Description

About the book

He signed a lease. He didn’t sign up to fall in love.

Teo Navarro is broke, exhausted, and days away from losing his apartment.

Then a listing appears that makes no financial sense: luxury downtown penthouse, eight hundred dollars a month, grad student preferred.

The catch is Julian “Jules” Black.

Jules is the landlord’s son—wealthy, charming, and lonelier than he knows how to admit. He has subsidized roommates before because paying to keep someone nearby feels safer than asking them to stay.

Teo refuses to play along with the fantasy that money erases the imbalance between them.

He argues about groceries. He refuses to be impressed by marble counters and expensive whisky. He insists on being treated like a roommate, not a possession.

Then forced proximity becomes attraction, attraction becomes a shared bed, and the lease starts turning into a relationship neither man knows how to define.

When Jules’s father threatens to end the arrangement, Teo has to decide whether staying means being kept—or demanding something real from a man who has never learned how to offer love without paying for proximity.

Book details

Author: Jace Wilder
Genre: MM contemporary roommates-to-lovers romance
Tropes: Sugar-adjacent arrangement, roommates to lovers, forced proximity, age gap, class difference, slow burn, praise kink, touch-starved hero, contract/arrangement
Heat: High heat; explicit adult romance
Ending: Happily ever after

Content notes

For readers 18+. Contains explicit MM sexual content, strong language, financial anxiety, class-based power imbalance, family conflict, and housing insecurity themes.