own joke and ignoring her huff, he kept drinking and turned on the TV, cued up the guide.
His company was public.
The stock price was good, although it was too early to truly tell if his gamble would pay off. Okay, that was a cop-out. He knew it was going to pay off. The company’s valuation was solid, investors were pumped, his business was steady and increasing and steady.
A good bet.
A great investment.
So, all would be good.
And for the first time in six fucking years, he could take a breath. He could relax. He could . . . do something that would be relaxing. He just needed to figure out what that would be.
Sex.
Yeah, he could do that. He should do that.
When was the last time he’d had an orgasm? Okay, and adding to that, when was the last time he’d had an orgasm that wasn’t courtesy of his own hand? Months? Years?
Sweetheart huffed again.
He squinted at the guide on the TV, hit something at random, and if that something was Dr. Pol then it wasn’t because of the ornery dog next to him.
Ben jerked up, his beer sloshing over his hand, splashing onto his expensive couch, probably staining it irrevocably.
The marathon of Dr. Pol was still going strong, a line of empty beer bottles on his coffee table, and—his eyes flicked down—the devil dog was curled up next to his thigh. Sweetheart had her head on his thigh, and when he glanced down at her tiny white head, her lips tightened.
“Shut it,” he muttered, lifting the bottle to his mouth then wincing and reaching forward to plunk it on the table, ignoring the displeased sound that she made.
It was nearly midnight on a Friday, and he was on the couch with his dead mother’s dog—drunk on the couch with the dog because he was so out of practice relaxing that five . . . he squinted . . . six? . . . beers meant that he was gone.
Room spinning.
Veterinarian on the TV screen shuffling around.
Dog who was the worst dog in the history of all dogs on his lap.
Months since his last orgasm. Years since his last pussy.
For all intents and purposes, he should be out celebrating with a model on each arm. That was what all the tech guys who made it big in Silicon Valley did. They lived large and partied hard, somehow managing to shed their nerdy roots and revel in the excess.
Well, he wasn’t much of an excess guy.
And frankly, he was a nerd all the way down to the marrow of his bones.
Before Sweetheart had highjacked his viewing habits, he’d been an all Sci-Fi all the time guy. Stargate, Farscape, The Expanse, Van Helsing, old movies he’d seen a million times. The more out there, the better.
He liked to escape.
His reality had been more than e-fucking-nough.
But the last few years, he hadn’t needed to escape—or at least, he hadn’t needed that escape. Work had been enough. There hadn’t been a necessity for fantasy.
Now . . . he was a CEO with some time on his hands.
His phone buzzed, and he reached into his pocket to extract it—much to Sweetheart’s displeasure—and saw a notification on his screen.
For an app he’d never downloaded.
You’ve got a new match.
Trailed by some fucking emojis.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
And then he knew.
His fingers worked on the screen, ignoring the notification in lieu of calling the one person who would have the balls to download an app like this onto his phone.
It was nearly midnight on a Friday.
He didn’t give a shit.
It rang twice, three times, and then Claire picked up. “Hello?”
Music blared in the background, a thumping bass told him his assistant had more of a social life than he did, and maybe he was an asshole for calling her at midnight on a Friday.
But in that moment, he didn’t care.
In that moment, he was tempted to fire her.
Which would make his life a fucking nightmare because she was the best person he’d ever hired.
“You downloaded Tinder?” he snapped.
Silence.
Well, silence from the woman, not silence from the background. The bass still thumped, and the noise was intense, so much so that even though he kept the phone a few inches from his ear, he could still hear it.
Same as he could hear her shouted out, “You need to get laid!”
Now, it was his turn for a blip of silence, before he snapped, “I’m your boss, for Christ’s sake!”
This time, she didn’t miss a beat. “You’re my boss, who’ll be a