One Night On The Virgin's Terms - Melanie Milburne Page 0,56
would crack a molar. ‘Love affair? On my part, maybe, but not yours. You’ve hardened your heart out of fear, the same way I avoided intimacy out of fear for all those years. You won’t allow yourself to get close to anyone in case they hurt you or make you feel vulnerable. You’ve got intimacy issues, Louis. You won’t ever be happy unless you address them. You’re not at heart a playboy. You remind me of Ronan, pretending all those years to be something he’s not and could never be. You are a man who wants to love and be loved but you’re too frightened to give anyone the power to hurt you.’
Louis threw his head back and gave a cynical laugh that grated on her already shredded nerves. ‘Stick with antiques, ma petite. You’d make a lousy therapist.’ His laughter lines faded and his expression tightened. ‘I’m perfectly happy with my playboy lifestyle.’
She raised her chin, giving him a level stare. ‘Then you won’t mind going back to it sooner rather than later. I’m going home tomorrow morning. There’s no point me staying here in Paris with you any longer. Our relationship was always coming to a dead end and I should have seen your emotional stop sign at the end of the road a whole lot earlier. I’ll sleep in the spare room tonight.’
‘Fine. You do that.’ His voice was clipped, his expression tightly drawn. He reached for his keys in the ceramic bowl and added, ‘I’m going out. I’ll see you in the morning.’
No, you won’t, Ivy decided on the spot. I’ll be long gone by then.
Louis walked several blocks, trying to get his emotions in some sort of working order. His emotions. What a joke. He didn’t possess the emotions Ivy wanted him to feel. Of course he cared about her—why else had he bought her such an expensive gift for her birthday? Why had he been so reluctant to enter into their fling in the first place?
Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. He should have known it would end this way—with her upset with his lack of commitment. But he couldn’t change what was an essential part of his character. He wasn’t the marriage and babies type. He could think of nothing more claustrophobic than ending up in a marriage like that of his parents.
His father had promised ‘in sickness and health’ and got more sickness than health. His mother had promised ‘to love and to cherish’ and ended up loathing and criticising. Ivy’s own parents had done the same, along with numerous others. Love, when and if it even existed in the first place, never lasted. It had never lasted for him. He had occasionally felt flickers of something for the odd partner, and he had definitely felt more than a flicker for Ivy, but it didn’t mean it would last the distance.
It would pass. It always did.
And it would again.
CHAPTER TEN
IVY QUICKLY PACKED her things and then called a cab to take her to a hotel closer to the airport. Within the space of minutes, she was out of his apartment and on her way back to her old life. But her life would not be the same as before. She had changed, and those changes had come about through her relationship with Louis. She had seen sex as something to get out of the way, a box to be ticked. But he had shown her how pleasurable sex could be with a partner you trusted. Sex for her was never going to be a simple scratching of an itch, a purely physical response to stimuli. She needed more, she wanted more, she ached for more.
She deserved more.
She was not just a body that had needs and desires. She was an adult woman who craved intimacy that went beyond the physical expression of lust. An emotional intimacy. A deep and lasting bond that would only be enhanced by physical passion. She had hoped Louis felt the same way about her. Hoped and dreamed he would open his heart to her, but where had those hopes taken her?
To a dead end.
It was time to do a U-turn and get on with the rest of her life. Without Louis. Without the love she so desperately craved. Without her happy-ever-after fairy tale.
Louis came back to his apartment an hour or so later and immediately sensed Ivy was gone. The atmosphere was dull, listless, as if the energy had been taken out of