The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement (7 page)

My mouth dropped open.
We hadn’t even been invited to this dinner?

Across the table, Duke just winked at me.

“You’re lucky you’re charming, Duke,” Augustus said dryly. “Otherwise I don’t know how your fiancé abides you.”

“She has the patience of a saint,” Duke answered. “And she likes her chardonnay. A lot.”

“It’s the only way to tolerate him,” I replied dryly, with a dark look across the table at my “fiancé.”

But Augustus’s lips quirked into an approving smile.

“Indeed,” Augustus said “Fortunately you’ve enough sense to settle down with a woman of wit and intelligent, though I have to question her judgment if she’s marrying you. Now what was I saying?”

“That we are all competitors for funding and you will decide based on top secret criteria. Any complaints can be addressed to Twitter,” Duke summed up.

“Well done,” Augustus said plainly. “All your boozing and drugs haven’t fried your brain after all.”

“Why don’t you just declare him and his
fiancé
the winners and let us all go home?” one of the other startup guys asked, not quite able to disguise the anger in his voice.

“After everyone has traveled all this way?” Augustus asked. “Duke and his fiancé could still screw up.

“To building the future,” Augustus said, raising his glass. Everyone else raised their glasses as well. I nervously plucked my glass of white wine, but aware of skeptical and accusatory eyes on me, my hand shook and I dropped the wine glass. It shattered.

Across the table, Duke gave me A Look I couldn’t quite read. Dinner had only just begun and already I had screwed up.

After the appetizers had been cleared, disaster struck again. A guy named Jack asked what would have been considered a polite and innocuous question under any other circumstances.

“So how did you two meet?”

“The news that Duke was engaged was one hell of a surprise,” added another guy—I think his name was Justin. “Never thought he’d be the marrying kind.”

My smile tightened and my stomach started to ache.

I looked to Duke, hoping the alarm I felt wasn’t apparent in my expression. We had made up some tweets about our first date, but we hadn’t concocted a story—especially one that we could tell in the cute couple-finishes-each-other’s-sentences kind of way.

I thought of our flight from NYC to SF. I wrote and he slept when we should have been getting this stuff straight.

Duke just lifted his brow. I know—I was the writer. The romance writer. I should come up with this on the spot. But my mind went blank.

Apparently, his did, too.

“It was really romantic,” I said, buying a little more time. And then I blurted out the first thing I thought of: “We met in the gazebo in Central Park. During a rain storm.”

Of course I said this at the same time Duke said, “We met at a party.”

“I didn’t know Duke was the kind to take long walks in the park,” Jack remarked, apparently not having heard Duke, thank goodness.

“I was on my home from a party. Couldn’t get a cab in the rain,” Duke explained. This tested the imagination of no one. It was a good save. But I knew why everyone was questioning us and it wasn’t to hear a happy little love story.

If Duke and I could be exposed as frauds, we wouldn’t get the funding, which would up their odds of getting it. One hundred and fifty million dollars. I could not forget that.

There was also the fact that Duke and I were so different and were an unexpected pair: He was gorgeous, magnetic, and all kinds of trouble who was known to have a preference for tall, leggy, skinny blonde models. I was the librarian in a prim shift dress and pearls who had made him wear a tie. In what world did a guy like him and a girl like me meet, let alone fall in love and promise each other forever?

“After your chance encounter in Central Park, did you propose immediately, Duke, or did you tweet about it first?” Augustus asked dryly.

“Did you guys date at all?” Justin asked. “Was there a whole relationship that went unrecorded on social media?”

“Check the tweets. And the Facebook updates. And Instagram,” Duke said, grinning. I knew he was thinking about the triumph of the hacking that night and that he’d anticipated these questions. “When a man knows he’s found the woman for him, why should he wait?” Duke mused.

A romantic sentiment? My heart thudded at the thought.

Or evading the question?

Definitely the latter.

“And how are the wedding plans progressing? Did you set a date yet?” Augustus asked.

“We haven’t set a date. But I have everything planned on Pinterest,” I said, and everyone laughed. Then I reached for my wine glass and made sure to flash my giant, cubic zirconia engagement ring.

From there, the conversation finally turned to and business talk, most of which I could not follow, like UX, API’s and metadata. But every once in a while, Duke would catch my eye for a smoldering gaze across the table that made me shift in my chair. I was thinking of what would happen after dinner.

One king-sized bed.

One grey silk tie.

One bad boy billionaire.

One girl who’d been too good for too long.

I’d never been great at math but even I could easily tell what that added up to. Roxanna was right. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I needed to have fun and not waste a moment.

Duke was twisting that grey silk tie around his wrists and giving me A Look. I shifted in my chair, crossing one leg over the other. I might have sipped my wine, which did nothing to cool the surge of heat as I thought about my turn to wear the tie.

Later

$(“.janesDress”).remove();

Duke started loosening the tie in the elevator. It was going to happen. Me, him, that tie. There was no pretending otherwise. Part of me was ready to rip off my dress and his T-shirt—to hell with the security cameras. The part of me that was all feeling and no thoughts. But I took a deep breath, willing my pulse to slow and my nerves to settle.

It was just sex. I’d done it before. A lot. But not in a while, and not ever with anyone other than Sam. And never with a tie or any other toy. And definitely not with a guy like Duke, who by all accounts, had a thing for models and the prettiest girls.

So pardon me if I was nervous like it was my first time.

The elevator doors opened. We walked through them, and strolled silently down the hall. Duke put his hand on my ass.

“Really?” I asked, meaning to sound sarcastic but actually sounding breathless.

“Really.”

Duke unlocked the door, I stepped in behind him and it softly clicked shut behind us.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” I whispered. My heart was pounding. God, I was
nervous.

“Now where were we?” He asked with a wicked gleam in his eye.

He gently tied the silk around my eyes. It wasn’t what I’d expected—I thought he’d bind my wrists and do all sorts of wicked things to me while I was helpless to resist. Then again, the night was still young.

He unzipped my dress, and it fell with a
whoosh
to the floor. Taking my hand he led me away from the door. With my eyes closed I was at his mercy. For all I knew he could be recording this or taking pictures or—

I felt his jeans pockets for his phone. It was there.

“Much as I would kill for pictures of you like this, I won’t take any,” he murmured.

“I would kill you.”

“You know, Jane, you could ruin me with this secret of ours. Remember that.”

I could, couldn’t I? He might have been the billionaire, and I was getting a favor out of this. But in the meantime, vulnerable as I was in this moment, I was not powerless in this relationship. If that’s what it was.
Stop overthinking things, Jane.

“Take this ridiculous T-shirt off,” I said.

He laughed and I reached out and felt that his shirt was gone. His skin was warm to my touch. Palms flat, I explored his chest, broad, flat and strong. He sucked in his breath as my fingers gently caressed his nipples.

He kissed my smile. Hot, possessive, rough. As if this was something that he’d been wanting for days. If I was being honest with myself, I’d been craving this since the moment I first set eyes upon him at the Hush party. So I melted into the kiss I had craved. I tried to memorize the taste, the sounds, the feelings as if I knew deep down this wouldn’t last. But then his hands pushed down the strap of my bra and he expertly unhooked the clasp. I sighed, feeling free.

He took my breasts in his hands, big and strong and his mouth, hot and wicked. I gasped. I sighed. I moaned. I was like That Girl in the library, but louder. I thought I’d die from this alone.

I was already ready for him. But he still wore his damned jeans and now he was—

“Never thought I’d say this, but I wish I had another tie,” he murmured as he firmly clasped my wrists behind my back and sank to his knees before me.

“Oh,” I sighed. His mouth, there. Me, in some sort of heaven. I exhaled slowly and allowed myself to surrender to all the sensations rocketing through me.

“Oh God,” I moaned as his tongue traced slow, lazy circles around and around and around while a heat inside me started to build. My knees started to feel weak. I needed to touch him, run my fingers through his hair, hold onto to something because I was slowly but surely slipping away into that sweet oblivion. The pressure was building. Heat rising. I was gasping for air and couldn’t get enough.

He didn’t stop, no. Hell no.

“Duke . . .” He just kept doing that thing with his tongue and I really couldn’t stand or breathe for very much longer. I was hit with that crazy, just-about-bursting desire. He released my wrists. Then he did wicked things with his fingers, his mouth, me, there and I was gone . . .

I cried out, loudly. I sank to my knees. He caught me in his arms.

And that was just the beginning.

He removed the tie, threw it aside, lifted me up and tossed me onto the bed.

Throw down, as Roxanna would say. Sam did not have throw down. And that was the last I thought of Sam all night.

Duke stripped off his jeans and everything else before joining me on the bed, settling his weight on top of me. I felt him, hard, pressing up against me and I was ready, oh so ready. “Jane,” he whispered as if to ask permission, as if to ask if I had any second thoughts. As if I could stop now.

“Yes.” Dear God, yes. I needed this, and I needed it now. I was so wet, so ready. He reached over to the bedside table, pulled out a condom, ripped open the foil, and put it on. My heart was still racing. My desire only increased. I moaned as he slowly pushed himself inside me, making me feel full, complete and totally at his mercy. I closed my eyes. Then he began to move with long slow thrusts that left me intensely aware of every sensation . . .

His stubble, rough against my neck. His breath in my ear revealing how much he wanted this and how much going slow was killing him too. His hands, holding mine, pinning them to the bed. I fought back at that . . . I needed to touch him.

Desperate for more, I wrapped my arms around his back so I could feel him deeper inside me. Deeper and deeper, harder and faster. His mouth crashed on mine for a fierce, urgent kiss. I couldn’t think anymore, I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t do anything but feel that insane pressure intensifying until I just. Could. Not. Take it. Anymore. I cried out, oh so loud, he gave a shout and we collapsed, catching our breath.

And that was just the first time. That night.

Chapter Eight

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T
HE NEXT MORNING
we woke up in each other’s arms. I nestled into the warmth, having missed this kind of intimacy. For all the ways of connecting these days, nothing beat skin to skin. Nothing like a kiss, nothing like him slowly entering me, nothing like not being sure what was real and what was still a dream. It wasn’t long before I was crying out in pleasure and it wasn’t much longer after that before he came, too.

While he got up to shower and check email, I stayed in bed.

“Order room service. Go shopping. Write your novel. Whatever you want,” he said, kissing me quickly on his way out. “I’ll be in meetings all day.”

I ordered a pot of coffee, French toast with whipped cream and a side of crispy bacon. Then I started writing. Maybe, just maybe, I could finish this story and make an honest woman of myself. I indulged in a fantasy of showing up at the reunion with a published novel, and Duke on my arm. I may have fled the wreckage of my life and all the curious bystanders, but I could return triumphant.

The plot of my novel was ripped from my real life. But it was a romance novel, so I could be pretty sure Duke would never read it. He’d never know about the hero, the Duke of Ashbrooke, who was based upon him, including that wicked grin, the way that he moved through a crowded room like he was Somebody and the whole world got out of his way until one too many scandals and one fake engagement announcement changed the game.

I switched from my word doc to Google. Some research was in order. Fingers hovering over the keys, I thought about typing in DUKE AUSTEN. Did I want to know? Of course I did. But did I want to know from the Internet or from the man himself?

I texted Roxanna.

Jane Sparks:
Is it wrong to Google Duke?

Roxanna Lane:
I can’t believe you didn’t already.

I typed in the letters of his name, one by one, and clicked search.

Results came instantly. Duke, on every social network. His website, which included links back to his bio on Project-TK’s webpage and more links of how to connect with him. His Wikipedia page was much more forthcoming with the information I sought. Even more revealing were the profiles and interviews with him in
Vanity Fair
,
Fast Company, Forbes
and
Time.

The headlines alone were revealing:
Third Time’s A Charm? Can Silicon Alley’s Resident Bad Boy Redeem himself?

From Wikipedia:

Duke Austen, American tech entrepreneur, was the founder of two notable, but unsuccessful startups. His first startup, Findr.com, failed after questions were raised about its legality and the company declared bankruptcy from its legal fees—but not before Austen made and lost a billion dollars, earning him the name “the bad boy billionaire.” His second company, Friend.ly, was named “one to watch” by
Fast Company
but lost its users to rival startup Facebook at an unprecedented pace. The failure is attributed to many missed opportunities and alienating potential investors and business partners by Duke Austen’s failure to attend meetings, adhere to deadlines or maintain cordial business relationships.