in its smoke and sky hues.

  Ivy wished she hadn’t started this conversation but felt compelled to continue it regardless. The clock was ticking on ‘their arrangement’, as he called it. An arrangement that was passionate, exciting and thrilled her senses but was doomed to bring her heartache in the end.

  Why hadn’t she realised that before now? She was on a road that came to a dead end. It would be crazy to keep driving along it knowing she would never get from Louis what she most wanted. Yes, he’d bought her diamonds and treated her like a princess. He’d made love to her as if she was the only woman in the world he ever wanted to make love to. But he was not willing to open his heart to her.