Chapter 20
She woke up alone in bed. Jackknifing, she threw her legs over the side and stood.
Her legs wobbled, the byproduct of being tied up and fucked by Noah for the last twenty-four hours. Parts of her body were so sore she couldn’t think about them without wincing, and she had rope burns in places that made her face flame.
When she determined she could walk, she rushed out of the room before her brain had fully deciphered why panic was flooding through her veins.
Halfway down the hall, she heard voices.
Déjà vu froze her in place. Then, shaking her head, she crept closer.
Peeking into the room closest to the living room, she saw Noah seated behind his desk, the light from a laptop bathing his bare chest.
Relief weakened her. Feeling foolish for her bare-assed dash from the bedroom, she considered silently retreating. But as usual, the sight of him arrested her and reduced her willpower to nil.
He looked up, saw her and hit a button. The voices from the computer stopped .
Blue eyes narrowed. “You walk in here naked and I’ll paddle your ass so hard you’ll wear an ice pack for a month,” he growled.
She started to backtrack. Now she was assured Ashley and Warren were nowhere in sight, and that there wasn’t going to be a reenactment of last week, she could return to bed. Or…
She glanced back at Noah and found him staring at her.
One eyebrow quirked. “What?”
“I don’t have any clothes besides my gown.”
His gaze shifted to the screen and he held up a finger at whoever was on the other side.
He rolled his leather chair to the side and his sizzling gaze travelled over her nude body again.
She wasn’t ashamed to bask in the thrill of watching his eyes darken with lust. “Dressing room to your left in the bedroom. Find something to wear and come back here when you’re dressed. ”
Not stopping to question why her heart was bouncing around her chest in joy, she rushed back into the bedroom.
There was enough daylight to see where she was going without stopping to work out how to open the blinds.
She bypassed his formal stuff and headed for the stack of T-shirts and jeans.
Since there was no way she’d fit into any of his pants, she stuck to rifling through his tops.
Her breath caught when she saw the Vassar T-shirt.
Questioning herself over the wisdom of her actions, she gave a mental shrug and pulled the slightly worn T-shirt over her head.
The burning need to know what the item of clothing meant to him ate at her as she smoothed a hand over her hair.
She could ask, but she had a feeling her queries would remain unanswered.
Noah may have cradled her close after untying her and rained kisses on her temple and cheeks before they dropped off to sleep in the early hours of the morning, but there was still a barrier between them.
A Warren-shaped barrier which only time and trust would smash through.
And they were very much in the early stages of that journey.
She entered the study and Noah’s head snapped up. Electric-blue eyes raked her, then narrowed when he saw what she was wearing. She waited for him to tell her to go take it off.
After a moment, he beckoned to her. “Hold on a second, boys.”
She rounded his desk and stopped. He scrutinized her some more before he pulled her into his lap, tugging the hem of the T-shirt down over her knees.
Two faces stared at her from the screen. The boys couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen.
She glanced at Noah and back to them. “Hello, I’m Leia,” she said.
They eyed each other, then gaped at her.
Noah growled. “The lady said hello. Have you drowned your manners along with your brain cells in all those battery acid energy drinks you guzzle by the gallon?”
“Uhhh… hi?—”
“Yeah… hey—” They spoke in unison.
“These two knuckleheads are Tim Savarino and Harry Johnson. Believe it or not, they’re grad students at MIT.”
“I’m the youngest in my class,” Harry piped up.
“Yeah, only by 2.35 days,” Tim countered with a punch to his friend’s arm. They proceeded to tussle.
Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jesus. Stay on point or I swear to God…”
Leia curbed a smile and glanced back at him. “Are these the guys who designed the app?” she whispered.
Capturing her gaze, he nodded. His hand crept up her back and around her waist and tucked her body into his. Leia tried to contain the jumping of her pulse.
Tim cleared his throat and flipped his black and orange-tipped bangs. “Okay, umm, like we were saying… we shut it down.”
“And like I said, I need proof. The deadline is in just over five hours. I need to know there’s no way it can be brought back online.”
Leia tensed. Noah sent her a loaded, piercing glance.
Swallowing, she returned her gaze to the screen.
The boys exchanged hurt glances and stared back at him. “You don’t trust us?”
Noah’s hand tightened around Leia’s waist. Her nerves were making her squirm her ass crack right against his hardening cock.
And she was wearing his T-shirt again. That and the knowledge that she was naked and warm threatened to scramble his brain.
He wrestled his concentration back. “I trust you. But I still want proof. This is to do with her.” He cocked his head at Leia and slid one hand over her nape.
Her purr of acceptance of his ownership was for his ears alone.
His cock grew stiffer, which considering the amount of action it’d seen in the last day and night was nothing short of a miracle. He cleared his throat.
“That means there can be no room for error. Error means I hunt you two down and deprive you of your genitals. And as young men who’re about to get richer than your wildest dreams, I guarantee you’ll need your genitals.
So talk me through what you’ve done. And use words I’ll understand so I don’t?— ”
“Come over here and castrate us. Yes, we get it,” Harry griped. They exchanged glances again and Noah wondered whether they’d devised a way to communicate telepathically.
Tim pursed his lips. “In the simplest terms, we infested their website with a self-replicating trojan. But the beauty of it is that while they were bouncing the auction site through about a hundred proxy servers, we’re bouncing our trojans through just under a thousand servers across the world.
So they can’t send their virus after ours.
And our trojan is also designed to find and destroy theirs whenever and wherever it pops up.
” Harry grinned. “And we installed a message for anyone who tries to log on. Go on, try the link,” he urged excitedly.
Leia stiffened. Noah smoothed a hand down her thigh, kissing her cheek in reassurance. “It’s okay, baby. They may not look it but these two are quite good at what they do.”
“Umm… you know we can hear you, right?” Harry grumbled.
Noah ignored them, staring at Leia until she swallowed and nodded. The flash of pain in her eyes gnawed at his insides, but he forced himself to access the file he’d kept under specially encrypted code and clicked on the link.
His screen flared to life with a picture of two yellow and blue goggled cartoon characters frantically fondling each other and giggling.
Leia burst out laughing. Noah reluctantly chuckled.
He tried to access it half a dozen more times before finally shutting down the site. “Okay, you get to keep your little peckers for now. But keep an eye on the sites. Anything happens, let me know straight away. Understood?”
They nodded.
Leia leaned forward. “Wait, crashing the site doesn’t stop the auction though, does it?” She chewed on her lip .
Harry’s smile disappeared, and his face turned serious in a way that reminded Noah why investing in these two brilliant minds had excited him in the first place.
“No, but finding the top bidders’ website as per Mr. King’s request, and infesting them with a worm so they can’t broadcast any material at all, sent them the message.
The… umm… porn industry is worth billions.
” He blushed at the word “porn” and Tim smirked.
“Shutting down a website, even for a few hours, is seriously bad for business. Four of the bidders dropped out before we crashed the site. We’ve taken care of the rest.”
Leia’s head whipped round to him, her eyes wide with delighted surprise. “You did that?”
He nodded. “I did that. For you.”
She blinked and a sheen misted her eyes. Turning to the screen, she gave a little wave. “Thank you, boys,” she said with a smile.
They openly gaped at her. Tim recovered first. “Umm… you’re welcome. And it was nice to meet you, Leia.”
When his gaze dropped to her breasts, Noah growled and terminated the link.
“They’re sweet,” she said.
He slammed down the lid of the laptop. “They’re horny teenagers whose only saving graces are that they’re blessed with some cool skills.”
She took his head in her hands and pressed her mouth to his jaw. “So… I said thank you to the boys…” Her fingers trailed down his throat and her nails scoured his chest.
He hissed as his heartbeat escalated. “Yeah?”
“Now I want to find a way to thank you.”
Mentally inspecting the box of toys he’d had delivered from storage, he said, “I’m sure I can come up with a few sug—” He stopped when she shook her head .
“I have one in mind.” Her face reddened. Her eyes darted to his and slid away.
He captured her jaw. “Spit it out.”
“I want you to… umm, fuck me in the ass.”
His fingers tightened and his senses caught fire. The need to grant her wish screamed through him, but he forced himself to shake his head. “Baby, I’m too big for you. You cried last night when I tried, remember?”
“I was overwhelmed by… everything. I can’t guarantee I won’t be overwhelmed this time too, but I really want you to take me there. I want you to hurt me like that, Noah,” she whispered huskily.
Blood roared in his ears until he thought he’d burst. He stared long enough to make sure she meant it.
Then he picked her up and rearranged her so she straddled him, her legs thrown over the arms of his chair.
His hands teased the bottom of the T-shirt, every sinew in his body tightening in anticipation of the treasure beneath.
“We’ll try again… soon,” he added when she opened her mouth to protest, “but not right now.”
He smiled at her adorable pout. Placing a hand on her stomach, he pushed her back until she leaned her elbows on his desk. Then he lifted the T-shirt and bared her to him.
God. Fuck. No matter how many times he ate, fucked and fingered her, his hunger only grew wilder, stronger.
Addicted. That was the word he’d applied to her the first time they’d fucked.
That addiction had survived all the shit of the last week and had puzzlingly multiplied a thousand-fold.
“Noah…” she murmured.
And the way she said his name… He gritted his teeth.
Lifting his head, he looked into her breathtaking face as he flicked a thumb over her swelling clit. “Tell me you did the sensible thing and didn’t schedule any meetings for today?”
Her eyes were darkening with arousal, but she shook her head. “Nothing that I can’t handle over the phone or with a l… laptop.” She groaned the last word, and her head fell back, her mouth dropping open to gasp her pleasure.
“Good girl.” Noah quickly unbuttoned the jeans he’d pulled on to call the boys. His cock sprang free, immediately seeking her core like a fucking guided missile.
Leia made a thick sound at the back of her throat and his dick twitched again, reminded of how it felt to have that hum against its head. She rubbed herself eagerly against him, slicking the underside of his shaft with her wet heat.
Gripping her thighs, he spread her wider. She flinched from the rope marks marring her inner thighs, but he didn’t loosen his hold. He knew the pain only added to her pleasure. She confirmed it when her eyes glazed over and she licked her lips in anticipation of his possession.
Tugging the T-shirt over her head, he caught it at her elbows and tied a snug knot. With her hands immobilized behind her, he went to town on her beautiful small breasts. He licked, sucked and slapped her exquisite mounds until she begged him to finish her off.
Impaling her on his cock, he shouted at the first thrust. “Christ, you’re so hot! So tight and silky.”
She circled her hips in answer, her head thrown back in surrender of the insanity threatening to sweep them away. Noah attempted to slow things down… to gain a little clarity… to stop the rush of feeling that came with having this woman in his arms.
In the end, he closed his eyes and just rolled with it.