4

This was the fourth morning in a row that I’d woken like this, poking at Love’s entrance, her nakedness positioned around me in some way, before I was forced awake.

And just like all the previous mornings, I rose with a raging case of morning wood.

Goddamn it.

At least there was the scent of bacon in the air, what Holden, our designated chef, had apparently chosen to make us all for breakfast. A scent that was strong enough to pull me from bed.

I shoved my cell into my pocket and opened my bedroom door, expecting to find the guys parked in our makeshift office.

There were guys, all right, just not the ones I was anticipating.

“Where’s Holden and Grayson?” I said to our coders, who were stationed on the floor, using each end of our coffee table as their desk, fingers pounding their laptops so hard, it sounded like they were jackhammering cement.

“Class, I think,” Brennon replied. With his back to me, all I could see was his thick, wavy hair, looking like it hadn’t been washed in days. The same dark fuzz covered his back and arms—his hairiness was a constant joke in our group. “Our landlord is dealing with our mice problem, so we’re here until that’s handled. Lucky you. Those little fuckers ate a hole right through my bedroom wall.”

“City living,” David groaned. “Anyway, Holden made about two pounds of bacon before he left. We helped ourselves.” He finally looked up from his computer, and the second our eyes connected, he immediately shielded his. “Jesus, Easton, put that fucking thing away.”

What fucking thing?

I looked down my body and saw the tent inside my mesh shorts. “Shit, sorry.” I tucked my erection under the elastic waistband. “I can’t stop dreaming about this girl I met on Hooked. This is what those dreams do to me.”

“You and almost a million other users as of this morning.” David’s glasses had fallen down his nose, and he pushed them to the top, the frames so small they looked like they were made for a doll.

I froze halfway between the living room and kitchen, realizing I hadn’t logged on to the database when I’d woken up, a ritual I’d been doing every morning since launch. “You’re kidding. We’re at . . . a million?”

Brennon went over to the window, cracking it open a few inches before he took out his one-hitter and lit the end. “Not kidding.” He coughed as he blew out the smoke. “And because of that wild-ass number, we’re at hour twenty-nine, I believe.”

“What’s twenty-nine hours?”

“That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen my bed.” His bushy eyebrows pushed together as he exhaled another hit. “Which means I need more of this”—he held up the small device, which looked like a cigarette—“and a fat raise.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied.

Since we were offering a free one-month trial to all users, we wouldn’t be generating any membership revenue for another three weeks. That was assuming any of the million-plus users would want to continue using Hooked. With our projections much higher than we forecasted, another source of income would be ad dollars, and we’d soon be meeting with an agency that would help achieve that potential.

But I didn’t want to talk specific numbers with the coders until I had more substantial data. What we knew for sure was that we had to pay them a lot more than they were earning now.

And we would.

I continued to the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. “Do either of you want a cup?”

David raised his energy drink off the floor. “Unless it can lift me to the moon like this shit, I’m good.” He returned the drink to the floor and put his long, slick strands into a ponytail.

“You?” I asked Brennon.

He blew out a cloud and said, “I prefer bud,” and he closed the window.

I placed some bacon on a napkin and carried my breakfast into the living room, taking a seat on the couch. “What are you working on this morning, fellas?” I popped one of the greasy strips into my mouth.

Brennon sat on the floor in front of his laptop. “We’re making sure the app doesn’t crash, that it can continue handling the traffic that’s been coming in.”

I stopped midchew. “Did it crash while I was sleeping?”

“Close,” David admitted. “We had several areas not working correctly, but we got it under control.”

“Was that last night when it happened? Or this morning?” Brennon scratched his arm, the sound almost like the sticking and peeling of Velcro. “I don’t even know what day it is.”

“Honestly, I’m as overtired and lost as you two. I think I got about two hours of sleep last night, and I don’t know if that made me feel worse or better.” My phone vibrated and I took it out of my pocket, seeing multiple notifications that had come in during my nap; the most recent was from Hooked. “Messages are working great. I just got one.”