Random Encounter by Allyson Lindt

Seven

Dustin

Three days of beta. Three days of seeing the world play the game we’d built. Three days of epicness.

I grinned like an idiot the entire time we were loading loaner computers back into my SUV. Phillip and Adrienne were cleaning up the conference room, while Brandon and Jeremy helped me fit everything in my vehicle.

The early reviews were fantastic—of course—but Brandon and Jeremy had opted not to read them. Brandon already knew people were going to love the music, and Jeremy said he didn’t read reviews. Any of them. Apparently he’d managed to avoid them most of his career.

It was a writer thing, he told me.

“That’s the last of it.” Brandon tossed a bundle of cables into a crate in the front seat. “Tonight?”

“Looking forward to it.” Watching Danny and Reese on stage was always fun, and it would be the perfect end to a perfect week.

“Dustin, a minute?” Judith joined us behind the building.

Never tell the boss no, especially when I was working to convince her I wanted that Director job. “Sure.”

“We’ll catch you later.” Brandon waved, and he and Jeremy headed back inside.

She waited until they were gone, before speaking again. “I sent the information to Legal that you gave me. It looks good, thanks.”

“Any time.” I knew where the balance lay between a casual tone and a professional one and I summoned it now. “I’m sorry this came down on us.”

“Not your fault. As long as the asshole backs off, it doesn’t matter. I’m hearing a lot of good things about the beta this week, both internally and from fans and streamers.”

I couldn’t help my grin. “Because this game is going to blow them out of the water. Everyone I’ve talked to loved the company-sanctioned gaming we did in the conference room. Thank you for permission to set that up.” I wasn’t above reminding her of the awesome things I’d done. Every conversation was a chance to push how good I’d be if she promoted me.

“Keep it up,” Judith said. “I want to see more of this kind of teamwork.”

“You don’t even have to ask.”

“Go. Return this crap. Tell them I send my thanks.” She patted the back of my SUV, where the computer equipment sat.

I gave her a salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes and walked back into the building.

I did one last mental check, making sure everything I’d borrowed was going back, and I headed to Rinslet.

Was this part of my job? The hype? The build-up both internally and externally?

No.

Was I going to keep doing it anyway?

Damn right.

I’d flitted through a lot of jobs in my life, thanks to a knack for picking up new things and running with them. The art had been at my core for as long as I could remember, but it wasn’t my job until Rinslet. Like Adrienne, like so many of the people at Rinslet, I was hired for my talent rather than experience, and given a chance to step into a highly sought after job.

Unlike Phillip, Brandon, and most of the others at Aces, I was older when I was hired. I’d been doing the video game art for less than a decade, and some of my colleagues were going on twenty years. No one worked for the same company for twenty years in tech. Especially in the cutting-edge jobs. While it was true, Aces was a new company, they were really Rinslet 2.0. Aside from Adrienne and Luna, I was the new guy.

At Rinslet I’d found a group of people I wanted to work with, but it was still just a job.

When we all started talking about this game, when Judith said she could fund it, I was all in. This was a project I was fully behind, not specifically because of the extra options for characters to fuck, but it was new. It was groundbreaking. The game itself was brilliant. I wanted the world to love it as much as I did.

Maybe the world was asking for a bit much, but I was willing to push every limit to get our name out there. Aces didn’t have a marketing or client-facing group specifically—it wasn’t in our budget. Since everyone at Rinslet had media training, we’d decided we could handle spreading the word in other ways.

And I was God damn fucking determined to make that happen.

I’d hate to take the Director position from Phillip, who had become my closest friend over the past few years, but he’d been up front about not wanting a management job if it only involved bossing people around. He wanted to mentor.

Maybe it hadn’t made sense to put me in charge of a two person team, but Brandon was the only one in Music, and he had a director spot, while an office sat empty in the Art room, waiting for my name to be on it.

I pulled into the loading docks at Rinslet, and Chloe was waiting for me with a couple of younger guys I didn’t recognize. This company came from humble beginnings, just like Aces, and now they had their own eight story building in the middle of downtown, with their name in big bold letters on the glass.

We were going to hit this point, and it was going to happen long before I retired.

After I parked, I greeted her with a smile and a wave, opened the back of the truck, and grabbed a box of keyboards.

“Let them do the work.” Chloe jerked her thumb at the guys. “I wanna talk game.” She was a few years younger than me, probably about Adrienne’s age, but I wanted to be Chloe when I grew up. She’d started in writing when she was fresh out of high school, had created the core storyline for Rinslet’s most popular game, and now ran a large portion of the company.

I stepped aside and let her minions grab their first load of equipment. When they had disappeared inside, I asked, “What do you think?”

Her eyes grew wide with what I assumed was supposed to look like innocence. “I’m not supposed to have access to your beta. I’m the competition.”

“Uh-huh.” I chuckled. “Should I ask who gave you a key, or are we going to play the I heard from a friend of a friend?” It was probably Judith who let her into the beta. Or Scott. He was a half owner of Rinslet, and a silent investor in Aces. He kept the latter quiet mostly to let us rise on our own merits, and not at all because he didn’t want his name associated with our game.

Chloe shrugged and her smile never faded. “Let’s just say Santa visited early, but my feedback is firsthand. Are you following the early reviews?”

“Duh.” The bad was exactly what I expected—people hated it either for the smut content or the diversity, and frequently both. But the good was really good. “But what did you think?”

“It’s incredible. Seriously. It’s visually stunning, the fight mechanics are spot-on, and Sonya and Jeremy did a bang-up job with the side quests. We get to see the main story soon, right?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

She raised her eyebrows. Yeah, we both knew I was full of it. She wasn’t going to tell anyone.

“As long as bug fixes go well this round and next, we’re opening up the first twenty levels in two weeks. Main story and all.”

Chloe grinned. “I have a huge favor to ask. Feel free to tell me no, but I will beg if it’ll help.”

“As long as it won’t get me fired, or arrested or killed I guess, ask away.”

“Santa only brought me one beta key. I don’t suppose next round I could get a second one for Jordan.”

Jordan was Chloe’s boyfriend, and someone else I had mad respect for. I’d been hired to replace Jordan when he was fired over a bullshit public scandal, so we’d never worked together, but the guy was wicked talented and a blast at parties. “Only because it’s you and him,” I said.

Her grin spread. “You’re the best. Seriously. I owe you.”

“I’m not keeping score, but if I were, right now we’re more than even.” I jerked my thumb at the computer equipment she’d helped me secure. “Tell him to check his email in a couple of days.”

We chatted a little longer as we helped her guys finish unloading the SUV, mostly gossip about who’d been promoted and who had moved on to other things, and I was on my way.

Manit had been a great week. The beta. Addie.

Whispers of her perfume, or whatever it was, teased my memories. I may not be able to describe a scent, but I knew exactly how she looked, and the woman did amazing things to a lightweight camisole with a button-down open over it.

She should join us tonight at the club. To celebrate. She was part of the team, after all. And she was probably even more fun outside the office than in. She had that quiet girl next door attractiveness, with just the right blend of life experience and naïveté. I didn’t know quite how she made that work, but fuck I liked it.

I dialed her at the next stop light and put her on speaker.

“Hello?” Her voice was sweet and hesitant. I bet she was insatiable behind closed doors.

Or wanted to be. “Hey, it’s Dustin. What are you doing tonight?”

“Not a clue. Nachos and bad sci-fi movies? Am I being graded on my answer?”

I laughed. “Nope. No grades. A couple of us are going to celebrate an awesome week and head to a local club. You should meet us there.”

“What kind of club?” Like that, the hesitation was back.

“The kind with beer and a live music. Brandon’s boyfriend Danny is performing.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure.” And now she was light again.

What? “What other kinds of clubs are there?” I had a list in my head, but I needed to know what she was thinking.

“The kind with collars and leather and whips and... you know. A girl hears stories about orgies, and starts to wonder— Never mind.”

Was she the kind of woman who wanted to be cuffed and collared? Maybe. But something told me Addie was more a strip-me-down-in-front-of-an-audience-and-make-me-come-while-they-watch kind of gal.

Like that, I was hard. Did a series of celebrations filled with everyone screwing everyone sound like fun? Yeah, but mostly to the part of me that was still twenty. I wasn’t up for weekend orgies these days. Drawing the extra limbs was hard enough. Keeping track of them during actual sex? No thanks.

Whoever I was dating tended to be plenty when I wanted to get laid, and when I didn’t have that option, Phillip was always a great fuck. But I might consider a threesome if Addie was involved.

“Nope, just the normal kind of loud, obnoxious, fun bar-type club,” I said.

“Sounds great. When and where?”

Yes. How was I so excited about such a simple answer? “Eight, so you’ve got time. I’ll text you the info when I get home.”

I might need to do something else when I got home, like take a little life advice from Something About Mary. Get rid of the raging hard-on digging into my jeans, so I could focus on the evening out.