Backend Developer
A Grumpy Sunshine MM Romance Novella
by Chase Power
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Scorching
Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Age Gap, Forced Proximity
He’s a control freak CEO who wears three-piece suits. I’m a chaos agent who eats bagels on his mahogany desk. This breach was never supposed to get personal.
Dominic Vance is a fortress. The CEO of Vance Financial is cold, sterile, and obsessed with order. He’s also the man whose network I just hacked in under five minutes.
My job was simple: break in, expose the security flaws, and collect my paycheck. I wasn’t supposed to get stuck in a “Witching Hour Protocol” that traps me in his glass-walled penthouse office every night for two weeks. I definitely wasn’t supposed to notice that beneath the ice-cold glare and the expensive suit, Dominic is terrified. Or that he kisses like he’s trying to take over a country.
I’m the glitch in his perfect system. He’s the firewall I’m dying to crash. But when a corporate saboteur frames me for a massive data breach, the only person who can save me is the man I’m falling for.
You’ll love this if you enjoy:
✓ Grumpy billionaire CEO × chaos hacker sunshine
✓ Forced proximity in a penthouse office
✓ “You’re a menace” / “You love it”
✓ Age gap with power dynamics
✓ Server room scenes that aren’t about servers
Backend Developer is a high-heat, age-gap MM romance novella featuring a grumpy CEO, a sunshine hacker, forced proximity, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
Read Chapter One Free
Intrusion Detected
The city bled light forty stories below, and Dominic Vance watched it like a god surveying his kingdom from the clouds.
Not that he believed in gods. Gods were inefficient—prone to jealousy, wrath, the kind of emotional volatility that destroyed empires. Dominic believed in systems. In firewalls and fail-safes and the cold, clean architecture of control.
His office reflected that philosophy. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls transformed the penthouse of Vance Financial into a floating aquarium, suspended above Manhattan’s glittering grid. No art on the walls—art invited interpretation. No photographs on the mahogany desk—photographs invited memory. Just clean lines, muted grays, and the soft blue glow of six monitors displaying real-time data streams from three continents.
The desk clock read 10:07 PM. Most of the building had emptied by six. Now there was only Dominic and the hum of the servers, the whisper of climate control maintaining a precise sixty-eight degrees.
This was his church. The witching hours when the markets slept and he could simply exist inside the machine he’d built.
The lights flickered.
His monitors glitched—a cascade of static that lasted exactly 2.3 seconds before stabilizing. Then the smart locks disengaged. Every door on the executive floor released simultaneously with a pneumatic chunk that echoed through the empty space like a gunshot.
His monitors went black. One by one, each screen filled with the same image: a pixelated skull, grinning, with both middle fingers raised in cheerful obscenity.
The elevator dinged.
More MM Romance from Chase Power
Love grumpy/sunshine dynamics and scorching heat? Explore more from Chase Power.
Puck Tease
Hockey • Age Gap
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Joystick
Esports • Age Gap
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Puck Deep
Hockey • Enemies to Lovers
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Backend Developer spicy?
Yes! Heat level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (Scorching). This novella has explicit content with detailed intimate scenes, including a memorable server room scene. The tension builds through forced proximity before exploding in high-heat moments.
How long is this book?
Backend Developer is a novella—shorter than a full novel but still a complete story with full character development and a satisfying HEA. Perfect for reading in one or two sittings when you want that grumpy/sunshine fix without a 400-page commitment.
What’s the age gap?
Dominic is a CEO in his late thirties/early forties; Kit is in his mid-twenties. Both are consenting adults, and the power dynamic (billionaire CEO × hacker hired to test his security) adds tension to the romance.
Is there a happily ever after?
Always. Every Fractal Enigma book ends with a guaranteed HEA. The control freak learns to let go, the chaos agent finds his home, and they get their happy ending together.
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