LAUREN (Silicon Valley Billionaires Book 1)

by Leigh James

  He grunted. “Touch yourself,” he commanded.

  Fine. If he wasn’t going to take me, I would just pleasure myself. I pinched my own nipples and arched my back, hoping to drive him wild. Then, I opened my legs so he could see me, and I circled my clit with my own fingers, rubbing it finally and moaning in pleasure. I looked up to see him watching me in the firelight. I was so close, right on the edge of an orgasm.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  My breath hitched painfully, but I didn’t move my hand. I was just about to come. So close…

  He came over and moved my hand, holding it over my head and securing it to the bed with his. He did that with my other hand too, so I struggled beneath him, unable to give myself release or put my hands on him.

  “Not yet, babe.” A glimmer of a smile passed over his lips as he kissed me, his tongue tentatively searching my mouth.

  Our tongues connected, and I moaned beneath him, arching my back. I could feel him against me, thick and hot.

  “Gabe. Please.” I could feel my own wetness soaking my thighs. After finally having him inside me, I knew nothing else could satisfy me like that. “Don’t you want to?” I pleaded, exasperated and frustrated.

  “Of course I want to. But I have self-control. And I’m going to teach you a lesson.” He leaned down and took my nipple in his mouth, sucking and nipping at it.

  My hips bucked against him. “What lesson?”

  He took my other breast in his mouth and drove his hips against me, grinding his erection into my thigh.

  So close, but yet so far. “What lesson, Gabe?”

  He slid down between my legs and lapped at me expertly, from my vagina up to my clit. He swirled the tender bud with his tongue, making my world go white. I was so close again.

  Then, he stopped, and I cried out, wanting his mouth back on me, desperate for release. He is torturing me.

  “You’re going to learn not to cross me and not to lie to me. Because I’m the only one who can give you what you want.”

  I licked my lips in anticipation. “What’s that?” Desire twisted in my belly. I had a feeling I already knew, but I needed to play along so maybe he’d give it to me.

  “This.” He notched the top of his cock into me, and I exhaled in release. “This.” He thrust into me deeper. “This.” He entered me to his hilt, his thickness filling me completely. My eyes rolled back in my head.

  I clenched around him. “Oh yeah—that’s what I want.”

  Then, he pulled out.

  “Gabe!”

  He kissed me deeply then pulled back. “You think you can do what you want just because you have that tight little body that drives me wild?” He ruthlessly sucked on my nipples and I bucked beneath him, wild for him to get back inside me. He palmed my pussy then circled my clit, finally rolling it between his fingers.

  I cried out, arching against him in desperation, and he stopped.

  “You’re mine. I’m the only one who can give this to you…” He lazily entered his cock into me again and rolled my nipple between his fingers, causing shockwaves of pleasure to course through me. Then, he pulled back out.

  There was so much pent-up frustration in me, I could burst. “Please, Gabe.”

  He put the tip of his cock back inside of me tantalizingly, promising so much more. Then, he withdrew again, leaving me bereft. “Promise me—and this time, you better mean it.”

  I cursed him. “Promise you what?” I asked. It sounded as if I were begging, and I was. I would have promised him anything at that point, I would have traded anything just to have him take me.

  He took my face in his hands and looked me in the eye, all pretenses of teasing gone. “Promise me you’ll never put yourself in harm’s way again. I can’t take it, Lauren.”

  “I promise.” I meant it. I knew in that moment what I’d suspected all along: I would do anything for Gabe.

  “Good girl.” He finally penetrated me and started driving deeply, filling me, making my vision blur around the edges. I moaned, relaxing against the bed even as I writhed beneath him. Finally. My body stretched to accommodate him as he buried himself in me.

  “When you’re good, you get rewarded.” His voice was husky as his hips bucked against me and he worked his fingers over my breasts, my hips, and finally down between my legs again. He rose up and continued to fuck me as he fingered my swollen clit, pinching it and driving me wild.

  The combination of sensations pushed me over the edge. I came apart beneath him, grinding myself against the base of his cock and his hand.

  Just as he’d said I would, I screamed his name.

  His orgasm chased mine, and he exploded into me. He cursed as a powerful spasm shook his body; he was still shaking after he stilled and pulled me into his arms, cradling me against his chest.

  I closed my eyes and pressed myself tightly against him, never wanting to be anywhere else. He held me as we both drifted off toward sleep. “You see?” he asked after a while.

  “What?” I mumbled.

  “You like me. You should stop fighting me so we can do that a lot more often. Like every night. Like in an hour, after I let you rest for a while.”

  “Okay,” I murmured, pressing my naked and finally sated body against his. I felt a smile on my face as I drifted off to sleep.

  “Okay,” Gabe said. For the first time that day, he sounded as though he meant it.

  Chapter 17

  I realized three somewhat unfortunate things the next morning. The first was that for the first time in six years, I’d overslept. It was eight a.m., and I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. Having a personal life was seriously messing with my obsessive work habits.

  The second thing was that I’d run out of road with Clive. He couldn’t be reasoned with, and he hadn’t been of any real use to me when I’d seen him. On top of that, he’d seemed afraid and possibly crazy. Possibly crazy meant possibly dangerous. He was too much of a loose cannon to leave out in the wild. It might be time to turn him in to the police, after all. Maybe that would offer him some protection or peace of mind, or at least put an end to his ill-fated pursuit of whatever it was he was chasing. Money. Power. Influence.

  None of that seemed to be working out too well for him.

  That third thing I realized? I’m in love with Gabe, and have been for some time.

  Maybe it was hormones, I mused. I’d waited so long, maybe my pent-up hormones were finally going wild, making me feel some sort of romantic attachment to him that wasn’t real.

  Except that it was real. I could feel it, the truth of it, as if it were a weight on me. It was as real as his warm body next to mine.

  I rolled over, away from him, and regarded the ceiling. My FDA compliance protocol was almost complete. We still had major work to do in order to make that happen, but I knew my team was capable. Part of me wanted to ignore Clive and the ominous feeling he’d given me the day before, while continuing to race to get the patch to market. Part of me wanted to just take that risk, but I knew I couldn’t.

  My phone buzzed. It was my sister, calling instead of texting.

  “Hannah? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah—I just wanted to call you first thing. Are you in the office? Have you been online yet?” There was a breathless urgency in her voice.

  “Not yet.” I headed out to the kitchen and fired my laptop immediately. “I’m logging on now. What is it?”

  “It’s Clive. He’s been arrested.”

  “What?” I asked, heading to the Valley News website.

  I read the article, which was only two short paragraphs. It said that Clive Warren had been arrested on tax evasion charges, and that he was awaiting arraignment.

  “Tax evasion?” I asked. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know. And the other weird thing? I called my contact at the Valley News, and he said he’d heard from his police source that Clive turned himself in.”

  What the actual fuck? “Thanks Hannah. If you hear anything else, call m
e, okay?”

  We hung up after she promised to have her bodyguard breathing down her neck all day, and I promised to check in with her later.

  I started the Keurig, made myself coffee, and commenced pacing.

  I had been on the verge of calling the police. Clive had gone ahead and done it himself. But why?

  There was only one answer, and it wasn’t because Clive had grown a set of ethics overnight and decided to pay his back taxes—if he actually owed back taxes.

  Gabe came out of the bedroom, in a snug-fitting T-shirt and boxer briefs. I tried not to ogle his hot body. The timing was so not right. He smiled at me as he headed toward the coffeemaker but seeing my expression, he stopped. “What’s the matter, babe?”

  I tapped my fingers against my mug, jittery. “Clive Warren’s been arrested.”

  The sleepy look vanished from Gabe’s face. “For?”

  “Tax evasion.”

  Gabe blinked, processing the news. He made it to the coffeemaker, hit the button and turned to me. “I’m guessing he turned himself in.”

  I nodded. “And you know why, right?”

  He crossed his arms against his chest, his biceps popping. I sort of wished I was his prisoner, and that he could keep me restrained with those big arms—and that I didn’t have to deal with the fact that my world was crashing down around me this morning.

  “Because he doesn’t want to wind up dead at his office?”

  I nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. He’s afraid of them. He’s afraid of what they’ll do.”

  I started pacing again, my insides tangling in a mixture of guilt and panic. “I might be responsible for this, you know. Maybe Li Na found out that he’d talked to me yesterday and she was upset. Maybe he was afraid of what she’d do.”

  “Babe, come on.” Exasperation rolled off him in waves. “You can’t feel guilty about this—Clive Warren hacked you. He stole from you. He sold your information to the Chinese, and now they’re trying to reverse engineer the technology you’ve worked on for years.”

  Even though that was true, guilt still knotted my insides. “But they’re failing. They’re angry—and he’s so afraid of them, he turned himself into the police.”

  Gabe’s eyes were stormy. “I don’t care about Clive, for fuck’s sake. Good riddance—whether it’s because he’s in jail or because Zhao puts a bullet in him.”

  I whirled on him. “You can’t mean that.” I appreciated his loyalty, but sometimes, his protectiveness outweighed his common decency.

  “Of course I mean it. He threatened you. He’s put you squarely in harm’s way—with people he’s so afraid of, he’s gone to jail rather than face them. I have zero sympathy for him, babe.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better…” I let my voice trail off. I knew full well what I was about to say wasn’t going to make Gabe feel any better. “It’s not just him I’m worried about. You know what this means, don’t you? The fact that he’s been arrested?”

  Gabe scrubbed a hand across his face, looking weary in spite of the coffee. “Yes.”

  “They’re going to seize his equipment, and go through all of his electronic records. They’re going to find evidence of his correspondence to Jiàn Innovations, unless he scrubbed it. Not only that, they’re going to find out that I reverse-hacked Clive. They’re going to find out that Leo and Dave got into his phone too. That’s wiretapping. Those are going to be federal charges.”

  “We’ll tell them the truth—about everything. Clive, Jiàn.” Gabe’s expression softened. “Whoever investigates this is going to understand that you were only trying to protect yourself. You weren’t stealing. You’re the victim here.”

  “Well, that would be great if it actually turned out that way. But for now, I need to turn myself in. It’s literally a matter of hours before they find that stuff and come looking for me. This is a nightmare.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to ward off a headache. “As a corporate CEO about to launch her first major product, it doesn’t look good for me to be dragged away in handcuffs. I need to get out in front of this and turn myself in.” I swallowed again. “I’m also worried about how Jiàn Innovations is going to respond to all this—to Clive being held. There’s the possibility that they’ll be exposed. The FBI will get involved now.”

  Gabe said nothing. He appeared lost in his own thoughts.

  “If they hold me—and they probably will—I’ll need you to help run Paragon. I need you to stay on track with the launch.” For once, I realized that I couldn’t do everything myself and be successful. I needed his help. “You’re the only one I trust to do it.”

  His eyes met mine. He looked stunned. “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course I mean it, Gabe.” I’d protected Paragon with everything I had. I believed that Gabe would do the same. I’d just have to make him promise not to bash anybody’s kneecaps in while he did it.

  We were both quiet then, contemplating the changes the imminent future held.

  He finally nodded. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  I managed a small smile. “Including sending me care packages to prison?”

  He closed the distance between us and wrapped his arms around me. “I’d be your prison wife, if I could.”

  I laughed, but then I realized I might cry. “I have to call the police soon. I have to turn myself in before this becomes a media circus and blows up in my face. That’s probably still going to happen—but at least this way, I might be able to control the message.”

  He stroked my cheek, looking into my eyes. His eyes had that familiar sparkle, the one I longed for, the one I relied on. “I’m not going to let you go to jail, babe.”

  I ran my hands over his shoulders. “I know you’re Silicon Valley’s resident badass and all, but that might just be out of your jurisdiction.”

  “We’ll see.” He rose up and kissed me deeply, our tongues connecting. I threw my arms around him, pulling him to me, relishing our closeness.

  Eventually and unwillingly, I pulled back. If I was indeed going to jail, I was going to be separated from him, and I needed to say more. I owed him that much, but I still struggled with the words. “I meant what I said yesterday. I’m…I’m so sorry about running off to ambush Clive like that. Without telling you. If you’d done the same, I would’ve been worried sick.”

  He chuckled. “Why is it so hard for you to say?” He kept me wrapped in his embrace.

  “Because I’m so rarely wrong, the words ‘I’m sorry’ aren’t part of my normal lexicon,” I teased, even as my heart swelled.

  “I’m still not sure I’ve forgiven you yet.” He brushed his lips over mine. “You might have to make it up to me some more.”

  “I might not have time.” I leaned up and kissed him hungrily, trying to commit the taste and feel of him to memory.

  “We can make it quick. And dirty.”

  Hot anticipation lit my veins as I kissed him again. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” I whispered when our lips parted, thinking of the police. “I don’t want to be away from you.” I bit my lip and blushed.

  “It makes me crazy when you bite your lip like that. Stop.” He sighed and scrubbed his hands across his face. “Go wait for me in bed. I think I need to be inside you again before I can fully forgive you. It’s a theory worth testing out anyway.”

  “So…you haven’t forgiven me?” My voice came out wobbly.

  “I have, but it’s against my better judgment.”

  I exhaled in relief. If things are right with Gabe, I can face everything else.

  This realization almost pushed me over the edge. My life had irrevocably changed, so quickly, and my heart was now in someone else’s hands. Damn. All the scientific method in the world hadn’t prepared me for this.

  He sighed. “I can’t stay mad at you, babe. Even the things you do that drive me crazy—like worry about Clive—you’re acting with a moral purpose and a higher level of selflessness than I’m even remotely capabl
e of. So even when I’m mad at you, I admire you.”

  “So?”

  “So go wait for me. Before you’re carted off to prison, we’ll have more make-up sex and call it good.”

  Memories of the previous night flooded through me, making my skin hot. “Aren’t you coming?”

  He nodded. “In a second. I just have to make a quick call.”

  I decided to put my own phone call to the police off for a little bit—he promised we’d be quick. And dirty. My body thrummed in anticipation of what that meant as I went to his room and waited for him, taking my clothes off, shaking my hair out so it was loose over my shoulders. Then, in a final act of contrition, I got onto my knees in the middle of the floor.

  He came in a minute later, already undoing his belt. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. “What are you doing, Lauren?”

  I looked at him, mustering all the bravery I had. “I’m asking you to forgive me. Fully.”

  “I forgive you. Fully.” His voice was hoarse.

  Still, I didn’t get up. He unbuttoned his shirt and stripped off all his clothes, all while watching me with hooded eyes. “Why are you still on your knees?”

  I looked at him in his naked magnificence—at his cock, thick and erect, filled with the promise of unending pleasure.

  “I’m giving myself to you. I’m yours.”

  Gabe smiled, then got on the ground, on his knees, facing me. “I thought we’d already established that.”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m going to try to stop fighting you so much.”

  “Ah, I see. You’re submitting to me.”

  I nodded, my cheeks burning hot.

  “The thing is, babe, I don’t believe you. You’re not the submitting kind.” He palmed my breast, rubbing my nipple beneath his fingers until it beaded. He leaned forward and took it into his mouth, licking and sucking. He trailed his fingers down my body, making me tingle. He ran his thumb along my slit, tracing the wetness there, then rubbed my clit, captivating me with an onslaught of sensations that put me completely under his spell.