Rabbit was the one who’d set up the challenge Cooper was working on: infiltrating the servers of what was supposedly a dummy corporation in Norway. It was most definitely something the guy—at least, Cooper wasmostlysure at this point that Rabbit was a guy—had created to size up the competition in the hacker world.
It wasn’t the sort of thing Cooper would have normally entertained, but he and Rabbit had gotten to chatting in various other forums a while ago. The guy was less awkward than most of the people Cooper connected with online, and he never tried to push or trick Cooper into giving away his secrets like some did. So Cooper hadn’t minded giving Rabbit’s little game a go. It was a way to pass the time, if nothing else.
But he left the message waiting for now. There wasn’t any sense in bragging before the thing was done. Plus, if he waited until tonight to respond, when he wasn’t about to run out the door, they could get a chat going, maybe connect in real time.
Just admit you’re lonely as fuck.
Please. Like that was any sort of secret. Lonely and now getting to the point of being seriously touch-starved. How long had it been since he’d even had a hookup?
Maybe Cooper would venture into the apps tonight, see if he could find someone to fuck him out of his head. But that would mean either inviting someone to his apartment—Cooper wrinkled his nose at the mess surrounding him—or going to some unknown location instead.
Cooper didn’t have that in him after shutting himself off to the outside world for the past week. He’d need to do baby steps to get used to strange people and strange places again. He’d go to Ivan’s office and get the meeting over with. Ivan always sent a driver, so Cooper wouldn’t have to deal with the subway crowds or a chatty taxi driver. When he got home, he’d clean his apartment so it looked like an actual human lived there and not a garbage raccoon in a human suit. And tomorrow he’d make himself go out for a bagel.
Thenhe’d work his way up to getting fucked by a stranger.
In the meantime, there was always porn. Because, sure, porn was definitely a replacement for real human touch.
Cooper shook his head, annoyed at himself. He didn’tneedhuman touch to get off—that was what toys were for.
But first, he had to actually leave his apartment and see what Ivan wanted.
The driver Ivansent didn’t speak, beyond the initial mumbled greeting, for which Cooper was incredibly grateful. Same with the security guard that manned the entrance to Ivan’s office building, who knew the sight of Cooper well enough to give him one of those manly nods as he passed by, but not well enough to attempt a conversation.
That was two hurdles passed. See? This was fine. Cooper wasfine. So Ivan wanted to talk to him. So what? He wasn’t going tokillCooper or anything.
At least, probably not.
Cooper just hoped Sergei wasn’t there today. Ivan’s right-hand man was a mean, scary asshole in the same way Ivan’s father, Dimitri, had been. Sergei seemed to think Cooper mainly played video games on the family’s dime, and he loved to let him know how much that idea pissed him off.
Which was only half-true. Cooperdidplay a lot of video games, but he did work stuff too, when Ivan remembered to give him any to do. And part of the reason Cooper didn’t want to catch sight of Sergei today was the work Ivan had asked him to do after Sascha’s stabbing by a rival family two months ago: Cooper had been tasked to look into Sergei’s finances. Finances that were definitelynoton the up-and-up.
Sergei was taking money from someone who wasn’t Ivan. He hid it well but not nearly well enough, given Cooper’s skills. Ivan had shattered a full bottle of vodka by throwing it at the wall when Cooper had told him.
Cooper was hoping for less broken glass this visit.
He pressed the elevator button, fiddling with his hoodie strings and repeatedly reminding himself not to put them in his mouth when in public.
“Going up?”
Cooper didn’t jump exactly, but it was a near thing. He shot a startled glance to the right, clocking the bearer of the smooth, flirty voice. No big deal. Just an inhumanly beautiful man with long, wavy red hair in a high ponytail now standing next to him. One who apparently moved like a ninja, since Cooper hadn’t heard him coming.
He saw the guy do a double take as he caught sight of Cooper’s eyes. Cooper was used to people staring. He’d been born with heterochromia, with one brown eye and one green. He didn’t like the extra attention it brought him—hated it with a fucking passion, really. But it was hard to mind as much because this guy had freaky eyes too. They were purple.
“Well, aren’t you lovely?” the guy crooned, like Cooper wasn’t an out-of-shape nerd in desperate need of a haircut, wearing clothes that were onlyprobablyclean.
“Uh…” Cooper turned his gaze to his feet immediately. He was barely equipped for human interaction of any kind today, let alone beautiful men flirting with him. Especially because this seemed to be the kind of flirting attractive people like that did by habit. There wasn’t any real intent behind it, and Cooper never knew how to respond.
What would it be like to be effortlessly charming like that? Cooper wouldn’t have to be trawling through apps for dick; he knew that much.
They got into the elevator together, and Cooper did his best to breathe normally, trapped in the small space with a stranger. Howdidsomeone breathe normally? Like, two seconds in, two seconds out? He’d forgotten somehow, but he hoped he was doing it right.
What was a guy like this doing at Ivan’s office, anyway? He was dressed in a flouncy blouse and extremely tight leather pants and had just been openly flirtatious with another man. Basically the opposite sort of presence Ivan usually allowed at his side. Cooper could see the guy beingSascha’sfriend—Cooper’s other cousin had always ventured toward the flamboyant, those few instances he’d been able to get away with it—but not Ivan’s.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it, though, not when Cooper was about to face Ivan himself. He headed straight out of the elevator, toward Ivan’s office, the only occupied room on the floor, glancing behind his shoulder every now and then to confirm the stranger really was going to the same destination.
At the last minute, the guy slid in front of him to enter the office first, announcing to Ivan, “You have a visitor.”
Cooper stepped in after him, just in time to catch Ivan glaring at the guy from behind his desk. But as he caught sight of Cooper, his expression smoothed in an instant, back to his usual emotionless mask.
