Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112244 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112244 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Hux made a high-pitched teakettle noise of rage. “This is why no one wants you around, Kevin Rogers. Because you will do anything to get attention. But I’m not gonna give it to you anymore.” He clapped a pair of headphones over his ears and began banging his head in time to some music I couldn’t hear.
Oh. My. God.
Attention? Me? The guy who’d avoided attention his whole life like vampires avoid the sun? How could one human contain as much wrong as Jasper Huxley? I burned with fury at the injustice.
I briefly brainstormed ways to create a targeted signal disruptor that would work only on Hux’s headphones so I could force him to listen to Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” until the resulting earworm dissolved his brain into applesauce.
When that vision didn’t satisfy my lust for vengeance, I contemplated outfitting the kitchen with some kind of laser I could use to vaporize people—one particular person, really—at will.
Then I sighed. I was pretty sure this was how regular geniuses turned evil.
And the truth was, I didn’t want Hux harmed, I just wanted his charming, poison-ivy-eyed, mean-spirited self out of my home as quickly and safely as possible… which meant getting to the bottom of Champion Security’s infiltration problem.
I’d already begun checking over the scans I’d set up the night before, and even set a couple of new ones to run, when a new message notification from Horn of Glory popped up on my screen.
I expected to see some kind of acknowledgment from Smitty—was a thank-you too much to hope for?—but I quickly forgot about him because the message was from someone way more exciting.
Anomaly451: Hey, honey! How’s my Valentine? I missed you today!
My heartbeat kicked up a notch at the endearment.
I’d waited a long time to be somebody’s honey. Twenty-five long years, in fact.
Take that, Huxley. Plenty of people want me around, fuck you very much.
Anomaly451, whose real name was Adam, was a HOG player I’d “met” in an online tournament a little over a month ago. Unlike Smitty, who had a chip on his shoulder the size of my homestead, or HogMasterHux, who was the sort of person who’d commandeer a man’s orc forces without so much as a by-your-leave, Adam was sweet.
When I’d harvested a record number of snowflakes and knocked him out of contention for the tournament prize, Anomaly hadn’t been upset. Instead, he’d plucked a bouquet of snowflowers to congratulate me. Then he’d chat-requested me, and… well, the rest was history.
We’d been online boyfriends for weeks. We’d started having regular Tuesday night chats. I’d told him all about the computer lair I’d constructed. He’d asked my advice on system security for the projects he worked on. And, in a development that had filled me with 90 percent excitement and only 10 percent crippling anxiety, he kept begging to meet in real life so he could “see my setup”—which was code for helping me cash in my virginity card at long last—and I was pretty sure I was going to agree. Soon.
Like, really soon.
Could be any day now.
But I couldn’t exactly invite the guy over to my house while it was invaded by a nest of hot-as-fuck security operatives, could I? “Pay no attention to the waves of high-octane testosterone luring you toward the ripply-muscled badasses, Adam! Come down to my dark lair and spoon me!”
Yeah, no. There were limits to how much humiliation a man could endure.
HogDocKev: Hi! It was good. Haven’t gone to bed yet. How was work?
When Adam had told me he had to work on Valentine’s Day, my brain had immediately tried sabotaging me by suggesting he had someone at home to celebrate with, but I’d resisted. I was not the doubting, jealous type. Besides, Adam told me all the time that I was the first thing he thought of each morning. That he’d never met anyone like me. That he didn’t want us to rush into anything too fast or to become exclusive too quickly, but that he considered me his boyfriend. His Valentine.
Having him message me first thing this morning just confirmed it.
Anomaly451: Meh. Work was a shit show because my boss is incompetent. And you remember that huge research project I mentioned to you? Looks like it’s gonna be more time consuming than I thought, and the deadline is getting tighter. You know how it goes.
Anomaly451: Actually, I guess you don’t exactly, do you? Lol. Trust me, it’s annoying. Not nearly as fun as staying home and playing games all afternoon!
I shut my mouth with a clack.
So, okay, maybe there were a couple of things about our new relationship that I wished I’d handled differently. One was the time I’d explained to Adam that I came from a long line of prestigious doctors, when he asked why my username was HogDoc. Another was telling him that I was a self-employed consultant, when he’d asked what I did for a living.