Bedding the Geek Tycoon Page 3

  “Thanks.”

  Okay, so that hadn’t helped. She took Ryan’s distraction as an opportunity to study his handsome features. Had she really had those lips between her legs the night before? Had those hands really massaged her breasts, stroked her in places she hadn’t been touched for years, brought her to shuddering climax on the floor of her apartment?

  Ryan Stone was straight out of her daydreams. No way that could be real.

  But the growing heat between her legs was real, and kind of embarrassing. He hadn’t even done anything yet. But damn if the way he turned that steering wheel wasn’t the sexiest driving she had ever seen.

  Some superhero you are, Jenn. All it takes to penetrate your shields is one hot former TA within arm’s reach.

  “What are you staring at?” he asked, shooting a glance at her.

  Jenn’s cheeks heated. “Sorry. I was just thinking about… dinner.”

  His eyebrow quirked. “You sure about that?”

  If dinner was whipped cream and strawberries and hot man flesh…

  “Of course.” Her voice was an octave too high. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I’m open for suggestions.”

  I bet you are.

  She struggled to keep the suggestions she really wanted to make off her lips—like the ones that involved getting Ryan back to her place as soon as possible and riding him like Yoshi in Super Mario World. A very dirty Super Mario World.

  What a dork.

  Somehow, she managed to say something that sounded normal. “I really like pho. There’s a good place on the corner.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  He headed out of the city, and she watched as the bay passed underneath them. Jenn didn’t own a car. She was so accustomed to taking the train everywhere that it was almost surreal going over a bridge on the freeway.

  They drove on for several minutes in total silence aside from the engine’s throaty rumble and the patter of growing rain on the windshield. She peeked up at him through her bangs, stealing glances of his rugged profile. His sideburns were indented slightly—like he normally wore glasses.

  Oh man, glasses. The idea practically made her salivate.

  “Thank you,” he said, breaking the silence.

  She blinked. “For what?”

  “For agreeing to take on the project. I know you must be busy with your own work.”

  “Not really,” Jenn admitted. “Nothing that comes through Oscar is challenging, you know? I try to keep myself busy, but I have yet to find a problem I can’t conquer.” Except, maybe, for the mystery that was the sexy Ryan Stone.

  “You’re really incredible,” he said. A thrill shot through her stomach, making her abs clench. He cleared his throat. “Your accomplishments.”

  When she spoke, her voice was softer than she intended. “You, too.” He glanced at her, lips tight. “I mean, being an engineer for Turner is something you should be proud of. I’m happy to help you, but you’re not exactly a lazy bum yourself. You know?”

  His knuckles went white on the wheel. “Stop it. Just… be quiet, Jenn.” The intensity in his voice shocked her to silence. His burning eyes turned on her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He pulled off the freeway abruptly, taking a side road into the trees. The motion was so sudden that she had to grab the dashboard to steady herself.

  Ryan’s truck bounced over the rough road, going just into the forest where they could see the road, but could not be seen through the bushes. And then he stopped.

  A few drops of rain filtered through the tree branches and drummed on the windshield.

  He turned off the car. His stare drove right through her.

  “This doesn’t look like dinner,” she said lightly. He responded by dragging her into his lap. His fingers bit into her hips as he shoved back his chair, giving them more space. She gasped. “What—?”

  “You don’t have to be so nice to me, Jenn,” Ryan growled.

  “I’m not being nice, I’m being honest.”

  He silenced her with a hand on the back of her neck, dragging her lips down to crush them against his. His kiss was rough and sudden. The pressure was almost bruising. It made her heart race, her skin flush, her body heat. All it took was a touch.

  She gripped his shoulders and pressed against him even harder.

  When he broke the kiss, she could barely breathe. “I don’t know you at all, do I?” Jenn asked, suddenly hoarse.

  “No.” His eyes smoldered. “But I want to know you, Jenn. I want to know you so much better. Damn it.”

  Some part of her realized that statement didn’t make sense—why would he be angry at her for caring about him, and for wanting to care about her? But all she could think about was the hard bulge straining against Ryan’s jeans, pressed between her legs, and it pretty much killed all her brain cells on contact.

  They never made it to dinner.

  Jenn didn’t care.

  She almost ripped his fly when she opened his jeans. His cock was already at half-mast, just from having her in his lap for a few short seconds, and it swelled at her touch.

  A helpless whimper tore from her throat.

  So delicious. She couldn’t resist.

  Jenn squeezed it gently, feeling the blood rush under her hand as it hardened, and then stroked her hand over the shaft.

  “God, Jenn,” he murmured in a harsh undertone, sliding his hand up her shirt. He shoved the hem over her breasts, exposing the swollen mounds to the warm air of the car.

  His hands smoothed over the material, flicking her nipples through the silk. Ryan’s hands dragged her closer, pinning her belly to his, and he bent his head to lock the moist heat of his mouth over one breast.

  She almost forgot to keep stroking him. When she realized her hand had stilled, she pumped it over him with new fervor.

  His fingers pinched her nipple through the bra. “I want to taste you,” she moaned, trying to pull away so she could envelop him in her mouth. “Let me—”

  “No.”

  He yanked her back against his body and threw them both to the bench seat of the truck, pushing between her legs. Her head bumped against the passenger door. He loomed over her, face shadowed and short hair silhouetted against the gray light filtering through the trees.

  Cars rushed past. She could hear them, just a few feet away. If anyone stopped—or if someone walked up to the truck, and noticed the fogging windows…

  He bit down on the other nipple, and all the worries vanished in an instant.

  Tugging down the cup, Ryan exposed her breasts to his rough hands, and he rolled them between his fingers with an expression that bordered on reverence. “You could ruin me,” he whispered. “You perfect little…”

  Whatever about her was perfect, she didn’t catch. He thrust his pelvis against hers, and through two layers of clothing, the feeling of his erection was still enough to shoot hot waves of pleasure over her clit.

  He ground against her as he sucked and licked her nipples. Somehow, despite the confined space, he found a rhythm. His jeans rubbed against her in just the right way. Between his hand on her breasts and the stroke of his hard cock against her nether lips, she could feel the pressure rapidly build.

  “Ryan—”

  He climbed up her body and pressed a hard kiss into her mouth. “Come for me, Jennifer,” he growled without breaking away. “Come for me now.”

  Her reaction to the command was instantaneous.

  Jenn’s spine arched, and she cried out, even as he kept kissing her. The orgasm spread from the top of her head to her toes. Her legs locked around him as she bucked.

  “Ryan!”

  The cry was too loud in the enclosed space of the car. It rattled her eardrums, and his hands tightened on her hips, almost crushing them.

  His responding groan was immeasurably sexy. She nearly orgasmed twice, one right on top of the other.

  When her vision and hearing cleared, he was sitting up with a
small smile. She snaked her hand into his jeans, grabbing his cock. He was still hard. He hadn’t come, too. “Let me finish you,” she said, but he used his grip on her wrist to extract her arm.

  “Not yet.” He turned the key in the ignition. “I’m taking you back to your apartment, and I’m going to destroy that tight body of yours first.”

  Jenn couldn’t seem to think of an argument.

  Four

  There was one thing Jenn seemed to like better than Ryan’s ministrations, much to his consternation.

  A challenge.

  He had every intent of ripping her clothes off and giving her the thorough ravaging she deserved the instant they entered her apartment. But she zeroed in on her server room, and took his flash drive with him.

  “Coffee beans are in the freezer,” she shot over her shoulder as she ducked into the second bedroom to work.

  Ryan stared after her, raking a hand through his hair.

  Jenn was so smart, so beautiful—and so much sweeter than he expected.

  When Ryan saw that foul prick of a boss hitting on her, he had been ready to murder. He wanted to make up for it by taking her body, showing her how she deserved so much better. Showing her how she needed him.

  But every second he stood in her apartment made his guilt grow.

  Ryan had known he might have to seduce the sexy programmer to get her to solve his problem. He hadn’t planned on having her seduce him back. Worse, he didn’t plan on those growing feelings of warmth he got every time he looked at her.

  “Don’t get attached,” he muttered at himself, slamming through the cabinets to find her coffee grinder.

  Jenn was a means to an end. That was it.

  He wasn’t going to fall in love with her.

  In the other room, Jenn was humming to herself. The sound made his heart skip a beat.

  Don’t fall in love?

  A quiet voice whispered to him from the back of his mind: Too late…

  He had just gotten the coffee pot worked out when he heard her dart from the server room into the bedroom.

  “Do you have creamer?” he called.

  She responded from her room, muffled by the wall. “Refrigerator door.”

  Ryan found it. Vanilla flavored. He gave a low chuckle. There was nothing vanilla about Jenn—a little spice would have been a lot more appropriate.

  Bowser curled around his ankles as he poured a cup and added a touch of cream.

  Jenn’s door opened. “Do you want it black?” he asked, turning around.

  His jaw dropped open.

  She held a closed laptop against her side. Which was naked.

  In fact, all of her was naked. He could see every inch of the curve at her hips and waist. The red marks he had left on her breasts with his teeth. The fine curls between her legs.

  “I wouldn’t mind a little cream,” she said with an impish smile.

  “What…?”

  “I’m going to have to rejigger a few things in the server room to get the most juice out of the equipment. I can’t risk a static charge frying my motherboards.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Want to help?”

  Ryan had never gotten naked so fast before in his life.

  ~~~

  It took Jenn an unusually long time to jury rig the equipment—a couple hours longer, actually, because she kept stopping to generate static with Ryan on the floor between the racks.

  But once she got things going, they got down to business. They lounged in bed with her laptop as she worked through a remote desktop connection.

  Jenn studied the code Ryan had brought her with the sheets tangled around her naked hips while he traced lines over her ribcage. It was the most complicated program she had seen in her life.

  “What did you say this is for?” she asked.

  “It’s a security algorithm. Quantum.”

  A quantum encryption. Her heart sped with the promise of it. “And you said this won’t cause problems with my job, right?”

  “It has nothing to do with your company,” he said firmly. “A programmer left it behind when he required. Brilliant guy, but mischievous. We can’t contact him to get the key, so we can’t open any of the files he locked down.” Ryan’s hand stilled on her back. “Can you do it?”

  “Is the Raven Lord the stupidest epic mount ever?” Jenn quipped. He stared. It took her a moment to realize what she had said, and she gave a sheepish smile. “Yeah. It is. Just so you know.”

  “So you can do it.”

  “Probably,” she said, squinting at the laptop’s screen. “But look at this block of code. This is… this is going to be trouble.”

  He hesitated, then leaned over the bed to pull a case out of the pocket of his trousers. Ryan slid reading glasses over his nose. They had thick black frames and completed the Clark Kent look.

  Holy hotness.

  “You do wear glasses,” she said, unable to control her delight.

  His defensive look immediately killed it. “Mostly for reading and programming work, to prevent eyestrain. I don’t need them for driving or anything.”

  “I like glasses,” Jenn said. “They’re sexy.”

  He gave a masculine chuckle and cupped her cheek. “I have never known a woman like you.” His thumb brushed over her jaw.

  She only let him kiss her for a moment. Then she ducked her head. “Okay. Let me work on this while I have the mood. Sorry.”

  Their naked limbs remained entwined as she tapped away at her laptop. He traced circles down her spine with one thick finger, which made it really hard to concentrate.

  That wasn’t the only thick appendage she wanted sliding down to tease the edge of her underwear.

  But if anything could distract Jenn from sex—even with Ryan Stone—it was programming. She almost forgot he was there until he spoke, deep voice rumbling against her back. “What are you humming? You’ve been singing it all afternoon.”

  “Promise not to laugh?” she asked. “It’s the Superman theme. When I’m programming, I like to think… well, I pretend I’m Super Jenn.” Ryan laughed. She ripped a pillow off the bed and hit him in the head. “You promised!”

  “I’m not laughing at you,” he said, grabbing her wrists to keep her from smacking him again. “I couldn’t possibly. I don’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Screw you.”

  He used his grip on her wrists to press her flat against the bed. “Is that an invitation?”

  The husky undertone of his voice shot arousal straight between her legs. His hot mouth pressed against her neck.

  “I’m never going to finish this algorithm,” Jenn sighed.

  His lips traced a path behind her ear.

  “It can wait a few more minutes.”

  Actually, it ended up having to wait a few hours.

  Neither of them really cared.

  ~~~

  A couple of days passed in that vein. Jenn wasn’t sure how many. The rising and setting of the sun didn’t mean anything to her, when all she knew was Ryan’s musky smell and his lips on her body.

  From dawn until dusk, they made love. And even though she took frequent breaks to program, she didn’t make a lot of progress.

  Ryan was too distracting in the best possible way.

  “I like the way you laugh,” she said, snuggling her head into his shoulder after their third wrestling match of the week. “You don’t do it enough. Why are you so serious?”

  “I told you. I don’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Then what was that pillow fight we just had?”

  “Seduction,” Ryan said. “Totally humorless seduction.”

  She hummed low in her throat, tracing her fingers along his collarbone. Sometimes, when she had been spending too much time in front of her computer, she saw mathematics in everything—even the hot, sweaty, organic things.

  His shape was making her think of bezels, and the projections she had been running that morning, almost as much as the sex.

  Bezels. Wait.

  Jenn s
at up. “Oh my gosh!”

  “What is it?” he asked without moving.

  “The encryption! I just realized—”

  She nearly tripped escaping the tangle of sheets on the bed, but made it to her laptop unscathed. She opened up the remote desktop program to her second bedroom’s super computer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

  Her breath became choppy in her throat as she typed.

  Linear regression… bezels and angles and projections…

  “Do you have it?” he asked.

  No. She didn’t.

  But she was so close.

  Jenn jumped into bed with her laptop. “Don’t talk to me,” she said, laying her belly flat on the mattress.

  The hours blurred together. Jenn worked while Ryan kissed her shoulders and back, rubbing those massive hands along her arms.

  After a while, he stopped rubbing. He stretched out to watch her work in silence.

  Some time passed—maybe a few more hours. She had no idea.

  And then it was done.

  “I did it,” she whispered, gaping at her screen.

  Jenn had cracked a quantum encryption. Not just any quantum encryption, but one that stumped even the best engineers at Turner Industries. Her heart pounded as their files decoded one by one.

  “I did it!” Jenn squealed, squirming with delight.

  No response.

  She craned around to look over her shoulder. Ryan had fallen asleep with his head pillowed on his arms. His glasses had slipped halfway down his face.

  Disappointment thrummed through her. As much as she wanted to celebrate, she didn’t want to disturb him.

  She bent down to brush a kiss over his lips. “You owe me,” she murmured.

  And Jenn could think of several ways that she would be willing to take repayment.

  Naked ways.

  She slipped out of bed with the laptop and returned it to her server room.

  A red light was flashing on her firewall.

  Frowning, Jenn plugged her laptop into the USB port and logged in to check the error report.

  Something was sending data from her server to an external location. The timestamp of the transfer was only seconds after she keyed in the commands to back up her decryption algorithm.