Chapter 20

For a moment, Dante was entirely speechless. Was this guy joking? How was that even a question? Dante studied his expression carefully, wondering if Rhys was playing dumb on purpose, but Rhys looked genuinely nervous—like a young boy, repeatedly meeting Dante’s eyes and then quickly darting away.

This had been four years ago, so Rhys really had been astonishingly young back then. Rhys Elliott at twenty-five could easily have been compared to Adonis or Eros from myth. Now, slightly older, he was closer to Apollo.

“Yes. You’re handsome.”

“That’s a relief.” As if a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders, Rhys covered his mouth with his hand and murmured the words softly.

Dante had absolutely no idea what was such a relief, but either way, Rhys’s mood seemed to have drastically improved, so Dante smiled along.

“Have you eaten yet, Dante?”

“Haha, not yet. I was just starting to get hungry. If you haven’t either, would you like to grab a bite together?”

“I’d love that,” Rhys replied seamlessly. “If Dante is all right with it, I was thinking of a Greek place nearby. What do you think?”

“Sounds like an excellent plan.”

His original agenda to buy Rhys a single coffee and bounce vanished entirely from his head. As if he had never harbored such a thought in the first place, Dante began walking beside Rhys in the direction he indicated.

Rhys mentioned he had already made a reservation at a nearby restaurant and began explaining its signature dishes, while Dante stole a glance at his face once every five seconds. There was a faint floral scent clinging to him back then, too. It wasn’t as pronounced as the scent Dante had picked up recently, but he remembered thinking that he liked it because it was entirely different from the heavy colognes ordinary men wore.

He only remembered that he actually had to return the handkerchief after the meal had ended and they had relocated to a café for dessert. During lunch, they had formally exchanged details about where they lived and what they did for a living. They talked about their respective hobbies and how they usually spent their days off. Rhys listened attentively to Dante’s every word, treating the mundane details as if they were truly vital pieces of information.

Then, after they changed locations, ordered coffee, and sat down, Dante finally retrieved the handkerchief from his back pocket.

“I’m returning this. I used it well the other night.”

He had definitely folded it neatly before putting it away, but by now, the handkerchief was slightly crumpled. As Dante uselessly pressed at the fabric with his fingers, trying to smooth out the creases, Rhys watched his movements intently before opening his mouth. The face that had been smiling ever since they met had suddenly settled into absolute calmness.

“Have you ever seen this kind of handkerchief before?”

It was a sudden, specific question. Dante turned it over in his mind, staring down at the cloth. The blue cotton fabric itself looked fairly common in terms of material and color, but the embroidery was undeniably unique.

“The embroidery is beautiful. It resembles your eyes, Rhys.”

At Dante’s answer, Rhys smiled quietly and accepted the handkerchief. His slowly extended hand brushed lightly against Dante’s fingers as he took it. Dante paused, momentarily captivated by the warmth and sensation that grazed him in that fleeting instant. He barely managed to maintain his poker face, but for a split second, he felt incredibly strange. His heart pounded, and a sudden heat rose through him, identical to the sensation he had felt outside earlier.

After Rhys took the handkerchief, Dante lowered his hand beneath the table. Every spot Rhys had brushed tingled fiercely. Dante clenched his fist tight, rubbing his fingers roughly with his thumb, but the only thing that achieved was a sudden spike of inexplicable tension.

What the hell was wrong with him? If the other person had been a woman, he would have realized immediately that his heart was fluttering. But Dante, at the time, had not even considered the remote possibility that he could feel that way toward another man.

“Dante seems to say sweet things so casually,” Rhys noted suddenly, fiddling with the handkerchief.

Because his voice sounded noticeably lower than before, Dante leaned his upper body forward, moving closer to him, bothered by the sudden shift in tone. Meeting Rhys’s eyes, he asked, “If I offended you, I’ll apologize.”

“There’s no way you offended me. It’s more that…” Rhys’s blue eyes stared steadily at Dante. “I thought you must be very popular with women. You must have dated a lot, too.”

It felt like pure deception for someone who looked like Rhys to say something like that, but Dante objected anyway. “Not at all. I can count the number of people I’ve genuinely dated on one hand.”

That wasn’t a lie. It was exactly five.

“If anything, aren’t you the one who’s so popular it causes problems, Rhys?”

“I don’t know…” Rhys murmured, as if he genuinely had no clue, like someone with absolutely zero interest in the matter.

“You don’t have to be that modest. Someone like you must be adored by men and women alike, regardless of secondary gender designation.”

“Isn’t that your story, Dante?”

“Not really. I don’t usually even talk much with men. I say this as a man myself, but men are generally thoughtless, selfish, violent creatures. They also smell awful. People as clean and beautiful as you, Rhys, are incredibly rare.”

The longer Dante spoke, the more ambiguous Rhys’s expression became. For several minutes, he stayed completely silent, sipping his latte and simply watching Dante quietly.

As the sudden silence settled over the table, Dante also awkwardly sipped his iced Americano. Lazzaro always gave him endless shit for drinking iced Americanos, claiming he wasn’t qualified to be Italian. Dante was wondering if he should crack some useless story like that to refresh the suffocating atmosphere when Rhys, after minutes of silence, finally spoke again.

“You said you only date Beta women, right?”

Dante quickly nodded. As the silence had stretched on, he had been growing increasingly anxious that Rhys was finding the meeting boring.

“Yes. Did I mention that while we were drinking?”

“You did. You also said anyone else felt burdensome. You mentioned that because you didn’t really understand designations or pheromones, dealing with them was difficult.”

Apparently, he had spilled his entire life story to a first-time acquaintance while wasted. Dante acknowledged it with an embarrassed laugh.

“I just don’t like complicated things. I’m not exactly a deep thinker, and… more than anything, I can’t help them with things like cycles. I don’t want to deal with that.”

“Even if the other person said it was fine?”

“Yes. A boyfriend who can’t take responsibility for his partner’s most important physical problems has failed as a boyfriend.”

Rhys took another slow sip of his coffee, then straightened his upper body, elegantly crossing his legs. Lacing his fingers together over his knee, he smiled softly and asked, “Even if she looked exactly like your ideal type—if she were an Omega or an Alpha, she would be completely out of the question?”

At this point, anyone else might have realized Rhys’s questions were becoming extremely personal and had absolutely nothing to do with a modeling gig, but Dante simply answered whatever he was asked.

“Mm… I suppose so. I don’t really know much about Omegas, but I definitely don’t like Alphas.”

Rhys asked gently, “Why is that?”

“I have quite a few Alpha friends around me, and they say when they get too excited or too fond of someone, they start instinctively wanting things like knotting or bonding. I heard female Alphas are similar… But since I’m a Beta, I wouldn’t feel anything from that, would I? The other person would be doing it because they loved me, but it would just leave one side completely pitiful.”

And if, by some microscopic chance, he ended up giving up his backside, that would be a catastrophic problem. Dante, who had heard that female Alphas also possessed male genitalia, briefly imagined that exact scenario and felt physically ill. To Dante, a rigid Beta, his backside was a part of his anatomy meant strictly for excretion, regardless of the genders involved. He absolutely could not tolerate having a place like that compromised.

“…I see. I think I’ve heard that Alphas can do things like that, too,” Rhys murmured, his head slightly lowered as he raised the latte cup to his lips.

Thanks to the angle, deep shadows fell across his face along the high, smooth bridge of his nose, making him look exactly like a flawless marble statue. Dante had been making the entirely irrelevant mental guess that perhaps Rhys became a sculptor simply because he looked like one himself, when he belatedly remembered that this meeting was supposed to be for refusing the modeling job. It had slipped his mind entirely.

“Um, Rhys. About that modeling job you mentioned last time.”

From the moment he met Rhys today, Dante had followed whatever the man suggested as if entirely bewitched. Even so, modeling was out of the question. Sacrificing his hard-earned days off for a man who wasn’t his girlfriend flatly contradicted Dante’s core values.

“Ah, right. We haven’t talked about that yet.” Setting down his coffee cup, Rhys smiled brightly.

When Dante faced those brilliant blue eyes looking at him with such open, naked anticipation, his lips suddenly refused to cooperate.

“I’ve taken up far too much of your time today, haven’t I? I’m sorry,” Rhys said softly. “I’d like to ask for your help on your next day off. What do you think? I’ll pay you $300 an hour. If that isn’t enough, name your price. All you’d need to do is come to my studio and pose for two or three hours. I’ll never ask for any difficult or uncomfortable poses, so please don’t worry.”

Purely in terms of conditions, Rhys’s offer was beyond generous. In truth, Dante’s current salary was already more than enough, but money was always better the more you had, and the work sounded incredibly easy.

“Of course, if you hate the idea of spending time with another man that much, it’s completely fine to refuse,” Rhys added, lowering his eyes with a smile that looked profoundly lonely.

Seeing that expression, Dante found himself utterly incapable of uttering a refusal. His entire body violently rejected the option.

“There’s no way I’d hate it,” Dante answered, setting down his own coffee cup and speaking with absolute certainty so Rhys could feel reassured. “When should we meet next?”

The moment Dante mentioned a future appointment, Rhys’s face instantly illuminated.

“Really?” he asked back, as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

Dante nodded warmly at the adorable younger man. To celebrate, Dante suggested ordering dessert, buying a piece of tiramisu from the café counter along with one of its signature donut-shaped candles, presenting it to Rhys as a small gift.

That was exactly what had transpired during their second meeting.

***