Page 40 of Romeo vs Romeo

I nodded. The relief that washed over me was such that it felt like a second baptism. “I won’t let you down.”

Roman’s hand took mine before I even knew he had stepped forward. I had expected a trial. I had expected them to ask me to wait outside while they weighed the risks my presence posed. I had expected them to, at the very least, downgrade me to the status of a volunteer who didn’t need to know everything.

I clutched Roman’s hand like it was the only thing holding me grounded, keeping me from floating away. The boulder of anxiety had rolled off my chest, making me lighter than I had been in years.

As the guys expressed their agreement and relief, tapping my shoulders on their way out, Roman and I remained in Mama Viv’s dressing room. The motherly face she pulled on in the instant that the door shut, leaving the three of us alone and with privacy, solidified all that Roman had told me about her. She wasn’t just a diva or a talented performer but a caring soul. On occasion, I had seen my own mother look this way, only it had never been directed at me. She looked this way when the poor gathered in the church or when Monsignor O’Connor opened his doors to the homeless in winter with her financial aid.

Mama Viv stepped forward, examining me carefully for a moment. “Darling, I hope you’ll forgive my forwardness, but it’s their loss. You would have made a powerful ally had your family been kinder.”

“What’s done is done,” I said.

Mama Viv took my free hand in both of hers after closing the fan and slipping it up her sleeve. “You have a home here. It’s not gilded or particularly comfortable. It’s modest, but it has a place for you.”

“Thank you,” I said. And then, when those two words seemed insufficient, I added, “Mama Viv.”

“Give Mama a hug,” she said, closing the distance and wrapping her arms around me gently. The hug lasted a couple of heartbeats, and then she released me. The entire business was settled just like that.

The following night, Roman brought me to the event he had been hyping among Viv’s supporters. The drag queens who had started their careers on Mama Viv’s stage some ten years ago and who performed as a duo in Vegas every weekend arrived with a bus of fans. The petitions were set up in the garden despite the chill of the deepening fall.

When Sodom and Gomorrah took to the stage, Roman and I were inside with most of the crowd. In the sweltering heat of somany moving bodies, sweat broke over me quickly. Roman held on to me on the dance floor, his hands shamelessly exploring my body, each of my muscles easy to feel through my tight T-shirt. And when the heat was overwhelming, Roman didn’t hesitate to offer me a helping hand in taking the T-shirt off. Although I tucked it into the waist of my jeans on the small of my back, my T-shirt disappeared in a drunken bliss of dancing with Roman. His tank top was gone, too, and our bodies slammed together as the beat of music pounded through us.

Near dawn, long after the party was over, Roman offered me an oversized hoodie from his wardrobe, and I returned to the Billionaires’ Row and my father’s penthouse. On me, the scent of Roman’s hoodie was the strongest, but underneath, there were all the other scents of Roman that only I was aware of. Showering felt more like sacrilege than letting Roman bite on my cross in the heat of the passion barely over an hour earlier.

By Monday morning, Roman and I had filled up a mile of digital space with messages, and I found that waking up at six for Dad’s meeting with Jacobs was already hard work because I had stayed up until three, texting like a teenager who was unmistakably in love.

Even so, when my alarm went off, two things happened at once. The sense of purpose blossomed in me like a time lapse for a rose blooming on a very thorny branch, and fear of what I had to do prevented me from drawing a deep breath for nearly a solid minute. Two days ago, in my mother’s ranting about the ways to deal with Joseph Burton and Alex Blakely, Father hadn’t said a word of disagreement. He had been listening with only half of his attention, but he had been nodding nonetheless. If I had hoped to find even a bit of sympathy in him on the fateful day that was bound to come sooner or later, that hope had been squashed.

And today, I needed to return the favor.

Father was dressed, shaved, and having toast for breakfast when I finished getting ready for his meeting with Jacobs. Mother was there, quiet and drawn inward, and she barely noticed when I joined the breakfast table.

We ate with little conversation. Father was reviewing the notes with increasing concern on his face, so I decided I wouldn’t poke the wounded lion with a short and fragile stick.

“Very well,” Father said once my coffee and toast were gone. “We might as well go.”

Mother didn’t wish me good luck on my first day of work. She was undoubtedly thinking of Joseph Burton, the golden boy who was corruptible. What could she, then, expect from a son that had never qualified as good? The concerns creased her forehead, but I struggled to give a shit.

Father and I took the elevator to the garage, where his chauffeur awaited with the engine on. We entered, greeted the man behind the wheel, and drove on. The ride took us nearly two hours, during which I texted Roman with small, unimportant updates. Somehow, everything I saw made me think of him, even when I texted him that I saw a black-and-white cow.

The country was changing its colors from the lush green of summer to the broody orange and brown of fall. Recent rains freshened up the windswept grass on the fields and hills as far as my eyesight could reach. As we drove to the Gilded Greens Club, where Jacobs would meet us, my heart thundered. My texts with Roman were getting more risky with each mile we crossed, and my father was two feet away from me, his nose buried in his papers.

“I’ve got something for you,” Roman texted, following that up with a warning to hide my screen.

In an instant, he tore apart the facade of cool composure and dedication to my father’s business. He tore apart the conservative membrane that held all my true nature hidden.The expiring image he sent was enough to leave me flustered and squirming in the seat. His bathroom mirror was cloudy, the steam wiped off in an arching move of a towel, and the clear part of it showed Roman’s naked body from behind. His smooth, round ass was firm and beautifully curved. Then, when I saw it, my heart went into an overload. He wasn’t naked. There was a thick, elastic stripe of a waistband around his waist and a thinner one sliding under his cheek. He wore an indigo jockstrap with red lettering.

The photo disappeared from my screen, but the heat remained unchanged inside of me.

“The things I would do to youright now,” I texted back.

I could see him grinning, those dimples large and deep. “Which things? I need you to be specific.”

My dick shifted in my pants, and I held my breath as I typed back. “I’d throw you on your bed,” I texted. “I’d bury your face in a pillow and eat you like I ate you the other night. I would devour you, Roman.”

“And then?” Roman asked. I could hear that touch of sluttiness in his tone, even though his words were just text on my screen.

My imagination ran wild.I would tie your wrists with the tie I’m wearing to this meeting. It’s black silk. You’d love it, Roman. You wouldn’t stand a chance against it. Trapped. Helpless. Mine. And then, when you’re so horny that you can’t say three words correctly, and when you’re begging me to make you come, I’d push my dick inside of you. You’d cry. You’d tell me to slow down. But I would stuff my boxers inside your mouth and make you shut up. I’d fuck you so hard you wouldn’t walk for a day, Roman.

His messages back grew shorter and hotter. He begged me to keep going, and I did. The car spun around me. Some vague awareness that my father sat next to me made everything a littleworse, except that I knew how much better it felt to do this right under his nose. I felt vindicated when Roman sent another image a good ten minutes later. It was the image of his abdomen, and I recognized his bed at the edge of the frame, but my gaze didn’t linger there for long. Instead, I gazed at the white splatter down Roman’s abs, and it was all I could do not to growl and moan right here in the car.

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