He Slept With the Most Popular Internet Celebrity

Chapter One

The air in the apartment was heavy with the smell of dampened heat, but it didn’t stir Jun nearly as much as the sight of the omega who peered timidly at him through the narrowly opened front door.

He was a petite Black man—barely more than five feet if Jun had to guess—and uncommonly pretty, with ringlets of curls that fell over his brow and formed a dark halo around his face.

Freckles stippled his nose and cheeks, sable speckles on brown skin.

He wore a soft-looking t-shirt and plaid pajama pants that pooled on top of his bare feet—they were too long for him.

“Miles?” Jun asked to be polite, even though he was already sure he’d come to the right place.

The omega nodded, eyes flicking up to meet Jun’s before shyly dropping again.

“I’m Jun. Can I come in?”

The door shut, which wasn’t the warm reception Jun had been anticipating. He blinked in surprise and reached into his pocket to fish out his phone—maybe he had come to the wrong place—but then there came the scrape of a door chain unlocking and the door opened again, fully this time.

“Do you want something to drink?” the omega—Miles—asked shyly as he gestured for Jun to step inside.

“I can get you some water, or… um… well really, I just have water, but there might be one of those single-serve electrolyte powder samples in the junk drawer if you wanted something with flavor. I think I got it in the mail a couple months ago and it wasn’t like I could just throw it out, so I’m sure it’s gotta be in there. I know I didn’t drink it. I—”

He cut himself off abruptly as Jun entered the apartment.

They stood close now, too close for strangers. Too close even for friends.

“I don’t need anything to drink,” Jun told him softly. “All I want is you.”

It looked like Miles was a few degrees away from melting into a puddle on the floor.

He mumbled something indecipherable, his head lowered to such an extent that his chin was nearly tucked against his chest, and made a vague gesture that might have been an attempt to invite Jun deeper into the apartment.

It was way too cute.

What was an omega this shy doing on Grindr?

Infatuated, Jun looked him up and down, biting back a grin.

He knew better than to make assumptions, but at this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Miles was a virgin.

He certainly wasn’t the type of guy who usually put himself out there on apps like these.

Jun wasn’t an expert at hookups by any means, but he’d been around the block a few times, and he had never met anyone quite like this—not on his home turf, and not anywhere he’d gone on tour.

Miles was different, and maybe it was the scent of his heat messing with Jun’s head, but his sweet shyness was doing it for him.

“Do you want to show me around?” Jun asked, not because he was eager to rush Miles into bed, but because he figured if he didn’t take initiative for them, Miles would spend the rest of the night staring at his feet. “I’d love to see your place.”

“Um, yeah. Sure.” Miles darted around him to lock the door, then hurried down the short hallway to stand in the open space beyond.

“The bathroom is on your right,” he said, waving toward the darkened room to Jun’s right, its door ajar.

“The door on your left is a closet, and this is the kitchen slash living room slash bedroom. The kitchen part is here”—he gestured to the right side of the room—“the living room part is here”—he gestured to the left—“and my bedroom is down from the living room, on the other side of the wall to your left. That’s, um, that’s everything.

It’s just a studio apartment. I don’t even have a balcony or a patio.

Just windows. But when the bakery across the street throws out its old bread, sometimes the pigeons will come up and perch on the sill to eat, so that’s kind of neat, I guess… ”

Jun wanted him carnally.

“Do you like birdwatching?” he asked as he followed Miles into the room.

It was tiny. The kitchen was actually a kitchenette, its one square of counter space partially occupied by a coffee maker and its fridge so compact, it looked like it would be a struggle to fit a carton of ice cream in the freezer.

The living room wasn’t much better. There was a loveseat—not even a couch—and a cube organizer pushed up against the wall on which sat an ancient TV.

The screen was black, but the glare from the overhead light revealed a crack that ran down its left side.

The cubes of the storage unit beneath were stuffed full of books, which led Jun to believe the television had been out of commission for a while.

“Birdwatching?” Miles blinked, then widened his eyes as the light bulb went on. “Oh, you mean because of the pigeons. No, I’m not really into birdwatching in general. There’s just something about seeing a pigeon eat a stale croissant up close, you know? It’s funny. They’re cute.”

“When do you usually see them?”

“Crazy early in the morning, usually around five. That’s when the employees at the bakery go through yesterday’s unsold goods and throw away what they can’t sell.”

“Maybe I’ll get to see them, then.”

“You wanna stay the night?”

“Yeah.” Jun smiled. “I think I do.”

The slightest bit of flirting seemed to make Miles’s brain shut down.

He slid both hands nervously into his back pockets and lowered his gaze again, but this time, Jun caught sight of what he was trying to hide by staring at the floor—he was smiling.

He liked being flirted with, even when it made him embarrassed.

“I guess… maybe we should go to bed, then,” Miles mumbled, glancing up just slightly as if to gauge Jun’s reaction.

It wasn’t a difficult assessment.

Jun enthusiastically agreed.

It was only a few steps to Miles’s bedroom nook, in which there was a double bed piled high with soft throw blankets and pillows.

Miles hurried in before Jun had a chance to enter and snapped shut a laptop that had been partially concealed behind the mountain of comfortable things, then slid it under the bed.

It was just as well. The last thing Jun wanted was to be reminded of all the work he was putting off to be here.

“I put on clean sheets this morning,” Miles told him as he shoved the laptop out of sight, seemingly to fill the silence.

“I did spend a lot of time cuddled up in bed watching stuff on my computer after I put the clean sheets on, but I showered before I did it, so it’s not like they’re really dirty.

They’ll probably just smell like my heat.

I’m on suppressants, but I don’t think they take the smell entirely away, right? ”

They didn’t, but that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that whatever suppressant Miles was using was doing a terrible job. It worked enough that Jun could tell he was on something, but the smell of his heat was still so potent, Jun had been hard since he’d opened the door.

“It’s no big deal.” Jun stepped into the nook and stripped out of his shirt, tossing it casually aside. “I like it. You smell good.”

“Thanks. My doctors said that I—”

Miles stopped speaking the second he straightened up and saw that Jun was shirtless.

His mouth fell open, and for a moment he seemed to forget himself, blatantly staring at Jun’s bare chest and defined abs.

He was stricken for so long that Jun had time to come over, closing the distance between them.

“You wanna take this off?” he asked, toying with the bottom hem of Miles’s shirt.

Miles nodded and went to pull his shirt off only to get it stuck on his head.

He cried out and thrashed, but ultimately lost the battle, falling backward onto the bed.

Jun—silently snickering—followed Miles down and freed him from his cotton prison like he might a puppy who’d gotten its head stuck in the loop of a plastic bag.

It took a little tugging, but eventually the shirt did come off, and when Miles’s eyes appeared again, big and brown and beautiful, this time they couldn’t escape.

Jun was on top of him, too close for Miles to effectively duck his gaze.

Their eyes met, and the look lingered.

Jun played it cool, but on the inside, it felt like his heart was about to beat out of his chest.

Miles was adorable.

He’d known it from his Grindr pics, but his pictures were pale comparisons to who he was in real life. He was gorgeous, yes, but his sweet personality made him so much more than that. It made Jun want to do more than simply take his heat—it made him want to get to know him.

Maybe he could talk his manager into letting him stay in Aurora another day.

“I don’t, um…” Miles bit his lip, gaze dipping to Jun’s mouth before darting up to meet his eyes again. “I don’t usually…”

“Do this?” Jun chuckled. “I figured.”

“It’s just, with my heat and everything…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. All that matters is that you want what you want. Don’t worry about what I think—be selfish. Take everything you want from me. I’m here for your pleasure alone.”

Miles nodded, curls bouncing. He seemed too overwhelmed to speak.

“But if anything makes you uncomfortable,” Jun went on to say, “or if you want to stop—”

“I won’t,” Miles said in a rush. “I want you.”

“—then tell me,” Jun continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And if you can’t make yourself say it for whatever reason, then tap me twice on the arm and I’ll stop and check in on you, okay?”

“Okay.”

It wouldn’t be easy to stop when the scent of Miles’s heat was so thick and smelled so good, but the thought of harming someone so sweet and earnest tied Jun’s stomach in knots.

He was always a mindful lover, but Miles brought out a protective side of him he’d never known before. He would do anything to protect him.

Anything.

Even if it came at a cost to himself.

But that was his hormones talking, wasn’t it?

His biological response to Miles’s heat.

It was absurd to think he was so deeply attached to a guy he’d only just met.

In the morning, after they parted ways, he’d feel better.

His head would clear, he’d forget about this hookup just like he’d forgotten about all the others, and he’d move on with his life.

But that would be tomorrow.

There was no sense in depriving himself now. After all, what harm was there in indulging in a little hormonal fantasy?

Especially when it would only last a night.

“Practice tapping my arm,” Jun insisted, distancing himself from those thoughts. “I want to make sure I know what it feels like when you’ve had enough.”

Miles scrunched up his face like he didn’t want to, but he relented without a fight and obediently tapped Jun twice on the arm.

“Perfect. Are you ready for me?”

Miles didn’t answer with words.

He reached up and pulled Jun down into a kiss that was anything but innocent.