His Love for Her (Carmel Springs Book 10)

Prologue

I couldn't do this anymore. Even as his hands skimmed over my body, even as his lips tasted my skin, even as I didn't say no, I knew that I couldn't do this anymore.

I was in love with someone that didn't love me back, and I'd been fooling myself into thinking that I could make him love me. That was the biggest lie that desperate women told themselves. Men didn't fall in love with women because we made them fall in love with us. Even the most perfect of wives got left for another woman.

No, men either loved you or they didn't.

It was that simple.

There was no great mystery to it. There was no secret code to unravel. There was no couples' therapy that would give you all the answers. If love was complicated, it was because we made it that way with our hopes and/or insecurities.

With his lips on my bare shoulder, I knew that he wasn't to blame for all of it. I was the one that had proposed that stupid agreement two years ago. I was the one that had offered up the stupidest idea ever, hoping that it would lead to love and a house with a few kids. I was the one that had jumped into something that I thought I could control but was clearly wrong.

I forced my eyes to remain dry as I predicted what was going to happen next. Like clockwork, after the caresses, after the thank-you kisses on the back of my shoulders, after the few hours of relentless passion, he was going to get up, get dressed, then leave. Then, like the pathetic woman that I was, I was going to sit around and wait for him to text me, so that it could all happen again.

I hugged the pillow tightly beneath me.

Not anymore.

My birthday was one month away, and while I was only twenty-seven, I wanted a family one day, and I wasn't going to get it if I continued to be nothing but a bootycall. I was never going to get that husband and kids if I limited myself to only being available for a night of sex.

I did my best to keep my emotions in check as I heard the rustling of clothes, proving my predictions correct. The room was eerily silent, or maybe that was just my mind conjuring up the feeling. Maybe it was just my resolve finally crumbling all around me. For over two years, I had tried to convince myself that my plan had been solid, and I never felt as much of an idiot as I did now.

I had wasted two years of my life trying to get a man to fall in love with me, and if that wasn't the definition of pathetic, then I didn't know what was. In my mind's eye, I had believed that all the dinners, movies, picnics, whatever, would show a side of me that would be easy to love. It'd been the perfect scheme to become friends, and then fall in love in the middle of that friendship.

However, two years later, there'd been no dinners, movies, picnics, or even trips to the damn grocery store. There'd been no opportunity to fall in love with me because there'd been nothing but sex to our relationship, and everyone knew that men didn't fall in love with sex. Sure, they might fall victim to it, but they never fell in love with it. Men fell in love with the one woman that they thought about and missed outside the bedroom.

So, now all I was left with was two wasted years when I could have been spending them with someone who wanted the same future as I did. I could have been spending time with someone that didn't need to be manipulated into falling in love with me. I could have been going out on dates, getting to know people, and making new friends if nothing else.

I hugged the pillow tighter as I felt him kiss the back of my head. I often let him believe that I was sleeping because I wanted to avoid my emotions for as long as I could when he was around. The only emotion that I allowed myself was desire. I felt it in spades whenever he walked through my front door, but it left me feeling empty the second that he was no longer inside me.

I bit my lower lip as I heard his footsteps exiting my bedroom. I let out a shaky breath as I heard the front door to my house open, then close. I hugged the pillow painfully tight as my mind heard him getting into his truck, then driving away, even though my ears couldn't possibly hear it happening.

The only other problem that I had right now was not knowing how to end things. Did I just stop answering his texts? Did I end it face-to-face? Did I tell him the truth and demand more? Did I just start dating new people, letting him get wind of it?

I let out a heavy sigh.

I had no idea what to do; I just knew that I had to do something, and soon.