Condemned (Beauty And The Billionaire Geek Book 2)

Photographs of Zoe popped up on Marcus’s image processing software. I took in image after image of her perfect, naked body displayed in a myriad of ways. Working for Marcus, I’d become used to seeing naked women. But this girl was different.

I didn’t know
what
made her different. It was completely irrational. When I’d met her on the porch, I’d felt something strange rise and fill my chest like an over extended balloon. Now that I saw her photographs, that feeling in my chest burst.

I couldn’t breathe. I sucked air into my lungs, but it didn’t help. I put my head between my knees and wheezed until the panic subsided.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” Marcus asked from the doorway. I shot up and looked at him. I’d been caught with my head between my knees, having a panic attack, like a boy who’d just seen his first naked woman.

“Um, yes, very,” I said through parched lips. My mouth felt dry and swollen. I needed a drink of water. Springing to my feet, I squeezed past Marcus in the doorway and fast walked to the kitchen. Marcus snickered at me as I held a glass under the faucet and then chugged down the water.

“You going to be alright, Billy? Should I call someone?” I didn’t know if he was serious or making fun of me. I turned around and examined his face. I still didn’t know so I decided to ignore it and turned back around to fill my glass with water again.

“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” I said, coughing on water as it went down my windpipe. He laughed again. Now I was pretty sure he was making fun of me. I frowned. I hated it when I didn’t know for sure. Of course, I would make fun of me for this too. It was just a naked woman. I saw them all the time. Beautiful ones, doing dirtier things than that. Marcus took some racy pictures.

“I’m going to get back to work,” I said, rushing past him to the office. There was no reason to stand here having a personal conversation. I liked Marcus. He was a cool guy, aside from the fact that he shot pornography. He would argue day and night that he made art. But if it turned you on, it was porn in my opinion.

The backup had completed, so I cleaned and defragmented his drives. While that process ran, I sat down at his laptop to do the same maintenance there. The photographs of Zoe had finished rendering. Hundreds of images of her naked body sat on the screen in front of me in perfect high definition resolution.

My hands ached to touch her creamy skin and brush her strawberry blond hair away from her taunt, pink nipple. My imagination flew off, and I grew hard before clicking away from the portfolio.

Trying to calm myself, I went about my maintenance routine without another thought for the beautiful girl who stirred something in me I didn’t even know existed. It had been so long since I’d had any interest in women at all, the sudden burst of desire felt foreign to me. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I decided to compartmentalize it and address it later.

I finished my work, and I told Marcus I was going to go. He had a smirk on his lips and a gleam in his eye that made me nervous for some reason. I took my money and left him standing in the doorway. As I pulled my helmet on my head, he had the same disturbing look on his face.

He waved from the door, and I gave him an unenthusiastic wave back. That guy definitely was strange. Marcus never creeped me out, which would have been easy considering what he did for a living. I never quite understood his motives.

I pulled out of the driveway wondering if maybe he had a thing for me. I was almost certain Marcus was gay, or bi, or something. Not that it mattered. I didn’t care about that kind of thing. I just didn’t want him to think I went that way. That would just be awkward.

After leaving Marcus’s studio, I went to my next client— a wealthy older woman who had absolutely no computer skills. No matter how many firewalls and anti-virus programs I installed, she always ended up with a virus. She must have done some funky things on the internet. Oddly, her browser cache was the only thing she knew how to maintain. When I finished cleaning her registry, and running her anti-virus again, I left her house.

Having finished my work for the day, I went home. Spock greeted me at the door of my bedroom with a frantic meow. When I turned on the light, I saw why. He’d crapped all over my bed. I turned around to the litter box and noticed it was overflowing.
Crap. My fault.

I blinked a few times and took in the state of my room. An image of Zoe flashed through my mind. It made me feel ashamed. My computer called out to me, but I ignored it. I had to get his place clean, or I wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.

I did my laundry and made my bed with my clean sheets and blankets. My room smelled fresh for a change, so that was good. Spock had inconvenient little ways of reminding me to do my housekeeping.

Sitting in front of my computer, I clicked on the screen. I opened a Notepad and began typing commands for a completely new algorithm. I’d had the idea while riding my Vespa away from Marcus’s house. If I could make it work, it would enable my crawler to parse files as if they were compressed without quality loss. The servers would barely register that my crawler had been there.

Spock jumped on my lap and sent my hand into the keyboard, creating a jumbled mess. I hissed at him and pushed him down with the back of my hand.
Damn it.
I’d completely lost my train of thought. My code had been smashed to pieces.

I stood from my desk, growling. Spock ran under the bed with this tail flicking from underneath. I took a deep breath, feeling bad that I’d thrown him. I had to take a break. My clock said it was already 11 p.m. I’d been at the computer for five hours without noticing.

“Sorry, Spock. Hungry?”

He followed me upstairs and I fed him wet food in a bowl. The only other person up was Daniel. We’d been in undergrad together but he dropped out sophomore year to write design code at Microsoft. He sat in front of the TV, intently watching Battle Star Galactica… again. I loved that show too, but Daniel had watched it about five times in the last six months.

I peered into the refrigerator and found the sliced turkey and cheese I’d bought a few days ago. Rustling through the cabinets, I grabbed half a loaf of bread. I made myself a sandwich and went back downstairs.

Spock finished his food and followed me into the basement. I sat in front of my computer, but my brain felt fried. I hadn’t even cleaned up the mess in my code the cat had caused. Clicking on my browser, I typed “Zoe Parker” into the search bar.

I took a bite of my sandwich and glanced over the search results. The first results were her social media pages and some photographs. I clicked on her Facebook page and read her profile. She came from a small town in California and she had her school listed as North Seattle Community College.

What was she doing up here? I clicked on her photos. She had horrible privacy filters. I was able to see everything. I saw images of two other young women who were tagged with the same last name. I checked her family and found out they were her sisters. There were images of a toddler that apparently belonged to her twenty-year-old sister, Claire. Zoe was only eighteen.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. The images of Zoe’s naked body swirled behind my lids. It made me angry and aroused to think of her so vulnerable. I didn’t even know her, and I already felt protective. Why was she in Seattle doing porn? Surely, a girl like that didn’t have to take such measures. Did she like exposing herself? None of her social media images would suggest an exhibitionist tendency. 

Spock rubbed my leg, and I opened my eyes again and looked at a high school graduation photo of Zoe and her friend Stacy. I shoved my hand through my shaggy black hair and took a deep breath. This girl had already become a monumental distraction. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

I hopped out of Stacy’s pickup and watched her drive away. The morning air smelled of lilies and felt cool on my face. My feet crunched over the white and black rock path that led to Marcus’s doorway.

My heart pounded in my ears even though I’d modeled nude just yesterday. A sick feeling fell in my stomach, but I sucked it up.

I couldn’t let myself get freaked out about this job. It was just a job, like any other. It didn’t mean anything. It paid two hundred dollars an hour for crap’s sake. I’d make eight hundred dollars today. I just had to keep it together.

I stepped onto the porch and pressed the doorbell. Seconds later, Marcus answered with a big smile.

“Come in, darling,” he exclaimed, leaning in to air kiss my cheek. It was way too early in the morning to be so enthusiastic. I gave him a fake toothy smile as he led me into the studio. An attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with her blond hair piled in a twisty turban thing, carted around an umbrella light. She nodded at me as she placed the light and taped down a cable.

“Zoe, this is Uma, my assistant and second shooter. She also does hair and makeup in a pinch. For the most part, you will be responsible for your own hair and makeup if we’re doing simple shoots. For more involved setups, I bring in professionals. You can go ahead and change. There is coffee and bagels in the kitchen. We’ll get started in a few minutes. Did you bring the contract?”

“Um, yeah. I didn’t see anything objectionable. I signed it. Here.” I dug in my purse and handed him the slightly crinkled paper.

“Perfect. I’ll scan this into the computer. Just go ahead and get ready.”

I turned down the hallway toward the bathroom, feeling both relieved and strange that there was a second person in the room for the shoot. I went inside the bathroom, slipped out of my clothes, patted on some simple makeup, and brushed my hair. Slinging the bathrobe around my shoulders, I stepped out, ready for my close-up.

I could hear Marcus grumbling in his office a few doors down from the bathroom. I glanced inside as I walked past and saw him dialing his cell phone. In the studio, Uma had the set ready. The lights and cameras pointed at a life-sized carousel horse.

I stood next to her as she checked the settings on a camera. Inspecting the horse, my eyebrows crushed together. Did they want me to pose naked with
that
? It seemed a little strange and kind of freaky.  The carousel horse had a grimacing look on its face, but the curves of its smooth black body gleamed in the light.

“Could you stand next to the horse, please? I need to check the light meters,” Uma asked. I stood next to the horse while Uma waved a light meter around my face and body then fiddled with some equipment.

“The scanner isn’t working,” said Marcus as he walked out of the office, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. The irritated expression on Marcus’s face transformed into delight as his gaze fell on me, standing next to the horse. I grinned back at him, but couldn’t help the sinking anxiety and rising bashfulness in my stomach. He clapped his hands together.

“Let’s get started. Are you ready, Zoe? Uma, get her a bottle of water.” Uma stopped adjusting the lighting and dutifully walked to the refrigerator to get me a bottle of water. I really didn’t need water. I needed money and maybe not to have to take my clothes off to get it. I didn’t say anything when she brought it back to me.

I twisted off the cap and took a swig. “I’m ready,” I said earnestly. I felt like some kind of naked soldier going into battle.

Marcus gave me some instructions, and Uma took my robe. I struck my first pose standing with my back against the horse. I moved through poses with the strange plastic creature. At some points, I got the feeling Marcus wanted me to pretend it was my lover. He had me straddle and ride it like some kind of kinky Lady Godiva while flinging my head back in an orgasmic expression. Later, he had me flick my tongue at its mouth. All this intimacy with an inanimate object began to feel a little obscene.