Page 36 of Billion Dollar Love: Manlove Edition

Chapter Three

Carson was wrong. It was more like four days before moving in certain ways no longer sent reminders of his night with Zach shooting through his body. Carson had woken up cramped and cold, still lying on top of Zach, in the middle of the night. He’d managed to slip from the bed without waking him, but he’d been unable to resist the urge to press one last kiss to those full lips before he left.

“Thanks, daddy,” he’d whispered, grinning like a fool.

“See ya around, kid,” Zach had mumbled back.

The same idiot grin was on his face now, almost three weeks later, and he wanted to smack himself for it.

He was literally never going to see the man again. He’d known that going in, yet here he was mooning over a fling.

“Moron,” he chided himself as he taped up the last of the boxes. The moving company would be there early in the morning, and then he and Ophelia would begin the day-long drive to the city. He had no interest in arriving before his stuff and sitting around an empty apartment.

They’d thrown him a going away party at the Hot Box, which had been nice. He was going to miss his friends. His foster parents were happy that he’d be living closer to them again, since they were the only family he really had. They didn’t quite understand his chosen field and thought he could do “that computer stuff” from anywhere, which, while technically true, he couldn’t make the kind of money he wanted while living in rural Pennsylvania with them.

He refused to ever worry again about where his next meal would come from, or if he’d be able to pay the rent.

So first he’d gone to Boston, then Norfolk, and then Detroit. He was confident that this new job would be it for him. ZIM Tech was owned by the best in the business. The application and interview process had been long and rigorous, but they paid the best and he’d have unlimited opportunities after this with them on his resume, if he moved on.

Ophelia came over and forced her way into his lap.

“I know, sweetie. You don’t like moving. But you’re almost as much of a pro at it as I am by now, huh, little girl?” She purred and rubbed against him as he petted her and soothed her. “You’ll see, baby. This’ll be it. Promise.”

****

Late the next night, with the sounds of New York City floating in through the open windows, Carson flopped onto the bed and looked around his room. His room. The bedroom alone was half the size of the studio apartment he’d had. The living room was almost the same size as his old place. Even though he still had a few boxes of odds and ends to unpack and the rest of his clothes, the place was going to be empty. He’d gotten used to having only a handful of things. Moving around often as a young teen had taught him the expendability of most material possessions. Well, I’m not buying anything until I have my own place, not company housing. I’ll get used to it.

****

Two days later, he arrived at work.

“So, Vladislav, this will be your station.” Meg, his new supervisor, swept an arm into the room.

“Please, just call me Carson,” he said absently, as he looked around. He hadn’t seen a single cubicle wall in the entire building. There were rooms, with dividers, but they all appeared to be made of glass. The entire place was open and airy and had a generally relaxed feeling to the staff. Clusters of couches and armchairs and tables were located at intervals around the floor, helping to divide the space into work areas. There was a full-service coffee shop on one floor, a deli/cafeteria on another, and a small convenience store on a third. All of those were open twenty-four hours a day, as was access to the work floors (after passing a security checkpoint), since the company did business worldwide. Down the block was an all-hours gym that they had access to if they wanted. “Just show your work ID at the desk!” Meg had chirped happily.

“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”

Meg laughed and brought him to the empty desk near the far end of the room. A large rubber duck holding a sign that read “Welcome Aboard!” and a bow on its head sat on top of the desk. Carson laughed and opened his bag, pulling out a little rubber duck in a vampire costume.

“Hey, with a name like mine, you have to have a sense of humor,” he grinned.

“Clint! Pay up!” the man at the desk next to them yelled.

Several heads turned in their direction. “What? Aww, ducky, no!” the one presumably named Clint moaned as he picked up a duck from the collection on his desk and threw it across the room with perfect aim.

“Yes!” the man next to him exclaimed as he snatched the duck from the air. “Thanks, man. I’ve been trying to get this back for months,” he said to Carson, brandishing the little duck in a Captain America costume like a trophy. “We had a bet going about you,” he continued, using the coveted duck to point toward the one in Carson’s hand. “And on how cool you would or wouldn’t be with your name and your duck. Name’s Sam, by the way, if you need anything.” He placed his prize between the screen and his keyboard, patting its head before he resumed his work.

Carson set his bag on the desk with a grin. He was going to like this job.

****

It took a month for Carson to master the programming system that ZIM Tech used—a fact that both infuriated him for how long it took while at the same time gave him pride as being one of the fastest to do so. Zachary McAllister had taken all the best parts of different interfaces and somehow made them all work together. Seeing up front and in person just how amazing it was, Carson wasn’t entirely sure that the man hadn’t sold his soul to the devil to make it happen.

The general use internet security programs they had were one thing, but the ones customized for businesses were something else, entirely on another level. Carson genuinely wondered if it would be easier to hack into the Pentagon than it was to hack this system. It constantly changed, shifted, and adapted at the blink of an eye with an artificial intelligence so advanced he couldn’t figure out how the government hadn’t stolen it for themselves.

Of course, they were probably were a top-secret client that nobody on staff knew about except McAllister. Zach… Carson found himself staring through the glass wall and out in the hallway as he swore he knew those shoulders walking away—but of course it couldn’t be him, and he wrote it off to mental association because he’d been thinking about the owner, and the first name was the same. It was merely coincidence. New York was a city with nearly ten million people in it. Even if the man he’d fucked was in the city, the odds of them ever running into each other were astronomical. And it wasn’t like Zach was the only person on the planet who could have that build.

He told himself the same thing when he went for a stroll through Central Park and thought he saw Zach’s face in the crowd. I’m tired. I’ve been working a zillion hours learning the system. My brain is fried, and I’m lonely. Of course I’m thinking of him, so it’s only natural to think I saw him, too.

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