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“Of course he did,” I say dryly. I dig into my meal and try not to think about the whole encounter.
I wonder if I’ll survive the year.
Chapter 8
Aurora
For the most part, my run-ins with Mikhail at the office are brief. More often than not, they’re in passing. Striding past each other in the halls, accidental eye-contact from across the office, one unfortunately long elevator ride together on my way in from work. His eyes remained on his phone the whole time, texting someone. I’m pretty sure he was faking it to avoid talking to me.
Dick.
It’s just as well, I guess. I’d much rather we mutually ignore each other’s existence than deal with… whatever the hell happened between us. Sometimes I think about it and cringe. Many choices were made that evening, and most of them were on the wrong side of sanity. But sometimes…
Sometimes I reminisce with a strange longing. I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel so completely undone. He had me unraveling with his words alone. I’ve had a couple of boyfriends throughout college, a couple of one-night stands, but none of them ever made me come using only the sound of his husky voice.
Even though it’s been a whole week since that night, I can still hear his delicious words in my ear. They never fail to make me flush, the ravenous look in his eyes seared into my memories like an iron-hot brand. He clearly wanted me. The hard press of his cock was impossible to deny. I saw my hunger reflected in him, could feel the sizzle in the air.
And now his cold indifference makes my chest sting.
It’s a good thing I have all this work to distract myself with.
Luka, my immediate supervisor and program mentor, is a man of few words—a trait he seems to share with his eldest brother. I don’t have any problem with it, though. He’s clearly passionate about what he does, as well as extremely knowledgeable. A no nonsense kind of guy, a man who just wants to get the job done.
He handed each of us interns our own separate projects to work on, as well as one larger task to work on as a team. My work primarily consists of reworking the internal coding of old backup data CyberFort keeps in one of its many servers to make it as small as possible.
Our team task is to completely rebuild the recruitment page of CyberFort’s website. As it stands, the webpage is clunky and has a number of outdated scripts encoded into its programming. It’s up to us to not only get rid of the kinks, but to also design it to be more eye-catching for prospective employees.
I don’t mind the work. It’s enjoyable, actually, like putting together one large, intricate puzzle using just my keyboard, fingertips, and brain. My workspace is open and welcoming, the CyberFort cafeteria down on fifth has a wide selection of free meals every day, and my commute is a peaceful thirty minutes by subway.
It’s just a shame that I fucking hate my co-workers.
The Tech Bros are the absolute worst. They’re loud, take up too much space, and don’t even get me started on the messes they leave because they think the janitorial team will take care of it. It makes me roll my eyes. Why do they feel the need to act like idiots? Do they seriously expect their moms to pick up after them?
David and Timothy aren’t so bad.
But Charlie makes me want to put my head through the shredder.
I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s the type of guy who’s bad at first impressions. All it took was two days for me to realize that he’s 100% a giant prick.
“Who wants to come to my barbecue this weekend?” Charlie asks, sitting on the edge of my workstation. There are literally a dozen different chairs andthisis the exact location he decides to park his ass. His back is to me, which I take as a very clear sign his invitation doesn’t extend to me. Not that I’d ever want to go.
“How the fuck are you allowed a barbecue in New York?” Buck asks. He has a dumb voice, weirdly high-pitched for a man of his rotundness.
“It’s on my father’s yacht,” Charlie clarifies. “We cook lobsters and stuff every other week.”
I swallow my groan.Of coursethis guy has a yacht. His stupid expensive polo shirts should have been my first clue. Everything about him screams over-privileged frat bro who’s been breezing through life on Daddy’s money.
In the strangest way, he gets me thinking about my own father. I’ve built him up in my head after all these years, trying to create a collage of what he might look like and how he might act. I wonder if he’s rich like Charlie’s father or just as pompous. I like to imagine he’s wealthy, but kind and generous. The only way to find out for sure is to find him, but that’s going to take time. Every day, I inch closer and closer to my savings goal. Once I have the funds, I’ll finally be able to look for him.
Hopefully I don’t slam Charlie’s head into the nearest copying machine first.
“What do you say, babe?”
I look up. Charlie’s looking right at me with a smug grin that makes my skin crawl. Ugh.
“Don’t call me that,” I retort, returning my attention to my laptop. I’ve got lines upon lines of code on the screen, sifting through each digit carefully for any mistakes I might have made.
“Comeon, Foster,” he continues to prod. “It’ll be fun. You do know what that is, don’t you?”
