Boy Meets Geek (15 page)

Then Eric reached out towards the girl and she stopped. Her hands moved up to her neck and she fell to her knees as though choking.

“I am of the dark lord Orthaur! Who dares challenge me?”

Samantha leaned in again. “Are you sure he’s not an actor? Because this definitely looks like some sort of bullshit publicity stunt.”

I shook my head and watched on in horror. I really wish he’d warned me before he dragged me to this opening ceremony. I would’ve known to stay the fuck in my hotel room after we had our fun. Hell, we might not have had our fun in the first place!

“You can’t do this,” the girl said, gasping as though she was actually being choked. I rolled my eyes. She was a really hamming it up. We’re talking positively Shatnerian levels of overacting. “Sean Taylor… Won’t… Let you…”

“Sean Taylor? Who is this Sean Taylor who would challenge me?” Eric bellowed, throwing his arms to the side. Weird. His voice was booming with that odd modulated sound even though he wasn’t actually in front of the microphone on the podium.

“He’s the creator! And he’s more powerful than you dark lord!”

“Is he really?”

This time the entire room started to shout. They were booing, shouting. Amazing how quickly that crowd turned on him.

Eric reached down and pulled off his helmet. He tossed it to the side and I winced as it landed on the stage with a clatter and a crack moved up along his viewing slit. That thing was expensive, and I hated to see a good costume being damaged like that even if he was acting like a first-rate asshole and embarrassing me!

“Oh,” he said. “Then I suppose we’d better get started!”

The entire room erupted in cheers. I looked around in confusion. What the hell was going on here? Talk about the world’s most fickle crowd. They loved him, they hated him, and then they loved him again.

The blonde girl with the clipboard stood up and brushed herself off and then turned to the crowd. But not before she spared a lingering glance for Eric. A lingering glance that showed a great deal of interest. Far more interest than I cared to see between a woman and Eric, even if he had just really embarrassed me.

She threw her hand out towards the crowd and her voice boomed through the room as she smiled for the first time, though it looked like a forced smile.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, her voice echoing through the room. “The one, the only, the great Sean. Eric. Taylor!”

I turned to Samantha whose eyes were just as wide as mine. And suddenly I was wishing I hadn’t gotten distracted by that stupid video game all those times when I was about to look up pictures of Sean Taylor. Sean Eric Taylor. I looked up at the stage and he was beaming at the crowd, but he also took a moment to look down at me, smile, and wink.

What.

The.

Fuck.

17: Revelations

I sat in a daze as Conlan, Eric, Sean, whoever the hell he was started giving the opening keynote. He started by talking about the early days when he didn’t think anyone liked his books, and he looked pointedly at me when he started talking about dedicated fans getting him through those early days as he built the vast media empire he now presided over today.

I sat in stunned silence.

“Dude,” Samantha said as she leaned in closer to me. “Your rich boyfriend really is your rich fucking boyfriend. That’s Sean Taylor!”

“I thought you said you’d seen pictures of him before?” I asked.

“I’d seen pictures, but those were from years ago. He was skinny, kinda pimply, and had way longer hair back then. He didn’t look anything like stud muffin up there on stage right now. Apparently he decided to take some of that money he got from those books and invest in a personal trainer because damn!”

I shook my head. A personal trainer would explain why the king of the nerds looked so absolutely delicious. Though that wasn’t entirely a fair thought. You could be hot and be a nerd too.

Everything was starting to make sense. That was how he managed to get the Conlan name for his Elassa mail account. He was the owner of Elassa Corp. Of course he could have whatever email he wanted. He probably had that email since the service first started up!

That also explained why he was online in the middle of the day when most self-respecting people would be at their jobs. When most self-respecting students would be at class or, at the very least, hung over and avoiding class. It explained why he was such a good writer. He was the one who wrote the damn books in the first place. Of course he’d be good about writing role-playing scenarios for a game based on the books he wrote!

Something else hit me. He read my stuff. He liked what I wrote. Sean Taylor read my stuff and he liked what I wrote! I had to fight the urge to stand up and dance in front of this massive crowd. Sean Taylor liked my stuff!

Then the worst-case scenario part of my mind started to take over. Did he really like my writing? Or was he just saying that because he was trying to get into my pants? Because if that was his game than it certainly worked! I’d certainly fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

He was hot and he was fabulously wealthy. How could a guy like that possibly have any interest in me? I was a just a college girl in an MFA program surrounded by a bunch of people who didn’t like the genre fiction I wrote. How could I be anything other than a one night stand, or maybe a one weekend stand, to a man like that?

If anything finding out who he was had dented my confidence even more. That was how screwed up my brain was.

And yet every time he looked at me I felt warmth running through my body. I felt as though everything was going to be okay. He smiled at me and I had the feeling that all was right in the world. And he seemed to be smiling at me a lot.

My attention moved down the stage and I blinked. That girl in the polo was still standing at the edge of the stage. And she wasn’t looking at Conlan, Eric. Sean, whoever the hell he was. No, she was looking straight at me with pure hostility. I’d never met her but it was obvious that girl straight up hated me.

What the hell?

“What’s with the crazy girl staring daggers at you?” Samantha asked.

“I have no clue,” I said.

“I bet she has the hots for Taylor up there and you’re in the way,” she said. “The poor girl. She gets to be up there with stud muffin working the convention and then he shows up with you on his arm wearing that plastic bikini. There’s no competition!”

“Can you shut up for five seconds Samantha? I need to think.”

“You only need five seconds to think?”

“Listen to the speech,” I said with an eye roll.

Part of my brain was telling me that this was impossible. I had to be dreaming. There was no way the man up there, the man I’d been flirting with online for the past couple of weeks, the man who’d been so amazing in bed just a couple of hours ago, was actually the Sean Taylor. There was no way I’d caught the interest of a world-famous author, particularly one who looked like that!

And yet there was no other way to explain it. Who else would have the kind of money to just fly two friends out on a whim like that? How else was he able to afford that suite, for that matter? To pull the strings and get us VIP tickets that weren’t even for sale? The only way he could pull something like that was if he was the person who was in charge of the convention.

And of course there was the way he wanted to cover his face when we were going down to the convention floor. He was probably worried that somebody would recognize him and then the mob surrounding us would be nothing like what we got when it was just the two of us in costume.

And how about the way he’d summoned that golf cart seemingly out of nowhere and had it whisk us straight over to where we needed to be complete with convention security and everything?

No, now that it had been obvious something fishy was going on from the get-go, and I’d been so wrapped up in the fairytale of it all, so dazzled by everything that was happening and how quickly it was happening, that I’d been blinded to what was really going on.

But the cold hard truth was that I’d managed to attract the interest of the most famous, richest writer in the world. The only thing that remained to be seen was whether or not I’d attracted his attention for real or just for a little fun at the convention.

I knew what my heart was hoping for and what the worst-case scenario center in my brain was telling me. And they were definitely at odds with one another.

18: Action Plan

“So what did you think of the big surprise?”

What did I think of the big surprise? I thought I was furious he kept such a big secret from me. And at the same time and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still in the middle of some sort of geek girl fairytale. After all, it wasn’t every day that you got to meet your favorite artist in the whole world, let alone have a little fun with him in your hotel room and maybe find yourself falling in love with him at the same time!

“I honestly don’t know what to think,” I said.

“Did you like it?”

“Honestly I thought I was going to die from embarrassment until the big reveal,” I said. “You really had me thinking you were a crazed lunatic rushing the stage!”

Conlan, Eric, Sean, chuckled. I wasn’t sure what name to use, there’d been so many at this point, but I figured I’d have to get used to calling him Sean and not his middle name. Sneaky, that.

We were walking through one of the tunnels that ran under the convention center. It was the only way to get around now that Sean had revealed his costume. I had a feeling that anybody wearing an Orthaur costume was going to find themselves getting rushed by mobs of crazed fans whether or not they bore even a passing resemblance to Sean’s version of the costume.

I looked over to him and suppressed the flash of irritation that went along with the next question. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Would you have believed me if I told you?”

I thought about that and realized he had a point. I hated that he had a point, it made it a lot harder to be really irritated with him, but he had a point.

“Thought so,” he said. Even more infuriating! And yet I was losing myself in that smile as he looked down at me.

“What was I just thinking oh great mind reader?”

“You were just thinking that if some random guy playing Tales Elassa told you he was none other than the great Sean Taylor you would’ve cut off all contact. You would’ve thought I was telling one hell of a whopper.”

“Probably,” I said. I decided to ignore the part where he called himself the great Sean Taylor. It was true as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t want to inflate his ego any further.

“And you definitely wouldn’t have come to the convention if you thought I was lying about being Sean Taylor,” he said. “It’s why I go incognito when I’m playing the game. You’re the first person I’ve ever revealed myself too.”

It wasn’t fair how he could make me feel love drunk just with a few words like that. How he could cause a thrill to run through me with a simple admission. I glanced at him again and smiled, and felt another naughty thrill run through my body as I caught a glimpse of his muscles through his armor that he still hadn’t taken off entirely, though I wouldn’t mind taking giving him a hand with that.

“Okay, so maybe you have a really good point. You still could’ve told me the truth when we met up at that restaurant!”

Sean paused for a moment. “To be perfectly honest I thought the game would be up as soon as you got a good look at my face.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s really not often I meet a fan who claims she’s been reading my books since the very beginning who doesn’t know what I look like.”

I blushed at that and looked away for a moment, suddenly ashamed. I suppose I didn’t seem like much of a fan if I didn’t even know what my favorite author looked like!

“I’ve actually been meaning to look up a picture of you for the past couple of weeks, but for one reason or another I got distracted every time I thought about it,” I said.

He reached out and took my hand in his. He’d done away with the claws at least, and so I just felt one of his strong hands wrapping around my own.

“I’m glad you didn’t know what I looked like though,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Let’s just say that in my line of work, especially at these conventions, it’s very difficult to find somebody who likes me for who I am and not for what I am, if that makes sense,” he said.

“No, that makes perfect sense,” I said.

I could only imagine that girls probably threw themselves at him at these conventions. The combination of who he was coupled with his smoldering sexiness was probably deadly as far as the ladies who went to these things were concerned. I couldn’t begin to pretend to understand leading that sort of life, but I could imagine that it would start to be a serious pain in the ass to wonder whether or not somebody was interested in you because they liked you or if they were just interested in you because you were world-famous and coincidentally super rich.

I suppose in a way meeting online was the perfect way to get around those awkward questions. I liked this guy before I knew who he was. I figured it would be better to steer the conversation away from that though. He seemed uncomfortable now that we were getting close to questions of his fame.

Of course thinking about that fame just made me wonder again why exactly he was with me of all people. Sure he seemed tired of girls throwing themselves at him because of who he was, but by the same token that meant he constantly had girls throwing themselves at him because of who he was.

How could I possibly stack up to the kind of groupies he ran into in the course of a convention? I’d seen some of the girls out on the convention floor, some of them in costumes more scandalous even than what I wore, and to say that there were a lot of tens in the crowd would be an understatement. And I’m sure any one of them would jump at the opportunity to jump Sean Taylor.

Yet he was with me. It was a crazy world if something like that could happen. I didn’t understand what it was he saw in me, not exactly, but at the same time I decided I wasn’t going to worry about that too much. I was going to do my best to strangle the worst-case scenario part of my brain before it could ruin this for me.

“So what’s the plan for the rest of the day?” I asked.

Sean blushed and looked away for a moment. I felt a moment of panic as he did that. Was something wrong?

“Well the problem is I have a lot of obligations here at the convention,” he said. “A couple of panels, meetings with some people.”

My heart sank as I heard that. He had a busy day, probably too busy to spend time with me.

“If you’re busy then I can make myself scarce. I can find Samantha and hang out. Maybe we can meet up later or something.” I mumbled.

Sean must’ve stopped as I kept walking because I felt a tug on my arm. I yelped and then turned to a look at him, wondering what the hell he was up to. He was staring at me, totally serious. That rakish smile that I loved so much was gone.

“That’s the last thing that I want,” he said.

I felt a chill run through me as he said those words. I felt heat as though I was in the center of a volcano erupt from between my legs to every nerve ending in my body. A very unladylike reaction but fuck it. That was just the sort of reaction he inspired in me.

“I’d like nothing more than for you to spend the rest of the day with me,” he said. “I just worried that’d bore you when you could go off and have fun at the convention.”

I smiled and moved closer to him. The plastic from our costumes clattered together and I giggled but didn’t pull away from him. I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent. I luxuriated in the warmth radiating off of his sculpted body. In the feel of his hard muscles where they were peeking out from under his costume.

“I’d love nothing more than to spend the day with you,” I said.

I was already in a mood to melt into a puddle just from him smiling down at me, but that was nothing compared to the look that crossed his face when I said I wanted to spend the rest of the day with him. He looked both relieved and excited at the same time and it very nearly made me come just from that look alone. Seeing him look at me like that made me happy. Content. It made me feel secure and comforted in a way that I hadn’t felt in a relationship in a while.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer. Or at least he tried to pull me closer. It was a little difficult because we were both still in these ridiculous getups. Our costumes clattered against one another again and one of his shoulder pieces got knocked free entirely and fell with a loud crack to the hard concrete floor.

I looked down at the hunk of plastic and back up to Sean. I moved a finger up and ran it along his chest where it was exposed. He closed his eyes and breathed in sharply as I did so and I giggled at his reaction. It was nice to know I could get as much of a reaction out of him as he seemed capable of getting from me!

“You know this gives me an idea,” I said.

His eyebrows rose. “Oh? What sort of idea is that?”

“Maybe we should head back to the suite and change into something a little more practical before we go to your business stuff and your panels? I know I’d love an opportunity to help get you out of that costume.”

I walked my fingers up his chest and he took in another sharp breath. I looked over my shoulder at the convention staffer who was leading us through the labyrinth. He was apparently oblivious that we’d stopped. He disappeared around a corner so I decided to risk reaching down and running my free hand along his cock. His cock which was definitely rock hard and throbbing. I smiled up at him and gave him my best sweet and innocent look as I bit my lip.

“Does that sound like fun?”

“Fuck yes,” he said.

I wanted nothing more than to rip all of those clothes off right here, pull him down to the rough concrete floor, and have my way with him right here and now. Only I resisted the urge. It could wait until we got up to the suite. Besides, I was truly worried that if we got too far behind our minder we’d get lost in this labyrinth of tunnels running under the convention center never to find our way out.

So I reluctantly reached down and pulled Sean’s hand away from where it had slipped around and started to squeeze my ass in a most delicious way.

“Save it for getting changed Tiger,” I said.

He grinned but pulled his hand away. I promptly grabbed it and started dragging him through the tunnels. I needed to get him back to that fucking suite, and the way I was on fire I needed to get him there twenty minutes ago.