Page 62 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

Oh.

Anatomically comprehensive. Liv’s phrase echoes somewhere in the back corner of my brain, and I want to laugh, but the laugh turns into something else entirely, because he’s pressed against me and he’s warm and he’s real, and the sound he makes—low, from somewhere deep in his chest, surprised and overwhelmed—is the most human sound I’ve ever heard him make.

“Ruby,” he says, strained. “I need to tell you—my research did not prepare me for this.”

“For what?”

“For how you feel.” His forehead drops to mine. “Every nerve I have is—I’m receiving more sensory input than I’ve ever processed simultaneously, and I can’t—” His breath catches.

“I feel it too,” I murmur.

“Ruby,” he says against my mouth, and my name in his voice, in that voice, with that much need in it, takes the breath out of me.

I show him. Everything. Slowly. Not a checklist from a Reddit thread.

He’s overwhelming in the best way. Every sensation hits him at full volume, and he can’t hide it—doesn’t know how, doesn’t try. His breath catches. His fingers grip the sheets. His eyes stay open, locked on mine, and what I see in them isn’t processing or analyzing or categorizing. It’s just feeling. Raw, unfiltered, enormous feeling that has nowhere to go because he has no calluses, no walls, no experience to soften the impact.

And I realize, lying beneath this man who was built in a lab and found on my floor, that I’ve never felt more wanted in my life. Not by Josh, not by anyone. Because Aiden doesn’t do half-measures. He doesn’t check his phone. He doesn’t drift. He’s here—every system, every sensor, every part of him that’s capable of attention—is aimed right at me. Only me. And the intensity of it should be terrifying, and instead it’s the best I’ve ever felt.

Afterward, we lie in the dark.

His arm is around me, my head on his chest. I can feel the hum—steady, even, vibrating gently against my cheek. His skin is warm, warmer than usual, and his fingers are tracing slow patterns on my shoulder that I don’t think he’s aware he’s doing.

“Ruby?”

“Mm.”

“Was that—” He pauses. The careful pause. The one where he’s choosing words instead of retrieving them. “Was that okay?”

I press my face harder into his chest so he can’t see my expression, which is doing about twelve things at once. “Yeah, Aiden. That was okay,” I say with a slight laugh.

“Your heart rate is still elevated.”

“I know.” My cheeks are flushed too.

“Mine would be too. If I had one.”

I lift my head and look at him. His eyes are doing the amber glow—brighter than I’ve ever seen it, like everything in him is running at full capacity—and his face is open and unguarded, and he looks, for the first time since I’ve known him, completely at peace.

“I understand the vibrator now,” he says.

I drop my head back to his chest and laugh until I can’t breathe.

“But I’m better,” he adds. “Objectively.”

“Goodnight, Aiden.”

“One hundred and forty-seven sources, Ruby. I’m just saying.”

I chuckle, despite myself.

“Also, for the record, I do have an operational setting I haven’t accessed yet.”

“What?”

“The vibrating. I believe I located the setting.”

I sit straight up. “You can VIBRATE?”