The Billionaire's Virgin

More importantly, why did he run?

I hear the bathroom door open and shut again, and footsteps pad back across the room. I wait for his weight to sink into the bed once more, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the footsteps cross to the other side of the room, approach my side of the bed. I feel more than hear him bend over, sensing his eyes on mine. Is he checking to see if I’m awake?

It feels safer to pretend I’m not than to risk starting some kind of serious conversation at this hour of the godforsaken morning. I keep my eyes firmly shut, and eventually his footsteps move away again.

Sometime later, though I can’t be sure how much, a phone vibrates. I tense, thinking it’s mine, but Pierce answers a moment later, his voice low and hushed. I crack one eyelid to watch his naked body as he stands and crosses to the farthest window. Despite his attempts to keep his voice low, it’s nearly dead quiet in the apartment, and his tone carries.

“For how long? And why wasn’t anyone keeping an eye on the market prices?”

I watch shamelessly as he stretches his leg out to one side, which puts his bare ass on prime display. Damn, boy is ripped.

“I see. And Kelly can’t clean this one up?” He turns to the side, in profile, and the light from a building across the way catches his bare chest and abs, illuminates his cock, large even now while it’s limp and presumably a little bit cold from the air in here.

“You’re sure.” He sighs, running a free hand through his hair. “Yes, of course I can. I don’t know, a couple of hours.” There’s a long pause, and then his fist clenches in his hair, and his face tightens. “Well, it’s what you’re going to get, so take it where you can.” He groans as he disconnects the phone and turns back toward me.

He moves too fast for me to shut my eyes again, not while I was busy drinking in every line of his hard muscles. I catch his eye and blink in surprise, then smile a little, forced. “Something wrong?” I ask, deciding it’s best not to pretend I didn’t overhear that conversation.

“Get changed,” he tells me, his voice deadpan. “You need to go.”

It takes a couple of seconds for that statement to sink in. Then it takes me a couple of seconds to reign in my temper. Seriously. After all of this, the hotel, Vegas, last night, he’s not only going to not fuck me, again, but he’s throwing me out on top of it?

“You aren’t going to finish this, are you?” I shove back the sheets and sit up in bed.

He must be nervous, because his eyes don’t even dart down to check out my body, even though I know full well that he can see my tits through this sheer nightgown.

“Why did you bring me here, Pierce? What is all this for?” I spread my arms wide at the penthouse. “You said my first time should be special. Then you go all out on spoiling me—not to mention with the freaking . . .” I wave my bracelets at him, because last night after fucking, I couldn’t figure out how to work the clasps, I was so tired, so I just slept in them. “The insane presents, and the helicopter flights, and you’ll fuck my ass but not me, and why? What’s the point? Are you ever planning to pay me at all, or is this all some game to you?”

“I told you, Bonnie, I will pay you when I get what I bought. You have assurances now, surely.” He points to the bracelets with a sarcastic expression. “You know I’m not lying about my wealth.”

“Oh, so you just brought me here to prove you’re rich. Not even because you want to have me here.”

“You’re being ridiculous!”

“You’re throwing me out of your fancy penthouse hotel room at . . .” I flail toward the windows, through which the horizon has only begun to turn a faint pink in the distance, the first indicator of dawn. “Freaking five o’clock in the morning or whatever ungodly time it is, and I’m the one being ridiculous?”

“I am not throwing you out, Bonnie. I have work to do. I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up out front in an hour.”

“Oh sure, that’s completely different from throwing me out.” I roll my eyes, but only to keep them from stinging. Fuck. Why am I letting him get to me like this?

Because I thought he was starting to care. Because waking up wrapped in his arms last night felt too good to be true. Because all of this does, like a fairy tale that couldn’t possibly be real—and now I’m learning that I was right. It is too good to be real.