Revived (The Dungeon Black Duology 2)

Huge mistake. Monumental.

Sean and his stupid bright ideas.

Shit, thanks to him, the morning after their impromptu sleepover, Max had looked ready to check himself into an institution. Like he was finally fucking losing it. Losing it for real.

“Great work,” Sean muttered, setting the images on his pile.

Thing was, Max wasn’t the only one losing his mind. The following Friday, when Sean had picked up a shift on his birthday, he’d sworn he saw Max lingering outside the café. Just standing there, looking in through the large, front window, like some specter from Sean’s over-active imagination. It was late at night, so it’d been hard to see, but since the café was dimly lit and there were park lights outside, he’d still been able to make out a form. Or so he’d thought. Because before he could truly wrap his brain around what he was seeing, the mysterious dark figure disappeared.

Sean shook his head. In retrospect, having thought that that was Max was ridiculous. Wishful thinking and shit, his mind seeing what it wanted to. But the reality of it all was that Max would never come to see him. Didn’t want him. Was moving on. Had no reason to be there at all. Looked like Sean was still a fool for the man even now.

Exhaling, he kept on task but soon came to other pictures of Max. Random pictures he’d taken and forgotten about, only to stumble back onto again this past weekend. He’d been going through a handful of negative reels and hadn’t been able to resist when he’d found them. He’d just had to develop them, regardless of his state. Probably because they were ones of Max smiling.

Sean plucked off the first one and gazed at it wistfully. Before long, his own lips started to curl. Max’s smile just had that effect on him. Made him feel all warm and happy. Not that Max was beaming in the picture or anything, but he’d definitely had that glint in his eye. The sexy, yet affectionate one he used to get when they were together. The one that always made Sean feel so special. Special, because that gaze was for him alone.

So intimate and private. And loaded with feels.

Sean’s insides lifted higher… then dropped like lead. He’d never see that look in Max’s eyes again. That era was over, was history.

Frowning dejectedly, Sean pulled down the remaining pictures, then took the pile over to his desk. He needed to run them through his photo scanner so he could download them onto his computer, something that ended up taking a good ten minutes. After that, he was on to saving them to thumb drives, each labeled and organized for easy reference.

But as he wrapped things up and readied to log off, he instead found himself jumping online. And not just online, but over to Max’s website, a place he hadn’t been to in fucking ages. In fact, he hadn’t been there since his very first visit, when Max had told him to look it over before making a decision.

To sub, or not to sub. That had been the question. But it hadn’t been the question for very long. Sure, some of the stuff Sean had seen on the site had jarred him, but discovering he could pick and choose exactly what he wanted had pretty much nixed all trepidations.

So he’d gone for it. Smiled and dove in head first.

Best and worst decision he’d ever made.

Heart thumping despondently, he clicked through the site, his eyes lingering repeatedly on images of Max. He’d added some new pictures, but none of Sean. Which would make sense, Sean supposed, since Max never took pictures during their scenes. But now, Sean couldn’t help wondering why. Was he too green? Too young-looking? Had his performance not been up to par? Not good enough to represent Max on a professional level?

Perhaps, but for some reason Sean didn’t really think so. A lot of the subs on the website looked early twenties, and not all of the images were hardcore. Sean easily could’ve handled the majority of these shots. He was a model part time, for fuck’s sake. But then a different reason occurred that gave him pause. Maybe Max didn’t want to share Sean with others… because he cared about him… romantically… even if he hadn’t planned to.

Sean’s chest clenched, pushing a groan past his lips. “Fuck, Max… I miss you so fucking much.” He clicked out of the gallery. God, he needed to stop torturing himself. Needed to get Max out of his head. But before he could exit the site entirely, he spotted a notification about changes in policy. Not that any of that applied to him anymore, but nevertheless, he couldn’t resist checking it out.

He clicked on the hyperlink, which took him to Max’s list of services, then stilled when he read the new announcement. Max wasn’t offering sex anymore. He’d yanked that shit off the menu. In fact, going by the notice’s posted date, he hadn’t been offering it for months. Sean frowned. He and Max had been having sex all along, so that post didn’t exactly make sense. Didn’t make sense, that is, until Sean re-eyed the date, then did a bit of backtracking math.