Chapter 4
Milo
I'm half-hard behind the library circulation desk at three in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
This is not sustainable.
I shift in my chair, pressing my thighs together to ignore the dampness I really shouldn't be dealing with in a public workspace, and scroll up to read it a fifth time.
Anonymous: I keep thinking about what you said last night. About wanting someone's hands on your waist. I'd start there. Both hands, thumbs pressing into the soft part above your hips. I'd hold you still and take my time. I'm not in a rush with you.
My face burns. The slick is already there—not imagined.
A warm, heavy dampness soaking into the cotton of my boxer-briefs, enough that when I shift, the wet friction makes my breath catch.
Beneath the smell of old books and carpet cleaner, I catch a thread of my own scent.
It's sweeter than usual. Sharper. It has that honeyed edge that means my body has made a decision my brain hasn't signed off on.
I'm producing slick at the circulation desk. At the fucking circulation desk.
It's been two days since we matched. Two days, and I've become a person who hides in the bathroom at work to check his phone. A person whose traitorous, embarrassing body responds to text on a screen like it's actual hands.
I type back before I can overthink it.
Milo: you can't just SAY that while i'm at work
Anonymous: Are you at the library?
Milo: yes and i'm supposed to be a professional
Anonymous: Are you blushing?
I glance down at my arms. The flush is visible on my brown skin if you know where to look—the insides of my wrists, the heat creeping up my neck. I'm grateful for the dim lighting and the fact that nobody at this university has ever voluntarily approached this counter.
Milo: ...maybe
Anonymous: Good. I like that I can do that to you from across town.
My stomach clenches. It's not butterflies.
It's lower, and a hell of a lot hotter. It makes me press my thighs tighter together, feeling the slippery drag of slick between my legs.
It's obscene. If anyone were close enough to scent me, I'd have to drop out of school.
Previous KnotMe conversations have been some variation of hey, u up?
followed by a blurry dick pic and a come over?
that made me feel about as desired as a microwave burrito.
Nobody on that app has ever made me blush. Nobody has made me wet.
Anonymous is different.
Anonymous: Tell me something. What do you think about when you're alone?
I stare at the message. My thumb hovers.
I've had exactly two hookups in my life—both before KnotMe, both from parties where someone's friend knew someone's friend.
They were fine, forgettable, and both were with guys who wanted an omega who'd show up, present, and not make it weird after.
I was good at that. I showed up, I made it easy, and I left before the awkward morning part.
I didn't tell either of them what I actually think about when I'm alone, because what I think about is embarrassing and specific.
It involves hands on my waist, sliding down to my stomach—the soft part I always suck in—and an alpha saying stay still, let me look at you and actually meaning it.
I type, delete, type again. The cursor blinks.
Milo: honestly?
Anonymous: Always honestly.
Milo: i think about someone touching my stomach. which is dumb because it's not my best feature or whatever but i think about big hands just. holding me there. pressing down. like they want that part of me specifically
I hit send and immediately want to crawl under the desk and die.
That is the most vulnerable thing I've ever typed on a hookup app.
In my life, honestly. I've never gone this deep with anyone, and the fact that it's a stranger on a screen somehow makes it worse and better at the same time.
I watch the typing indicator pulse. My heart hammers so loud I'm sure the girl studying three tables away can hear it.
Anonymous: That's not dumb. That's the hottest thing anyone's ever told me.
Anonymous: I want to press my mouth there. Right where you're soft. I want to feel you breathe against my lips while I hold you down with both hands. I'd stay there until you stopped hiding.
My cock throbs. It's a full, heavy ache pressed against the zipper of my jeans. My breath comes out shaky, and I grip the edge of the desk with my free hand. The slick is real now. A wet, warm spread that means my body has decided this is happening regardless of where I am.
I'm hard. At work.
I cross my legs, then uncross them. The friction doesn't help. Nothing helps. I want to shove my hand down my pants, but I'm sitting under fluorescent lights next to a "quiet please" sign, dealing with a growing puddle of arousal that I'm going to have to clean up before my shift ends.
Anonymous: Too much?
Milo: not enough
I type it without thinking, my face going hot. I don't delete it. Something about the screen, the distance, the fact that he can't see me—it makes me braver. Like there's a version of me behind this keyboard who says what he actually wants instead of pretending he doesn't want anything at all.
Anonymous: Tell me what "enough" would be.
Milo: your hands where you said. on my stomach. and then lower. slow. i want someone who goes slow and pays attention and doesn't just skip to the part where i'm useful
I stare at those last five words. The part where i'm useful.
I didn't mean to say that. Except I did.
It slipped out the way truths do when you're turned on and tired of pretending.
Now it's sitting on his screen and I can't take it back.
I don't know if I want to. No one has ever gotten this particular confession out of me before.
The typing indicator pulses for a long time.
Anonymous: Anyone who treated you like you were there to be useful didn't deserve to touch you.
Anonymous: When I get my hands on you I'm going to make you forget that word. The only thing you'll need to do is lie there and let me take care of you.
My eyes sting. I'm sitting in a library with a hard-on and wet boxers, about to cry because a stranger on a hookup app said something nice. I don't catch feelings over DMs. I don't leak slick at work.
I press my knuckles against my mouth and take a breath.
Milo: you're dangerously good at this
Anonymous: At what?
Milo: making me feel like an actual person and not just a warm body on an app
Anonymous: You're not a warm body. You're a person who stress-bakes and studies psychology and deserves someone who asks how your day was. I told you that the first night.
He did. He told me that the first night, and I've thought about it every day since. I screenshot the message, immediately feel pathetic for doing it, and then save it to my camera roll anyway because I'm past the point of pretending.
Someone clears their throat.
I fumble my phone. It clatters loudly against the desk. Soren is standing on the other side of the circulation counter, a coffee in each hand. He tilts his head, his dark wavy hair falling across his forehead. He's wearing a sweater that's at least four sizes too big.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." My voice comes out an octave too high. I slide the phone behind a stack of sociology textbooks and try to arrange my face into something that doesn't scream I was just sexting.
Soren sets one of the coffees in front of me. Oat milk latte, from the good place off-campus. He remembered. He always remembers.
"You okay?" he asks, settling into the chair on the other side of the desk like he's got nowhere to be.
"I'm great. I'm very normal. Why?"
He takes a sip of his coffee and studies me over the rim with those calm, dark eyes. Soren doesn't push. That's his thing. He just creates a silence and waits for you to fill it. It works every time because the silence isn't awkward—it's patient.
"I'm fine," I try again. "It's just—there's this guy on KnotMe."
"The one from the other night?"
"Yeah." I wrap my hands around the warm paper cup. "We've been talking. Like, a lot. It's been two days and I've barely slept because we keep—it's just—he's..."
I trail off. I don't have a word for what Anonymous is.
"Different," Soren offers quietly.
"Yeah." I look down at my coffee. "Different. He asks me things. Real things. Like what I study and why, and what I think about. Nobody on KnotMe asks you what you think about. They ask you what position you like and whether you swallow."
Soren's mouth twitches. "So he's a conversationalist."
"He's a conversationalist who also says things that make me want to climb through my phone screen and sit on his lap. I didn't think those two things could exist in the same person."
"They can."
"Can they though? Because my experience suggests that guys who are good at talking are terrible in bed, and guys who are good in bed communicate exclusively in grunts and dick pics."
Soren laughs. It's soft and surprised. "I think you might just have been meeting the wrong people."
I open my mouth to deflect, but I catch the look on his face. He's smiling, but his eyes have drifted to the window behind me. For a second, he's somewhere else entirely.
"Hey." I nudge his coffee cup toward him. "You good?"
"I'm good." He blinks, refocuses, and gives me a real smile. "Tell me more about the conversationalist."
He's deflecting, and I know he's deflecting, but neither of us pushes it.
"It's just a hookup," I say, because the words are familiar and safe.
Soren looks at me. He doesn't say anything, just gives me that patient, steady expression. The lie hangs heavy between us.
"Okay," I admit. "It might not be just a hookup."
"That's allowed," he says. The way he says it—simple and sure, no lecture, no big deal—makes the anxious knot in my chest loosen a fraction.
My phone buzzes behind the stack of textbooks. We both look at it. Soren's eyes crinkle.
"Go," he says. "I'll watch the desk."