The morning light poured through the large windows of Adam’s high-rise. I groaned and rolled the covers over my face briefly before throwing them back down. I felt like shit. Images from last night flashed through my mind. Our date started out so great, but once I opened my mouth, I ruined everything.

“Baby, wake up.” Adam pulled the covers away from my face. “It’s nearly one in the afternoon. What’s going on with you?”

“Jetlagged,” I said, closing my eyes again.

Coiling his muscular thighs around the lower half of my body, his arms pulled me into his chest. Warmth. “Wake up. We have a lot to do today.”

Shit. I forgot about all of our plans. A week ago, we spent a whole day scheduling walkthroughs of various facilities and warehouses. We were going to find the perfect building to take pictures in. Pictures of Hank if he’d just loosen up and let us.

“Dreams are for fools,” I whispered to myself.

With a peculiar look in his eyes, Hank stopped pressing. “Sure. Whatever that means.”

I turned around, but I could barely face him. I felt embarrassed and silly. The worst part was that I actually liked Hank. And I knew that if Adam met him, he would like him too. Maybe Hank could knock him out of his funk.

“I’m sorry that I’m in such a sour mood. Things are not going as planned,” I groaned.

Adam rolled his body away from mine. He knew something weird was going on with me, but what he seemed to worry about the most these days was whatever messed with his plans.

“Back up for a second. What do you mean?”.

I jumped out of bed. “Nothing.” I needed to escape this trap fast. I walked into the bathroom, but Adam was insistent on knowing more.

Adam kept his fury at bay, but I knew how he felt. “You saw him last night, didn’t you?” Silent and still, my eyes said it all. “Oh, Noah. You didn’t…”

“Look, I’m not going to apologize for seeing him. You’re the one who told me to do it,” I said.

Kissing my cheek, he walked back to the bed and sat down.

“I’m not mad, but I want to know more,” he said.

The gentle kiss on the back of my neck reminded me of Hank. It sent chills down my spine. Turning around to face Adam, I kissed him once more. “You needed to act, my love. At the party, you were supposed to join us. After you didn’t, it became obvious that I needed to step up. I was only trying to help.”

He lowered his head, ashamed. Squinting, he tried to make sense of what he was feeling. “I don’t know what came over me. Maybe I’m just out of practice. I don’t feel like Adam Newton anymore.”

“It’s all in your head,” I said. “Anyway, he’s a fan. A big fan.”

Adam nodded his head, but he kept that heavy look of concern locked on his face. “Doesn’t mean he’ll want to be in the exhibition.”

“Just give him time. He’s hesitant to open up about his kink.”

I glanced down at the fabric of the comforter. It was made out of the softest silk in the world, beautiful in every way. Softness was a sign of indulgence. “It’s always a little weird at first.”

“He owns a BDSM sex dungeon,” I said, laughing at the thought.

“I’m telling you. He’s different, but no man wants to keep a fetish locked away forever,” Adam said.

As I brushed my teeth, Adam kept his eyes fixed on me. I knew what he was wondering. Did I sleep with him? Did I suck his cock until completion? Did I kiss him goodnight? He could have just asked.

I spat the white toothpaste into the sink. “He gave me head,” I said.

Adam laughed. A look of relief washed over his face. “Where?”

“Bar Silencio,” I said.

More quick laughter escaped from his dry throat. “Fucking hot. I wish I could have been there to watch that,” he said.

Pushing his back onto the mattress, I pinned his shoulders down with the palms of my hands. “You would have been so turned on,” I teased.

“Where were you? Wait. Let me guess. The back alley,” he said.

I shook my head. A faint smile twisted my lips. “Try again.”

“The bathroom.” He must have seen my eyes change because he suddenly got very excited. I could feel the warmth of his cock press against my taint, so soft, yet so tough. “You’re a filthy sex hog,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“You know me best.” Kissing him once more, I teased my hand around his cock. Without warning, I let go and jumped off of his sexy body.

“Oh, come on. Come back to bed,” he said.

“No can do. We have a lot to do today, remember?”

If we were going to do this right, we were going to have to hire a crew, rent the necessary lighting, and somehow convince Hank that this was worth doing. That last part was going to be tough.

Before I decided to move here with Adam, he told me that if he was going to do one last exhibition, he wanted to do it the right way, the way he used to do it. No agents, no heavy PR campaigns, and definitely no outside publishers. It seemed like it had been forever since he had done something for the sake of himself.

When he first started, nobody knew how big he would become. At the time, I was too young to know about him, but the way he described those early days made it seem like it was such a small and tight-knit community. That was before the magazines, major corporations, and society at large finally bent at the knee for the gay community. Adam helped paved the way for all of that.

The BDSM scene was always unapologetic. Men showed up wearing bondage gear and black leather garb. Generally, half of their bodies showed, bodies in full display. You had to be tough to do that back then. Not on the outside, but on the inside.

To me, they were like warriors.

Adam sought to destroy the societal misconceptions that brought us all down. Looking past the scene, he wanted to focus on the individual. His thought was that every theme in society could be molded and shaped into something new. I believed him.

The 80’s came and went. People grew up, the Reagan era placed its horrid flag into the sand, and big business seemed to take over the planet. The good news was that we were finally able to make some considerable strides in the years following. Over the decades, society didn’t give a damn whether you were an alpha, omega, straight, bi, or whatever.

Adam told me the fight never ended. And once he achieved a certain level of fame, he thought of himself as a failure. “I fear they’ll never understand my work,” he once told me. “I’ll never be like those people on the outside. So why should I care to appease them? I need to push harder.”

Once he took me to a gallery show of his, I saw the types of pictures he took. Erotic, yet raw and engaging, they pulled me in almost immediately. I realized that something was missing from today’s world. The rawness of yesterday’s past... it was gone.

After I fell into his vision, I gave everything up to be with him. I knew I loved him more than I could love anyone else, but we were two alphas. We couldn’t conceive and start a family. Eventually, we decided being open was the best way to find omegas that fit both our needs.

Unlike New York, this city actually felt peaceful during the day. All of the crowds from the night before had dispersed, and now that the holidays were over, there was a sense that things were finally settling down.

Adam had a look of determination in his eyes. As we drove to the warehouse location, I felt like we were doing this right. For once, we were feeling stuff out on our own.

“What?” Adam could see me looking at him. It bothered him when I stared at him for too long.

“I’m just proud of you,” I said.

Adam gave me an inquisitive look, but in the end, he smiled fondly. “Why are you proud of me? I haven’t done anything,” he said.

Feeling the blood pump through my veins, I placed my hand against his thigh, near his tight crotch. I would give myself over to him again and again if I had to. My only wish was for him to recognize his greatness.

“You’ve done everything you’ve imagined for yourself. I wish I were half the man you are,” I said.

We were getting closer to the warehouse. The last years of our life together were spent so close that all dreams were put on hold. We stayed inside nearly every single day, despite the looming temptations of the city that was and always will be New York City.

Eventually, I had to push him back into creating again. It was one of those catch-22s. Adam was a great artist and technical genius. It wasn’t fair to keep him inside, even if that was where his body led him on most occasions.

“I told you that you don’t need to feel bad for last night. It was a fun hookup,” he said.

“Just take the damn compliment,” I said.

“I’ll take it when this project’s finished.”

Pulling off the freeway, Adam slowed the car down. “It’s just around the corner,” he said.

The “no trespassing” signs led us directly to the old warehouse building. When we saw it, my eyes lit up. It was absolutely perfect, but I knew it would be expensive.

Adam couldn’t contain his excitement. When he found the locations for his shoots, it was like walking in a candy store for him. But this time, it was the biggest candy store we had ever seen.

“It’s incredible,” he whispered.

“It’s out of our budget,” I said.

Placing the car in park, he said, “Screw the budget. We can afford it.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but it might work out if Hank agreed to do this shoot with us soon. “If you say so.”

The owner would be here any second. We could sign the papers and be on our way.

After some time, however, Adam’s face changed. He was barely able to get the words out. “My coat. Did you get it back from him?”

At first, I didn’t understand what he was talking about. But when the understanding started to set in, the reality of our situation weighed me down. “I almost did,” I said.

I remembered the look on Hank’s face when he started to put the pieces together that Adam, and I were after something together. As a couple. The hurt in his eyes pushed me to a new low. Why didn’t I just come out and tell him? What was I afraid of?

Rejection.

I never wanted to mix business with pleasure. Once I took to flirting with Hank, all of my convictions went out the window.

“Shit. What happened?” Adam asked.

“Remember when I told you how things aren’t going as planned?” I asked.

“Uh huh.”

Clearing my throat gave me an extra second to think. I took his hand and locked my fingers with his. “Hank is pissed, Adam. He thinks we’re stalking him, like we planned the whole thing at the party,” I said.

Adam shook his head. “Well, we kind of did,” he said. “The plan was simple. You were going to get him to agree to do a few shoots with us.”

I remembered how violently Hank held the coat over his head before he left me at Bar Silencio. He had to have found the pictures inside. Getting Hank to play ball was going to be more difficult than we anticipated.

“He has the coat, but he thinks we left it there on purpose,” I said.

“What?” Adam couldn’t comprehend that. He was cunning, but he didn’t plan things out so methodically.

“Yeah.” I bit the edge of my lip, twisting my mouth to the side. “The good news is that he still has the jacket. Probably.”

Was that good news? A silver lining? Maybe? Probably not.

“The pictures were in the pocket!” Adam gasped, turning a shade of off-white. “Fuck me. That’s it. We’re screwed. The party’s over.”

“Calm down,” I said. “The pictures aren’t even that bad.”

“They aren’t ours to have,” Adam said.

Another photographer in the scene took those pictures, but he gave them out to half of New York like a snake. When I saw the set at the asshole’s house, I pocketed them. At home, I felt a pang of curiosity. I looked at them and saw Hank’s masculine cock resting in sexy lace panties.

I knew he was the one. He was perfect for us, and for this exhibition.

“It’s hot. Really fucking hot,” I said.

“The world is more conservative than it leads on to be,” Adam said. “Maybe he doesn’t want the world to know. Maybe we shouldn’t have had those photos in the first place.”

“Without those photos, we would never have met him.”

His brain was turning, trying to find a way to spin this in a way that would be acceptable to Hank. I hoped he could think of it fast because once we signed the papers to this warehouse space, we’d be paying top dollar for rent.

We weren’t trying to go behind his back. Maybe he didn’t realize it. We were fans. Big fans. “You have his number, right?” Adam asked. A look of defeat marked his face, but I had a feeling Hank would come through.

“You’re going to call him?” I asked.

Adam nodded. “I have to, right?”

Clearly, he needed to settle this once and for all. For one, I didn’t want Hank pissed at me for something as silly as this. Two, I really wanted to see him again, and I knew Adam did too.

“Yeah. Here’s my phone. Call him,” I said.

Years of acting as Adam’s manager told me one thing: people wanted to work with him. Hank would be no different, I thought.

Adam held the phone against his ear. I could hear the faint ringing noise, followed by several long pauses.

“Hank?”

“I told you to back off,” Hank said.

I felt a stitch of regret enter my body. I wished I had handled things differently. Saying sorry was one thing, but could he accept my apology? I hoped so.

“It’s Adam. This is the first time we’ve spoke,” he said.

The pause went on longer than expected. “Don’t call here again,” Hank said.

Adam paused before ending the call. Turning to me blankly, he asked, “He’ll come through?”