Chaos & the Geek (Grace Grayson Security #1) - Elizabeth Stevens Page 0,15

his shirt, where a Storm Trooper was looking at a line-up of a whole lot of robots from different fandoms; Bender, a dalek, R2D2, C-3PO, even Wall-E was there. “I love your shirt.”

He grinned widely before he looked down at it and holy hells the guy was hot. “Thanks. Chaos got it for me last Christmas.” He looked back up at me and I knew I hadn’t been imagining things.

Nerd boy was hot. Not Kit-level hot. But he had the addition of that geeky charm that I could totally relate to.

“Did he have any idea what it meant?” I asked, fighting a smile.

Nico shook his head. “No fucking clue.”

I snorted. “Why am I not surprised.”

“What do you need set up?” he asked.

“Uh, laptop and phone I think?”

“E-reader? Tablet?”

I nodded. “Good thinking. I’ll grab them.”

He grinned and I decided I liked Nico; he was someone I knew how to deal with. Geek I spoke. “I’ll get started on your laptop?”

I nodded as I hurried off to my room to grab my e-reader, after a few minutes of hunting around for it and finding it had fallen under the bed. By the time I got back, Nico was looking over my spectacular mess on the table. He flicked his eyes up to me and pointed at it.

“This shit is heavy,” he whistled.

Here was a guy who obviously appreciated the geek in a woman.

He is also off-limits, I reminded myself.

Nico hadn’t trained with the others – he’d been a replacement tech guy, fifty points to the house of your choice if you can work out what happened to the first guy – but he’d become just as close with Patrick as Kit was. Older brother’s mates were off-limits. It was like an unspoken rule. Unless you were in a trashy romance and then you could have whoever the hell you wanted.

I brushed my hair back. “Yeah. It’s…like quicksand. One step in and I’m deep.”

He chuckled. “I get it.”

I looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’ve lost count of the times Chaos has to literally pull me off the computer to sleep or eat. I get sucked into a whole new world.”

I smiled at him. “Me too.”

I passed him the e-reader and he did whatever he needed to do, his long fingers flying nimbly over the screen much faster than mine ever could. It was damned mesmerising. Finally, he passed it back with a smile.

“I’d best get back. Tank vowed to wipe the floor with me in our sparring session and I should be suitably wary.”

I knew enough about the boys to remember their codenames better than their first names, even if I hadn’t met them. “He’s likely to?”

Nico snorted. “Tank would wipe the floor with The Rock.”

I breathed out. “Ah.”

“Yeah. But we have mandatory sparring. Chaos doesn’t want us going soft.”

“Sensible.”

Nico crooked his eyebrow at me. “I live behind a screen. I haven’t needed combat in…fuck, years.”

“And when the baddies break into your office?”

“Then I’ll tell them I’m not the droids they’re looking for and hopefully distract them for long enough that Chaos or Hawk can come and kick some arse.”

I sniggered. “Sounds like a legit strategy.”

“Much, you’ll find, like camping,” he quipped as though it was second nature, but I knew what he was referring to.

“Ah, no. I think you’ll find that immoral.”

He looked at me like he wondered where I’d come from. “What would you know about it?”

“I know that a spawn point is sacred, dude. Don’t desecrate the spawn point.”

“Fuck,” he chuckled, twisting like he was going to walk away. “Hawk never said you were cool.”

I laughed. “That’s probably because he doesn’t think I am.”

Nico waved a hand at me. “Wanker’s not all that.” He checked his watch and swore again. “I’ve gotta cruise. Aces to meet you. I’ll see you later, I hope?”

I nodded. “I hope so.”

He grinned, gave me a nod, and hurried out.

See, I could talk to men. They just had to be my own kind.

I checked my phone and found it had enough battery for me to call my boss and quit. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but he knew how stressed I’d been with my thesis, so he’d understand.

I hoped.

4

Kit

When I walked in at around three, Amber was sucking on a pen and I had a very traitorous moment.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up and there was a flash of something that passed over her face. I was almost convinced her eyes had widened and she’d caught her lip in her teeth at the