Spotlight & Giveaway: One Night on the Virgin’s Terms by Melanie Milburne

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Melanie Milburne to HJ!

Hi Melanie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, One Night on the Virgin’s Terms!

 
Hello! Great to be here!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

A virgin asks her brother’s best friend, who goes by the moniker Mr Amazing One-Night Stand, to help her get rid of her V card before her thirtieth birthday.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

‘Thanks for keeping the lights off.’ In semi-darkness she could hide her secret thoughts and feelings…she could feel less exposed, less vulnerable. She was ready to give herself to him physically but she wanted her emotions kept in the shadows where they couldn’t be seen.
‘That’s fine. I can make love to you by Braille.’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

This book is the first in a heroine-led trilogy. Ivy and Louis came to life from the moment I selected their names. It was fun writing book one and planting the set ups and characters for books two and three. It was like writing three books at once, which sounds more like hard work than fun but I can assure you it was actually really enjoyable.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

As Louis and Ivy have known each other for years, their mutual attraction has been humming in the background for quite some time. But when Ivy turns up at Louis’s office he is acutely aware of how attracted he is to her even before she asks him to help her with her ‘little problem’.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I really enjoyed writing the scene where Ivy asks Louis ( in a roundabout way) to help her get rid of her virginity.

Do what with a stranger? And why did she trust him? Louis wasn’t so sure he deserved her trust, given where his mind was leading him—straight into the gutter. He pushed his chair back and stood, putting a little more distance between them. He went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a neat whisky. He wasn’t a heavy drinker—thankfully that was one way in which he was different from his father—but right then he could have drained the bottle and followed it with a brandy chaser.
He took a measured sip and turned back to face her. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you. What exactly do you want me to do?’
Ivy shifted from foot to foot, her hands interlaced in front of her body, her cheeks blooming again with colour. ‘I have a problem with…with sex…’
Louis sprayed most of his second sip of whisky out of his mouth on a choked splutter. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Are you sure I’m the person you should be talking to about this?’
Her mouth was down-turned at the corners, her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m still a virgin and I’m almost thirty. I need to do something to fix myself otherwise I’ll never find a partner—especially today, when everyone’s so adventurous and open about sex. I’m a pariah. An uptight prude who can’t even get undressed unless the lights are out.’

Readers should read this book….

If you enjoy a friends to lovers story and want to be entertained by a quirky heroine and a deliciously handsome hero who speaks fluent French.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am just a couple of thousand words off finishing a matchmaker trope story. The next two books in the Wanted: A Billionaire Trilogy-Breaking the Playboy’s Rules and One Hot New York Night are out later this year and early next.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A signed copy of One Night on the Virgin’s Terms.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: My heroine has an important goal to tick off her list. Do you have a current goal you’d like to achieve by a certain time?

 
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Excerpt from One Night on the Virgin’s Terms:

Louis had lost count of the number of times he’d taken a woman out to dinner, so there was no reason why this time he should be feeling as if this date was something special.
Date? Is that what this is?
No. It. Was. Not. He hadn’t committed to anything. One part of him was determined to talk Ivy out of her plan to have him initiate her into the joy of sex, the other part of him was mentally stockpiling condoms and scented candles. What had got into him? Where were his set-in-stone boundaries?
Louis adjusted his tie and then pressed the doorbell on Ivy’s flat. The sound of heels click-clacking on floorboards sent his pulse up. Was it his imagination or could he already smell her perfume? The door opened and Ivy stood there in a little black dress that clung to every delicious curve on her body, the vertiginous heels she was wearing showcasing her slim legs and ankles. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and his fingers itched so much to reach out and touch it, he had to shove his hands into his trouser pockets.
‘Hiya.’ Her lips curved around a smile and desire coiled hot and tight in his groin. Her smoky eye make-up made her periwinkle-blue eyes look all the more stunning, and her shimmering lip-gloss highlighted the perfect shape of her mouth. Her utterly kissable, sexy-as-hell mouth. Heaven help him.
‘Good evening.’ Louis stretched his mouth into one of his carefully rationed smiles. ‘You look amazing.’
Amazing, sexy, gorgeous, stunning, beautiful… The words piled into his brain as if he had swallowed a thesaurus. She didn’t look like his friend’s sister any more, which was a problem, because he needed to get those boundaries firmly back in place. And fast.
‘Thank you.’
There was a funny little silence.
‘Right. Well, then.’ Louis took his hands out of his pockets and gestured towards the street where his car was parked. ‘Shall we go?’
Ivy stepped down the three steps to the footpath but almost stumbled on the last one and Louis shot out one of his hands to stabilise her. ‘Whoa, there. Take it easy in those shoes. How on earth do you walk in them?’ His fingers moved from grasping her wrist to curl around hers and another punch of lust hit him in the groin.
‘I like wearing heels. It makes me taller. Otherwise I’d end up with neckache trying to look up at people all the time, particularly people as tall as you.’
He kept hold of her hand on the way to his car. Her fingers were soft as silk and her hand so small it was completely swallowed up by his. ‘I’ll have to get you a stepladder or something when you’re with me. I don’t want you to break your ankle on my behalf.’
She gave a tinkling-bell laugh and playfully shoulder bumped him. ‘Don’t be silly. So, where are we having dinner? I’m starving.’
‘A French restaurant.’
She grinned up at him. ‘So you can dazzle me with your fluent French?’
‘Something like that.’ Louis was the one being dazzled. Big time. He knew he was crazy even to take her out to dinner, let alone contemplate anything else. She was exactly the type of girl he avoided—the type who wanted the husband, the house and the sleepy hound in front of the cosy fireplace. He’d missed out on the settling-down gene, or had had it pummelled out of him through witnessing the marital misery of his parents. These days the sense of claustrophobia at being in a relationship longer than twenty-four hours was suffocating. He enjoyed sex for the physical relief it gave but, since his stalker, the thought of a longer relationship made him break out into hives.
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.
Her gaze met his and she gave one of her dazzling, dimpled smiles. ‘Hey, for a moment there I thought you were going to kiss me.’
Louis traced the curve of her mouth with a lazy finger, fizzing sensations shooting through him. ‘I was definitely thinking about it.’ His voice was so rough it sounded as if he’d been snacking on gravel.
‘Then why don’t you do it?’ Her voice was not much more than a breathy whisper that sent a wave of hot tingles across his scalp and down his spine.
He leaned across the gear shift and lowered his head until his mouth was barely an inch from hers. Her breath was milk and honey with a dash of cinnamon-sweetness, innocent, addictive. ‘Once I kiss you, I can’t un-kiss you.’
Her fan-like eyelashes came down over her eyes and her right hand came up and slid along the side of his face, the soft skin of her palm and fingers catching on his light stubble like fine silk on sandpaper. ‘You worry too much.’ She closed the distance between their mouths and touched his lips with the rose-petal softness of hers. It was the barest of touchdowns, but an explosion of sensation erupted in his lips. She eased back to look at him, her eyes dark and luminous. ‘See? No harm done. It was just a kiss.’
Just a kiss? Her lips were a drug he hadn’t known he had a weakness for until now. Before he could stop himself, Louis put a hand behind her head, splaying his fingers through the wild curls of her hair. Her mouth opened on a soft little gasp, as if his touch electrified her the same as hers did him.
He lowered his mouth to hers in achingly slow motion, drawn by a force as old as time. An irresistible force that sent his blood roaring through his veins and his willpower flying out the window. His lips finally met hers and incendiary heat charged from her mouth to his. He gave a low, deep groan and increased the pressure of his lips on hers, fuelled by an uncontrollable need for closer, firmer contact. Her mouth opened beneath the insistent pressure of his, her tongue brushing shyly against his. He cradled one side of her face, the other hand still buried in the red-gold tresses of her fragrant hair, his kiss deepening, his desire rising, his self-control wavering.
Ivy whimpered against his mouth, her hands coming up around his neck, her fingers playing with his short-cropped hair.
Every hair on his head tingled at the roots, every nerve in his body was on high alert, every reason for not sleeping with her retreating to the back of his mind. He breathed in the scent of her—spring flowers with an undertone of heady, intoxicating musk. Somehow, he sucked in some much-needed air before taking the kiss a step further, his tongue duelling with hers in a sexy tango that made his blood thunder through his body. Every time his tongue touched hers, a zapping lightning bolt of lust fired through him. Her lips were velvet-soft and he could taste her strawberry lip-gloss and his own salty, earthy and raw desire—a lethal blend of temptation. He knew he would never be able to eat a strawberry again without thinking of their first kiss.
Without thinking of her.
The thought was sobering enough to give him pause. He pulled back from her, lowering his hands from her cheek and the back of her head, his breathing still out of order, his body still roaring with lust. She looked as dazed as he felt—her eyes shining, her lips cherry-red and swollen, her cheeks tinged with pink.
‘Well, that was a surprise.’ Her tone was light, but a small frown appeared between her neat eyebrows and her gaze drifted back to his mouth. She moistened her lips with a quick dart of her tongue, her gaze coming back to his. ‘I didn’t think it would be as…as nice as that.’
‘What? You haven’t enjoyed being kissed before?’
‘Not really, but with you it was…something else.’ She touched her fingers to her lips as if she couldn’t quite believe what had happened. Her fingers fell away and she added, ‘Is it my imagination or was that kiss kind of off the charts?’
Louis fought not to smile. ‘It was pretty damn good. You certainly don’t need any tutoring in that department.’
She cocked her head like an inquisitive little bird. ‘Hey, is that a smile you’re trying to hide?’ Her own mouth was curved in a smile that made something warm spread through his chest. But he could and would keep his emotions out of this. He did it all the time. A kiss was just a kiss. He wasn’t going to commit to anything else that could have more troubling consequences. He unclipped his seatbelt and took the wireless car-key out of its slot on the dashboard. ‘Come on. Let’s eat. I’m starving.’
But it wasn’t a physical hunger gnawing at him.
It was good old-fashioned, rip-roaring lust.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Demure Ivy Kennedy is determined to lose her virginity by her thirtieth birthday. And there’s only one man she trusts with the role- Louis Charpentier, king of no commitment.
Louis has long denied his attraction to the red-haired beauty. Ivy deserves nothing less than the happy-ever-after she’s always dreamed of and is ultimately looking for long-term romance. Louis avoids relationships, thanks to his parents’ marital misery. But her request has started a fire…How will one night of unleashed passion ever be enough?
Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Melanie Milburne writes modern romance stories for Harlequin Mills and Boon. Her love affair with romance novels began when she read her first romance at the age of seventeen and it inspired a dream to one day become a romance author. With over 80 books in print and several industry awards and nominations for her work, Melanie enjoys crafting contemporary romance stories from her home in Hobart in beautiful Tasmania, where she lives with her husband and fur family of two dogs and two cats.
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