Chapter Text
Hey, why don't you ever send me nudes anymore?
Flopping across his hotel bed on his back, Roman fired off that quick hinting text to Gerri and rested his phone on his chest in case she replied, which honestly was unlikely. And that was a shame, both because he missed the view of her voluptuous tits and because he was fucking bored. It was 9:00 pm in Cabo San Lucas and he was surrounded by luxurious, premium accommodations in his oceanfront villa, but he wasn't in the mood to enjoy any of it. Not alone, anyway. The jetted tub in the bathroom that two people could comfortably soak in would remain dry. A state-of-the-art television and gaming system hookup sat dark and deserted without company to join him in fiddling experimentation of its controls. In the villa's kitchenette, the glittering assortment of top-shelf liquor wasn't tempting in the fucking slightest. Since Gerri had left him for the night to bunk with Stacey for some mother/daughter bonding before the wedding tomorrow, he was left lying here by himself to either sulk or masturbate sadly, he hadn't decided yet.
Things had been brighter earlier today. The entire crew had assembled for a champagne brunch on the beach to celebrate Stacey and Stephen's recommitment to their marriage, and Roman had hoisted his glass high, fizzy bubbles cascading as Gerri cuddled into his side happily. He was legitimately thrilled that Stacey and Stephen had called off their separation, snapping at the chance to fly with Gerri to Mexico for their vow renewal. It was a small group, just himself, Gerri, Stacey, Stephen, Liam, Stephen's parents, and Stacey's younger sister, Danielle. The ceremony was but one event of their four-night stay. When Roman had packed for the trip, he'd envisioned lots of time for him and Gerri in swimsuits, warm ocean water sluicing off their sunbaked skin, followed by the cooling press of the hotel sheets as they sought relief from the heat by sizzling with each other in bed.
It hadn't happened quite like that this morning. Gerri had reclined on a towel to chat with her girls, catching Danielle up on the important bits of news from around New York and eagerly asking for Danielle's stories about California. Stephen and his parents had invited Roman to go for scuba diving lessons with them and he'd politely declined, as he was a firm believer that the mysteries of the ocean should remain where they were and he'd do the same on dry land, thanks. Still, he'd had fun on the beach building sandcastles with Liam, running up and down the shoreline with pails of water to complete the construction faster than the tide could roll in to destroy their designs. He'd let Liam bury him in the sand afterwards, and a laughing Gerri had knelt next to his jutting head for a kiss, both of them grinning wide as Liam had fumbled with Roman's phone to produce an adorable if somewhat-blurry picture of them.
He snatched his phone from his chest to look at the picture now, noticing how Gerri's bent position tilted her breasts forward in her halter top. Fuck, but she was a bombshell siren in her red suit and slicked wet hair, body damp from her splashing visit to the water with Stacey and Danielle. He dropped a hand to his shorts and palmed at his dick thoughtfully, eyeing the rivulets streaming across her. If she was that wet on her surface, surely some of that moisture would be found beneath her suit as well. His dick swelled at the thought of her turning to straddle him, planting herself on his face and demanding to be pleasured while he was stuck in the sand, his whole existence narrowing to the texture of her delicate pink folds riding his tongue with abandon. Well, if Gerri was fucking busy painting Stacey's nails or whatever and didn't respond to his text tonight, he could be content extrapolating filth from this innocent picture.
He was in the process of shucking down his shorts to get a proper grip on himself as his phone vibrated with a new text. Roman. It's the eve of my daughter's wedding. Don't you think I have bigger concerns than the tawdry yearnings of your dick?
That was a classic Gerri reply from a playbook they hadn't used in a while, the 'I'm too good for your pathetic nonsense' fake rebuff they both thrived on. Her use of it now proved she had tawdry yearnings of her own, and his blood coursed frantically south in urge of fulfillment. You literally always have bigger concerns than my dick, but when has that ever prevented you from indulging me?
Maybe tonight is where I draw the line. You aren't entitled to my nudes. I've given you my body enough fucking times, you can make do with your imagination. Tug on yourself like I'm there with you. You hard yet? Grunting, he carried out her instruction, stripping his dick and pretending it was Gerri, accepting him inside her as he clinged to her hips for dear life as she began to pump atop him. Another text vibrated. I know you are. I could sneeze in your direction and you'd get it up. Do you never get embarrassed, being so easy for me? You wear me all over you like a collar. I'd offer to buy you one, but everybody can tell who your owner is already.
Jesus christ, now that was a new element to her repertoire and he fucking loved it, a visual claim tethering him to Gerri. She was right, they didn't technically need it because everyone had very much known about their relationship for ages, and last month he'd practically bought a billboard in Times Square to announce that she'd asked him to move in with her, so smug he was of that staggering development. Clearly, Gerri was the older and more dominant figure of the two of them, and he simped for her like it was his full-time job, and it sometimes was on rare occasions when the Waystar offices were slow. But it was hot as hell, the idea of a piece of her fitting snug against him even when she wasn't around, a reminder that he reported back to her at the end of every fucking day. He was hers, and fucking proud of it.
Don't you have anything to say? Or can't you type with sticky fingers? Spoiled baby, do you expect me to lick them clean? she goaded when he didn't write her back, and he whimpered, propping the phone on the mattress where he could read any other filth she texted hands-free, dick twitching as he jerked it, preparing to spill.
But then he heard something that made him freeze. A soft snick of a key card inserted at his villa door, the gentle whoosh of the door pushing open, a light thudding of tap, tap, tap from shoe soles crossing the tiled entrance to the bedroom where Roman was lying, and shit, who the fuck was entering his room at 9:00 pm? If this was guest services dispensing extra towels or some bullshit unannounced, he was going to fucking scream, and the resort would most definitely be comping his stay to cover the cost of this humiliation. He scrambled to sit upright, flinging a pillow over his crotch to hide his obscene nudity, though with his shorts dangling at his ankles it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain what he'd been doing. "Who's there?" he called out as the footsteps approached faster, cringing that his scared high-pitched whine didn't convey a ton of authority.
The person poked their head through the bedroom doorframe and appraised him with a cocky sneer. "Don't stop on my account," Gerri purred, walking to perch at the edge of the bed, carelessly flinging her phone on the mattress as she got comfortable. She gestured at his pillow impatiently. "You wanted me, and here I am. Fucking show me something worth my while."
Exhaling heavily with the rush of receding terror, he tossed away the pillow and began to jerk himself again, a little slower and fancier than before, twisting his palm to rub at his shining tip for Gerri's approval. She leaned in nearer, openly curious. "All the hours I've logged listening to you masturbate, and this is my first time witnessing it."
"You like it?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, as he was intimately familiar with the horny gauze clouding her eyes, the rapid uptick of her breathing indicating her arousal.
"I don't know why you had to pester me about it. Seems like you have a handle on the matter just fine," she murmured, shifting on the bed to touch his leg, fingers petting the flesh.
"Yeah, I can go through the motions and it's fine. It fucking scratches an itch," he told her, tempo increasing speed as Gerri squeezed at his leg in a loose facsimile of a hand job. "But it's 100% better with you. Doesn't even compare."
"Why?" she said quietly, fingertips digging in with purpose as his grip stuttered.
"Because you're beautiful. Sexy. Incredible. You elevate everything on the mere basis of your presence. Fuck, how can I help being easy for you?" he panted, close to blowing. "It's like asking the moon why it orbits the earth. It can't not. One fucking needs the other, and that's you and me, Gerri."
"Roman, remove your hand from your dick," she said from out of the blue, the mattress dipping beneath her weight as she crept towards him.
"What?" he gasped, flabbergasted by the request but still cognizant that he should follow her command, forcing himself to quit stroking. "The fuck, I was about to come!"
"I know. And you would've spread mess everywhere if you had, and you know my feelings on mess. I can't have it," she said, flipping her hair behind her shoulder and lowering to be level with his dick, and oh, shit, he suddenly realized what her intentions were. "So allow me to offer a more tidy solution."
She suctioned him into the molten cocoon of her mouth, and he tried to relax and enjoy it, really, he did, but her tongue was as much of a fucking champ at pressing his buttons as her mind was, and she'd delivered deadly on both fronts tonight. He had zero methods of defense to mount and he wasn't interested in trying to, either, not when it was so much sweeter to succumb to orgasm, flooding between her lips in a syrupy pulse and moaning as she downed every last drop.
"Thank you," he murmured as she left him with a tiny parting kiss to his dick.
"You're welcome," she said fondly. "Sorry for scaring you with my arrival. I was on my way over when you texted. I forgot to grab my shampoo to bring to Stacey's room. I have to wash my hair tonight so it'll be ready to be styled for the ceremony tomorrow."
"You almost gave me a fucking heart attack and I was gearing to sue the shit out of this resort for barging in on me, but it's okay," he chuckled, sliding his shorts back on and rolling over on the bed lazily as Gerri rolled off it to head to the bathroom, searching for her shampoo bottle. Sleepy after coming so thoroughly, he snuggled into a blanket, eyelids droopy, squinting them open just a crack as from somewhere in the vicinity of his feet, Gerri's phone pinged with a notification.
"Hey, I think someone's texting you," he yelled over the clattering of Gerri sorting through her toiletries in the bathroom. Struggling to move, he managed to lunge forward and grab her phone, figuring he'd find Stacey's name on the screen, asking what her mother was doing on this extended shampoo hunt.
But that wasn't remotely similar to what was displayed on Gerri's phone. The new notification wasn't for a text sent by Stacey or anybody else on the trip with them to Mexico, and in fact wasn't referring to a text at all. It was an app alert, a glowing banner splashed across the screen revealing that Gerri had an unread message from none other than the Meet Acute app.
"Care to fucking explain this to me?" he demanded, thrusting the phone aloft as Gerri emerged from the bathroom with her coveted shampoo. Frowning, she settled on the bed beside him and took the phone, poking at it much too slowly for Roman's liking. "Who the fuck is messaging you on Meet Acute?"
"Oh, it's just Theodore," she said casually. Shocked, Roman collapsed backwards into the pillows, sprawling like a piece of roadkill who'd had the stuffing knocked out of it, which he basically had.
"The fucking chipmunk?" he exclaimed. "You stayed in contact with him? Why? Why is that app even on your phone? We agreed to delete it like nine months ago, Gerri!"
"We agreed to communicate without the dressings of the app. Remus and Holland used Meet Acute to talk, Roman and Gerri communicate by regular old texting or via phone calls like normal people. I never said anything about deleting the app," she shrugged.
Roman could not fucking believe her nonchalance on such a serious subject. "So, what, other guys have been messaging you the whole time you've been with me? You keeping peeled for your backup man, got him fucking prepped in the wings should I ever step a toe out of bounds?" The accusation sounded so wrong pouring from his mouth, paranoia and anger temporarily trumping rationality. She loved him. They were living together, for fuck's sake. It was fucking weird to leave the app on her phone and he wasn't happy that she'd spoken to Theodore without telling him, but she wouldn't betray their relationship by cheating. "Shit. That didn't come out right. I don't mean to accuse you of going behind my back. You wouldn't, of course you wouldn't. I'm just fucking confused."
"No, I get it," she assured him kindly. "Don't worry, swarms of men haven't been messaging me. My Meet Acute profile isn't active. There's a setting where you can turn off the ability to match with new people, but continue to message those you've previously matched with. That's how I can talk to Theodore. And we haven't stayed in contact. We've only messaged just the once since our one and only date. Want to read for yourself?"
She flipped the phone to him again. He scanned the scant text on the screen, a brief, professional conversation about Theodore's orthodontist practice, as apparently Stacey was seeking input on Liam's dental situation. "We bumped into each other randomly the other day at a coffee shop," Gerri spoke up as he read. "And we chatted for a minute. I mentioned that Stacey said Liam's dentist had some concerns about the spacing of his teeth requiring orthodontic intervention, so I asked Theodore if he accepted pediatric patients. He told me he'd message me with details, through the Meet Acute app since we never actually exchanged phone numbers. I didn't mention it to you because it was such a minor blip on my radar, Roman. With the trip and the wedding approaching, an encounter with Theodore frankly didn't matter much."
Well, shit, that was perfectly reasonable, and it had him feeling like an enormous ass. "Alright. It's cool. I'm sorry for freaking," he apologized, passing her the phone. "But why have a dating app installed, Gerri, if you're taken?"
Sighing, she reclined on the bed, huddling on her side to face him. "I like to revisit the conversations we had on there. Holds my stonewalling tendencies in check if they threaten to flair up," she admitted reluctantly, and Roman instinctively tucked her beneath the shelter of his arm in comfort. She'd been doing so fucking well letting him in to her heart, body, and soul, but he respected that didn't necessarily come naturally. "And of course I enjoy all the nicer conversations, too. I daydream about them sometimes, if you're out of town or working late in the office without me. It's difficult, that your father hasn't paired us on many assignments since we announced our relationship. There's moments I'm lonely, although those are fewer and farther between now that you've moved in. But the app has such a lovely record of us, and I guess I look at it and..."
"You think about who your owner is?" Roman supplied. She was fucking his exactly as he was hers, no doubts about it.
"That wasn't the phrase I was going to use, but sure. Touché," Gerri grumbled, giggling as he tickled at her ribs, scooching closer to rain kisses along the length of her arm.
"Maybe a collar could benefit us both," he said, lips trailing from the crook of her elbow to the pale veins of her wrist, then the silky-smooth skin of her hand, her left hand. "Except that wouldn't be very practical for day-to-day wear. Might garner some raised eyebrows. No, we need something that draws less attention. Smaller. But still circular. And still every bit a personal declaration of our commitment." He pushed a pointed kiss to the base of her ring finger.
"Oh, Roman," she whispered in surprise as she caught on to his implication.
"I'm not proposing," he told her quickly, unable of determining if her surprise was born of excitement or dismay. "It'd be fucking tacky to do that while we're here celebrating somebody else's wedding. I also don't have a ring yet." He paused for that word 'yet' to permeate the air, watching Gerri breathe it in with a smile breaking across her face. Excited surprise it was, then, fuck yeah. "But sometime in the near future, I will. That's where I want us to go. The stuff on the app, it was wonderful, romantic as shit. I fucking cherish it, Gerri. But our origin is just that, a beginning. We can move on from it. Preferably in ways where other dudes can't slide into your DMs."
"Okay. Yes, I suppose deleting the app is really past due," she conceded, and he carefully released her hand to reach for her phone.
"You can hang on to a highlight reel of us, though. I'll screenshot some of our best messages. Then you can save them forever." Tapping into the Meet Acute app, he scrolled deep into their chats to capture them at their finest, the flirting, the banter, a few choice clips of their heartfelt Stonewall discussions, and several of the sexy pics Holland had sent Remus, forwarding those to his phone for a private perusal later. He finished by grabbing a copy of the orthodontist information Theodore had provided on Stacey's behalf and gave the phone back to Gerri for examination. "There. That look okay?"
She hummed, flicking through the gallery of images, thumb halting abruptly as she scoffed. "Did you seriously screenshot multiple pictures of my breasts? Why, when you have open access to them daily?"
"I am indeed fucking blessed to live in a time of plenty, but a man has to have options to tide him over in times of scarcity, Gerri," he teased. "I wasn't kidding about asking for nudes. It's the thought of you setting up the camera to get me all hot and bothered, and I can't even tell it's coming until it hits me. Ugh. Fucking hot."
"I'll take that under advisement," she said, gaze going cloudy for a second like her mastermind brain was plotting a thousand steps ahead on how to seize him by the balls and have him keeling for mercy. She probably was, fucking diabolical bitch, also known as the love of his life. The cloud passed in another second, her eyes clearing to stare focused at her phone, finger prodding at the screen. "Alright, I'm doing it. It's getting deleted. Goodbye, Meet Acute."
"Thanks for everything," he added as the app uninstalled and vanished from the phone. "Welp. The end of a chapter, but the book continues."
"It absolutely does. We'll write it together," said Gerri, cupping his chin and angling him to her lips for a tender kiss. "Oh, god, Stacey must be wondering if I've ditched her by now. The length I've been gone, I could have had my hair washed already."
"Fuck. I shouldn't have lured you in with my text," he said guiltily. She deserved an uninterrupted night of quality bonding with her daughter. He could have granted her that instead of wheedling her like a needy prick desperate for an ego boost.
But Gerri wasn't concerned. "Don't feel bad. You've never made me do anything I didn't want to do."
"I know," he nodded, nuzzling his nose against her creamy cheek. Once his insecurities had plagued him, the sickening worry that he'd coerced Gerri into a situation where she didn't belong, that his refusal to give up on them was perceived as unwanted aggression rather than what it actually was, staunch dedication they were each other's destiny. She'd erected so many roadblocks to keep him away, he'd been prevented from seeing what was real. It was a ludicrous proposition that Gerri Kellman, tough as nails and with the backbone of a hammer, would lift as much as a finger against her own free will. She wouldn't. He knew that, finally.
And that meant having her in his arms like this was infinitely special. "I'll leave for Stacey's room in a minute. After I've had just a few more here with you," she said, body soft as jelly as she curled against him, because nails were only as tough as the hammer driving them in and the constructions she'd erected weren't ever built to stand. Her roadblocks and Roman's insecurities had nothing on their love.
"Yeah," he said softly, bundling her tight, understanding that soon he would have to let her go for the night but that she'd return to him, then, now, and always. "Right here is a pretty good place to be."