The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement (8 page)

Vanity Fair
covered his early years with a six-page article, complete with glossy photographs of Duke in his apartment with the Manhattan skyline lit up behind him and with a bevy of gorgeous, scantily clad models draped all over him.

After his parents died tragically in a car accident (which Duke miraculously survived), he went to live with his aunt, Ada, who was a professor of computer science at the local university. When the boy showed signs of a genius level intelligence—and a series of disciplinary problems—she taught him to code and gave him increasingly difficult projects in order to keep him out of trouble.

It worked. To a point.

From the
New York Times
:

We would like to apologize for a recent security breach that resulted in an offensive article being published on our website. The perpetrator, a juvenile, has been apprehended by the FBI and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

There were then pages and pages of pictures, featuring everything from stylized photographs for glossy magazines to blurry shots taken by camera phones at parties. Nearly all of them with girls, models, actresses . . . The kind of Done Up girls that made mere mortals feel so very not quite.

I was
so
not his type.

Which was exactly the point of this fauxmance.

Which was something I really ought to keep reminding myself. I glanced down at the sparkling hunk of rock on my left ring finger.

It’s not real, Jane.

It doesn’t mean anything, Jane.

Two words, Jane: Cubic Zirconia.

With a troubled heart, I clicked away all the articles and images and returned to my novel more determined than ever to make a success of since it was clear that Duke and I had no real future.

I wrote for hours. When I needed a break, I flipped through the hotel TV offerings and watched
The Hunger Games
, which totally sparked my imagination and sent me back to my story.

My room service meals came and went. I took a break to shower and dressed in a pair of skinny jeans, my grey sweater set (which I actually needed since it was crazy cold in San Francisco even though it was summer), black patent leather ballet flats and, just to drive the point home, a pair of pearl stud earrings. I didn’t bother doing my hair since, with any luck, it’d just end up a tousled mess. Again. Instead I wore it in a bun high atop my head. Prim spinster, indeed.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
we survived another dinner. When I wasn’t completely mystified by their tech talk, we were dodging more questions about our wedding, our first date, and when we knew the other was The One.

“Sometimes you just know,” I said, but I was thinking of Sam. I missed the comfort I felt with him, which was the opposite of uncertainty and tingly anticipation that I felt with Duke. When he looked at me across the table, I felt the fluttering of butterflies in my stomach. My skin tingled, as if in anticipation.
Cubic Zirconia
, Jane.

“Jane makes me a better man,” Duke told everyone. It was exactly what everyone wanted to hear. I smiled and blushed and felt warm and lovely from the compliment.
Cubic Zirconia
, Jane.
Cubic Zirconia
.

Duke held my hand as we exited the restaurant. Everyone was watching, so I decided it didn’t mean anything.

In the elevator up to our room, he kissed me so passionately that there was no doubting what was happening next.

Behind us, the door to our room clicked softly in the latch.

No one made a move to turn the lights on.

Any thoughts of real or not real, diamonds or cubic zirconia, faded. The only thing that mattered was his skin against mine. His T-shirt and my sweater set hit the floor. It all came off, a trail of clothes strewn from the door to the bed.

His mouth doing wicked things to me, kissing me all over. Everywhere. My mouth doing wicked things to him. All over. Everywhere. Hands caressing and exploring . . . until that tie reappeared. Duke wound it around my wrists, binding them together and leaving me under his control.

I opened my mouth to protest. He silenced me with a kiss.

I struggled slightly against the silk. Duke laced his fingers with mine and pinned my hands to the mattress above my head. His gaze locked with mine. For a second, I found it impossible to breath.

“You’re gonna like this, Jane,” he murmured. I knew he was right. I was just . . . nervous and excited and curious and a bit scared and . . . his mouth closed around the pink center of my breast and I just sighed, sinking into all the exquisite sensations.

His hands roamed over my bare skin. I wanted desperately to touch him back. He laughed softly as I writhed under his touch. I only smiled wickedly in response. Even in the dark, he saw. He paid attention to the kisses that made me moan and the caresses that made me sigh. He discovered just how to touch me to drive me crazy.

Duke’s fingers started to work their magic. I felt the heat increasing and pressure building. I was wet and ready and desperate to feel him inside me. And I was loud about it.

“Shhh, you’ll wake the neighbors,” he murmured. For the first time, I didn’t care because I didn’t know the neighbors and I wouldn’t ever have to see them.

“Who cares about them?” I panted. If I didn’t come soon . . .

Duke reached over to the bedside table for a condom, ripped open the wrapper and put it on. And tortured me with his hands and mouth some more. With the pressure building, I couldn’t take it. I fussed with the silk tie, managing to free my hands.

Finally I could touch him and I savored the solid warmth of his chest. I skimmed my fingernails down his back and pressed my palm against his lower back and urged him to me. I needed him. Now. I couldn’t quite manage the words. But I could cry out when he entered me at a torturously slow pace.

I writhed beneath him. We found our rhythm. Then we lost it in a frantic rush of almost too much pleasure all at once. I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. I cried out, overwhelmed. He groaned then shouted my name as he came.

We lay in bed for a while after that, just catching our breath and waiting for racing hearts to return to normal. The room was dark—but light from the city shone through the window.

We climbed under the tangled mess of blankets.

Beside me, Duke laughed softly to himself.

“I can’t decide if you’re keeping me out of trouble. Or not.” He turned his head toward me and I saw the slight grin on his mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“On one hand, I’m not out at clubs, with other girls. And drinking too much, and getting into fights that are filmed and posted online before heading home with said girls.”

Girls. Plural.
I decided to let that one go. He was just a guy after all.

“But then again we’re not exactly chaste and proper,” I said, turning to face him. He rolled over onto his side to face me.

“Chaste and proper?” he said with a laugh. I blushed, in the dark. “Am I in bed with Jane Sparks or Jane Austen?” he asked.

“Haha.” I’d been writing all day in Regency-speak and I didn’t exactly have my wits about me enough to filter out old-fashioned language.

“But we’re engaged, so it’s OK,” he said softly.

“Do you think people really believe it?”

“Sure. They want to. There’s enough evidence that it’s easy to.”

“Project-TK means a lot to you,” I said. Of course I
knew
that. But what started out as a crazy scheme was now turning into something bigger. I was afraid it would become
real.
Or that I would fall for him. I couldn’t forget that—

“Yeah. Everything,” he murmured. Project-TK was everything to him. I was doing him a favor and getting something out of it myself—namely, orgasms, travel and a date to the reunion. He was getting so much more out of this.

“I Googled you today,” I told him.

“Only today?”

“Call me old fashioned, but I had this idea that I would learn about you from you,” I said. “So tell me something that’s not on the Internet.”

Duke’s expression became serious. Thoughtful.

“I’m not really engaged,” he said quietly. I laughed and rolled my eyes.

“I know that.”

“You know my one secret,” he said. But I got the sense that there were more and that he wasn’t sharing anytime soon. Of course, I was desperate to know. But I knew pushing wouldn’t work.

“I used to nag Sam to tell me stuff.”

“Your ex?”

“Yeah,” I said. They we lay in silence for a moment. Side by side. He pushed a lock of hair away from my face. “Aren’t you going to ask what I nagged him about?”

“I’m assuming you wanted to know all his deepest thoughts and feelings,” Duke said. “And you wanted him to tell you you’re pretty and perfect and all that.”

“Am I that predictable?”

“You’re a girl.”

“Ugh,” I said and rolled over on my back to stare up at the ceiling.

“Alright, so here’s something I’ve been wondering,” Duke said. “I owe you a favor. Anything you want, I could give you. For example, I could have—and would have—written you a check for ten million dollars. You’d be set for life. And yet you ask me to be your date to your high school reunion. What’s that about?”

I laughed softly. “I really sold myself short there, didn’t I?”

“It sounds like you care what people think of you. A lot.”

“I suppose it’s pathetic,” I said. But I could still feel the pity-eyes I got from everyone back home. And I could still feel the sickening sensation of the floor falling out from under me when, after I’d lost my job, my boyfriend of
twelve years
broke up with me. Gone, in just a second.

But Duke didn’t give me the pity-eyes.

“Nah, I think I get it,” he said. “I don’t need the money from Project-TK. As long as I can afford all the Mac products I want, I’m set. But after my first two companies going bust so publicly, I need this one to work. I don’t want everyone to think of me as Almost Makes It Austen. Or whatever.”

“You don’t spend much on your wardrobe do you?” I teased, needing to lighten the moment. It was strange to think that maybe he and I weren’t so different after all. Because if that was true—if we had a real connection—then I could totally fall for him. I could think we had a chance to be real.

“Free T-shirts,” he said with a grin.

“Everyone thought Sam and I would get married. They thought I had it all figured out—the job, the guy, the matching sweater sets. I miss that. In the meantime, I’ll just do what I can to make it look like I’m not a total disaster while I figure stuff out.”

“Do you miss having all that or do you miss everyone thinking that of you?”

Wasn’t he an observant one.

“Yes. Both. I don’t know.” He smiled and laughed softly at my scatter-brained answer. “Do you know why I moved to New York? A moment of peer-pressure induced panic. I just blurted out that I was moving to New York and writing a novel.”

“So you moved to New York and started writing a novel. Obviously.”

“It’s the pity in their eyes that I can’t stand,” I confessed.

“It’s the worst,” the Duke said passionately. We laughed. “I got it all the time after my second startup failed. I wanted to punch the person. It was bad.”

“You know why Sam broke up with me?” While we were having a heart to heart, I figured I might as well go all the way.

“Nope. And I’m not guessing either,” he said. Smart man.

“I was too good,” I said. Then, with a wry smile I added, “Too chaste and proper.”

“If only he could see you now,” Duke murmured.

“Yeah. Exactly.” In a five-star hotel bed with a hot guy whom I barely knew and with whom I’d done all sorts of naughty stuff. The kinds of things that Sam had hinted at doing . . . But Duke just took control and made it happen and made sure I enjoyed it too much to protest.

“Should we take a picture for Instagram?”

Yes. Look at me now!

“No,” I said, listening to my better judgment. “. I can’t have naked pictures of me out there! What will people at work say?”

“You shouldn’t care so much about what other people think,” Duke said.

“Haha, coming from you!” I said. Then, tracing my fingertips along his chest, I asked, “What if you didn’t care so much either?”

“Then we wouldn’t be here,” he said softly. Gaze fixed on mine. His hand caressing my waist.

“Yet here we are,” I whispered.

“Just you and me,” he murmured.

Cubic Zirconia. Cubic Zirconia. Cubic Zirconia.

But it felt so real.

Chapter Nine

New York Public Library

Word count: 48,006

Calls from Duke: 0

Tweets from Duke: 0

Facebook messages of any kind from Duke: 0

Text messages from Duke: BIG. FAT. ZERO.

A
FEW DAYS
later I was back at the library, shelving returned books and wondering if I had made the whole thing up. Much of the weekend was spent in a blur of writing (me) and meetings (him). But then there were the stolen interludes in the morning and afternoon when he snuck back to the room. We locked the door and . . . Oh, I got all hot and bothered just thinking about it.

And then the nights . . .

Nights in which very little sleeping was done. Nights in which I didn’t think in sentences, including the phrase “in which” because I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just feeling his mouth, everywhere. His hands, skimming up my legs, playfully slapping my bottom, caressing my breasts, stroking my back and torturing me in just the place where it felt So. Damn. Good. His weight, on top me. Except for when I straddled him or I was bent over the bed or . . .

God, I was making myself blush. At work. Just thinking about him.

In that post-sex haze glow we stayed up late, having those intimate, exhilarating, confessional conversations before making love again. We were high on the thrill of fooling the whole world. Every hour that passed that this crazy deception seemed to work made us bold. We shared a secret. And we were fooling ourselves. Or was that just me?