by Cassie Cole
But all he said was, “You ever go by a nickname?”
“Why would I go by a nickname?”
“Juliana is a long name. Four syllables. Perfect for a nickname.”
I smiled at the friendly banter. Was he flirting with me? “As happy as I am to hear that you can count, I’m perfectly happy with my name. And hey! Donovan is close. Three syllables.”
“That’s why my buds call me Don, or Donny,” he said. “How about Jules? I like Jules.”
He was definitely flirting with me. “I’ve never been in a submarine, and I have no intention of traveling to the earth’s core, so that probably wouldn’t work.”
He smiled right back at the banter. “20,000 leagues is far too many. I’m happy right here on the surface too. So!” he said, gesturing with his beer. “Now that we’re no longer strangers, how about you tell me how you got started hacking, Jules?”
“I still don’t know much about you, Donatello. What do you do now that you’re out of the Marines?”
His face lit up. “Hell yeah, Ninja Turtles. Though nicknames are typically shorter than the actual name. I’m a security consultant. Kind of like you, only totally different.”
“What kind of security consultant?”
“Nuh uh,” he said. “Your turn to answer a question.”
Maybe it was because I’d had a couple of beers. Maybe it was because I wasn’t used to someone asking about my history, or caring about the answer. Maybe it was because he was really fucking hot and I couldn’t have refused him if my life depended on it.
“You really want to know how my career in computers started?”
“You bet.”
“It all started in 1822 when Hans Christian Oersted discovered electromagnetism…”
Donovan squinted at me in a playful but unamused look.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “It all started when I was 13 or 14, after I pissed off my parents by taking apart the family computer to see how it worked.”
“That pissed them off? My parents would have loved to see me take an interest in computers.”
“Well, what really pissed them off was my inability to put it all back together.”
“Oh. I can see how that would be a problem.”
“They had to hire someone to fix it. Of course, I watched over his shoulder while he did it, asking questions and learning as much as I could. Then that night when they went to bed, I sneaked downstairs to the office, unplugged the tower, and took it apart again. That time I was able to put it all back together just fine. It took a year of tinkering and messing around before they finally broke down and bought me my own laptop for Christmas. An old Dell Presario laptop. I loved that little guy. Core 2 Duo processor with an early version of the hyperthreading that would later be standard on the quad-core processors. Four gigs of ram. That was a shitload back then. I thought I was hot stuff.”
“And then?” he asked, leering across his beer glass. He was hanging on my every word like I was his hero. I was used to guys trying to pick me up at the bar, but never a guy who looked like this.
“And then I taught myself to code,” I said. “C++ first, but once I could send the standard Hello World message I jumped to visual basic, then the harder coding languages. Soon I was writing scripts to pop up dirty words on my dad’s computer. It all just sort of spiraled away from there.”
“You started doing real hacking,” he offered.
“That’s generous. I was a punk who knew just enough to be dangerous.”
He arched an eyebrow, waiting for me to go on. God, he had a face that made you want to spill your life story.
“I’m not drunk enough to tell you what happened next.”
I meant it as a decline, but he grabbed my beer glass and said, “I’ll fix that. What’re you having?”
“The red ale. Can’t remember the name.”
“I’m more of an IPA guy myself.”
“Of course you are,” I said sweetly.
He walked away and I cringed. Of course you are? What on earth did that even mean? As if the hoppiness of his beer said something deep and meaningful about who he was as a person.
But he’d only smiled. As if I were charming instead of awkward.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I had a few theories. This guy wanted a job at CSCG and thought I was the way in. Or maybe whatever security consulting company he worked for wanted to hire us.
Or maybe he works for a competitor and wants you to spill your secrets.
That one made me shiver because it rang truest. In any case, surely someone that hot wouldn’t be focusing on me. The room was full of much more attractive women.
He returned with the beers. “So what happened next?”
“I’ve told you a little bit,” I said. “Your turn again.”
“I was in the Marines.”
“No shit? I had you pegged as a kindergarten teacher.”
“I went right in after high school.”
“I bet you grew up wanting to be a marine.”
“No,” he said. “I actually wanted to do something with computers, but then 9/11 happened…”
“Oh, shit,” I blurted.
“Got swept up in all the patriotism,” he admitted. “I couldn’t just go sit behind a desk and wear a tie. I had to do something, you know? I had to serve my country. I thought… I thought it was the only way.”
“You weren’t the only one,” I said, although I was only six when the towers fell.
“And I won’t be the last,” he said sadly.
We touched glasses in a silent toast, then both drank.
Suddenly he felt a lot more real. Not just a sexy guy in a tight polo who may or may not be flirting with me to get a job at CSCG. A guy who had gone into the military for all the wrong reasons. Just like me.
It made it much easier to open up a little.
“I got my mom fired.”
Donovan’s eyes widened. “How’d you do that, Jules?”
“By downloading a hack toolkit and infecting my mom’s laptop with a trojan horse. A nasty little device that punched a hole in the firewall and masked all the data as standard HTTP traffic. It had a keylogger and an admin privilege elevation command prompt built in. State of the art stuff back then. I was so proud of it. I felt like a badass hacker, like Neo at the beginning of The Matrix. I was just curious, you know? I wasn’t trying to do any real harm.”
“Until she took the laptop to work…”
I slapped my palm on the standing table. “Until she took her laptop to work. Her secretary’s computer got infected first, then the other ones on her floor. Soon it had spread everywhere, and oh by the way, it was sending all that data back to whoever wrote the trojan in the first place. Someone in Luxembourg or Liechtenstein or some other tiny European country. I’ve never seen my mom so disappointed in me. Like I’d let her down.”
“How’d they find out it was you?” Donovan asked. “Did you confess?”
“Not exactly…”
“Wait. Wait wait wait.” He put his hand on my arm. It was warm and calloused and strong. “Did you put your name on the trojan or something? Please don’t tell me you put your name on it.”
I sighed and told him what he already knew. “I signed my hacker name to the trojan, deep down in the code. Ravenclaw. My parents knew it was me because that was my email address too.”
“Ravenclaw?” Donovan blinked, then burst out laughing.
“I was really into Harry Potter!” I protested. “17-year-old me thought it sounded cool!”
“Ravenclaw!” he said, laughing with me more than at me.
“I was quite the catch back then,” I said. “You should have seen the baggy jeans and boots I wore. Lots of buckles. I was the pride of Kennewick, Washington.”
“Thank goodness we all grow up eventually.” He glanced over to where the hacker kid was standing a short distance away, swirling the ice around in his still-not-drank whiskey. “At least, most of us.”
“He�
��s young. He’ll get there eventually.”
“So what happened after that?”
I shrugged. “My parents did what all parents do when they have an out-of-control teen. They sent me to military school.”
“Hah! Seriously, Jules?”
“Oakland Military Institute. Good old OMI. After that I pretty much had no choice but to join the Army.”
“So you weren’t overcome with patriotic fervor?” Donovan asked, striking a pose with his fists on his hips.
I laughed and said, “This was 2013, so no. Not even a little bit. We were disillusioned with war by then.”
“Shit,” he said, taking a long pull of his beer and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I bet you loved that. A teenage hacker girl pulled away from her friends to go to military school.”
“I didn’t have many friends,” I admitted. “But it still sucked. Up until then my life revolved around computers. At OMI, I only got computer time for an hour a day in the library.”
“So you joined the Army after that. But it didn’t stick.”
I cocked my head. “How do you know it didn’t stick?”
“Well,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially. I could smell the beer on his breath, along with a musky cologne. “Most first term enlistments require a four-year commitment. Especially coming out of a place like OMI. And in your presentation today you said you’ve been at that consulting company for four years already. Throw in a little math and that’s how I know it didn’t stick.”
“Congrats,” I said casually. “You can do basic math.”
He spread his hands. “I’m full of surprises. So what made you wash out? And before you insist on keeping it a secret, let me assure you there’s nothing wrong with washing out. Happens all the time to all sorts of people. Nothing embarrassing about it at all.”
The sudden seriousness in his tone, the concern for my embarrassment or shame, was endearing. We’d done a good job teasing one another but this was something on a different level. More personal.
“That,” I said, “is a story for another time.”
“Is there going to be another time?”
“That depends. How many of these conventions do you go to?”
He pursed his lips. “First time. Probably only time.”
“Well, do you happen to live in Seattle or the surrounding metro area?”
“Richmond Virginia, actually.”
I smiled sadly at him. “Then nope, there probably won’t be another time.” I finished the rest of my beer and looked around. Mr. Pendleton had already left, and I’d been here longer than the 30 minutes I’d promised.
And I was starving. For more than just tiny appetizers on toothpicks.
“Donovan, it’s been a pleasure shooting the shit with you,” I said. “But I have to go.”
He looked disappointed, but shook my hand. “Thanks for letting me pick your brain, Jules. It was better than trying to find the guys I came here with.”
I turned to leave.
“Hey.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Do you want to come back to my room for a drink?” He quickly put up a hand. “Just a drink. And so I can hear how you washed out of the Army so fast. I’ll gladly tell you an embarrassing story about my first tour in the Hindu Kush in exchange.”
I knew it wasn’t going to be just a drink. We could get a drink anywhere, but only one thing could be done in a hotel room that couldn’t be done in a bar.
Yet there was something I hadn’t realized until that precise moment: I desperately wanted to go back to his hotel room. And I sure as hell didn’t want to just swap stories.
“Do you have red ale back at your room?” I asked coyly.
“I’ve got an IPA six-pack in the mini fridge, but that’s it.”
I let out a dramatic sigh. “I guess that will have to do.”
I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed him out of the convention center.
Juliana
I wasn’t the kind of girl who did this.
My ideal romantic scenario was meeting a guy online, getting to know him for weeks of casual conversations before we finally met in person, then spending an entire day on the couch eating chips and binge-watching The Office on Netflix.
I didn’t do hookups.
But this guy…
We’d grabbed a cab from the convention center. The cab driver paid us no mind so I unbuckled my seat and scooted closer to Donovan in the back seat, placing a hand boldly on his thigh.
“Hi.”
“Hey yourself,” he said smoothly.
And then I did something I never did: I made the first move.
I pressed my body against him and kissed his neck, moving my lips up to his hard jawline. I could smell the ghost of his cologne, pungent and delicious. He made a noise deep in his throat.
“Jules…”
My lips found his like a magnet, and then he took over. He grabbed the side of my head and seared me with his scalding kiss, pushing me against the seat with urgency. My hand on his thigh crept inward until it felt the warm bulge waiting between his legs, and I threw caution aside and grabbed it like it was a stick of dynamite I intended to throw.
He groaned into my mouth and then his hand was forcing its way in between my legs. I spread them as his thick fingers rubbed me through my pants, that wonderful friction of fabric against my wet sex. The pressure on my clit was intense but I was ready for it, I’d been ready since we started flirting at the convention, the touch and feeling and reckless abandon that I so desperately needed.
I wasn’t the kind of girl who did this, but tonight that was going to change.
The faster he rubbed, the tighter I squeezed. As our tongues danced I imagined his thick cock rubbing against my slit rather than his fingers, plunging deep inside, taking me every which way…
He pulled away, panting heavily. “Let’s get to the hotel first.” He glanced at the driver.
I didn’t want to wait, I was enjoying being naughty in the back seat of a Boston cab, but I said, “Okay,” and let my hand slide off his privates. He smiled and moved his hand to my thigh, allowing it to linger there on my knee, thumb pressing against my bone.
Donovan cleared his throat and asked, “How much farther?”
“Two blocks,” the driver said.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have said Donovan was nervous. Like he was the one lucky enough to go home with me, and not the other way around. Was presenting at these hacker conventions giving me a sexy kind of authority? Maybe going to more of these was a good idea after all.
I was still starving. The only thing I’d eaten all day were six of those puny appetizers at the mixer. That and the three beers. But for a guy like Donovan I could put food on hold.
I could just eat him up instead.
His skin was smooth and taut, and part of a tattoo peeked out from underneath his shirt sleeve. Something tribal, which was kind of stereotypical but I certainly didn’t mind. I wondered what his skin tasted like. What his lips tasted like.
What other parts of him tasted like.
Be cool, Juliana. You don’t want to fuck this up.
We pulled up to an old stone building on Franklin Street: The Langham Hotel. Donovan hopped out and opened my door like a gentleman while I admired the building.
“Our room is on the fifth floor,” he said.
Our room. This was really happening. This gorgeous, muscular, charming guy was taking me up to his hotel room.
My jaw dropped as we entered the lobby. The floor was shiny marble and two incredible chandeliers hung from the ceiling like hoop earrings turned on their sides. To the left was a bar and lounge area with ornate carpet, posh booths, and a semi-circular bar. Behind the bar was a floor-to-ceiling mirror shelved with every manner of liquor. It was presently full of guests in tuxedos and evening gowns.
“I think they had a wedding reception here,” Donovan muttered. “It’s a nice place, though.”
Nice
place? This is the nicest hotel I’ve ever been in. I wondered again what type of security consulting Donovan did, but was afraid to ask because I didn’t want to seem like I was curious about how much he made. That’s not why I was here.
I’m here because we’re going up to his room.
I felt like every eye in the lobby was on me as we walked to the elevators. Of course nobody cared, but I felt self-conscious about going upstairs with this man. This handsome, chiseled man.
“I like your ink,” I managed to say as we stepped into the elevator. Donovan snorted.
“I liked it too… at the time,” he said. “My whole unit got them after Basic.” He scratched the back of his head. “It, uhh, hasn’t aged well.”
“I made plenty of mistakes when I was young,” I said. “None so permanent, though.”
“Is that how you washed out of the Army?” he asked. “You made a mistake?”
I wagged a finger at him. “I’m still not telling.”
“Not until that drink,” he said.
“Right.”
The elevator hummed along.
“I can’t decide if I like Boston or not,” he said, shifting his feet. “The city is nice, sure, but everywhere you go you hear that god-awful accent.”
“It does take some getting used to.”
Small talk. I hated small talk like this. But it was better than silence as we reached the fifth floor and I followed him down the hall. The thick carpet muffled our steps like we were doing something clandestine. Secret.
I’m about to have my first real hookup.
I was excited. I was turned on. I couldn’t ignore the way his ass moved back and forth in his jeans like two hams shifting around in a plastic bag. I wanted to sink my teeth into those cheeks.
We reached two doors adjacent to each other. Donovan pulled out his key.
But I wanted to do something before we got inside. To make sure it was what I wanted, even though every fiber of my body told me it was. One final test.
I pushed him against the wall in the hallway. He let me even though he could have resisted with a tiny fraction of his strength. I gently rested my hands on his massive biceps as I stared up into his surprised eyes. They were like dark pools in the dim light. He had cheek bones that could cut wrapping paper. How did someone so muscular have such well-defined cheeks?
