Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I still don't say anything. Just stare at him like my vocabulary's been deleted.
"Come on," he says, jerking his head toward the back of the gym. "I'll show you what I mean."
I follow him. Obviously I follow him. What else am I going to do? Say no to a special project with the perpetual chub man?
He walks past the weight racks, past the cardio equipment, down a hallway I've never noticed before. There's a door at the end. Double doors, actually. Industrial looking. He pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks them.
The doors swing open.
Holy shit.
The space is massive. High ceilings with exposed beams. Concrete floor. All the walls are covered with acoustic tiles. The room's mostly empty except for equipment positioned in the center.
And when I say equipment, I mean—
There's a TRX rig mounted to one of the ceiling beams. Professional grade. Multiple straps hanging down. Numerous attachment points.
A modified massage table sits off to the side—except it's not a massage table. Not really. Not with those stirrups fixed at one end, positioned at a precise angle that makes my stomach flip. Anchor points run along the sides at regular intervals, small steel loops welded to the frame. Not decorative. Functional. The kind of thing that doesn't exist in a normal gym setup.
A huge mirror propped against the far wall. Not mounted yet. Angled directly toward the equipment.
Five tripods scattered around the space, positioned at different angles like whoever uses them has been refining their setup for months. Each one has a camera mount. Phone mounts too. A ring light sitting on the floor near the table, the professional kind streamers use, not some cheap Amazon circle.
Everything's organized. Intentional. Not random workout equipment someone's playing with—this is a production setup.
A clipboard sits on a folding chair near the table. Against the far wall, a tall storage cabinet stands closed—industrial gray metal with a padlock looped through the handle but hanging open.
I stand there in the middle of the space, trying to process what I'm seeing.
The empty floor stretches around me, too much deliberate nothing.
Every single piece of equipment has been positioned with a goal in mind.
The angles between the tripods and the table aren't random.
The mirror placement isn't accidental.
The ring light's distance from the stirrups is measured.
Even the way the TRX straps hang down creates a specific visual frame.
This isn't someone fucking around with home gym equipment.
This is a film studio.
A production setup designed for one very specific purpose.
I turn to Ryan.
"What is this?"
Chapter 10
Caleb
Birds have been spies longer than any intelligence agency existed.
Ancient Romans examined their flight patterns before battle—augury, they called it. Reading the will of the gods through avian movement. Except it wasn't divine intervention. It was reconnaissance. Birds fly high, see everything, report back to gods who could understand.
The Norse had Huginn and Muninn—Odin's ravens. Thought and Memory. Flew across the world each day, returned to whisper secrets in their master's ear. Every culture has a version. Messenger birds. Oracle birds. Birds that watch and tell.
They didn't need cameras or satellites.
They already had wings.
Ryan Adamson.
Thirty-four years old.
Six-two, 190 pounds.
Dark brown hair, short on the sides, a little longer on top.
Brown eyes.
Square jaw, straight nose, slight cleft in his chin.
Good genetics.
Covered in bird tattoos that tell a story about love—intricate and highly custom.
So it is, ironically, the birds that give him away. Because the art on his body has a very particular style.
Just like the work on mine.
But I didn't use the same inkologist for every piece. My theme is… specific. I didn't want any single tattoo artist sitting with me long enough to start studying the theme. Didn't want them wondering what kind of man inks his body up with images of sexual domination.
One artist, one piece, then find another. That's how I did it. So the canvas of my torso, arms, thighs—every available surface—represents a carefully curated gallery. The styles vary deliberately, wildly even.
I wasn't interested in coherence. I rather like the chaos. It's an interesting side to my personality, I think. It reveals a spontaneity in me that almost never surfaces elsewhere.
Ryan Adamson didn't have the same one-and-done mentality when he commissioned his ink. He was committed to his inkologist in more ways than one.
Her name was Posie Little.
I last saw Posie Little three years ago. She was inking up Scarletta's face on my body. It's a throat fuck scene. One of my favorites, actually, that sits right below my sternum. I see it in the mirror every day.
Posie nailed the look of erotic exaltation in the eyes. The stretch and bulge of the throat. My hands on both sides of Scarletta's face.
Sometimes, just looking at that piece gets me hard.
Sometimes, I come on the mirror image of it.
Anyway. The point is, I know Posie.
Knew her.
Since she's dead now.
She was local to Jackson Hole—worked in a shop on Cache Street that catered to wealthy clients who wanted art, not flash. Her work was distinctive, recognizable even from across a room.