It’s 5am, the sun is rising and Adam Towers can’t sleep. He’d taken this assignment for the potential respite it offered from the humid, tourist-ridden clusterfuck the City always turned into during July. A quick and easy student/teacher scandal to write up and then three uninterrupted days of good food, good beer, and plenty of pretty postgrads to pick from. Instead, he’d failed to get the interview, had picked a restaurant that couldn’t understand why “such a lovely omega” would want a table for one, and had been rejected for a younger model by the cute alpha he’d spent all night flirting with. And he hadn’t bothered to bring even his most modest knotting toy to help him get off (to sleep, or otherwise).
He flings the covers off, unwilling to lie there with his head spinning any longer. He needs to do something, needs to move, to blow out the cobwebs and start fresh. The weekend’s far from over, after all, and he’s not letting one shitty night spoil the whole thing for him. He briefly considers the gym, but the thought of fluorescent lighting and stale sweat on the recycled air makes him grimace. And then he thinks of the perfect alternative – a gorgeous, natural pool he’d passed on his way back from the disastrous non-interview the day before. He’d been too pissed to explore it at the time (the professor, as well as being a lecherous old man, had turned out to be the kind of sexist dick who thought omegas should stay at home, barefoot and pregnant, instead of reporting on predatory assholes like him), but now the thought of cool water and fresh air is irresistible.
He dresses quickly, jeans and a t-shirt all that are necessary in this heatwave, shoves his phone in one pocket, his keycard in another, and leaves his room to the tender mercies of housekeeping. The pool’s only a fifteen-minute walk and he spends it mentally composing the hatchet job he’s going to do on that reprehensible knothead of a professor once he’s unwound a bit. Been a while since anybody’s tried to do him for libel, and this one would take him past Lounds’ record – assuming she’s still alive and the hot cannibal and his husband haven’t gotten her since they last exchanged emails.
He’s just trying on headlines for size – KNOT FOR TEACHER has potential – when he feels the ground sloping away from him and realises he’s reached his destination. The pool is separated from a cluster of little farm cottages by a thick line of trees, marking the beginning of the forest, and they curve all around the water, a curtain of sturdy branches and leaves that flutter in the gentle breeze. In the dusty-gold light of morning, it’s even more beautiful than he’d remembered, the water tinted green but mirror-clear and glimmering.
He pulls off his shirt, shoes and jeans in quick succession, folding them perfunctorily and sparing a prayer to the god of errant journalists that nobody comes by and snatches his belongings, room key and all. Standing in nothing but a pair of very expensive, very skimpy briefs, he takes a quick look around, just to be sure, but it’s still only half-five and there’s no sign of a single, living soul anywhere nearby. So he strips off his undies and stuffs them into his trouser pocket, then hides the whole lot in the tall grass under a couple of rocks. One final check that he’s alone, and then Adam stretches up into the dappled sunlight, feeling the first touch of warmth on his bare skin, before carefully making his way down the bank and into the cool water.
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