Five Star Review (MateHub)

Chapter 1

A iden unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped inside… then nearly did a one-eighty and walked right back out.

The scent of lube and come and satisfaction reached out to greet him. It brushed up against him, wrapped itself around him, and beckoned him toward Zayn’s room.

He ignored his wolf’s rumble of approval and took a deep, calming breath through his mouth in a desperate attempt to steady himself, to keep from responding to that perfect scent, the one that had been teasing his senses for years. His efforts weren’t entirely successful, but they were enough to prevent his dick from busting through his zipper.

After living together for as long as they had, he should have gotten used to the delicious torture of coming home to find Zayn had been filming another review, but he hadn’t.

They’d been roommates in the dorms their freshman year of college and had decided to get an apartment together after that. If he’d known the side hustle Zayn was going to start during junior year, he would have… Well, he still would have gotten an apartment with him, no matter how many discreet, unmarked packages arrived at their door. He was a glutton for punishment like that.

Zayn never reviewed products when Aiden was home, but that didn’t mean Aiden wasn’t aware of every single time he filmed.

Down the hall, the door to Zayn’s bedroom opened, and he walked out with a loose-limbed sway that nothing but the best of orgasms could produce. He was fresh from a shower, color high in his cheeks. Was this how he’d look after more mutual activities as well? His golden skin flushed, his brown eyes bright, his black hair no longer meticulously styled. Aiden tried to push the thought away, but it had lived rent-free in his head for so long, it’d gained squatter’s rights.

When Zayn saw him standing in the entryway, he grinned. “Oh my god. I’m so glad you’re home. I have to show you this.”

Before Aiden could ask what, Zayn ducked into his bedroom, then emerged again with a box in one hand and an… impressively large dildo in the other.

Aiden did the only thing he could do. He sat on their couch, grabbed a throw pillow, and placed it casually in his lap. As one did. Just his totally normal, one hundred percent usual way of sitting—clinging to a pillow for dear life.

“I need to tell someone about this. It’s insane ,” Zayn said as he plopped onto the couch next to Aiden, a gust of his scent coming with him—sweet, honeyed perfection, a rustle of fall leaves, and beneath that, the maddening knowledge that he was still stretched and ready, still wearing the scent of his orgasm like the headiest of perfumes.

Humans were supposed to have subtle scents, so why did Zayn’s always smack into him like an asteroid hell-bent on causing a mass extinction event? It had taken Aiden a couple days after they’d first met to truly notice, but once he had…

“I’ve never reviewed anything like this. It’s my new favorite toy.” Zayn suction-cupped said toy to their coffee table.

Aiden’s breath caught as he got a good look at the dildo. He could swear he recognized that… No. He had to be imagining things. It was merely a large dick. A very, very realistic one. Uncanny valley level of realistic. But that couldn’t be the dick he was thinking of. His extremely human roommate wasn’t in possession of that piece of merchandise. It was impossible. The only people who could purchase that line of toys knew about the supernatural community, and Zayn did not.

“Right?” Zayn said, misreading Aiden’s stunned silence. “It’s an absolute monster, but that’s not even the craziest part.” He flourished the box at Aiden. “It’s apparently called the Richard Knotz. And yeah. Dick knots . It has an inflatable knot. Like a dog. Plus warming and ejaculating functions. I’m not going to make it ejaculate because it’s got force behind it and I don’t want to make a mess, but you can definitely feel it.”

Oh, fuck .

His extremely human roommate was indeed in possession of something he decidedly should not have been.

Aiden didn’t bother to point out that this knot wasn’t modeled after a dog. It was a wolf shifter’s, and not just any wolf shifter. Richard Knotz was the hottest supernatural porn star in the world; his knotting videos were legendary in their community. But Zayn didn’t know any of that.

“You gotta give this thing a try. I swear, I whited out. Literally lost time. I had to check the recording to be sure, but yep, I came so hard, I zoned out for a solid minute. It’s intense .”

Aiden’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

His roommate, his best friend, the love of his life… liked being knotted.

That information had permanently knocked Aiden’s brain offline. He might as well drop out of university now. Three and a half years of hard work be damned, there was no finishing his senior thesis after that revelation.

“Umm…” he managed to say before Zayn reached out and started rolling the lifelike foreskin down, then up to cover the head, before retracting it again. Aiden held back a distressed whimper and clutched his pillow tighter.

“Look at how the foreskin moves. I’ve reviewed dildos with foreskin before, but none of them felt like this. The way it glides must be new technology. It’s so silky. I bet I can use this for docking. There’s enough here, and I’ve been wanting to try that.” As if to prove his point, he rolled it forward with one hand, then ran two fingers of the other along the inside.

It was official. Aiden had entered his own personal hell. That was the only rational explanation for what was happening here. He’d pissed off the powers that be, and now they were punishing him by making him watch Zayn gently trail his fingers over the head of a magically created dildo, teasing the edge of its foreskin.

Zayn slowed the motion as he glanced at Aiden. He wet his lips. “…Do you have…?” He retracted the foreskin another time, his thumb swiping over the now-exposed head.

“Yeah,” Aiden said, though the word was strangled. He very much did have, and if Zayn wanted to try docking, he didn’t need a toy to do it. He cleared his throat. “So. Where did you get that?”

There was no way Zayn had access to the shop that sold it. MateHub, the supernatural community’s best porn site, operated on a strict ‘if you know, you know’ basis. And as much as Aiden wished otherwise, Zayn didn’t know.

“One of my viewers sent it anonymously to my PO box, but I have no idea where they got it from. I can’t find anything about it online.” He stopped giving the toy a handjob and picked up the box. “This says it’s from the MateHub Shifter Line. I searched for that. Nothing came up. But this has to be a bestseller. I mean, watch this.”

He pulled a remote out of the box and pressed a button marked with an up arrow. On their coffee table, the Richard Knotz started to live up to its name. Its knot gradually expanded with every press.

“There must be some kind of mechanism inside,” Zayn said. “But I can’t figure it out. And it’s so quiet. Almost like magic.”

Not almost . Aiden smelled the enchantments that had been placed on it, the spells the MateHub mages used to make it throb and expand the same way a real knot would.

“I mean, I’ve reviewed knotting dildos before. Those videos get the most views—them and all the fantasy-creature-inspired toys—and I see an increase in payments on my ‘Just the Tip’ button whenever I post one. But this…” He wrapped a hand around the sizable knot. “It’s completely different. You can feel it pulse inside you. Here, touch it.”

“I’m… good? Thanks?” Aiden’s voice came out embarrassingly high-pitched.

“Oh, don’t worry. I cleaned it.”

That much was clear from the scent and wasn’t even ranking on Aiden’s current list of concerns.

His biggest worry at the moment was also the least important. He knew that, but it was hard not to develop a complex. There were many reasons Richard Knotz was a legend, and the largest was currently sticking straight up from their coffee table.

Did Zayn always want something that… girthy? That long? Aiden wasn’t small himself, but in comparison…

“It’s a bit, uh…”

“Yeah,” Zayn agreed, somehow guessing what Aiden was trying to say. “It really is. I honestly didn’t make it to level-ten inflation. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll be giving it another go, but I was hoping they had a size smaller. A few inches shorter, a little less girth, and it’d be perfect. Then I’d get to level ten for sure.” He let out a huff. “But if they have other sizes or products, I can’t find anything . So I don’t know what to do. I can’t put up a review without a link to the product. My viewers are going to want their own, and I’d be missing out on affiliate income.”

Aiden seized on that.

“Maybe it’s a prototype? Someone might have sent you an early version, but they’re not quite ready to launch, so their shop isn’t online yet. Wait a few days and check again.”

That wasn’t it, but it would give Aiden time to figure out what the hell he should do about this.

Zayn slumped against the couch. “You’re probably right.” He stared at the toy for a beat before glancing at Aiden again. “Ever wonder what it’d be like if humans could do something like that?”

“Uh. No. Can’t say I have.” It wasn’t a lie. He never thought about humans having knots. Certain humans getting knotted, on the other hand…

“I suppose.” Zayn sighed. “It feels amazing though.”

Zayn wanted to be knotted for real. This was knowledge Aiden was never going to recover from.

“But seriously,” Zayn said. “You’ve gotta get one of these.”

I already have one , Aiden thought. Okay, not yet, but he could. With the right person.

“At least I have Mr. Knotz to keep me company now,” Zayn continued. “He and I will be getting to know each other real well.”

Aiden wanted to growl at a sex toy. He wanted to storm his way into the MateHub headquarters and demand Richard Knotz keep his merchandise away from his ma— room mate.

But that was his wolf talking, not a logical response. No one in their right mind got jealous of a dildo. He wasn’t thinking about how it would be such a shame if it had an accidental run-in with their garbage disposal. A sane, well-adjusted shifter wouldn’t do that. Besides, the thought alone had him wishing for something more protective than a pillow to cover his dick. He’d never be able to go through with it; the toy was too realistic.

Zayn sighed again, then straightened up. “Did you finish the Astro Techniques homework?”

Aiden nodded, relieved they were changing the subject to more explored space. He carefully avoided looking at their coffee table as he answered. “Yeah, that last photometric analysis was killer.”

“What did you do with the two outliers?”

“Dropped the one that appeared to be a measurement error and kept the second, since it seemed like a genuine extreme value. You?”

“Same.” Zayn grinned at him. “Ready for our overnight trip to the observatory next week?”

“Of course,” Aiden said. They had research to do, but even if they didn’t, he still wouldn’t miss it for all the galaxies in the universe.