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The morning light barely filtered through the curtains, but Alejandro's biological clock never failed him. He woke up at exactly 6:00 a.m. He did not turn over in bed, nor did he let out a groan of tiredness. He simply opened his eyes, perfectly alert.
Before even moving a muscle, his mind ran back to the past. He could almost hear the ghost of Felicity complaining beside him. Felicity had been his first serious relationship, lasting six months. A girl who claimed to be "in love with his perfection" until she saw it up close. Alejandro remembered the first morning she had woken up earlier than usual: he had gotten out of bed silently to remove his black silk bonnet and take off the hydrogel patches under his eyes to drain the overnight puffiness that he had applied the night before, after she had gone to sleep. He had not wanted to wake her, so he had tried to be quiet, but then, to his horror, his foot hit a shoe left on the floor the night before, and the shoe struck a piece of furniture.
Felicity, suddenly awakened, had looked at him as if she had seen a monster. "What are you doing? You're ridiculous," she had giggled, with a hint of genuine annoyance. "You're Alejandro Burromuerto. You should wake up with your hair tousled like some rugged heartthrob, with a rough, masculine look, not with rubber patches under your eyes like my mother."
Felicity could not accept that such beauty was a daily job. She wanted the illusion. And Alejandro would have been willing to give it to her. He was used to people only wanting one side of him. But if only she had given him time. In the morning, Alejandro couldn't pretend to wake up perfect like everyone else thought he did.
Then there was Emily, with whom he had been together for almost a year. Emily did not laugh; Emily took offense. He remembered a winter morning when she had wanted to stay in bed and cuddle. Alejandro, however, had firmly freed himself from her embrace to begin his fifteen-minute facial drainage massage with the jade roller he kept cold in the refrigerator, followed by the first cleansing of the day.
Emily had gotten up furious, crossing her arms. "You're more vain than I am, Alejandro! It's sick of it! A man should just rinse his face with water, run a razor over it, and kiss his girlfriend. You make me feel like a dockworker next to you!"
For Emily, Alejandro's grooming emasculated him. She wanted the wild Latin lover from the novels, not a man who knew the difference between hyaluronic acid and salicylic acid. Alejandro had never figured out if Emily didn't understand the difference between reality and fantasy or if she simply wanted to find a reason to argue.
Alejandro looked away from the ceiling and turned onto his side, abandoning the memories.
Beside him, in the bed, was Heather.
Heather was sleeping peacefully. Well, as peaceful as Heather can sleep, Alejandro loved his girlfriend but her default expression was frowning and angry even in her sleep. Her hair was wrapped in a series of soft foam rollers to give volume to her bangs, and her face still had the shiny residue of a retinol overnight mask. Her lips had a generous layer of shea butter on them.
She did not look like a cover model at that moment; she looked like a sleeping woman. His beautiful sleeping woman.
Feeling him move, Heather half-opened her eyes. She was not startled by the patches under Alejandro's eyes. She did not make fun of him. She simply scrutinized him with the critical gaze of a general inspecting the troops.
"You have a slight bag under your left eye, Alejandro," she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep. "Use the metal roller. The jade one won't be enough today."
Alejandro smiled, a genuine, relaxed smile that he reserved only for her. "Good morning to you too, mi angelo. Your retinol is starting to flake near your nose. Remember to apply plenty of hydrating essence after cleansing."
"Shut up and pass me the hairband," she replied, sitting up and stretching without the slightest hint of embarrassment.
With Heather, morning was not a time for shame or judgment. It was the beginning of their daily strategy to be better than everyone else. And often better than each other, too.
By 7:00 a.m., Alejandro was already in his private gym. He wore a tight-fitting workout outfit that displayed his sculpted musculature. But anyone expecting to see him grunting beneath hundreds of pounds of iron or punching a boxing bag would have been disappointed.
Alejandro was on the mat, his legs extended at ninety degrees, focused on maintaining an extremely difficult Pilates position to strengthen his core and lengthen his spine. His breathing was calm and controlled.
As he transitioned into postural stretching, his mind returned to Felicity.
One Saturday morning a few years earlier, she had wanted to go to the gym with him. She expected the classic alpha male lifting barbells and shouting. Instead, she had found him doing a session of floor barre and stretches derived from classical ballet, fluid movements essential for maintaining his regal posture.
Felicity had looked at him somewhere between embarrassed and amused. "Alejandro, what the hell is this? It looks like a housewives' class." Later, she had giggled to her friends, "My boyfriend does ballet and Pilates. I thought he was a real man!" She did not understand that the huge, rigid muscles of crude bodybuilders destroyed elegance. She wanted a draft ox, not an elite athlete who cared about the harmony of his body.
With Emily, it had gone even worse. During their time living together, Emily had caught him using a fitball and small ankle weights to tone his stabilizer muscles, followed by a yoga breathing session to lower cortisol. Emily had gotten annoyed almost immediately. "This isn't a man's workout, Alejandro! Real men do push-ups, sweat, and lift heavy things. You spend your time on a rubber ball doing movements that look like gentle exercise for the elderly. It depresses me to see you like this." Emily associated masculinity with roughness. She wanted him to smell of sweat and motor oil, not meticulously control every muscle fiber to prevent unsightly hypertrophy.
The gym door opened, pulling him out of his memories.
Heather entered wearing a black yoga outfit, her hair tied into a high, tight ponytail. She was not carrying weights, but two resistance bands and a foam roller for muscle massage.
She positioned herself on the mat directly opposite him, mirroring his movements. They began stretching together, coordinating their breathing.
"Your hip flexors are tight today, Deadass," she observed, extending one leg with deadly flexibility. "If you lose your elasticity, it will affect your walk. And you know how much I hate it when you're not perfect."
Alejandro smiled, looking at her with admiration. "Always attentive to detail, mi amor. I was just warming up the area. But I appreciate your concern for my posture."
"It's not concern. It's an investment in our image," she retorted, moving into a perfect plank position. "I'm not going to be seen in public with a man who walks like a bodybuilder with a locked-up back."
Alejandro chuckled, changing exercises to move into an even more complex Pilates sequence. "You are absolutely right, mi preciosa rosa. Let us leave the crude weights and broken backs to those who do not understand the art of the body. Strength without grace is merely clumsiness."
With Felicity and Emily, Alejandro had to justify the fact that he did not train like a caveman. He had to endure their jokes about his "lack of masculinity" simply because he preferred flexibility and Pilates to pure brute strength.
With Heather, no explanations were necessary. She knew that true physical perfection was a science. Watching her push her body to its limits with the same ruthless discipline, Alejandro felt a pang of pure pride. She did not want an ordinary man. She wanted a work of art, and she knew exactly how much work it took to keep him that way.
Around 1:00 p.m., the kitchen of their home looked like the laboratory of a Michelin-starred chef. Alejandro was plating lunch: a perfectly seared wild-caught salmon fillet, accompanied by an organic raspberry reduction and diced avocado and mango. Everything was weighed, everything was balanced, without a single gram of saturated fat or refined sugar.
As he arranged a little mint leaf as decoration, Alejandro thought back to how food had been a battlefield with his exes.
He remembered Felicity and her constant weekend dramas. She loved afternoons spent on the couch eating packaged chips and gummy candies. Alejandro had never forbidden her from doing so, quite the opposite. If she wanted a snack, he always offered to cook something for her: he would prepare crispy baked kale chips with exotic spices, or fresh fruit skewers with a 90% dark chocolate, sugar-free fondue. Dishes that looked gourmet, beautiful and healthy.
But Felicity still got angry. "Dating you is depressing, Alejandro!" she had shouted one evening, throwing away a bowl of homemade hummus. "You never touch a real dessert, you don't eat a single chemical-filled junk food even if I pay you! You make me feel guilty every time I open a bag of chips. It's like being on a diet with a personal trainer, not eating with my boyfriend!" Felicity could not stand his strict self-discipline.
She wanted a partner with whom she could binge, not a man who took pride in eating healthy. And Alejandro would not have blamed her if she had chosen someone else instead of him, yet Felicity had still chosen to be with him even though Alejandro had never made any secret of his aversion to sweets and similar things.
With Emily, things had been even more tense. Emily complained that there were never any "normal desserts" in the Burromuerto household. Alejandro imposed nothing on her, but she constantly felt judged simply because he did not eat outside of mealtimes. "You're obsessive," Emily would tell him with contempt as she watched him refuse a slice of store-bought cake at a friend's birthday party. "A man doesn't sit around looking at chemical ingredients or preservatives. A man eats whatever is there without making a fuss. You look like a model before a runway show!"
To Emily, the fact that he didn't "let himself go" with junk food was a sign of weakness, almost an unmanly neurosis. Remembering those moments, Alejandro couldn't remember why he had stayed with her for so long.
The kitchen door opened, and a familiar chewing noise interrupted his thoughts.
Heather entered the room casually chewing on a milk chocolate bar filled with caramel and artificial sugars. Heather was not as fixated on calories as Alejandro. She did not mind snacks full of artificial ingredients or packaged sweets when she felt like having them, but she certainly did not resent him for having a healthier diet.
She approached the kitchen island, looked at the gourmet plate Alejandro had prepared for her, and her eyes lit up.
"Mmm, salmon and mango," she said, immediately picking up her fork. "Your exes were really stupid, Alejandro. Complaining because their man cooks like a three-Michelin-star chef is stupid as fuck."
Alejandro smiled as he poured her sparkling water with a slice of lime. "They just wanted me to share their blood sugar spikes, mi preciosa. But you know I prefer to keep my body clean of toxins."
"And you're absolutely right in doing so," Heather replied with a mischievous wink, swallowing a bite with obvious pleasure. "Don't get too big for your ass just because I'm telling you this, but you're right when you say your body is a temple. And I love to study the theology of that well-maintained temple," before kissing Alejandro passionately on the lips.
Alejandro was filled with joy, and when Heather pulled away from him and continued to talk about like nothing had happened, his eyes were still heart-shaped. "The other day Courtney was bragging about how Duncan brought her a greasy fast-food hamburger in a paper bag. I laughed in her face. I told her that my boyfriend only prepares healthy gourmet dishes for me and that he has a level of self-control her thug could never dream of in a hundred lifetimes."
Alejandro felt a surge of pure satisfaction in his chest.
That was the difference. Heather did not need him to indulge in the same vices she did in order to feel comfortable. She ate her junk food when she felt like it, but she respected and, in fact, embraced Alejandro's obsession as a strength of their relationship. She used her man's discipline as a weapon of social superiority to flaunt in other people's faces.
"I'm glad my talent and my body is to your liking, mi amor," he said, gently brushing her cheek with his fingers and wink at her.
"They're both very beneficial to me," Heather admitted, blushing, then pointed at her caramel bar on the table. "Now, though, I'm finishing my salmon. And don't you dare touch my bar." She then walked away with flushed cheeks.
"I wouldn't dream of it, mi reina," Alejandro chuckled.
With Felicity and Emily, his clean eating had been a fault that pushed him away from them. With Heather, it was a source of pride, a luxury, and yet another proof that together they were simply superior.
Around 4:30 p.m., Alejandro was once again in the kitchen preparing Heather's afternoon snack. He did not simply cut her an apple or open a yogurt for her. For his reina, every snack had to be a culinary work of art.
That afternoon, he was preparing small canapés of hydroponic cucumber with a light dill goat cheese mousse, topped with pearls of vegetable caviar that gleamed like black jewels. Beside them, he had arranged cubes of natural hibiscus and ginger jelly to stimulate the metabolism. The plating was so perfect, symmetrical, and carefully designed in terms of color that it could easily have appeared on the table of a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
As he refined the details with a pair of kitchen tweezers, Alejandro's mind returned to the past, remembering how his only two serious relationships had always ruined that moment of the day.
Felicity experienced afternoon snacks as an insult to her idea of "normality." Alejandro always offered to prepare something beautiful and unique for her, but she looked at those masterpieces with suspicion and annoyance. "Alejandro, it's just a snack. Why do you have to make it look like a painting in a museum?" she complained, refusing a strawberry and mint tartare on a mirror of aged balsamic vinegar reduction. "It gets on my nerves that you put so much effort into making healthy things. It looks like you want to prove you're perfect even when you're cutting fruit."
To her, the aesthetic beauty of healthy food was a provocation that somehow made her feel inferior. Alejandro had never understood how. Because, once again, he did not impose anything on her or forbid her from having anything, and she herself had said she was in love with his perfection.
Emily, on the other hand, found the whole thing deeply bizarre and unmanly. He remembered one afternoon when he had served her tiny rolls of artisanal bresaola stuffed with wild arugula and toasted almond flakes, arranged in a radial pattern on a dark slate plate. Emily had looked at him with an expression of pure mockery. "Do you realize how strange it is that my boyfriend spends half an hour decorating healthy appetizers? Normal guys open the fridge, take a piece of salami, and eat it straight from their hands. This obsession of yours with making everything gourmet, light, and clean kills my appetite."
To Emily, a man who cared about the aesthetics of healthy food lost his reassuring masculine spontaneity. She hated that it was healthy, and she hated even more that it was beautiful. And once again, Alejandro could not understand why. Technically, these were not things she should have been complaining about, but things she should have been bragging about to others or at least been happy about.
A rustle of silk interrupted his thoughts. Heather entered the kitchen wearing a dark red silk robe. She sat on the stool at the island, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. Her eyes widened at the sight of the slate plate, her gaze radiating pure satisfaction.
"Wonderful, Alejandro," she said, immediately reaching out to take a cucumber and caviar canapé. She brought it to her mouth, closing her eyes to savor it. "The touch of dill is divine. Truly perfect."
Alejandro smiled, feeling pride swell in his chest as he poured her a chilled cardamom infusion. "Do you like it, mi preciosa? I wanted something that would refresh the palate without weighing down your figure before tonight."
"It's a delight," Heather replied, picking up a cube of hibiscus jelly. She was visibly radiant and proud to be sitting in front of such everyday luxury. "Having a boyfriend who cooks with the precision of a Michelin-starred chef is fantastic. I love that you're so obsessive and attentive to detail. At least I know that what I eat is worthy of my standards."
Alejandro watched her eat, feeling a surge of pure satisfaction in his chest.
Unlike in the past, he did not have to endure criticism about his lack of masculinity or his supposed obsession. Heather felt no annoyance whatsoever. She was simply happy and proud to have beside her a man capable of creating extraordinary things just for her, transforming an ordinary snack into a moment of absolute privilege.
By 7:00 p.m., the couple's suite had been transformed into a temple of fragrances, steam, and fine fabrics. Alejandro was getting ready for a romantic date with his queen.
As he looked at his perfectly pressed clothes, he thought back to how Felicity and Emily had handled this moment. Both of them loved the final result: they adored walking arm in arm with a beautiful, charming, and impeccable man. But they hated all the process required to get there. They could not stand the fact that he did not simply "put on a shirt and leave."
Felicity would get furious about how long Alejandro spent in the shower. She could not accept the idea that he used three different exfoliating gloves: a rough hemp-fiber one for his feet and elbows, a medium horsehair one for his legs and back, and an extremely delicate sea sponge for his chest and neck. "You take forever! You're worse than a woman!" she would shout from behind the door.
To her, that anatomical precision took away the spontaneity of the date. And once again, Alejandro simply could not understand it. Yes, he took a little while in the shower, but it was not as if he did not leave her enough time. Quite the opposite: he started much earlier precisely so that he could give her more time.
Emily, on the other hand, was both terrified and annoyed by his organization. When she had first seen Alejandro's walk-in closet, perfectly arranged by color, fabric, and season, she had been baffled. Emily was used to guys who kept their clothes piled somewhere on a chair or stuffed into messy drawers. "A man with a walk-in closet this precise makes me anxious, Alejandro. It's unnatural," she would tell him with a crooked half-smile.
She hated the obsessive care he devoted to his hair products, from nourishing masks to protective oils and heat protectants. And even with her, Alejandro could not understand it. He remembered that Emily herself had said during their first dates how much she hated it when guys did not take care of themselves.
With Heather, reality was completely different. Their only arguments in the bathroom were purely technical and organizational.
"Alestupid! Did you use my bamboo-fiber glove for my arms again?" Heather shouted through the steam of the bathroom, her wet hair wrapped in a microfiber towel.
"Certainly not, mi amor," he replied from the shower, applying a conditioner specifically designed to enhance the shine of his dark highlights. "Mine has blue trim; yours is pink. Check the shelf carefully."
"Oh. Right," she said curtly. "And make sure you don't finish my keratin conditioner. If my hair loses volume tonight, it will be entirely your fault."
Their rare arguments about the time spent under the water had long since been solved with extreme pragmatism: they showered together. It was not only a matter of romance, but of pure strategic usefulness. Washing each other's hair was the most efficient way to ensure that every single strand received the proper treatment, while massaging the scalp to stimulate circulation.
Even the management of their clothes was not a source of judgment, but of small and ruthless territorial thefts. Alejandro entered his enormous walk-in closet and frowned when he noticed an empty space in the silk-shirt section.
"Heather..." he said aloud, walking toward the adjacent section, where her walk-in closet joined his. "Did you take my tailored black silk shirt again?"
Heather, who was spreading a brightening lotion over her legs, did not even flinch. "It fits perfectly with the cut of my oversized blazer for the pre-evening, Alejandro. Besides, it looks better on me."
"It's a men's shirt, mi preciosa reina," he said with a smile, crossing his arms in the doorway.
"Now it's a haute couture piece in my wardrobe," she retorted, giving him a look of ruthless sweetness. "And you have another twenty identical ones. Pick another one, so we'll be perfectly coordinated."
Alejandro shook his head, amused. Felicity and Emily had considered his walk-in closet and his exfoliating gloves anomalies to be ashamed of or criticized. Heather, on the other hand, considered his spaces and products resources to share, steal, and optimize. With her, there were no inferiority complexes or gender stereotypes; there were simply two extraordinarily vain people joining forces to be impeccable.
Then it was already deep into the night when Alejandro and Heather returned to their room. The date had been a triumphant success: every eye in the room had been on them, on their coordinated elegance and radiant skin. But for Alejandro, the day did not end with the applause of the audience. True discipline showed itself when the lights went out.
As he unbuttoned his shirt cuffs in front of the mirror, Alejandro thought back to how his exes had handled bedtime. Both Felicity and Emily believed that once they got home, he would simply throw himself onto the bed. They were invariably disappointed and irritated by reality.
Felicity would sigh every time she saw him disappear into the bathroom again. She could not stand that he had to take another quick shower to remove the remnants of perfume and sweat from the evening, nor that he used a gentle exfoliant to regenerate his cells before resting. "Are you serious? We just got home and you're spending another half hour washing yourself and putting on lotions? What a hassle!" she would complain, turning away from him in bed and continuing to grumble until she fell asleep.
Emily, on the other hand, found his nighttime meticulousness ridiculous. She hated the protective serums he applied to his face and neck with circular motions.
But what Emily and Felicity hated most of all was the way he slept. Alejandro liked to be the little spoon, curling up against them to relax his back after a day of perfect posture. Both exes would stiffen, finding it unacceptable. "You're the man, Alejandro! You should be the big spoon and protect me, not curl up against me like a child. It's ridiculous for a Latin lover," Emily had told him, pushing him away. To them, even the sleeping position had to follow a rigid script.
A light touch on his shoulder brought him out of his thoughts. Heather was behind him, her silk robe already open, ready for their second shower together.
No complaints. No judgment. Without saying a word, they stepped beneath the stream of hot water. By now, it was a perfect automatic routine: they removed the remnants of the evening together, washing away the stress with the same complicity with which they had conquered the party.
Once they were dry, they sat on the edge of the bed. Heather took the bottle of nourishing body lotion and began carefully massaging Alejandro's shoulders and back, loosening the muscles tense from the workout and the evening. Immediately afterward, Alejandro returned the favor, massaging her legs and feet with precise, relaxing movements. It was a ritual of pure well-being, experienced not as an obligation, but as a shared luxury.
They put on their matching silk pajamas—a deep red that enhanced both of their complexions—and slipped beneath the sheets, which were also strictly silk.
Alejandro curled up against Heather, his back pressed against the woman's stomach as he waited for her embrace, which did not take long to arrive. She pressed herself against him, intertwining her fingers with his and enjoying the warmth of that contact. She knew that even a king needed to rest his back and be protected after carrying the world.
"Your skin is incredibly soft tonight, mi rey" Heather murmured against his ear, her tone one of rare and genuine tenderness.
"Thanks to your massage, mi amor," he replied, squeezing her fingers a little more tightly and closing his eyes with a feeling of complete contentment.
With Felicity and Emily, his nighttime routine and his way of seeking comfort in sleep had been faults that destroyed the illusion of the untamable alpha male and latin lover. With Heather, every cream, every shower, and even that position in bed were part of a perfect fit. They were two sovereigns who, after fighting side by side, could finally lower their guard together, certain that they were understood completely.