by Cody Ryder
Will withdrew from me, and I lay panting silently on the mat. He moved away, brought back a towel to clean us both up, and then without saying a word picked me up into his arms and carried me up to the bedroom. He laid me down on to the bed, both of us enveloped by the warm afterglow of our union. He kissed me on my forehead, then my nose, then my lips. “I love you,” he said. “I’m completely, positively, insanely in love with you, Luke.”
I smiled and stroked his cheek, the scratch of his stubble tickling my fingertips. “I think I might’ve been since the moment we first met,” I told him. “You’re amazing.”
He laid down and wrapped his arms around me, and I cuddled him back, nuzzling my face up into his neck where I could take in his comforting scent. It was mixed now with the slight pang of his sweat and the musk of sex, a gorgeous smell, really. At that moment, I wasn't thinking about the fact that we were a secret and that the love we felt had to stay hidden. I was just happy, so happy that I wished I could exist in that moment forever, basking in the warmth and love of a man who I felt things for which I could never have imagined myself feeling for anyone.
Nine
The next day, I woke up to the savory smell of frying onions and sizzling meat. For a moment I forgot where I was, then remembered what had happened the night before and rolled over to look at the empty space where Will slept. I reached out and touched it, smiling, and then sat up from the billowy mass of white sheets that made up his king sized bed. Will was singing to himself as he cooked, his voice so clear and perfect that it sounded like he was playing music from a set of speakers.
I slid out from the bed and walked out naked from the bedroom and down into the loft’s open living space, where Will was busy at the kitchen working over the stove. He had a plain t-shirt on with a pair of boxers and over it all he wore a black apron. Damn did he look sexy. Here in the crisp white daylight that was streaming in through the loft’s and framed by the immaculate design of his interior decorating, Will looked like he was in some kind of photo shoot that would end up as the enticing centerfold in some entertainment magazine. That’s when I remembered that I had my camera with me. As a photographer, a shot like this was too good to pass up.
My camera bag was sitting on the chair where I had left it when I brought it in from my car last night, and I quietly pulled it out and framed up a shot of Will. The click of the shutter drew his attention, and he turned around, saw me with the camera and grinned as I burst off a series of shots and captured the whole sequence.
“Do I get to take a picture of you?” he asked coyly, eyes flicking up and down my naked body.
I put the camera down and strolled up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist. I let my crotch push up against the firm swell of his ass, and I felt blood rushing down there from a combination of his provocative suggestion and the feeling of his body against mine. “Do you want to?” I replied. “Want me to pose for you?”
He must not have been expecting to hear that answer because he gave me a quick look of surprise before turning around to kiss me. His hand snuck down and gave my ass a little squeeze. “I want you to do more than just pose, Luke,” he said with a little gleam in his eyes. “So why don't you just hold that thought for after we have breakfast. The food’s almost done.” He gave me another quick kiss before turning back to the stove. “I hope you’re hungry, because I made a lot.”
I was starving, and for more than just breakfast. I gave him a pat on the ass. “Anything I can help with?” I asked, walking over to where my clothes lay strewn across the floor from the night before.
“Not a thing. Except, ah ah! Keep those clothes off. Not every day that I have a gorgeous naked man in my house, and I’m going to savor it as long as I can.”
I smiled. “Fine. But only if you do the same.”
He turned off the burner and transferred the grilled vegetables and sausages to a plate. Then he untied the apron, hung it up, and drew his shirt off from over his head and tossed it aside before taking out two pieces of bread from a bag on the counter and pushing them into the toaster. “Tea?”
“Yes, please,” I replied.
He put on a kettle and picked out a yellow heirloom tomato from a wooden bowl and sliced it into pieces. Next he got a ripe avocado, cut it in half and drew out the creamy green interior in slices onto a plate next to the tomato. Then he gave me a little smile and shimmied out of his boxers. His lower half was conveniently hidden behind the counter, and he held up his boxers on one extended finger before flicking them aside. Another pulse to my cock, and in an amusing coincidence the toast popped up from the machine.
“Breakfast, is served,” he said dramatically, bringing over two plates of food. The morning daylight arced off the curves of his muscles, and I scooped up my camera again and fired another burst of photos. “Hey, I told you to hold that thought.”
“I couldn’t help it. You look too damn good, and the photographer in me can’t just let these shots go to waste.” I happily snapped a couple more as he set the plates down on the table and went back to grab the tea. He turned around and posed with the mugs, bringing one to his lips and arching up one of his eyebrows. Will probably had done dozens, if not hundreds of photo shoots before, and he knew how to strike a perfect pose, but regardless of that he had to be the most photogenic person I’d ever known.
“Eat up, I’m already hungry for dessert,” he said, sitting down at the table. I laughed.
Breakfast wasn’t fancy, just a simple grilled sausage and vegetables, but it was delicious and I ate hungrily, especially knowing that it was hand prepared by Will. But mostly I ate quickly because I was excited to move on to the dessert course too. We both cleaned our plates and then sipped our tea, silently gazing across the table at one another. I drained the last of my cup, and then stood up. Something else was standing up too.
“Hello,” Will said into his mug, his eyes widening. “Someone's excited for dessert.” He put the mug down and stood up, and he was also at full attention. I laughed, and then came over and kissed him. Our cocks slid up against each other, and we swayed our hips to hit them back and forth like a pair of swords. I moved away and picked my camera up from the table.
“Move over by the counter, where the light is,” I said, referring to a triangle of sunlight that fell across the kitchen. Will went there and posed another one of his model-perfect poses, one of his hands placed behind his head to show off his bicep, the other resting on the counter. “Very sexy,” I said, snapping a few shots. He did a few more poses at the countertop, then moved over to the bamboo mat sitting area in the center of the room where we had our fun the night before. He stood up on it, the huge windows off to the side of the room casting him in a clean and gorgeous light. I framed him up to show not only his perfect physique but the beauty of his interior design. He laid back on the bamboo mat, resting his hand in his palm and gazing mysteriously at the camera. “You're too good at these poses,” I told him.
“Part of the job, Luke,” he said, shifting poses. This time he wrapped a hand around his cock, turning his body to show off his length.
I snorted a laugh and snapped a shot. “Those are part of the job too, huh?”
“This is just for you. Okay, when's it my turn?”
I was used to shooting photos, not being in them (especially naked), and I shyly turned my camera over to him. He told me to lay down across the couch, and I obeyed. I was feeling slightly self-conscious, but that didn’t keep my cock from growing even harder from the thrill of it all. He snapped away, changing my poses with the ease of a natural director. Will was good at singing, design, cooking, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was good at photography too.
After a few poses on the couch, Will set my camera onto the table across from us. “Do you have a remote control for this thing?” he asked. My heart leapt, knowing exactly what he wanted to do.
“In my bag,” I said, and he went and pulled out the small black remote. Then he came over to the couch and brought himse
lf down onto me. Our cocks touched, and he lowered his lips to mine. Kachick! He hit the remote on the shutter and took a photo. Having the camera watching us only made me more aroused, and I reached down and grabbed his cock and began to stroke him as we kissed. Kachick!
Soon Will had me bent over the arm of the couch, my ass up to him, and was entering me from behind. The camera continued to chatter as he fucked me, right up until he left me gasping with orgasm.
We looked at the photos together while we laid together naked on the couch laughing at some of the earlier ones, and commenting on how good they looked. “These belong in a magazine,” Will said. When we reached the photos of our fun on the couch we both grew hard again, and put the camera down and stroked each other to climax. Then afterwards we looked through the rest of the photos and agreed that now that we’d had our fun we should delete them.
“I want to keep the first ones,” he said. “For our private collection. They’re too damn nice to get rid of.”
It was something that I should’ve thought twice about, considered all the possible repercussions, but at the time it didn’t seem like a bad idea. They were our private photos, and they were really nice. So I wholeheartedly agreed.
I swapped out the memory card for a blank one, in case April or someone decided to use my camera, put the used one into a plastic case, and zipped it into a pocket in my camera bag.
Ten
We developed a sort of routine over the next two months. Will was in the process of completing his new album, and so I would accompany him to shoot photos for our “project”. Despite seeing her quite often, and me always being as polite as I possible could stand for a woman as distasteful as she was, Linda refused to warm up to me. She always treated me with distrust, probably because I hadn’t been hand chosen and vetted by her. She always seemed to be watching Will and me, and there were a few times when I wondered if she suspected we were more than what we made ourselves out to be. We were always careful not to get too close while in public (asides from when no one was looking and we could sneak in a little kiss or squeeze), but despite that it always felt like she knew. Maybe it was just my own paranoia, I didn’t know, but I always remembered what Frankie said.
Frankie was incredibly supportive of our relationship, and still upheld the act that she and Will were a couple. They went to the screening for her latest movie, where I was given a press pass and shot photos of them hand in hand on the red carpet, and afterwards the three of us came back to Will’s place where the two of us cooked dinner for her and we all sat around playing board games. One weekend, April came over to meet Will and Frankie. She was completely normal around Will, but she went slack jawed star struck when she was introduced to Frankie.
“H-huge fan,” she had gaped. I had never seen her like that before, she was usually so deadpan about everything. After a few glasses of wine she loosened up, and she and Frankie got along really well. I wondered if part of their bonding came from being the only two people who knew about Will and my relationship. Solidarity in being the female best friends to two gay men, maybe?
That was another thing – I’d become comfortable with referring to myself as gay. Of course, it was still just between our small group, but it was still quite a big jump ahead in terms of accepting a new identity.
For the first time in a while, things were going pretty damn good in my life. The adventure of our relationship was a fine diversion from the career and life dilemmas I was wrestling with before I had met Will. Of course, like any diversion, it could only last for so long.
“What’s the matter, Luke?” Will asked. It was a warm Friday in August, and I lay stretched out across Will’s couch with a copy of one of his interior design photo books spread out over my chest. He was sitting in a chair across from me doing digital design sketches on a tablet laptop, something he often did to unwind at the end of the day along with play music on his guitar. I had drifted off into my thoughts and was staring up at the ceiling.
“Hm?” I said vacantly, turning to look at him.
“Something is bothering you. And don't tell me there isn’t, because I know there is. So what is it?”
I closed the book and set it onto the coffee table. “I think you probably know.”
He put his tablet aside, resting the stylus pen on top of it, and came over to sit with me on the couch. I sat up to make room for him, and he slipped his arm around my waist. “Keep applying around. I know you wanted Homeowners Mag, but you could always start small, you know?”
I nodded. “I’ve been sending my portfolio around, trying to get more eyes on my website,” I said. “But that’s only part of it, Will. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How long can you keep this up? I mean, how long can we keep this up?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I squeezed his leg reassuringly, knowing I would be treading into touchy territory. “Doesn’t it bother you that we both have to hide our lives? We’re living a lie, as cliché as that sounds. You don’t want to be doing what you’re doing, are you going to be happy knowing you’ve spent so much time working on something that doesn’t fulfill you? And of course our relationship. Are we going to keep it a secret forever?”
“I don’t like it either, Luke, but you know that we can’t go public about it.”
It was odd to think about having to “go public” about something as personal as a relationship – the most “going public” I was used to was setting a relationship status from “Single” to “In a Relationship” on Facebook, but when it came to Will it meant actually going public. The entire world knowing that we were together, that William Masterson had been having a secret gay romance.
“I know,” I said sadly. “It bothers me, but I do understand.” I took his hand. “And I’ll have to deal with that…but I what about your work, Will? You can change that.”
He looked away. “I…My fans. And I’m under contract. I couldn’t.”
“Your contract was for five albums. This is your fifth album, and then you can renegotiate. What’s keeping you doing this, Will? I know it’s not the money, and it’s not the fame. And anyway, you could write your own music. Change genres, put out your own albums. People would still buy them, even if you weren’t signed under the label. And then you could go back to school.”
He stared ahead blankly.
“Hello?” I said. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” he replied, with just a tinge of annoyance in his voice. I frowned.
“You could go back to school, and continue making music for your fans,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the same pop stuff, but it’d be the stuff you wrote yourself. It might not sell as well, but does it matter? You—”
“That’s not going to happen, Luke,” he said, with a cord of tension.
“I don’t understand. Why? Tell me why.”
“Because. I don’t know. I wish it was as simple as you say, but I have people to please. Corporate sponsors. The expectation of another five albums. A world tour. All of my fans.”
“And you’re telling me that those things mean more to you than following your life’s passion. And asides from your fans, because it's not like you would stop making music.”
He was silent, his faced turned down into a rare preoccupied frown.
“Is it your mom?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “Look, Will,” I said, squeezing his hand. “You’ve lived so much of your life for her. If you don’t start doing things for yourself, you’re going to look back and wonder if it was all worth it. I’m here to help you. I’m with you the entire way.”
He took a deep breath, pulled me in close and kissed me on the top of my head. He didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t expect him to.
I knew how he wanted to make her happy, and I knew how incapable he was of defying her when it came to matters of his singing career. It was something that could sympathize with, but would likely never be able to fully understand. To have grown up practicing sin
ging for three hours a day, every day of the week since he was just a child. To be told that he would become a star one day and to be raised in the Hollywood environment with famous parents. The most that I could relate to was that I had taken piano lessons for two years when I was in elementary school, but otherwise it was all way beyond my realm of experience. But I could at least understand that this was something that was deeply ingrained into Will, and helping him out of it would require more than a simple talk.