Page 55 of Smart Ass

Wait, what?

Yeah, dopamine. Ben’s brain needed more rewards, so shouldn’t his Dom, who was, uh, Max, and had that sexy-as-hell rumble of a voice, kind of… Dom him right now?

“Hi, Max,” he said. Because he was super cool like that, and his basal ganglia and reticular activating system had just totally bypassed his frontal cortex, which really should have told him not to be a dweeb.

Max chuckled, so warm and dark that it made Ben all shivery. “Drink your coffee.”

Oh, yeah.

God, Max was hot.

Ben drank more of the glorious nectar and automatically flicked on his filtered news stream to scroll across the wall-mounted screen.

Boring, boring, assholes, boring, okay, boring, good…

Hang on. “Max, did you tell Orbit this morning?” Shit. That should have been the first thing he asked. That was huge.

There was a pause. “I decided not to.”

“Why?” That woke Ben up faster than anything.

“I observed a conversation.”

“You mean you were spying?” This cracked Ben up. Max seemed so controlled and reserved (and Dom-y), but then, he was the one wandering around “observing” people’s conversations.

“I was monitoring several key individuals to find the right time to address them,” Max said primly. Now Max was just fucking with him.

God, Maxy cracked him up. He was perfect.

“And what did you find out with your super-sneaky, not-at-all spying observations?”

Now Maxamillion was completely serious. “I observed an interaction between Wallace and Charles Wollencroft.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t comfortable with Charles’s plans for me.”

“Okay…”

“I also saw something else. I think you should watch this.”

“Yeah, lemme see.” Ben was already spinning out possibilities. Corporate espionage or dirty little secrets.

What he saw instead was an abusive megalomaniac and a scared puppy who’d been kicked too many times.

“Shit,” he whispered. “He’s an ass.”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder Wally’s such a twat.”

“Bennnn…” Max cautioned.

“Well, he is. Like, that sucks for the dude, but he’s still the one making the choice to steal people’s work and threaten to expose us. They’re both wankers. His dad is just, like, the uber-wanker. Wallace should get the fuck out of Orbit and work somewhere else.”

“I imagine Wallace has thought of that,” Max remarked dryly. “His father might not allow him that choice.”

Ugh. And now Ben had to feel sorry for Wally. Er, Wallace. Gah.