In his opinion, long-term commitment was a dirty word.
Louis helped her into the passenger seat and tried not to notice how her black dress revealed a tiny shadow of cleavage and a whole lot of her shapely thighs. Tried to ignore the way his pulse shot up and his blood thickened.
He strode to the driver’s side and gave himself a stern talking to.
It’s just dinner. Nothing else. You’re going to talk her out of her crazy plan, remember?
‘Louis?’
He flicked her a quick glance as the engine turned over. ‘Yes?’
Her fingers were fiddling with the clasp on her evening bag, her cheeks a faint shade of pink. ‘Do you carry condoms with you all the time?’
He stared blankly at her for a moment. ‘Ah, well, yes, but we’re not going to need them tonight.’
‘But why not?’
His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles threatened to burst out of his skin. And that wasn’t the only part of his anatomy fit to burst. The stirring in his groin sent hot tingles down his legs at the thought of making love to her. He met her gaze. ‘We’re not going to have sex, Ivy. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not—’
‘Why not? I bet you have sex with other women on the first date.’
‘This isn’t a date,’ he said through tight lips. ‘It’s a meeting to discuss your...situation.’
‘My situation is that I want you to take my virginity. Why are you being so...so difficult about this?’
He sent her a sideways glance. ‘You’re not the one-night-stand type. You’ve got no experience of how to do this sort of hook-up.’
‘Which is why I want you to give it to me.’
Louis clenched his jaw so hard, he thought he was going to crack his mandible. ‘Look, I think we should talk about it some more before we go rushing into something with so many pitfalls. If we sleep together, it will change everything. We will never look at each other the same way again.’
‘Does it matter? I mean, you have sex with heaps of women and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.’ She let out a whooshing sigh. ‘Maybe it’s me that’s the problem. I’m so undesirable you can’t bear the thought of touching me.’
If only it were that simple. He’d been fighting the temptation to touch her since she’d come into his office that afternoon. He was fighting it now. She was the most desirable woman he’d met in a long time. ‘Feeling desire for someone doesn’t mean I’ll act on it. Not unless I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do.’
‘How else can I convince you? Do you know how embarrassing it is for me to be the only person in my circle of friends who’s still a virgin? I can’t imagine asking anyone else to help me. I would be too embarrassed—or at least more embarrassed, because it certainly wasn’t easy asking you this afternoon. Hence the brandy. Imagine if I had to ask a stranger!’
His gut roiled at the thought of her going out with a stranger. Doing anything with a stranger. Louis forced himself to relax his grip on the steering wheel. ‘I don’t think we should rush into this without some proper checks and balances done first.’
‘Fine. But let’s not take too long about it—because I turn thirty in a month and no way am I going to celebrate my birthday as a flipping virgin.’ She blew out a breath and continued, ‘I know this has come as a shock to you, but I’ve been struggling with this for years. I hate it that I can be so confident at work but this area of my life is so stuffed up. I need to get past this in order to move on with my life. It’s like there’s a big fat pause button on my future. Solving this will press the go switch, I’m sure of it.’
Yes, but it was the ‘go’ switch he was most worried about. Worried about removing the boundaries he had set up. Relaxing his self-control. Doing things with her he had only done in his most wicked dreams.
She suddenly flashed him a teasing smile. ‘Are you worried you might fall for me? Is that where your reluctance is coming from?’
He gave her the side-eye. ‘I know how to keep my feelings in check.’ He’d been doing it most of his life. Controlling his reaction to his father’s acid tongue and overly critical eye. Ignoring his father’s repeated digs about his choice of career and how he had let everybody down by not joining the family accounting business as expected. Ignoring his mother’s incessant nit-picking over every aspect of his life, knowing deep down it was her way of compensating for her lack of power in her marriage, and her bitter disappointment at only having one child after several miscarriages.
He had witnessed way too many of his parents’ fights in which bitter words had been exchanged, but one in particular had stuck in his mind as a ten-year-old child, so too the harrowing aftermath. His mother’s admission into a mental health clinic for months on end after a suicide attempt. Louis had shut down his feelings at seeing his mother inside the walls of a locked mental-health unit. Her blank, flat look—as if someone had pulled out the power cord to her personality. He had suppressed his own despair in order to cope with his father’s. When his mother had finally come home, his father had grovelled, begged, over-adapted and promised things he could never deliver.
That was forever love? Louis wanted nothing to do with it.
‘I sometimes wish I could keep my feelings in check...’ Ivy’s tone contained a self-deprecating note. ‘Ronan’s always telling me I wear my heart on my sleeve. Both sleeves, actually.’
Louis glanced at her. ‘Have you heard from your father lately?’
She sighed and looked down at her hands in her lap. ‘No. I think he’s blocked me on his phone. It’s much worse for Ronan. The things Dad said to him were unforgiveable. I was really worried about him there for a bit.’
‘Yeah, so was I.’ Louis pulled into a parking spot near the restaurant and turned off the engine. ‘But he seems happy now with Ricky.’
She swivelled in her seat to look at him. ‘Louis?’
‘Yes?’
Her eyes went to his mouth and a small frown settled on her forehead. The tip of her tongue came out and licked her lips, and scorching heat flooded his groin. The air tightened and the space between them shrank, his self-control wavering like a slab of concrete on a building site held by a gossamer thread. It would be so easy to reach for her hand, to stroke the creamy curve of her cheek, to lean forward and press his lips against the plump ripeness of hers. He could feel the magnetic pull of attraction drawing him closer, every cell in his body poised, primed for contact. In his mind he was already doing it—kissing her until they were both breathless, his tongue tangling with hers, his blood pounding like a tribal drum.
Go on, do it. You know you want to.