This was not the bathroom.

Vincent came to that conclusion sometime between spotting the yellow mop bucket, and discovering the omega in the early onset of his heat with a vibrator down his pants. However, as disappointed as he’d been, he quickly came to the conclusion that the tiny room he’d found in a quiet section of the banquet hall was better than a bathroom.

His cock was in agreement.

Thoughts of urination fled. Arousal pushed all other instincts away and brought him to act. There was no taking back the question that he’d asked, and no reversing the way he’d pinned the man he’d found in the room to the wall and kissed him. Under most circumstances, Vincent never would have dared to do what he’d just done, but today was different—today, he was two thousand miles away from the city he called home, and all of the familiar faces in it.

A fresh start. A clean slate.

And a gorgeous, mature omega in heat to kick it all off.

Vincent’s hand dipped behind his partner’s fly, and he squeezed the erection he found on the other side. A gasp was his reward, and soon after, his partner wilted against him, resting his head on Vincent’s shoulder while his hips bucked against Vincent’s hand.

“Oh, god.” The tiny utterance was spoken only when the kiss broke. It wasn’t drenched in the husky tones of an omega in heat, but spoken out of levelheaded need—Vincent knew the difference more intimately than he cared to admit. A moment later, the sentence was punctuated with an inward gasp, and Vincent braced himself as the omega pumped into his palm all over again. “Yes.”

“What’s your name?” Vincent asked. He couldn’t recall seeing him at the ceremony. With a face like his, sweet and unassuming, eyes bright and hair dark, falling in loose waves begging to be curls, Vincent would have remembered. And now that he’d seen the finer details of the omega’s face, he would never forget—the fine lines sunk into the corners of his eyes and lips, the thickness and texture of his skin from hours spent outdoors…

Whoever the omega was, he was older than Vincent—possibly old enough that he wouldn’t be going into heat for much longer. The thought stuck with Vincent and made his cock throb. Young omegas, confident and fluid in their sexuality, owned sex, their bodies, and the power their youth afforded them. Vincent found no fun in that. What he preferred in his partners was age. Experience. A rounded understanding of life and sex. To give pleasure to a man like that? A man who’d lived his life, knew who he was, and what he liked?

The idea of pushing someone like that up against a wall and working orgasm after orgasm from them made Vincent hot enough to drop the logical, reserved part of himself and do something he rarely did—embrace the moment.

If this was going to be one of the omega’s last heats, he wanted to make it one he’d be sure to remember.

“Mal!” the omega gasped.

The name was short for something, Vincent was sure, but what it was, he was left to wonder. Vincent brushed his fingers along Mal’s shaft, then turned his head to the side and pressed a hot kiss to Mal’s neck as he contemplated the mystery. They were almost the same height—Vincent was, perhaps, an inch or two taller—and the closeness in their statures allowed Vincent unencumbered access to Mal’s body.

He planned to take full advantage of it.

“Tell me what you want, Mal,” Vincent whispered. A thrill prickled through his chest, and with each word, his confidence grew. When had he ever been allowed to be so dominant? This true to himself? “Tell me how I can help you.”

The scent of Mal’s heat was deteriorating, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t in need of release. Vincent understood what it was like to be enslaved by primal need—to be alone and desperate for relief when only the touch of another human would do. He could help them both. He would help them both. This weekend was his first taste of what his life could be like outside of Corvallis, and he was going to make the most of it.

“The vibrator,” Mal whispered. The sound of his voice was strained, and Vincent barely caught the words. “I need… need to…”

The rest of what Mal said faded into nothing. Vincent concluded his meaning all the same. Before Mal could attempt to fumble his way through the rest of his thought, Vincent parted his hand from Mal’s bulge and retrieved the vibrator from the floor. There was a switch on the side, which he thumbed. The device buzzed to life in his hand, tiny, but fearsome. It needed to be sanitized, but Vincent saw nothing in the storage closet that wouldn’t be caustic. He’d have to keep the vibrator over Mal’s clothing while he brought him to orgasm.

That was fine—Vincent savored the challenge.

With the vibrator in his grasp, Vincent slipped his hand into the open V of Mal’s fly. At a teasingly slow pace, he traced the silicone down the outline of Mal’s shaft, forcing him to savor the contact. Mal gasped and squirmed beneath him, pushing into his hand sometimes and going rigid with pleasure at others. When the toy arrived near his balls, Mal’s face constricted with pleasure. His eyes squeezed shut. He pushed against the vibrator hard—hard enough that Vincent had to pin him against the wall all over again, his knee pushed against Mal’s thigh and his arm barred across Mal’s chest, as the vibrator did its job.

The buzzing may have brought Mal closer to orgasm, but it was the experience he was going to remember, and Vincent would see to it that his actions stuck in Mal’s mind.

He pushed the vibrator closer to Mal’s body, and Mal rewarded him with a choked gasp of delight.

“Yes!” Mal’s head fell back against the wall, impacting it in a way that had to be painful. He struggled to pump his hips, but Vincent restrained him further, forbidding him from taking control. The pleasure Mal experienced was Vincent’s to give, and he refused to relinquish it so easily. “Harder. Harder, please!”

Desire like that couldn’t be faked. The breathless sound of Mal’s voice and the desperation in his tone struck Vincent’s ears as genuine, and need lurched in his groin in response. A growl formed low in his throat, understated, but present nonetheless. He muffled it against Mal’s shoulder, scenting him, drawing the dying notes of his heat into his lungs.

Crisp. Bright. Addictive. Vincent raked his teeth over Mal’s skin, and Mal made the prettiest, papery noises of pleasure for him, so thin and delicate Vincent was sure they’d tear, caught in the ferocity of the currents between them. Vincent’s cock twitched, and he thrust his hips just once, pushing his erection against Mal’s body, right over his groin. Pleasure exploded behind his eyes, and the growl rolled from his throat anew.

Halfway across the country, he’d stepped into the wrong room and found everything that he’d been missing. There was no more fear, no more apprehension. This was what he was meant to do, and where he was meant to be—an omen of what was to come.

“Come,” Vincent uttered. His voice was husky in a way he wasn’t used to, its cadence rounded and heavy. His cock protested against his fly, wanting out and wanting into Mal. “Come in your briefs. I want you to soak them. The rest of the evening, I want you to remember how I made you feel.”

There was a sound in the back of Mal’s throat, highly aroused and so fragile it was almost crystalline. A whine, Vincent would have thought, if it wasn’t for the way it sounded so sweet.

“Oh, god,” Mal breathed. His voice was strained in the same, sweet way, like sugar dusted over honey.

Vincent nosed against his neck and grazed his teeth across Mal’s skin. Another sound broke from Mal’s lips, fuller and more confident than it had been before.

He was accepting his pleasure, Vincent realized. He was owning it.

All at once, Mal lurched forward, and Vincent readjusted his position to pin him back in place. He was glad that he had. A second after Mal’s rebellion, he slumped, boneless, against the wall. His chest heaved, and wetness bloomed on the front of his boxer-briefs.

He’d come.

Vincent eased the vibrator away from Mal’s body and switched it off, then took a modest step back to give Mal some space. The scent of his heat was nothing more than a hint on the air, but Vincent found himself breathing more deeply than he needed to so he could memorize how it sent goosebumps down his arms.

“That…” Mal exhaled slowly and heavily, pushing the air from his lungs. “That was… way too good. I don’t… I don’t hook up with guys. It’s really not like me. I hope you’re not offended, or anything. I, um…”

“Here.” Vincent produced a business card from his pocket. The name on it was old and outdated, but it was what his patients knew him by. What mattered was that the phone number on it was still accurate—and it was. “It’s not a hookup if you get my number out of it, right?”

“You want to give me your number?” Mal asked, sounding mystified.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Vincent smiled. He presented the card and the vibrator to Mal as a package deal. “You’re not the only one that had a fun time.”

Mal accepted his offering, a hint of a blush spread across the bridge of his nose. It was charming.

“I, um, I should probably be… be going,” Mal stammered. He tucked the business card and the vibrator into his suit jacket’s interior pocket, then sidled around Vincent on his way to the door. On the way there, his foot caught on the yellow mop bucket, and he careened forward, arms flailing. Vincent reached out to catch him, but Mal snagged a shelf and righted himself. Balance regained, he brushed off his suit like he’d meant to perform clumsy acrobatics, then nodded at Vincent a little too seriously. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mal moved to the door. His hand rested on the doorknob, but his wrist remained still, and the door remained unopened. Vincent watched him curiously, trying to figure out what was going on inside his head.

“You’re here for Alex and Laurence’s wedding, right?” Mal asked at last.

Vincent nodded. “I am.”

“Then…” Mal swallowed nervously and smiled. The expression, although tense, was genuine. “Then maybe I’ll see you around. It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.”

Seemingly too flustered to say anything else, Mal opened the door and left the room, leaving Vincent on his own.

“Well, then,” Vincent murmured, grinning. He sank against the wall where Mal had been and took a moment to let his heart calm down. Then, without anything more to say, he laughed.

If this was an omen of the life he was about to lead now that he was starting over in Aurora, the move from Corvallis was worth the heartache and hassle. For the first time in the last several years, Vincent felt like his wings were spread and the winds were in his favor.

He never wanted to lose that feeling.

While he grinned at nothing, too swept up in his reverie to bother with his full bladder or the erection that would, inevitably, complicate the piss he needed to take, Vincent’s phone buzzed. He took it from his pocket to find there was a message waiting for him from the Single Dad Support Group—the small group of formerly digital friends who’d become some of the most important people in his life.

Formerly, Vincent distinguished, because today, for the first time ever, the Single Dads were gathered in the same place at the same time. Every one of them had taken time out of their schedules to attend the wedding of one of their own—Gwynning—who’d just married the love of his life, and who was now late to his own reception.

The message was from TeenDad2, who was best friends with Gwynning’s new groom.

TeenDad2: @LoveHarley @xVerity @KnotMyProblem, where are you guys??? Not tagging Gwynn for obvious reasons, but come on! We need to hustle!

xVerity: You’re right. I’ll be right there, TD. I need to find the bathroom first.

TeenDad2: omg xV don’t get confused. When we came to scope the place out last week I no joke walked into a storage closet when I was looking for the bathroom. The bathroom is to the right of the sign, not the left. If you see a yellow mop bucket, you’ve got the wrong door

Vincent looked at the yellow mop bucket in question. It was the same one Mal had almost tripped over. There was a tiny ball of plastic film discarded inside of it, but otherwise, it was fairly unremarkable.

xVerity: Thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure not to mistake the mop bucket for a toilet. I’ll be right there, okay?

TeenDad2: you got it!

Vincent returned the phone to his pocket, rolled his shoulders back, and did his best to conceal the erection he was sure wasn’t going to go soft anytime soon.

Mal.

What a curious name.

Vincent left the storage closet and went next door to use the bathroom, but no matter where he went, thoughts of the omega he’d helped through his heat found him.