I felt my heart sinking at the sight of Noah’s face, but I didn’t wince. In fact, I made a point to keep an even face. I most certainly didn’t fear Jack, but I didn’t want to make Noah any more upset than I knew he was going to be already.

“What do you…I mean, I hear you, but how did he…oh my god, the picture!” Noah said, eyes going wide as he took a step back.

“Yeah, you were right,” I admitted, frowning as I reached out to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t treat it as seriously as I should have when you brought it up, and I’m sorry for that—I was wrong, and you weren’t crazy.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have believed me either,” Noah said, giving me a small smile. “But I appreciate that.”

Before saying anything else, I met Noah’s smile with my own, and I pulled him close to me, hugging our naked bodies together and feeling his heartbeat against mine for a few moments before I took a deep breath and stepped back, putting my hands on my hips.

We jumped out of the shower, dried off, and went into the bedroom.

“So,” Noah said, looking me in the eye with some genuine worry behind his gaze, “how did things go down?”

“He confronted me on the balcony the night after,” I said, running my hand over my face. “I was in the middle of breakfast and never saw him coming. Not that there was anything to be ready for. Whoever snapped that picture of us was working for him, which tells me he both suspected us to begin with and was looking for dirt on me.”

“Because you’re tied up with Charles,” Noah said, nodding and sitting down on the bed. “I’m guessing he brought up the council seat issue.”

“Exactly,” I said. “He made his feelings on me crystal clear. He doesn’t like that Charles is doing what he’s doing, and he sees me as a spoiled heir getting something I don’t deserve.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Noah said, standing up to his feet in a surprising show of emotion.

“Except—”

“Who is he to say you don’t deserve what you’re getting? He comes from a line of lawyers as far back as he can count!”

“Noah—”

“He’s the one who should be worrying about the wrong kind of people mucking up the club leadership. He—”

I crossed my arms and peered at him until he slowed down, and he finally realized I was trying to get a word in.

“He’s not entirely wrong, Noah,” I said.

“But you’re nothing like the kind of person Jack is worried about,” Noah said, frustrated. “You’re driven, kind, considerate, hard working, and…and –”

“Thank you,” I said calmly, putting my hands on his shoulders. “Honestly, that means a ton, especially coming from you. But he has a point, and I can’t just ignore that.”

Noah looked at me in a mixture of confusion and frustration. I knew he only wanted to root for me, and that was more touching and comforting than I could have ever let myself hope for. But this wasn’t a problem that was going to go away by trying to shove it aside.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m beyond angry that he thought he could just confront me like that with evidence he got behind our backs, literally. And not much that the guy said made me like him. But something he said was true, and it would affect everyone in the club, not just Jack.”

“What was that?”

“That I don’t really have a strong grasp on what the Fox is all about,” I said. “And I know that sounds superficial on some level—I could easily say that this is just a social networking club and leave it at that. But that would make me no better than big box stores that sweep in and buy out local mom-and-pop stores, if that makes sense.”

“Well, you’re new,” Noah said, frowning. “Nobody could expect you to really have a stake in this place when you’re still on your first week. Hell, the fact that you’ve started getting so much off the ground already is a testament to how good you’re going to be for the Fox.”

“Maybe, but even so, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m an outsider.” I crossed my arms and smiled at Noah confidently. “It also doesn’t change the fact that we’ve made a pretty damn good team over the past few days, so let’s keep that rolling. What do you know about Jack? What kind of man are we dealing with?”

Noah took a deep breath, thinking.

“He’s a prosecution lawyer who’s been at it all his life. Top of his class, clever, always been kind of brooding. I think he’s single, but he’s mentioned an ex in the past. He was always good at charming good ol’ boys—you know, older men who are in his same social circles. Probably comes with being an attorney, you need to know how to butter those types up when you want favors. The one thing he doesn’t do is rock the boat. He likes things the way they are, and he doesn’t like change.”

I nodded, taking all that in as I paced, still in the nude. Noah didn’t seem to mind.

“You sound like he makes you nervous. Does he?”

Noah shifted uncomfortably.

“Normally, no, but he’s the kind of guy I’ve never wanted to cross. Not that I blame you—this is all on him. He just holds a lot of sway with the council. I don’t know him well enough to make a call on whether he’s going to dig his heels in on this, but it makes me worried. Especially if he doesn’t like us doing what we’re doing.”

I paused for a moment, looking at Noah thoughtfully.

“And how do you feel about what we’re doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“That rule is probably in place because people wanted to avoid complications with people who get paid by the club, isn’t it?”

“It used to be, sure, and that’s the spirit of the rule,” Noah said, nodding. “But they made that rule in a different time when the club was structured differently. That problem doesn’t technically exist anymore—you couldn’t fire me, for example, even if you were a council member. The council has to take a vote on hiring and firing staff.”

“Wait, wait, wait, really?” I asked, suddenly much more intrigued.

“Yeah,” Noah said, shrugging. “A lot of this stuff is in the council meeting minutes, but it all gets buried over the years for different reasons. It’s not like anyone’s covering things up; it’s just that most people aren’t interested. Other employees are too busy with their lives, and members usually don’t even think about it.”

I thought for a moment, stroking my chin, and then I smiled down at Noah with an excited, driven glint in my eye.

“This is good, better than you might expect. Noah, I want to ask you to train me.”

He blinked.

“Train you? What do you mean?”

“You spend time on the Fox’s history and its very purpose more than anyone else here, I’d say. I want to pick your brain as much as you’ll let me, and I want to know all these little details so that when we put on the art expo, I’m able to back up all that flair with real substance. I want to be able to show that I can carry my weight as a club member and have the knowledge that will make me a good candidate for leadership here. And if some old rules are an obstacle to us, well, tradition is good, but just because something is time-tested doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good. Change keeps a place alive, sometimes, and I think that’s at the heart of why Charles wanted me to run for councillorship. What do you say?”

Noah stood up, rolled his shoulders back, and looked at me with every bit of severity and gravity the situation called for.

“I say it scares the shit out of me,” he said frankly before breaking into a smile. “But with you? I’d take on anything. Let’s do it.”

I embraced him, feeling a smile on my face like I was in high school again, and without a second thought, I pressed a kiss to his lips.

“Where do we start?” I asked.

“I know the perfect place,” Noah said with a wicked smile. “In spirit of breaking the rules.”

We were going down to the vault at the Gilded Fox.

Access to the vault was located through the staff quarters in a room that looked like it was reserved for storage. Within that room was an unassuming set of stairs leading to a large elevator—the kind large enough that it was clearly meant for holding heavy objects. The elevator required a key code to open, which I was surprised to find that Noah knew.

“I’m not even sure what ‘vault’ means,” I admitted as we stood in the elevator, listening to the machinery slowly lowering us down.

We were grown men, so we weren’t exactly casting furtive glances over our shoulders, but I had to admit, something about this whole adventure was making me feel like a teenager again.

“It’s kind of a dramatic name, isn’t it?” Noah chuckled, glancing over at me as he stood anxiously by my side. “It’s about as good a word for it as any, though. It’s home to all the most valuable pieces of art that aren’t on display for one reason or another, as well as more personal pieces of its history. You know, letters, photos, things like that.”

“For a place that’s supposedly off limits, you seem to know a lot about it,” I teased.

To my surprise, I could see Noah’s cheeks turn a little redder from the side.

“Ooh, you’re not supposed to know all this, are you?” I guessed, grinning.

“I…well, I wouldn’t do it on my own, but someone who used to work here had to go retrieve the literal gilded fox for a membership ceremony one time, and he brought me with him. And I might have memorized the key code to the door.”

“All right, Double-O-Seven.”

“I didn’t mean to see over his shoulder.”

“Yes, you did.”

We laughed quietly as the elevator came to a halt, and Noah entered another key code to open the doors.

Inside was far beyond anything I was expecting.

The walls and columns holding the vault up were made of concrete, but the walls themselves were partially hidden by sweeping black curtains. The lights hanging above and embedded in the ground gave the entire room the feeling of being a real art gallery. It was large, larger than a bank vault would be, and the entire chamber was at least the size of the main lounge upstairs.

It was also filled to the brim with objects that made it look like a high-class antique shop.

Large, framed pieces of art were set up against the walls and the large, square columns of the room. Statues of various kinds stood in every corner, and even though this place seemed to be used for storage primarily, it was laid out as if someone had put thought into displaying everything properly. It was as much an art gallery in its own right as it was a storage area.

Art wasn’t the only thing stored here, either. Several large bookcases took up one corner of the vault, and I didn’t have to be close enough to read the titles to tell that they were likely old and rare. Those were what Noah went for first.

“Most of these are rare books donated by private collectors,” Noah said as I started perusing the room slowly, still surprised at what I was surrounded by. “But the older council meeting minutes get stored down here too after a certain amount of time. It’ll be good for us to go over this later. We can borrow a few copies, take them up to our rooms, and go over them in the weeks before the expo. It’ll give you a good idea of how the club has evolved. The parts I can’t fill in, anyway.”

“About that,” I said, coming to a stop in front of one of the large displays I never thought I’d run into down here. “Don’t suppose you know anything about this?”

Noah trotted over to where I was standing, and his face split into a grin. I was standing in front of a large wood and glass display case of shelves upon shelves of liquor, the labels on which were very, very old. Off the top of my head, I could value even some of the opened bottles in the thousands. I saw scotch bottled in handmade glass from some of the remotest distilleries in the Highlands, gin from companies that hadn’t existed for over a hundred years, and more.

“Hey, here we go,” he said, approaching the case and crossing his arms. “This one’s close to my heart.”

“It doesn’t strike me as artistic, but it looks valuable,” I said, joining him.

“It is, but I think they keep it here more for sentimental value,” Noah explained, turning to me. “You wanted a lesson, so here’s an important one: you heard at your induction that we were founded by some rich art collectors, right? About the crowd you’d expect, all of them landowners with deep pockets. Well, the Fox hit a rough patch at the turn of the century, so it did what a lot of gay clubs did back then after Prohibition started.”

I was already following where Noah was going with this, and I turned to him with a growing smile, watching him get excited and loving every moment of it.

“Yes, they got a speakeasy running from the club’s own bar,” Noah said, reading my face.

“So, they had their doors open to the public for a while?” I asked, slowly circling around the case and examining the bottles inside.

“Not exactly-- the council at the time agreed that it should only be open to, well, gay men,” he said simply, but his smile was growing. “But still, it was a huge moment for the club because they opened it up to gay men who weren’t necessarily from the upper crust of society.”

“You’re telling me that, for a while, this club was just…bursting with gay New Yorkers who wanted to have a good time drinking with each other?”

In response, Noah gestured for me to follow him, and he led me back over to the bookshelves. He dug out a pile of what looked like folders, and from within, he carefully took out some very old photographs that he spread out on a small reading table in front of the shelves.

I looked over his shoulder to see pictures of dozens of men seated together at the very bar where I got my drink from Noah on my first afternoon here. Men from all walks of life were frozen there in the middle of what looked like a roaring good time. One small crowd of men was cheering on a couple of guys who looked like they were trying to outpace each other, pints in hand. Next to them, a gentleman in a fine suit was leaning over to a rough-looking factory worker, both of them smiling at each other, obviously flirting. The photo had caught the bartender tossing a bottle of liquor up behind his back, doing a bar trick while serving his customers.

There were a lot of those old pictures. Some featured pieces of artwork I’d seen hanging in the club elsewhere, one seemed to be a dinner party where an old man with a large moustache was popping a champagne bottle, and another featured a man holding the gilded fox, obviously someone’s induction into the club.

It was life, little scenes from daily life in the middle of the Roaring Twenties in the club. It was hidden, it was seedy, and it looked like a damn good time. Men of different races and incomes, all brought together in the name of laughing over a stiff drink.

I saw something peculiar in one of the photos buried under the rest, and I pushed the top ones aside. My eyes went wide at what I saw.

“Ah, that,” Noah stammered, following my gaze and laughing a little.

It was a picture of a man about my age, rippling with muscle, posing in the nude. He was looking at the photographer with a gaze full of desire, and his pose left nothing to the imagination.

“Not all art is oil on a canvas,” Noah said fondly, smiling down at the photo. “There are a lot of these. This was never a modeling agency, but every now and then a photographer happens to be around, and things happen.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this before,” I said, bumping Noah with my hip.

Noah’s smile turned into a grin, and his blush doubled in intensity, confirming what I said.

“Purely for historical interest, right?” I said, grinning and draping my arms over his shoulders playfully. “Just academic?”

“I mean…”

“I can’t blame you.” I laughed, letting my already deep voice drop a little as I got closer to Noah. “But personally, I think you’d be a better model than a photographer.”

Noah bit his lip, but his eyes met mine, and he swayed his hips along with me, gently.

“I don’t think I’d mind that,” he said back in a lower tone.

It was thrilling watching Noah break out of his shell and get excited, to the point that I felt like I was really getting into his comfort zone-- the inner life he didn’t let the rest of the world see. And here, in this ultimately quiet, private place where it was just the two of us, all other distractions cut out, there was something about that kind of excitable passion that got me just as worked up in a very different way.

“It would be useless,” I said into his ear in a deep, husky voice. “No photo could do you justice, I don’t think, even if you do photograph very, very well.”

“I’m not great at taking directions as a model,” he teased, pushing his butt back against me as I squeezed him.

“But you’re good at it in bed,” I growled, and I slid my hands down toward his pants.