Dirty Nasty Billionaire [Part Two]

by Paige North

  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part Two)

  Paige North

  Favor Ford Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Favor Ford Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Want To Be In The Know?

  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part Two) by Paige North

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Want To Be In The Know?

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  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part Two) by Paige North

  Chapter 1

  “How was your first day?” My roommate Elise asks. We share a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a triple decker in Cambridge, an apartment we found the summer before our senior year. It’s cheap, thanks to the faulty radiator, the sloping floors, and the drafty windows, but I don’t care why it’s cheap. I only care that it is. And since Elise is using her brand-new degree to work as a recruiter for New England College (a job which pays less than a year of tuition at NEC), she appreciates it, too. She’s waiting for me on the ratty old couch in our living room, her feet up on the chipped Ikea coffee table, which is covered with a fleet of tiny white Chinese takeout boxes.

  “It was …” I pause, trying to figure out how to describe what happened today, from the promising start, to my morning crash-and-burn, to the earth-shattering orgasm that ended it. I can’t imagine what Elise would say if I told her that I got oral sex from Nixon Blake while perched on the edge of his desk in the executive suite on my first day. I have a feeling there would be a stern warning in there, at the very least. So instead I go a little more cryptic. “Unexpected.”

  “Wow, something Delaney Masterson couldn’t plan for? That’s fucking unfathomable,” she says, diving into a box of lo mein with a pair of chopsticks.

  I drop my tote bag on the floor by the door and practically bum rush her on the couch, snatching the low mein container out of her hand. “You talk to high school students with that mouth?” I ask before shoving greasy noodles into my own.

  “No, I save it for you, old roommate of mine,” she replies before tucking into some General Tso’s chicken.

  Elise and I have been roommates since freshman year, when the housing office randomly paired us up. We always wondered if it was purposeful, throwing two scholarship girls from working class families into the same tiny room. And thank god they did, because I don’t know if I would have survived with one of the trust fund princesses that ended up living on our floor. Elise may have gone the sorority route at NEC while I tended more towards the library, but at the end of the day we were always a pair. A team. I could always count on her to commiserate when I was stuck waiting tables for a bunch of Harvard bros wearing Nantucket red, who loved to flaunt their wealth until it came time to tip.

  We lived in the dorms for three years before finally saying to hell with it and finding this apartment. And when we both scored jobs that kept us in the city, it went unsaid that we’d stay together. The thought of having to find another roommate (because until I score an actual job with Scour and not a low-paying internship, there’s no way in a freezing cold hell that I can afford to live alone in this city), practically makes me break out in hives.

  “So did you get to meet the Sexy CEO?” She asks. Elise spent more than her fair share of time staring over my shoulder at pictures of Nixon Blake during pre-internship deep dive.

  I instantly choke on a slippery, salty noodle. I feel like I’m blushing red as a maraschino cherry, so I fan myself as if I’m just warm from the commute. “Yeah, he made an appearance.”

  “What was he like?”

  Well, he gave me the first, and likely best, orgasm of my whole life and is now in possession of the tattered remains of my favorite panties … so, pretty great.

  “He’s a little aloof,” is what I say out loud.

  “Do you think he’s good in bed?” She asks, and I immediately choke on a water chestnut. “Well come on, he’s got to be shit, right? He’s hot and rich and a genius. He has no reason to be good in bed. He could be fucking terrible at fucking, and he’d still have no problem getting women.”

  I swallow the mouthful of lo mein, which gives me time to not say something completely ridiculous. “Elise, he’s hot and rich and a genius. He’s definitely good in bed,” I say, and try not to sound too much like I know what I’m talking about.

  “Well, play your cards right and maybe you’ll find out,” she says. She drops her box of chicken back on the coffee table and rises from the couch. “I’m going to get a beer. You want one?”

  “Sure,” I say, and as soon as she’s out of the room, I let my mind drift back to Nixon on his knees. It’s not an image I’m soon to forget, that’s for sure.

  As if to prove my point, I spend the entire night dreaming about our encounter in his office. Which should be amazing (who doesn’t want to relive the best orgasm ever over and over again?), but when I wake up, I find myself surprisingly on edge. Because the reality of the situation has come crashing down upon me. I fooled around with my boss. And not just any boss, but the most powerful man in tech, the very field I want to enter at the very company I hope to work. The man who holds my future in his hands has seen me naked and splayed out on his desk.

  Am I going to be able to look at him without blushing? Is he going to be able to see me as anything other than a sex object? He was very clear yesterday that what happened was to be forgotten (yeah right). We’ll be returning to boss and employee when I show up at Scour today. But how does that even work? Will it even work? Or will he summon me up to his office at the end of the day for another round?

  I’m ashamed to say that the dominant thought is dear god I hope so.

  I arrive at Scour, my emotions a roiling cauldron of anxiety, determination, and lust. I feel like if anyone looks at me wrong, I’m going to explode. I’m a live wire as I ride the elevator to the 9th floor, where my fellow interns probably aren’t expecting me. I wouldn’t expect me to show up after what happened yesterday.

  Though if there’s one perk of my encounter with Nixon yesterday (you know, other than the mind-blowing orgasm), it’s that I’ve almost completely forgotten about the dumb thing I said that precipitated it.

  But while I may have forgotten my get-to-know-you faux pas, my fellow interns certainly haven’t. As soon as I walk in the door, Jenna and Amber start giggling. Colin can’t bring himself to look up from his laptop, where he’s furiously tapping away, his cheeks growing redder by the second.

  I don’t know how Nixon is going to see me, but they certainly still see me as the hapless girl who’s never had an orgasm.

  Little do they know that I’m the artist formerly known as the hapless girl who’s never had an orgasm.

  “So you’re still here,” Amber says.

  “I am,” I reply, dropping my bag into one of the chairs and taking a seat.

  “Color me surprised. I sort of assumed you’d be busy too with the process of trying to change your name and leave the country to bother showing up to work,” she drolls. “I gave your assignment to the nerd.” Amber tosses her head in Colin’s direction. He finally glances up over his screen and mouths a quick sorry when she’s not looking.

  I give him a quick smile to let h
im know I don’t hold it against him.

  “Well I’m here, my name is still Delaney, and I don’t plan on going anywhere.” The venom oozes out of me, and I want to pat myself on the back for my courage. “I may have made a mistake yesterday, but I’m here to stay, and I’m here to compete. I’m sorry if that derails your plans of being a Grade A Bitch, but you’re just going to have to get a new plan.”

  Jenna’s eyes grow wide at the same time Amber’s narrow. She opens her mouth to reply, but I hold up a finger to stop her.

  “Colin,” I say, emphasizing his name, since Amber hasn’t bothered to learn it, “you can fill me in on what you’re working on, then I can take that task over. And after lunch, we’re going to have a team meeting to divide up projects equitably. Despite attempts to usurp the role, no one here has been appointed team leader.”

  Amber stares at me hard for several seconds that feel like an eternity. I don’t expect her to go down without a fight, so when she mutters a terse “fine,” I know I need to steel myself for more. There’s no way someone like Amber is done.

  The good thing is, neither am I.

  I’m midway through research on a recent Stanford grad running a startup app that creates custom road trip pit stops (it’s cool, but the design could certainly use some work, maybe a quirky graphic designer to put a unique spin on it) when Nixon finally makes his appearance.

  I sense him in the room before I see him. It’s as if everyone has taken a collective breath in, and though everyone is trying not to act awed by him, you could hear a pin drop in the room. Jenna quickly lowers the volume on the obnoxious EDM playlist she’s been blasting. Colin yanks his earbuds out with such force that one whips back around and hits him in the eye. Only Amber is able to act normal, which for her, means leaning over onto the conference table, her perky double Ds on full display. Of course, she’s sporting a button up shirt with more than a few buttons missing.

  “Good morning,” Nixon says, his eyes sweeping around the conference table. I steady myself for his gaze to fall on me, perhaps even ready for some kind of knowing glance to pass between us. Yesterday he had my nipples in his mouth, after all. But his eyes never even make it to me. He pretends I’m not even in the room. I’m a ghost to him.

  If there’s any comfort, it’s that he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to Amber’s breasts, either.

  Cold comfort.

  “Today I’m going to have you all down with the research team down on six. I want you to see how the professionals operate. You’ll each be shadowing a Scour employee. Randi will fill you in.” And then, without ever once letting his eyes come even in the vicinity of me, he turns and strides out.

  And it doesn’t escape the notice of Amber, who is positively giddy to see that I’m still on the outs. She must already be thinking about how she’s going to decorate her future office at Scour. And from the way she kept giving Nixon fuck me eyes, I’m guessing she’s imagining how she’s going to redecorate his house.

  Well, she’s going to have to go through me, first.

  Still, I’m unnerved by Nixon’s freeze out. If he keeps this up, it might have been better for me to just remain the hapless idiot intern who can’t figure out the appropriate place to talk about her orgasms, instead of the one who can’t figure out the appropriate place to have one. At least before he spoke to me, he acted like I was actually alive.

  Randi comes in soon after to lead us down to the sixth floor, where the research team works. There’s about two dozen people in the department, all of whom spend their days (and probably their nights) doing the work that we’ve been tasked with over the summer. The researching of startups, visiting tech conferences, interviewing coders and investors, and basically trying to predict the future.

  It’s their work that determines where the Scour money goes, and what companies, apps, and devices they should acquire, either because they want to incorporate the technology into their portfolio, or because they want to shut down the competition. Based on my research, I know that after the coders, the researchers are the most prestigious employees at Scour. Their recommendations chart the course of Scour … and its stock value. It the perfect job for me, a library nerd with a keen attention to detail. I’d want to work here even if it wasn’t the prize at the end of the internship competition.

  Randi gives us a quick orientation to the floor, then starts passing us off to various members of the research team. Amber and Jenna both wind up with bookish-looking women in glasses. Colin is paired with someone who looks like he could be a brother, or at least a distant cousin, right down to the matching hoodies. Which leaves me with —

  “Brent, this is Delaney,” Randi says, walking me up to the desk of a sandy haired guy with trendy, horn-rimmed glasses and a smile that looks like he moonlights in ads for a dentist’s office. He stands and flashes it at me as he shakes my hand with just the right amount of pressure. I try to match it. There’s no worse first impression than a dead fish handshake, my father always says.

  Unless you want to go ahead and tell him your orgasm story, I think to myself, but I manage to beat the thought away and return a nice, professional smile.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Brent,” I say.

  “Back atcha, Delaney. You want to take a seat?” He pulls a rolling chair over from a vacant desk and sets me up right next to him, so I can see his laptop screen over his shoulder. We spend the next hour deep in conversation. He’s generous in answering my questions while I furiously take notes. He shows me Scour’s checklist for evaluating potential acquisitions, but is quick to tell me it’s really just the bare minimum. Then he moves into his own personal system, which involves a series of spreadsheets and documents. He pulls up his notes on Scour’s most recent acquisition, a mindfulness app, that was his recommendation. I’m so busy furiously taking notes and asking questions that at first, I ignore the goosebumps on the back of my neck. But pretty soon I’m sure I’m being watched, and when I glance up, I see Nixon in a conference room. Randi is holding a tablet and flicking through something, her eyes focused down, but he’s looking through the glass and straight at me. Not sweeping the room. Not evaluating the interns.

  Staring.

  At me.

  The only time his eyes move is to flick over just slightly, like he’s trying to Jedi mind trick Brent straight out a nearby window.

  For someone who pretended I didn’t exist this morning, suddenly he seems to have a lot of interest in looking at me.

  And you know what? Fuck that.

  I immediately slide my chair a little bit closer to Brent and lean over towards his laptop screen. I point at something in one of his spreadsheets.

  “So how do you reconcile these two fields?” I ask. “Forgive my Excel ineptitude. I’ve always considered the program an instrument of torture.”

  He laughs, and so I laugh, too. And while I’m definitely not flirting, and Brent seems to know I’m not flirting either, when I glance up at the conference room window, Nixon seems to have no idea. In fact, I can see the tension in his jaw from here.

  I turn to Brent and smile again, but really I’m smiling at myself. Nixon said we were going to be boss and employee, not boss and invisible woman. If he wants to play games, I’m more than happy to join in.

  Game. On.

  Chapter 2

  “Wowza,” Elise says, dropping her spoon with a clatter into the bowl of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream that’s resting in her lap.

  “Good?” I ask. I give a little twirl, letting the silk flutter around my ankles.

  “If you don’t get laid tonight, it’s because every single owner of penis at this event has been struck dead by the mere sight of you,” she says.

  “That’s very … descriptive,” I reply with a giggle.

  I’d spent hours poring over the dress rental website before finally stumbling on the perfect gown for tonight’s State of Scour gala. All the interns were invited to the black tie event as a networking opportunity. The entire
company, top to bottom, will be there, along with some of the biggest names in tech and venture capital, along with more than a few influential CEOs and politicians. I heard the governor would be there, and more than a few Senators. I wanted the perfect thing.

  And the ice blue silk sheath is definitely it.

  The fabric slips over my hips like water, kicking out with each step, a dangerous slit all the way up to my thigh revealing my milky skin. The dress features a deep V neck that nearly required boob tape, though thankfully everything seems to be remaining in place. The straps come up over my shoulder and tie in a sweet silk bow at the base of my neck, the tails falling down my back, which is complete own all the way down to my waist. It’s by far the most daring dress I’ve ever worn.

  And I’ve never felt sexier.

  “I have you to thank, of course,” I say. I’d presented Elise with three options, two of them elegant, basic black floor-length gowns. But when she nearly hyperventilated looking at the ice blue number, I knew I had to do it.

  And only partly because the color would be a perfect match for Nixon Blake’s eyes.

  Of course, I’m wondering if Nixon will notice me in it, even if that thought makes me feel a little bit pathetic, like Amber with her boobs always out whenever Nixon shows up in the conference room. But I can’t help it.

  “You can thank me by spilling all the details of whatever sexy CEO you wind up boning in a closet tonight.” She gives me a tiny salute with her ice cream spoon. “I’ll be here waiting. But don’t rush home on my account.”

  The gala is being held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, right in Copley Square, the spot famous for the Boston Marathon finish line, the Boston Public Library gazing down stately from the corner. Despite having visited the library plenty and wandered Copley Square hundreds of times, I’ve never once been inside the hotel. But tonight, that’s about to change.