Secret Acquisitions Read online

  A sizzling standalone romance about a second chance with the billionaire who got away…

  * * *

  January: I need a billionaire. Fast.

  * * *

  When I stumble onto a tech giant’s plot to spy on everyone’s phones, I know my security company is only one who can stop them. But my little start up needs money. Lots of it.

  * * *

  Enter Mark Taylor, the hottest venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. And the only billionaire I know on a personal level. And the guy I reluctantly turned down in college.

  * * *

  I’m in his office and ready to beg… but he’s not the forgive and forget type.

  * * *

  Mark: I never hear the word no. Not since I remade myself from a skinny nerd into the deal making playboy of Bastard Capital.

  * * *

  January was the last woman to tell me no—and the one woman I can’t forget. She’s as enticing as ever, so I offer her a deal: I say yes to her in the boardroom and she says yes to me in the bedroom. A quick, scorching affair is exactly what I need to get her out of my system.

  * * *

  But when a shadowy conspiracy threatens her company—and the privacy of everybody—all my protective instincts flare to life. And this quick affair is suddenly much deeper than we’d ever expected…

  * * *

  Enter the world of Bastard Capital: Unrivaled men. Unimaginable wealth. Unlimited power.

  * * *

  Books in the Bastard Capital Series

  * * *

  Secret Acquisitions (Book One, Mark’s story)

  * * *

  Unfinished Seductions (Book Two, Logan’s story)

  * * *

  Competitive Instincts (Book Three, Finn’s story)

  * * *

  Intimate Mergers (Book Four, Paul’s story)

  * * *

  Hostile Attractions (Book Five, Elliot’s story)

  * * *

  Private Disclosures (Book Six, Dev’s story)

  Secret Acquisitions

  Raleigh Davis

  Copyright © 2018 by Raleigh Davis

  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.

  Chapter 1

  Fuck me.

  I try to pull my breath back into my lungs and my blush back under my skin, but it’s too late. Way too late.

  I rock back on my heels, nearly tripping over the stilettos. Bad move, terrible move, ’cause then he’ll think I dressed up just for this, that I don’t wear this getup normally. That I’m usually in sneakers, hoodie, and jeans, the female version of the five jillion brogrammers currently choking the Bay Area.

  He’d be wrong. I dress to kill always, whether I’m begging for money, building hardware, or coding like a maniac. The unexpected clothes help when you’re one of the few girls breaking into the boys’ club of tech.

  I need all the help I can get right now, desperate as I am.

  The man before me isn’t any kind of boy. He was closer to one five years ago, when we were both undergrads at Stanford. He was definitely one that night he made an awkward, nervous pass at me. The pass I shut down. Hard.

  Now, with his broad chest, thick arms, and razor jaw, Mark Taylor is all man. The twist to his mouth—half-amused, half-annoyed, all mean—tells me he remembers.

  He’s dressed in what I call rich-dude casual, soft T-shirt clinging to his shoulders and chest, jeans hugging his hips and thighs. Normal enough clothes, but something about the fit and fabric signals they cost more than most people make in a month. The dark chocolate hair and the green eyes—those are the same as in college. He hasn’t been able to change everything about himself.

  I was doomed the moment I saw him behind the conference table. My calculated risk—that it would be one of his partners instead of him—has blown up in my face.

  I’m desperate though, on the run with the hounds on my heels, so I plunge into the thorn patch, not caring if I tear my clothes or skin.

  Well, in reality I start my pitch, but I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.

  “So happy you took this meeting,” I murmur, not offering him my hand. Touching him would be a very bad idea. “Let me tell you more about—”

  He waves a lazy hand, the gesture dripping with power. Command comes second nature to him now, it seems. “Go back. To what you were talking about before.”

  “Before?” The only thing I’ve said is my opening. Unless…

  Fuck me. I said “fuck me” out loud.

  “Exactly.” His smile isn’t kind or welcoming, but his voice is a wonder, dripping sex appeal and condescension and making the area between my navel and my knees clench with heat. “I’m more than happy to discuss that offer.”

  “That…” I can play this like that, and I’m almost desperate enough to do it. If Bastard Capital turns me away…

  I’m done for. I’ll never be able to stop Arne Fuchs, and I’ll never find Grace. She’s counting on me, and I swore I’d do anything to help her.

  If only it weren’t Mark Taylor offering. Anyone but him.

  This was not the way this meeting was supposed to go.

  Yes, I knew Mark was a member of Bastard Capital, him and five other venture capitalists known collectively as the Bastard Boys. How could I not, when TidBytes had a story every morning about what Mark and his bros had gotten up to the night before? And the gorgeous women they’d done it with?

  But I’d gambled on one of the other Bastards leading this meeting, of having to metaphorically get on my knees with one of them.

  Not Mark. Because Mark was going to make it hurt.

  I should have walked out the moment I saw him across the wide mahogany conference table. But I was lulled by the bland façade of Bastard Capital, as unassuming as every other venture capital firm on Sand Hill Road. Inside, I was greeted by a Zen garden of a building. There wasn’t an actual rock garden—that would have been much too gauche—but every curve, corner, surface, and hallway suggested energy flowing effortlessly.

  Maybe it was a metaphor for all the money that seems to flow effortlessly to the Bastards. Money that I need if I’m going to save my friend. And maybe even the whole world too.

  “Sorry.” I smile like I’m some dumb girl who can’t control her mouth. Who knows? After my response, maybe I am. “I didn’t mean to say that. Let me tell you about Ultra.”

  Ultra is my company, my program, and my plan to defeat Fuchs. He’s one of the richest men in the world, and I’m only January Harris, obscure programmer and cryptologist, but I have to do something to stop him. Only, I need funds to do that, and the male VC world is notoriously stingy when it comes to female start-up founders. So here I am, begging for money from the one man I swore to never approach.

  Mark cuts me off with a wave of his hand, which is surprisingly battered for a man who spends most of his time behind a desk. “I don’t want to hear your spiel.”

  I’m ready for this, because this is what all the VC firms do. You hone a perfect pitch, several sentences that sum up the company and how you’ll change the world with it, make up some PowerPoint slides, and then they spend the rest of the meeting pushing you off that pitch, testing you.

  They think it’s clever, but is it really so clever if they’re all doing it?

  Only Mark has to be different. I’m expecting some question about undergrad, previous apps I’ve developed, maybe even my childhood, but Mark doesn’t go there.

  “I want to talk about the previous offer you made.”

  My heart pu
lses because my body wants to talk about that too. And maybe his tongue on my neck and those teeth raking across my nipples.

  Shut up, body. Just. Shut. Up.

  “I’d rather talk about my start-up.” I keep my smile dumb and my voice light. My rejection of him back in college had been anything but.

  He’d never believe me, but I’ve always regretted turning him down. We were friends, and his smiles made me want more. Dinner out, movies, kisses, and one day, maybe even more…

  If he smiled like he kissed, it would’ve been sweet and lovely and exactly what young love should have been.

  If I explained to him now why I rejected him, would he even remember? It had been all the way back in junior year.

  I definitely hadn’t forgotten—it was my very first lesson in how tech bros treated women. I didn’t want to end up as a cautionary tale, so I told him no, with a sharp harshness I didn’t feel, and he never asked again. He stopped smiling at me too.

  His smile isn’t shy or sweet at all now. I could cut myself on the edges of it. But even with the danger, my fingers still itch to touch his lips.

  With a hard, choking swallow, I pull myself back together. Remind myself why I’m really here.

  And I pull my phone out of my bra.

  His gaze is stuck to my hand so hard it will be a miracle if he ever pulls it free. I set the sleek rectangle of glass and electronics on the table and let my fingertips trail over the edges. It’s too cold, too slick, but I pretend I’m enjoying it.

  I can use his interest in my body to lure him into investing in Ultra. In a single heartbeat, I switch my strategy, tossing my well-honed pitch aside.

  “Think about the most intimate thing you own.” I let my voice go low, inviting, pulling him toward me as I keep stroking my fingers over the phone. “Something you keep close to you always. Under your pillow, next to your skin, something that holds your entire life. Something you’d never let anyone else touch and you’d be devastated to lose.”

  He pulls in his top lip with the very tip of his tongue, almost as if reminding himself it’s there. Or maybe reminding me. For all that I have his attention, he’s still very much in control.

  “Is this an app that will let me fuck my phone?”

  I’m so surprised I barely catch my laughter. He was funny even before, which was part of his appeal. Only his humor didn’t cut so deep then.

  “Um, no.” I smile because I can’t help myself and then try to regain my footing. He’s not supposed to make me laugh. “It’s encryption software,” I say bluntly. I can’t be seductive after he’s made that joke—I’m just not that good. “Starting with phones, because most people use them for everything. Messaging, photos, phone calls, banking… People aren’t joking when they say their lives are in there.”

  Now imagine someone looking through all that, without your knowledge, using spyware he’s implanted on your phone. Selling all that private information to whomever he likes. And you can’t do a thing about it.

  I can’t say that because that someone is Arne Fuchs, tech giant and friend/rival to every other tech giant in the valley, Mark included. They’re both major players here in Silicon Valley, and those men—they’re all men—stick together.

  I also can’t say anything because Grace wasn’t supposed to have access to Fuchs’s plans, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to pass them on to me.

  Mark looks supremely unimpressed, tucking his hands behind his head. His dark gray T-shirt catches on his biceps and holds. I imagine for a moment that my fingers are where the shirt is, cupping his muscles.

  “Not many people are interested in encryption,” he says. “It’s mostly a business-facing thing.” With that, he makes a dismissive flick of his fingers.

  “But they should be. People don’t understand how vulnerable their information is.”

  “And you’re going to convince them otherwise?” He raises one strong eyebrow. “People want to assume their banking apps are secure. And everybody already shares everything else on Facebook.”

  I pounce on that. “Exactly. Shouldn’t that everything be as secure as it possibly can? And people are starting to realize. When someone has their phone hacked or their private pictures strewn all over the internet or when customs asks people to unlock their phone as a matter of routine, people see it could happen to them. Just imagine someone’s reaction if their phone was stolen and the thief unlocked it. They’d feel violated, exposed.”

  I take a moment to let that sink in and to run my fingers down the screen of my phone. Not to be seductive now but to bring home the image of it being broken open, insides exposed.

  “But information—your most personal secrets—can be taken without anyone even touching the phone,” I say. “We have all these wonderful systems that let us communicate at the speed of light. But they also make us vulnerable. Someone can be inside your phone, and you’d never see them. Never see the person poking through your metaphorical underwear drawer.”

  His gaze flicks back to my phone, my finger still curled around it. Is he thinking about what I might have inside it? About the intimate secrets locked within?

  Or maybe he’s thinking about my real underwear drawer, about the pair of lacy panties I put on this morning, black as sin, naughty as a wink, my own personal, secret confidence booster.

  Whatever it is, his eyes are dark, bottomless, and so focused as to almost be cruel. I could wither under that intensity if he turned it on me for too long.

  “I agree with all that,” he says, and my relief is so strong I taste it, sharp and bright like peppermint. “But convincing the average person to care about any of this is impossible.”

  “Pixio’s going to want it.” They’re the biggest phone manufacturer in the world. And one of the few companies that actually still gives a shit about privacy. “Everyone wants to be customer-facing—the business-facing stuff is getting neglected, and it’s ripe for disruption. We’re going to be a unicorn.”

  The unicorns were the white whales of the VC world, the investments that paid off twenty, thirty, fiftyfold. The companies that minted new billionaires when they went big. Every VC was looking for the next unicorn, although most of what they found ended up as duds.

  Not everyone got rich in Silicon Valley.

  “Everyone who comes in here claims they’re a unicorn.” Mark shakes his head, the light catching in the sable of his hair. It’s shorter now, the curls cut down to simple waves. But the green of his eyes is still the same, soft and mossy.

  I mentally slap myself. Soft? Mossy? There’s nothing soft about the man in front of me. He’s hard from his head to his heels and all the many inches between.

  Hell, that’s even worse since now I’m all tingly and flushed. And he’s going to realize that the woman begging him for money—and the girl who once rejected him—is incredibly attracted to him.

  “What are you doing Friday?” he asks suddenly.

  Do lions play with their food the way cats do? Because that’s exactly what this feels like. But a mouse wouldn’t be so achingly, arousingly aware of the lion, would she?

  I play the dumb blonde even though my hair is black as ink. It’s the attitude, not the hair color really. “Why? Do you want to hear my funding pitch then?”

  He laughs, all low and rumbly, and I know I haven’t fooled him. “No, I want to invite you to a birthday party.”

  Now I’m confused. Is that part of his revenge too? Why doesn’t he just say Thanks but no thanks, and screw you for rejecting me all those years ago and send me on my way?

  “You want me to come to your birthday party?” I can’t remember when his birthday is. We shared a cookie once on his birthday back in college—chocolate chip—but the date is a bit fuzzy.

  He rises and comes around the conference table. My knees get wobbly, then give out altogether, the chair behind me catching me. He’s coming for me, and all I can do is wait, helpless, breathless, fixed to the chair. My thighs shift, trapped by my tight skirt, and the sensa
tion is so agonizing I close my eyes for half a breath.

  One of his fists lands on the table as he braces himself over me. It’s intimidating and intimate all at once. My mouth is dry, but my pussy definitely is not.

  “It’s not my birthday.” His amusement is a rough rasp.

  My skin quivers in response. “Oh? Then whose?”

  “Logan’s. It’s on Alcatraz.” He tosses that out as if it’s the Chuck E. Cheese’s of billionaire birthday parties.

  I don’t confess that I’ve never been there. Alcatraz is for tourists, although apparently it’s also for birthday parties. At least for men like him.

  “Great,” I say. Wonderful for him. And you.

  It’s then I take note of his expression—really study it. His eyes are too dark, his stare too fixed, and his breath just a touch too fast.

  Mr. Cool isn’t so cool after all.

  He’s given away more than he planned to here. He might be playing it cool—which I have to admit he’s good at—but he wants me. Still.

  I can use that.

  It can also bite me back. Hard. Because I still want him too, maybe even worse, but my rules from college remain intact. Don’t fuck where you work.

  I’m already in deep shit. I fuck Mark and things get tangled. Fast.

  Plus, if he even suspected I’m about to say yes just so I can manipulate him…

  Crossing Mark Taylor is the worst idea ever because he will make me pay.

  I swallow hard. He’d lean over me just like this, call me a naughty, wicked girl, and give me some terrible punishment.

  “I’d love to,” I breathe out, hoping he thinks it’s attraction that has me all flustered and not this femme fatale scheme I’m cooking up.