Page 9 of Swipe My Alpha
Benji's coffee nearly hits the ground.
"Is that," he says. His voice has gone very high. "Jude. Is that a claiming bite."
"It's a hickey."
"That isnota hickey. I've given hickeys and I've received hickeys and that is a full-on, permanent, you-are-now-biologically-bonded-to-another-person claiming bite." His eyes are huge. "From HAND GUY? The anonymous hookup? You let an anonymous alpha CLAIM you?"
"It wasn't— I didn'tlethim, it just happened, we were in the middle of things and it got intense and his teeth were just—"
"HIS TEETH WERE JUST?!"
"Can you keep your voice down? We're in public."
"Oh,nowyou care about discretion? You, who once described a blowjob technique at full volume in the dining hall?"
Fair point. "That was different. That was comedy. This is..."
"This is you walking around with a mate bite from a stranger whose name youdon't know." Benji is already pulling out his phone. "I'm telling the group chat."
"Benji, don't you dare—"
His thumbs are already flying. I lunge for his phone but he twists away, typing with one hand and fending me off with the other. He's scrappy for someone who weighs a hundred and forty pounds.
"Too late," he says. "Sent."
My phone vibrates. Then again. Then three more times in rapid succession. I don't have to look to know the group chat is detonating.
"I hate you."
"You love me. Now come on, we're going to be late for discussion and you can tell me everything on the way." He hooks his arm through mine and physically drags me toward Henderson Hall. "Start from the beginning. Don't skip the dirty parts."
I give him the version with some of the dirty parts. The scent hitting mid-hookup. The way everything shifted from casual to something I don't have a word for. The bite that neither of us planned. His knot locked inside me while his teeth were in myneck and the bond just... happened. Like a switch flipping. Like something that was always supposed to be on finally turning on.
I don't tell him about the crying. I don't tell him about the way the alpha held me after, his fingers in my hair, so gentle it made my chest ache. I don't tell him about the way he saidwaitwhen I was getting dressed, like the word cost him something.
Some things are mine. Even from Benji.
"And you just left?" Benji says as we push through the doors of Henderson Hall. "With a claiming bite? You just got up and walked out?"
"That was the deal. Anonymous. No names."
"Jude, the deal changed when he put histeethin yourneck."
"The deal is what I say it is."
"You are unbelievable." He shakes his head but lets it go, at least temporarily. "Whatever. Let's see who our TA is. Milo said someone in the Tuesday section told her he's hot. So at least there's that."
Great. A hot TA. Just what I need when I can barely function.
He gives me a look that says he has about forty more things to say about the bite, but we're at the classroom door and we're already two minutes late. I yank my scarf back up, take a breath, and walk in.
The discussion section meets in one of those mid-size classrooms with tiered seating and a podium at the front. Maybe thirty students, mostly bored sophomores and juniors fulfilling their science requirement. Benji and I usually sit in the middle-left, close enough to look engaged, far enough to text under our desks.
I slide into my usual seat. Benji drops into the chair next to me. I pull out my notebook, flip it open, dig around in my bag for a pen, and look up at the front of the room.
The world stops.
He's standing behind the podium. Button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Black-framed glasses. Dark hair, neatly trimmed beard. Those hands wrapped around a dry-erase marker, the same hands from the profile photo, the same hands that pinned my wrists above my head and gripped my hips and held my face while he fucked me so deep I forgot what language was.
