The Billionaire's Virgin

by Jackie Ashenden

  He thought a moment, then stood a little to the side. “You see that long black car at the curb? That’s mine.”

  Her wary gaze darted to the limo then back to him again. “So?”

  “It’s warm in there. Very warm.”

  She shifted on her feet, looking at the limo again.

  “I have whisky. I also have gin. In fact, I have pretty much any alcohol you might like in there.”

  “I don’t like alcohol.” But she didn’t look away from the car.

  For all that he was a rancher at heart, Xavier had always been good at closing a deal, at sensing when a buyer was wavering and only needed one small push to make the right decision. And he could sense it right now. All he needed to do was add the clincher and she’d be his.

  “Mia,” he said softly. “It’s cold and it’s wet, and the shelter is closed. My car is warm and we don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. But let’s go and talk about it there, okay?”

  She stared at the limo for a long time, then flicked another of her intense, focused glances at him. “You won’t touch me?” She brandished the fruit knife at him for good measure.

  “No. In fact. . . .” Slowly, very slowly so she didn’t startle, he bent and reached for a little something of his own that he always carried with him in a sheath on his calf.

  She stiffened when she saw it, but he made no move toward her as he straightened up. Instead, he kept his gaze on hers, flipped the weapon, and held it out, hilt first.

  Part of his father’s twenty-first birthday present to him, the same present he’d given to his three sons and one daughter. A handcrafted, limited-edition, De Santis 5 Compact. One of the most expensive and sought after knives on the planet.

  Some people’s kids got cars and jewelry for their twenty-first birthday.

  The de Santis kids got knives and guns.

  Mia looked down at the knife he held out, her eyes going wide.

  “Here,” he said. “Take it. It’ll do more damage than that fruit knife.”

  She glanced up at him, then back at the knife. And it looked for a second as if she might actually reach out and touch it. He could see that she wanted to; it was right there, shining in her face.

  But then all of a sudden, the want disappeared, her expression closing up like shutters coming down across the windows of a house. “No,” she said.

  Stupidly, he wanted to insist, but like he’d sensed her wavering earlier, he could also sense that now wasn’t the time to be forcing knives onto her. So he only shrugged, put the knife back in its sheath, then straightened and gestured to the car. “After you.”

  * * *

  Mia looked past Xavier de Santis’s tall, powerful figure to the sleek, shiny black machine that crouched at the curb.

  He had a limo. An actual, honest-to-God limo.

  Which must mean, of course, that he was rich.

  Her hand tightened around the hilt of the knife he’d made fun of, because if she didn’t trust clean, shiny, handsome men, she trusted rich men even less. Not that she’d met any rich men. Then again, any man who lived in a house and had more than one set of clothes was rich compared to her, so by that estimation, she’d met a few.

  She gave him another wary look. The streetlights were behind him, his face shadowed, and even though he was standing to the side, giving her plenty of room to escape if she wanted to, it felt like he took up the whole of the sidewalk.

  He was so tall and there was something about him that made her aware of every inch of space he took up. She didn’t know what that was about. He was threatening, but not in the usual way guys were threatening. Whatever it was, it made the uneasiness she felt around him even worse.

  Her gut instinct told her that getting into the car with him would be a giant mistake, and yet intellectually she knew that standing out on the sidewalk in the cold wasn’t a good idea either. She needed food and she needed to get warm. She’d lost her gloves a day or so ago and that was proving a problem too, so either she got in the car like he’d said or she left and went back to her little place behind the Dumpster.

  If he let her go, of course.

  He didn’t say anything, watching her with a sharp, intense gaze. The blue of his eyes looked even darker, like the way the sky looked in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, and she noticed, for the first time, that he seemed to be humming with a strange kind of energy. Like a cat going still just before it pounced.

  And you’re the mouse.

  Her spine stiffened. She wasn’t a damn mouse. He could laugh all he wanted at her about her knife for example, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless. She wasn’t going to let herself be threatened by anyone, and she sure as hell wouldn’t let them make her feel ridiculous or stupid.

  He didn’t know her life or what she dealt with every day. That knife, for instance, had enabled her to get away from the men who’d cornered her one night six months ago, taking all her stuff and nearly making her another of New York’s murder statistics. But she’d gotten one of the bastards in the gut before he’d managed to hit her himself, making him drop her and letting her escape.

  That knife had ensured her survival, so she didn’t give a shit if he thought it was funny or anything else.

  “If you want to make a decision, any time now is good,” he said, his voice as soft and as deep as the night itself, yet about a million times warmer. “I’m freezing my ass off. Just so you know.”

  Mia let out a soft breath. Okay. She could get in the car for maybe five minutes, warm her hands and the rest of herself up. Then perhaps, if he was insistent about giving her a ride, she’d tell him to drop her off at the other shelter. Then she’d double back to her alleyway. That wasn’t going to solve the problem about where she was going to sleep for the next few nights, but she’d deal with that issue in the morning.

  “Just for five minutes,” she said cautiously.

  He gave her a grave nod. “Sure. Five minutes.”

  She kept hold of the knife as she moved over to the car, mainly because her fingers were so cold she couldn’t actually loosen her grip. He followed, the dark intensity of his presence at her back making her feel jumpy. But he didn’t make any sudden moves toward her like he had back in the doorway of the shelter, only reaching out to pull open the door of the limo for her.

  She peered cautiously into the interior, but it was pretty dark and she couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “There’s nothing in there but leather and alcohol and a couple of Penthouse magazines.”

  She barely heard him. Warmth was flowing out of the car, warmth like nothing else she’d ever felt. It wasn’t the muggy, sour warmth of the shelter when it was full of people, or the hard, dry heat of the pipe she huddled up to at night. It was like a thick, soft blanket she could roll herself up in and never feel cold again.

  Dangerous.

  Like she didn’t know that already. Then again, it was only five minutes. She could handle five minutes.

  Getting into the car, she edged awkwardly over toward the windows on the other side, then lowered herself down onto the edge of the seat. It was like sitting on a cloud. She tensed, not wanting to let her weight rest too heavily on it in case she got the caramel-color leather dirty.

  Then she tensed even further as the warmth rolled over her, seeping through the overcoat she wore, crawling beneath the hem of her dirty jeans, soaking through the canvas of her ratty sneakers. So much warmth. It made her afraid, made her not want to move or even relax, because if she did, she’d knew she’d never want to leave. She’d want to stay right here in this car till the end of time.

  She shivered, keeping her hands tight in her lap, her fingers curled around her knife, her gaze straight ahead. There was a scent in the air, a thick, luxurious smell like leather and spice, and it made her want to lie down on those soft seats and close her eyes and sleep for days and days.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t give in, because this wasn’t real
. The darkness and the cold and the streets, they were her reality. And a tall rich man in a tall rich man’s car, didn’t have anything to do with that reality.

  He was getting into the car now, the hem of that thick overcoat brushing over the seats, and she almost put out her hand to touch it, only stopping herself at the last moment. Instead she sat there stiffly as the door slammed after him, shutting out the night and the freezing dark, enclosing her in the warmth of the limo interior.

  He moved to sit opposite her, leaning back against the seats, all loose-limbed and relaxed, his arms outstretched along the backrest, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankles. “There,” he said, his mouth curving into a smile that made her stomach curl. “That’s better isn’t it?”

  She didn’t know if it was. Sure, it was warm, but that didn’t make her feel better and neither did he. For some reason he seemed even bigger in the car than he had out in the street, as if he was taking up all the air and all the space.

  His overcoat had fallen open, revealing the dark suit he wore underneath. His business shirt was a deep, intense blue, and a couple of the top buttons were undone. Since he wasn’t wearing a tie, she could see a wedge of smooth, tanned skin.

  Quickly, she glanced down at her hands instead, her heart beating oddly fast.

  Looking at him made her head hurt, made her feel unsettled and antsy. He was so clean, so expensive. He made her feel acutely self-conscious in a way she’d almost forgotten. Aware of how dirty her clothes were and how they probably smelled. Of how her shoes didn’t fit and there were holes in her jeans and in her overcoat. Of how poor and small and vulnerable she was.

  “You can relax, you know.” His voice was soft in the quiet of the car. “Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Yeah, well, he didn’t know that he already had. The moment he’d looked at her, given her attention, then that hat, he’d hurt her. Because wanting things she couldn’t have always hurt.

  “You can take me to the shelter uptown,” she said, not relaxing one iota. “If we go now I can get dinner.” Not that she would. She’d wait until he’d gone, then she’d try for a free ride on the subway back to her alleyway.

  You can’t. You need gloves. You need food. Staying outside tonight would be stupid.

  Yes, well, what choice did she have? She didn’t want to stay the night in that shelter, not when she’d been pawed at and had her things stolen the one time she’d risked it.

  You might be pawed at but at least you wouldn’t freeze to death.

  He sighed and shifted, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them. “You really want to go there?”

  She swallowed. He was sitting very near and she wasn’t used to being in such close proximity to another human being. That expensive, luxurious scent of his was making her head spin, and the way he was sitting had brought his leg close to hers, making her aware of his warmth.

  “Yes,” she said thickly, trying to ignore all the sensations pulling at her, holding herself even more stiffly. “I need some dinner.”

  There was a silence.

  He was staring at her again, she could feel it.

  “I have a better idea,” he murmured at last.

  Mia tensed, every muscle in her body going even stiffer than they already were. There was a note in his voice, a note she recognized. It was the sound of someone who was going to try and help her, and if there was one thing she knew about the people who tried to help, it was that inevitably they only ended making her life worse.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what the idea is?” He sounded pleased with himself, as if he thought she was going to love whatever it was he was going to suggest.

  She shook her head, concentrating on her hands in her lap. They hurt now as did her feet, the warmth penetrating her freezing skin, sharp pins and needles jabbing her.

  “Right,” he went on. “Well, you’re going to hear it anyway. You could go to that shelter if you want. Or . . . you could come back to my apartment and you can have dinner there.”

  “No,” she said flatly, not giving herself any time to think about, because there was no thinking about it. She knew where this was going.

  “No?” he echoed. “Just like that, no?”

  She looked up, giving him one hard fierce glance. “Yeah, just like that.”

  His gaze was steady, direct, and he didn’t look away. The light from the street outside illuminated his face, all those perfect planes and angles, like the faces of the angels she’d seen on the top of graves in the cemetery. “I don’t know that I’m going to give you a choice about this, Mia.” Even though his voice was soft, she could hear the hard steel in it. “It’s cold outside. In fact, it’s freezing. You shouldn’t be on the streets tonight.”

  A little surge of anger went through her. She didn’t take kindly to being “helped” at the best of times, and when he made it sound like an order, she liked it even less.

  He’s right, though.

  Still, just because she was homeless and poor, didn’t give him the right to tell her what to do. “I won’t be,” she snapped. “I was going to stay in the shelter for the night.”

  His gaze dropped to the backpack that had slipped off one shoulder and was resting on the seat beside her then returned to her face. “And then what?”

  She didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Then I wake up and leave.”

  “What about the next night?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “No,” he admitted easily, “but now I’m making it my business.”

  “Why?” She didn’t look away this time either, staring hard at him, because there had to be a reason why a man like him was bothering with a woman like her, and only one reason was springing to mind. “Do you want sex?”

  Chapter 4

  Xavier blinked, struggling with the real yet highly unfair urge to laugh. Because seriously? Sex? With her?

  She was sitting bolt upright on the seat opposite him, her shoulders hunched, her hands clasped in her lap around her ridiculous knife, obviously uncomfortable. With her horrible orange hat, hideous brown overcoat, dusty dirty jeans, and soaked sneakers, he’d never seen a woman who looked less like a sex object.

  But her dark eyes were fixed on him, all fierce and burning, and for some reason the urge to laugh drained completely away. There was a curious dignity to her, the kind he both wanted to preserve yet mess around with a little too.

  No, he didn’t want to have sex with her. The thought had never crossed his mind, but the way she was looking at him was almost challenging, and he could work out if it because she’d be mad if he said yes, or mad if he said no.

  So he didn’t laugh. Instead, he allowed himself a moment to consider the idea, to look at her as a woman he might be interested physically in.

  She had gone very still, the fine line of her jaw lifted. Her cheekbones were sharp and slightly hollowed, which indicated she didn’t eat very often, and she really wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense. But she was striking. Her eyes, for a start, were amazing, and the long, dark lashes that framed them were black and silky and thick. Her mouth, too, was very promising, with a soft, full bottom lip, red and chapped from the cold.

  Something kicked unexpectedly inside him, a pulse of what surely couldn’t be desire.

  It unsettled him, because he might be an asshole with a healthy disrespect for authority and an unhealthy interest in firing guns and blowing shit up, but even he drew the line at forcing a hungry, freezing homeless woman into giving him sex.

  Letting out a breath, he leaned back in his seat again. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t want sex. That’s not why I’m interested in what you’re doing.”

  Her gaze narrowed, as if she didn’t believe him. “Then why are you?”

  If he’d been a different man, he might have been annoyed at her assumption that he was the kind of man who’d force a woman into sex. But he wasn’t that kind of man. Given her s
ituation, she probably experienced that sort of shit all the time, so no wonder she was distrustful. He’d probably feel the same in her shoes. “Because I don’t like the idea of you freezing to death in an alleyway somewhere.”

  The fierceness in her eyes didn’t lessen. “Lots of people freeze to death in alleyways, but I don’t see them sitting in the car with me.”

  “Maybe if they’d been standing in the shelter doorway with you just now, they might be.” Which was a lie. Oh, he would have helped them out, seen them safely to the next shelter, no question, but he wouldn’t have offered them a ride. Wouldn’t have offered to take them back to his penthouse.

  It was only her he was interested in. Only her he was curious about.

  She looked down at her hands again, her posture hunched and stiff.

  The assumption he wanted her for sex hadn’t annoyed him, but the way she was sitting did. He’d thought she’d be happier here in the limo, out of the snow and out of the cold, yet apparently not.

  Why? Did she still think he was going to hurt her?

  Or maybe getting into some rich asshole’s limo is just a little overwhelming. Did you ever think of that?

  Actually, he hadn’t.

  Xavier frowned, giving her another, closer look. Her clothes were filthy, the hems on her jeans and the edges of her overcoat sleeves soaked and frayed. Her sneakers looked like they might have once been bright red, but now were a dirty purple. The sole on one foot was starting to come away, and he could see by the gleam of moisture on them that they were also soaked.

  Jesus Christ, she must be freezing.

  He sat forward and reached for her hand without thinking.

  She flinched, rearing back like she had in front of the shelter doors, her knife at the ready. But this time he ignored it, taking her hand in his and closing his fingers around it. Her skin was icy cold.

  “Don’t,” he ordered quietly as she tried to snatch her hand back. “If I’d wanted to hurt you I would have done it already.”

  There was something wild in her eyes that reminded him of an animal caught in a trap, and he knew he should let her go. But her hand was so cold. He only wanted to warm it up.