The Billionaire's Unwanted Virgin

by Doris O'Connor

  "Could you get some water please?" The silent young man who'd served them their dinner sprang into action, but before he could reach for the heavy crystal goblet on the side board, Lakota's terse command stopped him.

  "Leave it, Brian. You may go now. I'll call when we're ready for dessert. Tell cook thank you for an excellent meal so far."

  Brian smiled at Alice and made a hasty retreat. The long room seemed to shrink all of a sudden, as though all the air had been sucked out of it. This was ridiculous. She was marrying the man studying her from under hooded lids, just as soon as it could be arranged. She really had to stop hyperventilating every time he focused on her.

  "Is there something wrong with the veal or the wine, little Alice?" He got up as he spoke, picked up the water carafe as he went, and filled an empty glass for her.

  "Thank you, and there's nothing wrong. I'm just not hungry, I guess." She avoided his gaze and picked up the glass. His close proximity made her so nervous her hand shook, and the water sloshed over the sides. He sighed and took the glass off her. A jolt of static tingled up her arm at the contact of his calloused fingers, and she held her breath when he leaned down and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered on the rapidly beating pulse for a few heart-stopping minutes before he straightened and sat down in the chair next to her.

  "What happened to the young woman I left in the courtyard all ready to tear me down a strip, Alice? Does the thought of being married to me scare you that much?"

  She shook her head.

  "It's not that. I … I'm just worried about my mum, I guess. She's not in the best of health, and I don't know how to tell her about … this."

  "I see. Where does she think you are right now?"

  "Oh she knows I'm here. I had to tell her." She shot him a quick glance, and she could tell she'd surprised him. His eyes narrowed, and he sat back in his chair, interlinking his fingers and propping one of his long muscular legs over his knee. The fabric of his jeans grew taut against his legs, and Alice forced herself to look away from temptation.

  "So, what is the problem? Surely from her point of view the fact that her daughter is marrying has got to be better than just throwing her virtue away on what would effectively have been a one night stand? "

  The inflection he put on virtue made it sound as though it was an insult, and she flinched. His short laugh in response to her reaction had her stiffen her spine.

  "This is not funny." She glared at him.

  "I'm not saying it is. I just fail to see the problem here. I am told I'm quite the catch." He winked at her again, and all the fight went out of her. He looked like a little boy up to mischief when he did that, his harsh features softening, and Alice found herself wishing that he would do it more often. It made him seem human, not this overpowering presence that held her and little Beth's future in his large hands.

  "My, you think a lot of yourself. I'm surprised you fit through the door with an ego the size of yours."

  This time his smile in response didn't reach his eyes, and Alice suppressed a shiver of unease.

  "Not particularly, but I make no excuses for who I am or where I came from. Unlike some people I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mother, may she rest in peace, worked her fingers to the bone to keep my brother and me fed and clothed. When she died I swore to myself that I would get the people responsible, and nothing and no one is going to stop me. I'm good at what I do. It bought all this, and still, it's not enough for them."

  The barely hidden pain and silent fury behind those words came through loud and clear, and without thinking, Alice leaned forward and put a hand on his forearm. The muscles tensed under her tentative touch, but he didn't pull away. Instead he covered her hand with his and squeezed.

  "I didn't mean any disrespect to you or your heritage, Lakota." A muscle ticked in his tightly clenched jaw. He released her hand and stood up so abruptly that she blinked in surprise.

  He poured himself a glass of Merlot and took a long swallow. Alice followed the movement of his Adam's apple as he swallowed, and she bit her lip. This was crazy. Everything about him turned her on. She should be furious. He was forcing her to marry him, to stay with him. She was not allowed to leave the house, and Percy was in the process of producing contracts and a prenuptial agreement a mile long, effectively tying her to this man in a way no marriage vow alone ever could.

  With those contracts came a settlement figure so high her head still spun, and it would mean neither she, nor Mum and Beth would ever need for anything ever again. The debts accumulated through Beth's illness would be swept away as though they were nothing, her medical treatments taken care of for however long she needed them. If the little girl lived that long.

  No, she would not allow herself to entertain any other possibility than Beth's full recovery. Alice blinked the rising tears away, uncomfortably aware that Lakota was once again watching her every move. She forced a smile on her lips, and his tense stance relaxed a bit. He sat back down and sighed.

  She couldn't shake the feeling that he was as unhappy about this arrangement as she was. She could only guess at the demons that drove him. All that Percy would reveal was Lakota's need to get married to cinch an important business deal. It seemed even in these modern times and with a man as successful as Lakota, old values were held dear in the corporate boardroom of Lord Langton enterprises. Lakota was the major shareholder, yet the board would not appoint him as CEO unless he was married.

  That's where she came in. A wife in name only, giving Lakota the respectability the board craved.

  In return for her several million dollar settlement she had to be his dutiful wife in public and keep her mouth shut. No hint of scandal could attach to Lakota's name. His brother's car accident had attracted enough unwanted attention. And she'd signed up to twelve months of torture. Twelve months of pretending to be his loving wife, of giving the public appearance of wedded bliss, before she would be allowed a quiet separation and eventual divorce.

  It was so far removed from what she had always hoped for in a marriage that her stomach churned with bile, and made it impossible for her to relax enough to eat anything. And this unreasonable awareness she had of Lakota as a man was so not helping.

  "I still don't understand why you have to marry," she said. "This isn't the Dark Ages, and surely a man with your connections does not need the approval of the board. You control the company as it is. Why go through all this just to be the public face? I just can't get my head round it, and I have no idea how to explain this all to my mum."

  "Surely the money will soften the blow." He ignored her probing, not that she'd really expected him to open up to her. As far as he was concerned she was just the means to an end. A problem caused by his brother that had to be taken care of. Had she not proved useful to him, she had no doubt she would ever have been allowed anywhere near him.

  "You don't know my mother. To get married for anything but love is a sacrilege as far as she is concerned. Daddy and she were childhood sweethearts, and blissfully happy until his heart attack last year. She hasn't been the same since he died."

  Her voice broke like it always did when she thought of Daddy, and this time she couldn't stop a tear escaping. She angrily swiped it away. Lakota had made it very clear that he didn't appreciate tearful breakdowns. By the time she had her emotions under control enough to look at him, his face was an unreadable mask. Only his dark eyes showed a swirl of emotion before he blinked, and they, too, turned to stone, making her wonder whether she had imagined that brief flash of compassion.

  Lance Lakota Kemnay and compassion in the same thought process was an oxymoron to the extreme. Percy had let her research Lakota when he'd explained the terms of the contracts he was going to have drawn up. Whilst she'd appreciated the older man's kindness, what she'd learned about her soon-to-be husband had given her the chills.

  A mega name in the corporate world, he'd worked himself up the ladder from the ground up. Ruthless, efficient,
ambitious to the point of obsession, and intensely private, he was a force to be reckoned with. She hadn't been able to glean much about his private life. His brother’s escapades dominated the gossip pages, his unfortunate accident under mysterious circumstances only last week still the top of the news hags.

  The pictures of Lakota at Zeb's funeral had broken her heart. Taken on the very day Zeb had won her in that auction, the pictures showed him standing to one side as he'd watched the proceedings with such an aloof expression the papers had branded him heartless. But Alice recognized the look of a man with such an intense grip on his emotion, that to show any would open the floodgates. She recognized it because she'd worn the same look over and over again over the course of the last year. She'd had to, because if she'd fallen apart, everything would have unraveled so much sooner. Beth and Mum needed her to be the strong one.

  It was those pictures in the end that had convinced her to take him up on his offer. If he was curt with her, it was because he was hurting inside. She could deal with curt. If only she could say the same for her body's unreasonable reaction to his presence.

  "Love doesn't exist."

  His harsh words held censure and such disdain it settled like a vise on her chest and squeezed.

  "Of course it does. How can you say that? You loved your brother, didn't you? And your mother?"

  His whole body tightened in answer, and his lips curled into a cynical sneer. He poured himself some more wine and stood at the French windows to look out at the vast expanse of garden.

  "There are those that would call me incapable of love. I'm the heartless monster, haven't you heard?" He raised his wineglass in her direction in a mocking salute. "The freak who couldn't bring himself to care enough about his own brother or the grieving fiancée."

  He drained the glass in one go and put it down on the table so carefully, that action, too, gave Alice the chills. It was far too controlled, too contained for this big man, to be anything but an act.

  "I'm assuming she wasn't really engaged to your brother? I mean, he wouldn't have made that … that … bid for me if he had been, would he?" She was aware her voice had risen to an unnaturally high level as she pondered that possibility, and she hastily cleared her throat. "Not that it matters much now, I suppose."

  "Ah, little Alice, that would interfere with your views on love completely, wouldn't it?" His black eyed gaze held her captive, and she couldn't have looked away now if her life had depended on it.

  "I refuse to believe that anyone could be so cruel, and if he did that, then he obviously didn't love her. So, no, actually it doesn't change my views on love. It just would reiterate my generally dim view on men though."

  "Ouch. And there was me thinking the reason you're still a virgin is that you were simply waiting for the right man, not that you had a dim view of them. More like you realized you could cash yourself a lot of money, by selling it to the highest bidder."

  "How dare you?" She glared at him, and he shrugged his shoulders, looking so impossibly gorgeous and male, her fingers itched to throw her water glass at him. Anything to remove that haughty, superior air and to get an honest reaction out of him.

  "I dare, because it's the truth. You did barter it to the highest bidder, did you not? Or did someone hold a gun to your head at the time? No, I thought not. Where were your haughty ideas of love then? Did it not occur to you that the man who purchased you, could well be in a relationship? Married with kids? Or perhaps worse still, use you to satisfy some sexual fetish?"

  He looked her up and down with such disgust, she was glad she was sitting.

  "A man like your brother, you mean? Would he have used me for those ends? And if he would have done, what does that make you? You're marrying me, but at the end of the day, it's the same thing, just dressed up, is it not?"

  She jumped at his reaction. In the blink of an eye he crossed the room and stood in front of her. With his hands on the arm rests of her chair, he caged her in, his nose inches away from her.

  "You are going into this with your eyes open, lady. It was your choice to come here and claim your payment. It is your choice to walk out of that door. I am not forcing you to sign those papers."

  As if to make the point he released her and stood next to the bell that would summon Brian in an instant.

  "Just say the word and you're free to go. Without your money of course, and if you breathe one word of this to anyone, your cute little ass will land itself a one way ticket to jail, and I will make your mother rue the day she ever gave birth to you."

  His quiet and controlled manner made the words even more chilling, and Alice could do nothing but stare at him. How had she thought she could deal with him?

  "You would do that to people you've never even met?" she asked.

  "In a heartbeat, sweet little Alice, in a heartbeat."

  Something broke inside Alice at those words.

  "You really are a cold-hearted bastard, aren't you?"

  ****

  Alice curled her slender fingers around the armrests with such force they turned white. Judging by the storm clouds crossing her expressive face she wished her hands were wrapped around his neck instead. He didn't even know why he was being such an ass, but something about her got to him. Just by sitting there, all prim and proper, stoically facing her fate, made him feel things he had no business feeling.

  The fact that she wasn't the money grabbing whore he'd first thought her to be just made it all so much worse. At Percy's insistence he'd finally read that file, and what he'd learned about her had rocked him to the core.

  Highly intelligent, she'd dropped out of her university degree when her niece had fallen ill, the year her father had had his heart attack. With no income coming in, it had fallen to Alice to provide for the family. And she had, admirably so, working two, sometimes three jobs, yet they were drowning in debt. Her niece's illness did not help. The experimental treatment she needed was not available on the NHS.

  For that reason Lakota had made Percy up the settlement offer considerably. He knew it would take more than that to ease his conscience screaming at him, but he'd had to do something to chase away the shadows in her eyes. He couldn't offer her any part of himself, but he could certainly provide the money. And with her reluctant agreement to his terms, he would finally get his revenge on the piece of scum that fathered him, and left his mother and him to rot after the arrival of Zeb.

  Lakota crunched his teeth together in disgust at his maudlin thoughts. He couldn't change the past, but he could damn well pave his own future. It's what had made him into a billionaire, and no little Alice in Wonderland would de-rail him from his purpose, no matter how much her unshed tears tore at his gut and made his chest feel tight.

  "You're only just now figuring this out, my sweet little Alice?"

  Her eyes widened, and she fixed him with such a glare of defiance, he almost squirmed under that silent censure.

  "I think you're trying far too hard to convince me of that fact, Lakota. What I think or don't think is irrelevant anyway. As you've been so at pains to remind me, you've bought me. I get it. I'll be the image of the doting society wife, don't you worry, but if you think for one minute that I will let you threaten the people I love, then you have got another think coming."

  She'd gotten up from her chair during her impassioned speech and now stood in front of him. With her hands on hips, her face flushed, and her whole body trembling in outrage, she looked utterly stunning, even in her ill-fitting ensemble of clothes, and he shoved his fists in his back pockets to stop himself from crushing her to him and kissing her senseless. She'd likely make him sing soprano if he tried, and giving in to his body's urges would just confuse the issues in hand.

  She wasn't experienced enough to accept sex for what it was. A mere physical transaction to leave him and his bed partner well sated. The few women he allowed himself to indulge with knew the score. He offered them hot sex and nothing more, breaking off the entanglement as soon as it wasn't mutually
beneficial anymore to either party. He treated them well, but he never made his affairs public knowledge, and he certainly never allowed his emotions to get involved. Not that they'd ever been in danger of getting employed. Not until little Miss Alice here. She made him look at himself, and he didn't like what he saw.

  "If you don’t mind, I would like to go to bed now." She looked up at him, defiantly staring him down, and when he was going to say something she put her hand up. "Spare me any more insults. You can't have anything else to say to me, and I'm not hungry. Please send my apologies to the cook."

  "I hope your appetite will improve, little Alice. I don't want you wasting away." He smiled to take the sting out of his words, and she rolled her eyes.

  "Don't worry, I shan't. I'm sure that eventuality, too, is going to be covered in the contracts Percy is drawing up. I get the impression neither you nor he are ever leaving anything to chance. It's been a long day that's all. I am allowed to sleep, I take it?"

  The sarcasm stung, and Lakota stepped back to allow her to pass.

  "Let me ring—"

  "No need, I can find my own way to my gilded prison." Alice interrupted him and strode out of the room with all the quiet dignity that seemed ingrained in very being. It left him staring after her. An uneasy feeling settled in his gut at the thought of being married to her for the next twelve months. As much as it would solve his current problems, it would create a host of new ones. The ache in his groin was an unwelcome reminder that marriage to his very own Alice in Wonderland would test his patience to the limit.

  Chapter Three

  Alice swatted the insistent fly buzzing in her ear away. Cocooned in Lakota's arms she sought to rekindle the erotic fantasies playing out between them, but it was no use. The dream slipped away until it was nothing but a wisp of smoke, the insistent throbbing between her legs and her sweat-slicked body, the only physical evidence of the erotic dream her phone had wrenched her out of.