System Error: The IT Boss's Possessive Glitch

The sharp, rapid clack-clack of four-inch crimson designer stilettos echoed against the polished granite floors of the twenty-eighth floor. The frantic rhythm practically radiated panic, causing employees in nearby departments to steal curious glances as she marched past.

'Lita,' or Lalita, the company’s top-tier PR maven, kept her slender back rigidly straight. Her strikingly beautiful face, usually adorned with flawless makeup, was now taut with stress. Her perfectly arched eyebrows furrowed so deeply they nearly tied into a knot.

Clutched tightly against her chest was her trusty, ultra-thin laptop. She held it like a fragile lifeline on the verge of shattering. The screen, which only moments ago displayed a multi-million-baht fundraising campaign for a national VIP client, had gone entirely pitch black. It was a bottomless void, completely unresponsive to her frantic, repeated stabbing of the power button.

And the worst part? In less than three hours, she had to walk into the boardroom and present this very project to the executive board and the client representatives!

"You just decide to die on me out of nowhere? You piece of junk! If you survive this, I swear I'll smash you to pieces and requisition a new one immediately, just watch me!"

She muttered curses under her breath, a huff of warm air escaping her plump lips painted in a trendy brick-orange shade. Sweeping her meticulously curled, golden-brown hair away from her delicate face, she strode purposefully toward the building's main elevators.

Her destination was the fifteenth floor... a barren wasteland that a fun-loving, music-adoring PR girl like her would never dream of setting foot in unless it was an absolute matter of life and death.

The Information Technology and Maintenance Department. Or, as everyone called it: IT Support.

Ding!

The moment the metal elevator doors parted on the fifteenth floor, a blast of freezing air hit her soft skin. The AC here was kept at sub-zero temperatures just to cool the massive servers.

A shiver ran down Lita’s spine. The atmosphere was a world away from the vibrant PR department on the twenty-eighth floor. There was no upbeat pop music playing in the background, no giggles, and no gossip about the latest fashion trends. There were only stark, blindingly white fluorescent lights reflecting off dozens of computer monitors, accompanied by the relentless, torrential clatter of mechanical keyboards.

It was eerily quiet yet bizarrely tense. Lita swept her sharp gaze across the room, searching for her usual go-to tech guy who always serviced her laptop with a sickeningly sweet smile. But today, his desk was empty, occupied only by an 'Out of Office' sign. Her absolute last resort was the tall, broad-shouldered figure sitting at the desk in the farthest corner of the room... a massive, isolated desk that clearly declared the title of 'Head of IT.' He was a man infamous for being the strictest, most ruthless, and most unapproachable person in the entire organization.

'Bhakin.' The twenty-nine-year-old man who held the undisputed title voted on by half the women in the company: The Untouchable Treasure.

Standing at nearly a hundred and eighty-five centimeters, his physique was impeccably maintained, packed with lean, dense muscle hidden beneath his clothes. His broad back was ramrod straight in a pristine white dress shirt, the top button casually undone. Both sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing thick veins mapping across his fair, powerful forearms. Meanwhile, his long, elegant fingers—like those of a concert pianist—flew across the keyboard, executing complex lines of code with flawless fluidity.

Bhakin’s facial structure was as sharp as a master painting. A razor-sharp jawline complemented a strong chin, paired with a straight, aristocratic nose. His deeply defined, undeniably attractive lips were perpetually set in a grim, unsmiling line.

Yet, the most magnetic thing about him were his eyes—piercing, hawk-like, and framed by silver-rimmed glasses that reflected the cold blue glow of his monitors. They were frigid, impossible to read, and radiated such overwhelming authority that no one dared hold eye contact with him for more than three seconds.

Lita swallowed hard, her throat suddenly parched. Even though she was a wildly confident woman, an absolute master at weaponizing her charm and handling all kinds of men, every time she had to face this man, she felt like a high schooler about to get her bag searched by the strict disciplinarian.

Bhakin was nothing like the other guys in the office who stared at her with lust, admiration, or tried to find any excuse to strike up a conversation. He was the only one who looked right through her with a gaze so flat and empty, it was as if she were just an inanimate object trespassing in his personal domain.

But right now, her pride and her hesitation were nothing compared to the absolute catastrophe awaiting her if she missed her 3:00 PM deadline.

She took a deep breath, her full chest rising and falling. She adjusted her stylish, sheer V-neck blouse, instantly swapping her furious scowl for her most intoxicating, sugar-sweet smile. Putting on a show, she slowly swayed her hips, sauntering right up to the stoic man's desk.

"Khun Bhakin..."

She pitched her voice to be a dozen times softer and more seductive than usual. Lita gently placed the dead laptop on the edge of his desk. Purposefully, she leaned her slender arms against his desk partition, angling her body forward.

The calculated move closed the distance between their faces to less than two feet. It was the perfect angle, intentionally flashing her graceful neck and the soft, creamy swell of her cleavage beneath the blouse. Her designer floral-fruity perfume—a sultry blend of sweet blossoms and seductive berries—wafted through the air, directly crashing into the ice-cold man's olfactory senses.

His long fingers, previously flying across the keys, halted for a mere fraction of a second. Yet, Bhakin didn't so much as glance up at the gorgeous woman actively throwing herself at him. His razor-sharp gaze remained locked on the endless lines of code running down his main monitor.

"What is it?" His deep, flat, entirely emotionless voice cut through the air. After that micro-second pause, his large hands resumed typing.

"Well... my notebook just completely died, Khun Bhakin. It died right as I was about to save a highly important presentation file. I’ve tried turning it on, but it won't boot up. Could you please spare a tiny bit of your precious time and look at it urgently? I need it for a boardroom meeting at three o'clock. If I don't submit this work in time, I'm completely doomed."

Lita faked a slight tremble in her voice, looking up through her thick, beautifully curled lashes at the man's flawlessly handsome side profile, playing the damsel in distress. Her slender hand brushed against his muscular forearm—a feather-light, "accidental" touch aimed at using physical proximity to melt the IT Head's icy firewall.

But Bhakin's only response was a long, suffocatingly awkward silence.

Slowly, the tall man pulled his hands away from the keyboard and swiveled his ergonomic chair to face her directly. He reached up, adjusting the frame of his glasses.

The piercing eyes behind those lenses stared intently at her striking face, then trailed down to appraise her outfit. The look was entirely unreadable. It was dead still, yet so profoundly sharp that Lita felt like she was being X-rayed. It wasn't the lustful, hungry gaze she was used to getting from men. It was the clinical gaze of a 'System Admin' running a diagnostic scan to detect a glitch.

"Have you opened a repair ticket in the system yet?"

The short, blunt, and freezing question left his lips, instantly wiping the sweet smile right off Lita’s face.

"Huh? A ticket... Oh, you mean the central IT support system? I was just in such a rush, Khun Bhakin. The computer completely died. The screen went black. I couldn't open the system to submit a ticket through the normal protocol, so I had to sprint down here carrying the machine to find you myself!" She still refused to give up, widening her smile and deploying her absolute maximum puppy-dog eyes. "Please help me, just as a special case? It'll only take a second. Pleeaase, Khun Bhakin kha?"

The purred 'Khun Bhakin kha' and her honey-dripping tone—which could easily make half the men in the company willingly jump into a raging fire for her—failed to shake this man's iron-clad defenses by even a single millimeter.

"Company protocols exist so that everyone follows them, Khun Lalita," Bhakin replied, his tone frigid, absolute, and devoid of any sympathy. "The IT department has procedures and a queue organized by the priority of the central network. If every employee in this building walked their computers directly down to me, claiming their work was the most urgent, my management system would crash just like your laptop. Please walk back up to your department, use a communal computer, log into the portal, and open a ticket through the proper channels. I will assign a technician from my team to handle it according to the queue."

Lita’s jaw dropped. Her large eyes went wide with pure disbelief.

This man had just rejected her!

He outright rejected Lalita, the star PR queen who weaponized her charm so flawlessly that she had never been denied a favor from a man in her life!

The frustration she had been suppressing since her laptop died skyrocketed past her boiling point. Her brimming self-confidence was utterly smashed by the robotic, rule-obsessed sentence from the man in front of her. Lita dropped the sweet act instantly. Flipping a switch, she tilted her chin up defiantly, her beautiful eyes blazing with unadulterated fury.

"But your department's queue stretches into the next lifetime! My presentation is tied to millions of baht. If this project slips through our fingers just because IT couldn't fix a computer in time, is the Head of the Department prepared to take responsibility for the damages?"

"I am responsible for the entire infrastructure and all confidential data in this company. The total valuation and impact of my systems are several magnitudes higher than your project."

Bhakin fired back instantly, not needing a second to think. His tone remained perfectly flat, completely unfazed and unafraid of the explosive anger radiating from the woman standing before him.

"And if we are discussing the root cause of why your computer crashes so frequently that it becomes a 'critical emergency,' it is because you have a habit of downloading high-resolution images entirely unrelated to work and dumping them onto your drive until the storage is maxed out. Not to mention, you leave thirty to forty browser tabs open simultaneously for online shopping. I have emailed you warnings and explained this to you no less than three times, haven't I? Yet, you never cared to manage it."

Lita’s face went numb. It felt like an invisible hand had just slapped her across the cheek. She clenched her fists so tightly her red gel nails dug painfully into her palms.

Was he indirectly calling her an idiot with zero common sense and no basic IT hygiene?!

"Fine! Since the honorable Head of IT is so deeply devoted to universal protocols and queue systems, I will no longer disturb your precious time!"

She spat sarcastically, snatching her laptop back off his desk so aggressively it made a loud thud.

"I'll go back up and open a ticket right now! And I'll be sure to leave a massive note saying, 'Maximum Urgency! So urgent it's on fire!' Let's see which lifetime your honorable queue actually reaches me!"

With that, she spun on her heel, her stilettos stomping furiously as she stormed out of the IT department in a blind rage, her slender back trembling with emotion. She left the office to settle back into its dead silence, save for the hum of the AC and the low drone of the servers.

Bhakin kept his eyes locked on her retreating figure until the automatic doors slid shut. A soft, warm sigh escaped his straight nose. The tall man reached up, removed his silver-framed glasses, and set them on the desk. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his long fingers, massaging away the tension.

Her signature perfume—that intoxicating blend of sweetness and seduction—still lingered in the air. It was a scent he had memorized completely, one that had made a habit of teasing his senses long before its owner ever came into view lately.

He wasn't made of stone. And he certainly wasn't the emotionless robot everyone made him out to be. Did they really think a normal man would feel nothing when the most breathtaking, seductively curved woman in the company intentionally pressed herself into his space? When she leaned in close enough to bare the creamy swell of her cleavage right under his nose? The scent of her skin, the alluring sparkle in her eyes when she called his name in that pleading voice... it awoke a raw, primal instinct inside him that was nearly impossible to control.

But that was exactly what infuriated him. Lalita was the type of woman who was acutely aware of her own value and beauty. She wielded her sex appeal and flirtatious wiles as weapons to manipulate every man around her into giving her what she wanted. She practically handed out her saccharine smiles like candy to every guy in the building—whether it was those sleazy salesmen or the marketing guys who swarmed around her like annoying flies. Those sights grated on his nerves, plunging his mood into a dark, violent irritation every single time he witnessed them.

It was pure, unadulterated jealousy, concealed beneath an icy, stoic mask.

Bhakin admitted it to himself with blunt honesty. He despised it whenever she threw her charms at other men. And it made his blood boil even hotter when she tried to use those exact same cheap tricks on him, as if he were just another weak-willed idiot she could string along.

He was the kind of man who loathed chaos. He hated losing control. And Lalita was the absolute embodiment of that chaos. She was like a dangerous, unidentified strain of computer virus—one fully capable of breaching the impenetrable firewall around his heart and crashing his entire system in the blink of an eye.

He picked his glasses back up and slid them on. His sharp eyes immediately recalibrated, snapping back to a cold, calculating focus. His large hand grabbed the mouse, clicking open the central IT ticketing system on his massive main monitor.

Just as expected, less than five minutes later, a ticket from 'Lalita P.' popped up on the screen. It blinked rapidly with a red banner, indicating the absolute highest level of priority. The description was punctuated with a rapid-fire string of exclamation marks, as if she were screaming at the monitor in pure frustration.

'Machine completely dead. Won't turn on! Urgent billion-baht project due to client at 3 PM! If IT doesn't fix this in time and delays the system, I will march straight up and report this to the CEO myself!!!'

The deep lips that were always set in a hard line slowly twitched, curling upward at the corner into a faint smirk. It was a wicked, predatory smile, dripping with a profound sense of danger—a smile no employee in the IT department had ever witnessed in their lives.

"Stubborn, dramatic, and fiercely competitive as always," he murmured under his breath.

His hand maneuvered the mouse, dragging the cursor over Lita's ticket. With a few rapid clicks, he bypassed the queue, changing the assignee status from 'Awaiting Assignment' directly to his own name.

'Bhakin S.' Blatantly abusing his admin privileges as Head of the Department, he cut in front of every single pending job in the system, completely disregarding the very protocol he had just lectured her about moments ago.

"You want priority access? I'll give it to you." A dark, blazing fire ignited in his eyes behind the lenses. "I'll fix the machine, and then I'll 'fix' this stubborn brat so thoroughly that she won't have the energy to strut around and flirt with any other man."

The tall, commanding figure stood up to his full height. He smoothly adjusted his shirt and sleeves, grabbing a small toolkit and a specialized diagnostic device. Gripping them firmly, he took long, purposeful strides out of IT territory, heading straight for the elevator to the twenty-eighth floor—the battlefield where the furious, seductive PR queen was waiting for him.

Little did she know, by intentionally challenging his system and stirring up the possessive glitch inside a stoic man like Bhakin, she had just opened the floodgates to a scorching, undeniable danger—one entirely prepared to burn through her defenses and melt her down to nothing.

This psychological war and their hidden, forbidden connection were only just booting up. And his security protocols had never let a disruptive virus slip through his fingers. Especially not a virus as insanely sexy and tempting as Lalita!