Condemned (Beauty And The Billionaire Geek Book 2) (3 page)

“Well, she’s different. I took her to lunch yesterday, and then came home and wrote the algorithm for my webcrawler. It’s as if the code jumped out of my brain onto the computer screen. I’ve never been so clearly focused before, and I’ve been working on this problem for months. She helps me think somehow. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“She’s your muse,” Daniel said clicking on tabs.

I thought about the ancient mythological immortals that imbued men with great ideas in the arts and philosophy. That’s exactly what Zoe was for me— a muse. The excitement of cracking the algorithm hadn’t even sunk in until I’d shown Daniel. It had all come so easily. Now I knew, Zoe had to be mine. I needed her as I needed to breathe air. 

“Could be,” I said. “I have no idea what to do with a woman. They don’t respond with ones and zeroes.” We both chuckled.

The front door to our house swung open. Alex burst through with a laptop in hand. Several nights a week, we had a guild raid in the MMORPG Netherworld. Alex plopped his laptop down on our massive dining room table. Daniel called up the stairs for Maddie, and she came running down with her computer in hand. Evan got up from the living room, and Daniel found a seat.

I’d been our raid leader for the last three years, a duty that I both enjoyed and sometimes resented. When we were all in undergrad, my guildies had family that helped them financially. Now, most of them either had regular jobs or only had to go to grad school. As a freelance computer technician, my hours were never consistent. Plus, I made squat compared to what Daniel made at Microsoft. Maddie’s parents were loaded, and I suspected that Alex was a pot dealer. Evan had a job at the school library archives, which wasn’t exactly demanding. Still, everyone wanted me to be raid leader.

We met at the entrance of Northfall Cave, which was the raid we planned to complete tonight. I set Northfall Cave on expert mode making it the most difficult raid in the current patch. That meant it also had the best loot drops. We’d been working for weeks to gear up enough to get inside.

We zoned in and were greeted by a horde of diseased goblins. Our healer Alex would have to cleanse us every fifteen seconds to keep the disease from stacking and wiping us out in under a minute. It would be a hard fight, but we had the knowhow and the gear to win.

I pulled the first goblin, and it scuttled toward me, making a noise that sent chills down my spine. A mass of diseased goblins surged toward us.

“You pulled too many!” Evan shouted.

“Keep calm and cleanse dumb ass,” said Maddie, our rogue, through clenched teeth.

Daniel’s fire elementalist’s area-of-effect spell rained fireballs down on the group of goblins, while Maddie’s rogue sliced and diced each goblin individually.

After the first pull, we took a deep breath and regrouped. The rest of the trash mobs took the same level of intense focus before we even made it to the first boss, Gormesh the Goblin King. Gormesh had three phases that included a disease area of effect debuff that was impossible to cleanse. That meant that we had to damage per second down all his adds, and Gormesh, before the debuff killed us all. It would be a real test of our gear and strategy, not to mention my leadership ability.

I pulled the boss, hopeful that we could make it happen on one attempt. The debuff fried us before we even made it to the adds phase. We tried two more times before everyone felt irritated, and we agreed we needed to increase our gear level before trying again in a few days. That was an epic fail. I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed. Everyone pulled their laptops off the table and skulked away.

For the next three hours, I made a list of venture capitalists in the Seattle Metro area that funded technology startups. There were twenty names on my list, but the one I wanted to work with most was Joshua Steinman. He had funded the last five multimillion dollar tech startups in Seattle in the last two years. His funding and guidance were almost a ticket to success.

Once I had my list, I wrote introductory emails to each, asking for a meeting.

The landlord showed us around a freshly painted second floor apartment in an old building that overlooked a busy street in Capital Hill. It had plenty of room for our things. The best part was it would be all ours. 

We filled out the paperwork on the laminate kitchen counter and handed the landlord a check for the deposit and first month’s rent. He handed us the keys and walked out of the building.

We got our stuff from the hotel and checked out. Then we made multiple trips from the storage unit with Stacy’s pickup so we didn’t have to rent yet another U-Haul.

With everything moved upstairs, we settled into our new place and ordered a pizza as our reward for a hard day’s work.

We didn’t have a couch or a table because we’d moved to Seattle thinking we’d be living in a shared house, so we threw a bunch of pillows on the living room floor and camped out in front of Stacy’s little TV, watching movies on Netflix. For the first time since leaving California, I felt like I had a home.

Monday morning, I woke in my new apartment feeling confident and finally ready to start my new life. I dressed in a pair of dark denim jeans, a violet colored blouse, and black flats. I took the long bus ride from my new apartment to my school and stepped off the bus and onto campus, feeling exhilarated that I’d taken the chance and made the move away from home. It was the first step on my journey toward my dreams, and I wouldn’t let anything get in my way.

The crush and hum of the other students surrounding me made me feel alive with possibility. At the same time, I felt awkward and alone. So many of the students already seemed to know each other. From the groups of foreign exchange students to the groups of locals. I felt a bit like the odd girl out.

My first class was English Composition, which was incredibly dull. I sat at the back of the room watching the other students take notes while the professor lectured about primary sources and whatnot. I had no idea what he was talking about and didn’t care. Most of the time I was too distracted by his ugly, nappy beard to hear his words.

Then I had an equally dull History of Western Civilization class. The book cost me seventy-five dollars and was basically full of a catalog of wars caused by a bunch of old, rich white guys. Wow. That was going to help me, the girl who had to nude model to pay the rent.

These were the classes I needed to take to get into the university, so I could study what I really wanted. It didn’t make a lot of sense that I had to learn all this boring nonsense.

Unfortunately, any and all dance classes I would take in community college would be nothing but phys-ed. electives. Apparently, this is what it looked like to follow your dreams. Feeling disappointed and broke, I made my way back to the bus stop.

Half way across the quad, I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Billy Black trotting toward me, his backpack bouncing on his back. I smiled, relieved to see someone I knew in the sea of strange faces.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I asked as he drew near.

“I tutor here as part of my Master’s program. Do you go here?”

“Yep, first day.”

“Awesome. Do you need a ride or anything?”

“Maybe. I just moved into a new apartment. It’s all the way across town. I should go to Central now, but I’d already registered here before I got the new place. The bus ride all the way to Capitol Hill takes like an hour,” I babbled, looking up into his shining hazel eyes that were partially concealed behind his shaggy, black hair.

My heart fluttered. I didn’t know why I found myself so attracted to him. He was tall with an adorably cute face, full lips and high cheekbones, but he was skinny and dressed like a geek in khaki pants and a black polo shirt. Maybe it was the after effects of dealing with a psycho jock like Chris, but everything about Billy made me want to get closer to him.

“Come with me,” he said in a friendly but commanding tone. It took me by surprise, but I followed as he marched toward the parking lot. We made it to his Vespa, and he handed me the helmet to wear.  He straddled the scooter, and I hopped on behind him, clinging to his tall frame.

He took off, and we rode through the neighborhood and onto the main road headed south toward Capitol Hill. I thought we’d keep going, but he swerved into a parking lot of a city park, overlooking Puget Sound. I wondered why he’d stopped here. He hadn’t said anything since telling me to follow him. We got off, and he grabbed my hand and led me toward an overflowing flower garden. My mind whirled with questions. The warmth of his hand wrapped around mine sent tingles up my arms and down my legs.

The smell of roses wafted through the air, intoxicating my senses. We wound through the garden, hand in hand, past corn stalks the rippled in the soft breeze, ripe, round tomatoes, bushy heads of light green lettuce, delicate multi-colored wildflowers, and a manicured rose garden, all in the full bloom of late summer. Billy led me to a bench tucked behind a towering grove of bamboo, looking out on the Sound.

We sat silently, holding hands, my head spinning. The magnetic connection I felt growing between us drew me toward him. It made it almost impossible to pull away. He wasn’t my type at all. I never went out with a science club geek before and they never even approached me. Most of the time I thought that type wasn’t even interested in girls. The strength of Billy’s grip on my hand told me he was interested in me, very interested.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, breaking the silence. “Thanks for bringing me here.” A seagull called as if flew overhead and a cool breeze blew in off the water. I shivered slightly as it hit the bare skin of my arms. Billy leaned closer, wrapping his arm around me to keep me warm.

I looked at him and fell into his bottomless hazel eyes. I felt transfixed and dazed by it all, desperate to gain some sense of power back. I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. Energy vibrated between us in waves that surged down my body through my nipples and between my legs.

He made a surprised groan and cupped my face in his hand, pulling me tighter into him. Our tongues flicked against each other, electricity building with each contact. Frantically, we clung to each other, our mouths and tongues tasting like starved animals.

Breathless, I pulled back. When I looked at him again, his eyes bore into me like a predator, but his lips quivered with anxiety. I’d taken him off guard, and I liked feeling in control. His cock bulged under his jeans. He wanted me bad. A sly smile crept over my lips as I rubbed my finger along his jawline and over his lower lip.

His mouth hung open, and I cupped his chin in my hands, taking in his gaze. He pulled me back for another kiss, but I let it fall on my neck. I enjoyed the feeling of his adoration as his hot mouth ran down my neck and shoulder. He cupped my breast in his hand, squeezing. I gasped with pleasure, but pushed him away.

If I wanted to keep the upper hand in this relationship, or whatever it was, I couldn’t let this go any further. Even though on the outside, he seemed kind of nerdy, there was something about Billy that screamed “control freak,” which I hadn’t seen at first. He’d told me to come with him, with no explanation, brought me to the park when I needed a ride home, and pulled me down the path to this bench. Despite the fact that I liked the kiss, and that I liked the view. He hadn’t asked me what I wanted. It was a red flag that I was determined not to let him get away with.

“We should probably go. I don’t want to make out in public. It isn’t my style,” I said. He might have been a skinny geek, but this guy was used to getting what he wanted. I could see it in his eyes.

He pulled away and ran fingers through his shaggy, black hair. Sitting up straight, he looked out at the water. “I didn’t expect that to happen,” he said, not looking at me. “I’d like you to be my girlfriend, and I’d like to do more kissing. We can go back to my place.”

“Not right now, Billy. I need to get home. Maybe another time.” I had to admit, I was tempted to go with him and see where it went. If the kiss had been any indication of what the sex would be like, I was all in. I just couldn’t do it yet. I couldn’t give him that much without making him work for it. He had me in some kind of magnetic field, pulling me in, whether I liked it or not.

I patted his knee then stood up. I could feel his eyes on my ass as he sat behind me. His focus on me was so intense, it made me gush moisture between my legs. I cleared my throat and turned around to face him, taking his hand in mine and pulling him toward me.

He rose, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, tilting my head up to crush my mouth against his. I couldn’t help it. I was almost ready to go back to his house. His hand gripped my ass. I pulled away, taking his hand in mine. I led him back through the garden to the scooter and waited while he detached the helmet from the seat.

All the way back to my apartment, I admonished myself for kissing him. He’d shown me his true colors today. On one hand, I found his directness attractive. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to give up my decision making to a guy I’d just met. I was already way beyond my comfort zone.

He dropped me off at my new apartment. I had to keep myself from inviting him up. I refused to take things too fast with him. Not that I hadn’t had flings before, but Billy was not fling material. Billy was “will you marry me and have my nerd babies” material. By the girlfriend comment, I could already tell he was not the type to take things half way. It scared the living shit out of me.