What a prick, I think to myself, as I head back to my cubicle and grab my personal laptop, which is covered in old stickers, mostly the names of white hat hacking collectives.

He’s got to be the most arrogant, self-assured asshole I’ve ever met in my life.

But he’s also fucking hot.

I can’t get the images from last night out of my head, no matter how much I try to focus on the project at hand. No matter what he says to me, I know I’m attracted to him like crazy.

Must just be my hormones, I think to myself.

I head back into the conference room, but before I enter I take a deep breath, promising myself not to let last night’s little adventure interfere with our work. That may sound like a far fetched idea, but I’ve manage to go 21 years without letting anyone interfere with me in that way, and so far it’s worked. But am I going to go another 21 years, and end up having never had sex with anyone?

I want him, and I don’t know why. Hell, I do know why: his broad shoulders, his jaw line as sharp as diamonds, and the way he looks at me. It makes me shiver just remembering his gaze.

I’m here to work, I remind myself. This is the programming opportunity of a lifetime, exactly what I’ve been looking for. This is an exciting, in the heat of the moment project. It’s going to require innovation.

Ryan just gives me a nod when I come back in.

My cubicle neighbor, whose name I finally learned is actually Jerry, is completely immersed in the code on the laptop Ryan handed him.

“Here,” grunts Ryan, tossing me a USB drive.

“The code?” I say.

He nods, and goes back to looking at his laptop.

A shiver goes down my spine… and he didn’t even look at me.

I find my gaze drifting down his body, soaking him all in.

Work, work, work, I chant to myself in my head. I’ve got to work.

I open up my laptop and plug in the USB.

This is an old machine, but I’ve heavily modified it, and it runs faster than anything you can buy new.

The processor is still one of the fastest, even though it’s a few years old. I upgraded the hard drive from the spinning disk kind to a wicked fast solid state, with the fastest type of connectors. The RAM was already maxed out, but I found a way to rig it up so that I’m running double the official max RAM. The real kicker, though, is the Linux distro I’m running, which uses less system memory, making the whole thing faster, regardless of the hardware.

There’s not much talking for the first couple hours, as the three of us dig into the code.

I get the feeling at first that I’m in way, way over my head. Whichever programmer did this is way beyond my level, and he didn’t use any comments in the code, so half the time I don’t even know what I’m looking at.

But all those hours squirrelled away in my room, examining code, start to pay off, and pretty soon, everything’s starting to make sense.

Wow, I keep saying to myself, marveling at the ingenuity of some of the programming here.

Then again, Ryan’s own code is really good.

There has to be something fundamentally different here that achieves these benchmark scores. Just writing clean fancy code isn’t going to be enough, if it’s still running off Ryan’s algorithm engine, which is the meat and potatoes of the whole program.

“Anything?” says Ryan, after hours of the three of us not talking.

We’re all hunched over our laptops, our eyes getting blurry from the screens.

I’ve managed to go this entire time without so much as glancing at Ryan, but it’s just been a testament to my strong will. Now that I have an excuse to look at him, I do so, and I drink him in. Just looking at him makes my body… respond.

“Nope,” says Jerry, sighing, and pushing himself back away from his laptop. “I mean, the code is good, but I can’t make heads or tails of the algorithm. Everything I’m finding makes it look just like your code.”

“Same,” says Ryan, frowning, somehow looking sexier. “To me, it just looks like he rewrote what I already did. But those little changes aren’t going to improve efficiency by any noticeable degree, and certainly not to the point where he’s getting these benchmark scores. Which makes sense. No one can seem to figure out how he’s doing it… What about you, Lily? Find anything?”

He sort of glares as he says this to me in a vaguely dismissive way, as if he’s sure I’m not going to find anything.

And, damn it, but he’s right. I have to admit that I haven’t found anything either.

“Shit,” says Ryan, checking his watch. I’m not even sure what a Rolex is, but I’m sure he has one, by the way it looks. “This is the most I’ve worked in years.”

“Me too,” says Jerry, chuckling. “It’s fun to be back into it, though. Should we call it a day? Maybe we’ll come up with something if we sleep on it.”

Ryan shakes his head. “No,” he says coldly. “We’re not going anywhere until we crack this.”

“I think I’m getting low blood sugar,” says Jerry. “I need to eat something.”

Ryan taps away at his phone. “I ordered us some food.”

I excuse myself, saying I need a breath of fresh air.

“Don’t take too long,” says Ryan. “We’ve got to crack this.”

I just feign a smile at him.

How can I be so attracted to such an asshole? Doesn’t he have any feelings about last night? If he does, he’s not letting them show, even in the most minimal of ways.

I take a deep breath at the vending machine, and remind myself that this is the programming opportunity I’ve been looking for… for a long, long time.

“Here,” I say, handing Ryan and Jerry energy drinks from the vending machine. “This’ll keep us going.”

I crack mine open and drink it down all at once. Now, I crack open the second one.

Ryan chuckles.

“This brings me back,” says Jerry. “Up all night, working on some code… Of course, back then we had to just use coffee and soda.”

“This stuff is great,” I say, looking at the label. “Three times the caffeine and twice the normal amount of sugar. Gives your brain some fuel.”

There’s a knock at the door.

“Come in,” calls Ryan gruffly.

The door opens. It’s Sheila, looking confused to see the three of us sitting around the conference table, apparently working.

“Uh, Mr. Hudson, there’s a delivery man here for you.”

But it’s not just any deliveryman. It’s not your normal pizza boy, with a scraggly beard and acne, reeking of pot.

This is a sleek waiter, looking like he just stepped out from a fancy restaurant. He’s wearing a black tie getup, and I look down, almost expecting to see tails on his dinner jacket.

“Mr. Hudson?” he says, bowing.

“Just bring it in,” says Ryan, barely looking up.

“Do you need help… uh… sir?” says Sheila to the waiter.

“I’ll be quite all right, thank you,” he says, and she retreats, confused, not knowing how to handle this situation.

The waiter wheels in a gleaming cart of silver covered dishes

Without getting in the way, the waiter/delivery man lays out a complicated set of silverware, complete with thick cloth napkins. Next, he starts with the plates, which aren’t disposable in the least bit. They’re nicer than the ones I use at home with Hailey.

It’s almost like being in a restaurant, the kind that’s far too expensive for me to go to.

The food is a light pasta dish with some kind of delicious beef sauce, one that’s not too heavy, just enough to keep us going.

“Anything to drink, miss?” says the waiter, making a small bow towards me.

I almost laugh at his bow.

I feel out of place, underdressed, even though I’m in my own office building. I do work here, after all.

“I’m fine,” I say, holding up my half-crumpled can of the energy drink.

Somehow, I’m outclassed here in my own office, but the waiter just nods politely.

Ryan slips him some bills for a tip and the waiter retires to the hallway, apparently to wait behind the closed door until we’re done dining.

Ryan absentmindedly picks up his fork and spears his spaghetti aggressively.

“I didn’t even know they delivered meals like this,” I say, in awe of what’s in front of me.

I take a bite. Damn, that’s good. I don’t know the last time I ate something this delicious.

Jerry is also admiring his food, and seems a little nervous to eat it. “I normally just eat from the vending machine,” he says, chuckling. “My wife’s going to kill me for filling up before her meals.”

“It’s good for the brain,” says Ryan, without looking up.

The three of us don’t talk through the meal, except to occasionally exchange comments about which part of the code we’re working on.

Eventually, we finish, and the waiter comes back somehow at exactly the right moment and takes everything away, wiping down the table.

Ryan tips him again, and I crack open another energy drink.

Jerry’s starting to look tired, his eyes blurry, and he starts taking frequent breaks because of his back.

“What time is it, anyway?” he says, making a show of checking his watch. He knows damn well what time it is, because our computers, of course, have the time clearly displayed.

“We just need a few more hours,” grunts Ryan, his laser focused gaze pointed at his computer. I do notice, however, that he occasionally looks me up and down, in an appraising sort of way, as if he’s giving me points for my breasts, my thighs, my ass. I don’t like the feeling, and it makes me feel cold. My desire is starting to turn to anger. Why hasn’t he mentioned last night at all? There were numerous opportunities when Jerry left to go to the vending machine, or to stretch his legs in the hallway. Instead, he remained stoic and stony, not saying anything that’s not related to programming.

Meanwhile, we haven’t made any progress, and the atmosphere in the room is getting tenser. And it’s not sexual tension. It’s the kind of tension three exhausted people find themselves in when they’re working on a problem that they can’t solve.

The lights for the rest of the office have been turned off, and now the door is open, the hallway like a gaping chasm. Everyone has left for the night.

Jerry’s phone rings. It’s his wife, and he promises to be home soon.

“Sorry, Ryan,” he says. “I’ve got to go home. The wife was worried, and the dinner is cold.”

Ryan grunts without looking up.

“All right,” says Jerry. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

Jerry pads his way down the dark hallway to his cubicle. I watch as he takes his things and walks towards the exit of the office.

My eyes are blurry from staring at the screen, and all the code is starting to seem like the same thing.

“You can go if you want,” says Ryan, still not looking up.

He’s a fucking machine, apparently able to go hours and hours with his laser like concentration.

“That’s it?” I say. “I can go? You aren’t going to mention last night?”

I’m getting angry now. I can feel it rising in my chest. I don’t care if he is my boss. He doesn’t have the kind of power he has over others. Not if I don’t let him have it.

“What do you want to talk about?” says Ryan, finally looking up from his computer.

He stares right at me, his eyes not leaving mine. It seems for a moment as if he isn’t even blinking. His face is unreadable, impassive, set in stone. But… he’s fucking hot. He’s like some gorgeous model, right in front of me. But his body language screams… indifference.

But now he looks me up and down, taking me all in, his eyes lingering on my body. He raises his eyebrows when he looks back at me, not bothering or caring to hide that he’s been so obviously checking me out.

“You don’t want to talk about what happens?” I say, trying to get my anger under control. Am I angry because he seems indifferent to me? His desire for me is still clear, but…

Ryan shrugs. “You weren’t ready,” he says simply.

“But…?” I say, waiting for him to finish.

“But what? What’s there to talk about? If you want me, you know where to find me.”

With that, he goes back to his computer.

I can’t help myself… I’m a bundle of conflicting feelings… anger, lust, desire… but more than that, I feel tossed aside, even though we never officially had sex. I’m still a virgin, just an inexperienced girl, and he’s a billionaire playboy with hundreds of women who would beg for the opportunity to sleep with him. He’s got experience, and I have… nothing. I feel small and insignificant.

“I can see why they call you the douchebag billionaire,” I say.

Ryan chuckles. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a shit.

I get up in a huff, grab my laptop, slamming it closed as I do so, and head out into the dark hallway.