The Unclaimed Series by Aspen Hartley

He couldn't open his door. The man on the other side never stopped knocking. Petey Newton hasn't left his Philadelphia apartment in three years. He writes bestselling MM romance novels under a pen name, orders groceries at 3 AM to avoid his neighbors, and sleeps with a stuffed bunny named Milo and a pacifier he's never told anyone about. His world is small and quiet and safe, and he has no intention of making it bigger. Then Carl Holden moves in next door. Carl is a firefighter... moreHe couldn't open his door. The man on the other side never stopped knocking. Petey Newton hasn't left his Philadelphia apartment in three years. He writes bestselling MM romance novels under a pen name, orders groceries at 3 AM to avoid his neighbors, and sleeps with a stuffed bunny named Milo and a pacifier he's never told anyone about. His world is small and quiet and safe, and he has no intention of making it bigger. Then Carl Holden moves in next door. Carl is a firefighter. He's six foot two, steady, patient, and completely unfazed by the fact that his reclusive neighbor communicates exclusively through Post-it notes stuck to his door. When Carl starts writing back, Petey discovers something terrifying: he wants to write back too. What begins as notes on a door becomes texts, then dinners, then the slow unraveling of every wall Petey has spent his life building. Carl doesn't push. He doesn't rush. He sits on hallway floors at five in the morning and waits. He learns the difference between the version of Petey who writes literary fiction and the version who needs to be held and called "baby" and told he's good, and he doesn't flinch from either one. But letting someone in means letting them see everything. The anxiety. The regression. The stuffed bunny and the weighted blanket and the pacifier and the parts of himself that Petey has never shown anyone outside the found family he built on a Discord server called The Unclaimed. Carl isn't a Daddy. He doesn't know what littlespace is. But he knows how to sit on floors. He knows how to wait. And he knows that the bravest person he's ever met is the one who can't open his door. Petey is a full-length contemporary MM romance featuring a gentle Daddy/little boy dynamic, a firefighter who learns to care in a language he didn't know he already spoke, a found family of fierce and loyal friends, and an open-door love story that proves the most extraordinary relationships are built from ordinary mornings. Content includes: DDLB dynamics, explicit sexual content, anxiety and agoraphobia on page, age regression (adult, consensual), praise kink, and a guaranteed HEA. Intended for readers 18+. less

Otto Kealoha is the man everyone leans on. He's never once asked someone to lean back. Thirty years old. Tattoo artist. The biggest person in every room he walks into. Otto has spent his entire adult life being misread. Too broad to be soft. Too steady to need holding. Every man he's ever shown the gentle side to has looked at his frame and decided it didn't fit. So he hid it... moreOtto Kealoha is the man everyone leans on. He's never once asked someone to lean back. Thirty years old. Tattoo artist. The biggest person in every room he walks into. Otto has spent his entire adult life being misread. Too broad to be soft. Too steady to need holding. Every man he's ever shown the gentle side to has looked at his frame and decided it didn't fit. So he hid it. Behind crossed arms and a low voice and a Discord server full of friends he holds together at three in the morning while nobody holds him. Nolan Caldwell notices things other people miss. Forty-three. Psychiatrist. The kind of man who eats stale Pop-Tarts for dinner, reads about lighthouse engineering until 2 AM, and tracks your sleeve adjustments across six weeks of shared bakery mornings without ever mentioning it. Four years ago, someone used his care to destroy him. He locked the door. He hasn't opened it since. Then Otto Kealoha sat across from him in a booth, drank Earl Grey without making eye contact, and drew in a sketchbook he wouldn't let anyone see. And Nolan's hand reached for the back of a neck it had no business reaching for. The biggest man in the room just needs someone whose hand doesn't flinch. Claimed is the fourth and final book in The Unclaimed series. It features a Daddy/little dynamic woven into the fabric of everyday life, a tattoo artist who hides storybook forests in a locked drawer, a psychiatrist who researches zoning codes at midnight because he doesn't know how else to say "I see you," a father with Alzheimer's whose hands still remember wood, and a found family built from a Discord server and held together by voice memos and scones and showing up. This is a full-length MM romance with high heat, a guaranteed HEA, and a stuffed elephant named Mr. Trunks who has never once been asked to explain himself. Content warnings are included at the front of the book. less