Free Bedding the Geek Tycoon by Desiree Crimson

One
    Jenn MacLennan was a superhero.
    Granted, she wasn’t the kind of superhero that punched out villains or saved people. Her archenemies were bugs that debuggers couldn’t fix. She faced down millions of lines of code that had, somewhere in their depths, a little error that made the entire damn program malfunction.
    There were no lives at stake or exploding buildings, but as far as her open source project was concerned, Jenn was a superhero. That was good enough for her.
    A drop of sweat rolled down from Jenn’s hairline, trailing down to her jaw and dripping to her chest. She swiped at it with the back of her hand, pushing her sweat-damp hair behind her ear with the same impatience.
    She watched her monitor as computers in the data center downstairs pounded away at her data. If she wanted to wait a month, the machines could solve the problem, but Jenn had never been patient. The program was a thousand times faster with the right operator at the keyboard.
    Jenn typed in the completed formula, making sure she got every single character right, and hit the enter key.
    The three dimensional character she had been modeling stopped its frenzied shifts. The non-planar polygons fell into place.
    “It works,” Jenn said softly, dropping her pen to the desk with a clack . “It works .” She threw her head back and pumped her fists into the air. “ Yes !” she yelled, momentarily drowning out the hum of her computer.
    The cheer fell awfully flat without anyone to join her.
    Her hands slackened in her lap.
    “Good job, Jenn. You’re so brilliant,” she muttered at her reflection in the mirror she affixed to the monitor so she could tell when her boss was approaching. Her tired eyes stared back. “Oh, why, thank you, Jenn. You’re so considerate for noticing.”
    Feeling about a million times more pathetic than she did before conquering the code, Jenn stood, feeling twinges of pain in her legs and back from having been sitting too long.
    She tried to rub feeling into her legs, bared by cut-off shorts that were by no means appropriate for her office. Nobody would dare discipline her for breaking the dress code. She was the best programmer in the entire company, despite her use of corporate equipment for pet projects, and she never missed a day of work. They couldn’t afford to scare her off.
    She stretched out her back, winced at the pops it elicited, and bent to check her computer clock.
    Nine-thirty at night.
    “Lunch time,” she announced to the empty office. “How does pho sound? I think pho sounds awesome.” The tiny Tom Servo figurine stuck to the side of her monitor with a wad of gum did not respond.
    Her cell phone rang from somewhere in the cubicle, startling her with the theme from Super Mario World. Jenn felt around on her desk for her phone. She found it hidden behind the monitor.
    Shock jolted through her at the name on the screen.
    Ryan Stone .
    For an instant, she felt a surge of disorientation—like she was back in the computer lab at college, hogging the equipment to compile naughty little viruses while living off Red Bull and Doritos.
    Ryan had been a computer science TA, and she had been completely head-over-heels for him—even though he hadn’t known she existed.
    How could he have her number two years later?
    She pressed the button to accept the call. “Hello?”
    “Is this Jennifer?”
    Oh dear Zelda, that was a sexy voice.
    “Yes,” she said, trying to sound composed. “Is this Ryan Stone?”
    He gave a low, masculine chuckle that sent thrills to the hot place between her legs. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine him the way he looked at graduation. That wide jaw, the dimpled chin, the Superman smile hidden behind Clark Kent glasses. He was a weightlifter, too, so he even had superhero shoulders. But it was nothing compared to his brain. Ryan was a geek girl’s wet dream.
    “How did you know it was me?” he asked.
    Because Jenn had tethered her phone to a private database that