“Sacha?”
“Yes?” Sacha turned without blinking to the woman who’d said his name, one of few employees in the room he’d deduced worth a second conversation. Her name was Helga, and she was beautiful. If not for the weight of the corporate world hanging over them, Sacha might’ve paid her more attention, but he didn’t have time for distractions right now. Only for yet another quick glance to the glass partition between Flash Gray Media and Blutecc Ltd.
A pointless glance as there was still no sign of the auburn hair of his dreams.
Helga said something else. Sacha missed every word, but was fairly confident that he could answer her question regardless. “We will have to find the time,” he said. “If we do not make the soft launch before Christmas, this app will be dead in the water. The investment will be lost, and this company will be marked as one that does not deliver.”
Another voice spoke. “What does that mean for working hours until then? Most of us are contracted for thirty-eight hours. You can’t make us work overtime without fair compensation.”
Sacha turned his gaze on the man not much younger than him, with wax in his thin moustache and terrible hand tattoos. “If that is your attitude this company will not survive long enough to pay you anything at all, fair or not. Perhaps it would be better if you worked somewhere else.”
“You can’t sack me.”
“I haven’t tried.” Sacha smiled. “But thank you for bringing yourself to my attention. I look forward to analysing your performance in the weeks to come.”
Moustache man spoke again, but Sacha was bored with him, and tuned him out, his attention, naturally, drifting back to the glass wall. This time, he was rewarded with a flash of copper, but it was gone before it became tangible enough for Sacha to say it was Jonah. It could’ve been anyone.
At least, that’s what his brain said. The warmth in his chest said something else.
“I cannot believe you took a complete stranger to your parents’ ball and got away with it, and managed to have incredible sex after it. Why do these things never happen to me? You didn’t even want a date, did you?”
Jonah snorted into his drink and set it down, wiping his mouth before he answered Lily’s admittedly fair question. “I didn’t think I wanted one until I had one. I can’t explain the rest of it. It just happened.”
“It’s never happened to me.”
“Yes, well. He’s bi, if it’s any consolation. Maybe you can take him out too.”
“And then have him ravish me? Don’t joke about such things, boo. I’d totally do it.”
Jonah knew she would. Lily Dawson had been his best friend since they were both in nappies and he was well aware of her insatiable appetite for amazing sex. Until Sacha, Jonah had believed he’d known the kind of sex she was talking about. Post-Sacha, he was fairly sure he’d been doing it wrong his entire life until the night of the winter ball. “Whatever. You’re not fucking Sacha. I need to keep my memories pure.”
“That good?”
Jonah drank more beer and shook his head. “It wasn’t good. It was…wow, I don’t have an adjective. It was like dream sex, you know? The kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night and you have to come to terms with it not being real.”
“Oh yeah. Dream sex is the best. There aren’t many men out there who can match up to your subconscious imagination.”
“He did. I swear…” Jonah glanced around and lowered his voice. “I’ve never come so hard in my life, awake or otherwise. I was literally seeing stars.”
“That’s cute. What does he look like?”
“Moody,” Jonah said. “But only if you don’t catch him right. He seemed quite sweet some of the time, it was fucking confusing.”
“It must’ve been if you’re swearing about it. Are you going to see him again?”
“Literally? I suppose so, we work in the same building. I don’t know about, uh, socially, though. He didn’t leave his number when he left.”
“Have you looked him up?”
“Where?”
“On social media. Give me your phone. I’ll do it.” Lily swiped Jonah’s phone before he could protest and opened his twitter account. “What was his name again?”
“Sacha Ivanov. I bet he’s not there, though. He didn’t seem the type.”
“He must be the type if he works for Blutecc. Social media and apps are what they do.”
“That’s work, not personal. Reading his business account wouldn’t tell me anything about him.”
Lily rolled her eyes and tapped at Jonah’s phone. Despite absolute certainty that he was right, Jonah leaned forwards and peered at the screen, watching Lily type Sacha’s name and scroll through the search results.
His heart skipped when her eyes lit up.
She held up the phone. “Is this him?”
Jonah squinted at the screen. The profile avatar was small, but there was no mistaking the chiselled features of the stranger who’d fucked him against his bedroom window. Dressed in a shirt unbuttoned to his chest, Sacha had perfected the look of a man who’d woke up as ridiculously attractive as he’d gone to sleep. And he was smiling in the photograph. Laughing, maybe. Damn, he’s gorgeous.
Lily smirked. “I’ll take that as a yes. I can’t stalk his tweets, though. They’re all in Russian.”
“That’s his first language.”
“Ooooh, does he have an accent?”
“Yeah. It’s sexy as hell, especially when, well. You know.”
“Dirty talk?”
“I think so. It was the right time to be saying something filthy.”
“While you were fucking him?”
“Other way round.”
“Really?” Lily lowered the phone and reached for her glass of Chablis. “You don’t do that very often.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you tell me every sordid detail I ask for.”
“You don’t always ask me that.”
“I don’t need to. Based on past evidence I’m usually confident making an assumption.”
Jonah laughed. “Well, you know what they say about assumptions.”
“I do. And I also know what you say about getting fucked. What was different about this bloke?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. It just happened.”
“Is it going to happen again?”
“You asked that already and I still don’t know the answer.”
“The Russian Twitter account didn’t help?”
“Shockingly no.” Jonah reclaimed his phone and shut down the app, resisting the urge to scroll through any pictures Sacha had posted. His likes and retweets. Any clue to who he actually was. It felt wrong without Sacha’s sardonic smirk for company. Besides, without the context of actual words, what was the point? “I very much doubt it, though. He was pretty clear about second dates.”
“As in?”
“They don’t happen. He’s a one-night kind of guy.”
“But it wasn’t a real date, not officially, at least. Surely he can spare you another one?”