Sal Gabrini: Love And War Read online

  But Tommy hugged his kid brother anyway, and kissed him on his cheek. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and headed toward the revolving doors.

  Sal stood there watching Tommy as he left. Because he knew Tommy was coming from that place of love. But Sal didn’t see what realistic choice he had. He was still a man with raging hormones, and Yvonne was still one woman he really wanted to try out. A relationship with a woman like Gemma Jones was a pipedream anyway. What would she want with a man like him? Then he shook his head. He knew he was rationalizing. But that didn’t mean he was lying. He was an asshole, what could he say?

  He headed for the elevators, for a quickie with Yvonne.

  Yvonne stood at the elevator in the back of the lobby putting on lipstick. She felt as if she was on top of the world. She’d known females who’d been with Sal Luca, and every one of them declared it was the best sex they’d ever had. There were rumors about some black chick suddenly popping up on the horizon, but she didn’t believe it. Sal wasn’t into black chicks. He loved him some busty blondes. And it didn’t get more busty and blonde than her. She was about to become, she fervently believed, the best he’d ever had.

  Besides, Fast Eddie was getting less and less able to satisfy her. She needed a man more her age, somebody still young and virile. Somebody muscular and strong and rich and good looking like Sal, she thought, as she looked up and saw him approaching her. She smiled that grand smile and tossed her lipstick back into her clutch. She looked at his midsection, and how big his bulge looked even when it wasn’t fully activated. Those tales other women told about Sal in bed had her aching too. She needed a replacement man. She chose Sal.

  “Come with me,” Sal said as he walked past the general public elevators to Reno’s private elevator further back. Yvonne smiled as Sal swiped his keycard and the doors opened. Sal didn’t talk as they got onto the elevator. But Yvonne was accustomed to men like him. He wasn’t going to make it easy: they never did. Any moves were going to be up to her. And she intended to pull out the stops.

  Sal pressed the button to head upstairs. But they didn’t make it upstairs. Yvonne decided to give him a teaser. As soon as they got onto the elevator, Yvonne began removing clothing. Specifically, her bra. She’d heard that Sal was a breast man, and she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. She was right.

  He pressed in the code on the elevator, which turned off the cameras, and pressed the HOLD button, which stopped the elevator’s ascent. Then he slammed her against the wall. And just as Yvonne had predicted, Sal was all over her breasts: licking and sucking and squeezing. She lifted her dress: she purposely wore no panties, and began grabbing his belt, and undoing his pants. And then she pulled it out, got on her knees, and began to give him the best oral she could possibly give to him.

  Sal stood upright and braced himself as Yvonne went down on him. He expected a quick cum. He expected to do her in her mouth the way he liked it, and be done with her.

  But his cum wouldn’t come. He tried to focus. He tried to give it his all too. But nothing was happening. The harder she tried: the licking and jerking and putting it in her mouth and going all the way down, the limper his penis became. She kept glancing up at him, wondering what she was doing wrong, and began to panic, but his eyes were closed.

  The problem wasn’t Yvonne. The problem was his own mind. Because, in the back of his mind, it wasn’t what Yvonne was doing to him that dominated this thought, but what Gemma could do to him if she was the woman in this elevator with him. And he couldn’t resolve it. He couldn’t figure out why he would settle for what at best was going to be a low-level cum with Yvonne, when Gemma Jones had the capacity to shoot him to the moon. And that moonshot was too much of an enticement for Sal. He pulled his dick out of Yvonne’s mouth, tucked it back inside his pants, and zipped the hell up. What Tommy had said was true. Why the hell did he keep settling?

  But Yvonne was mortified. She rose to her feet. “I was just getting started, Sal,” she said nervously.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “It’s over. Fix your clothes.”

  Yvonne put her clothes back in order as Sal turned back on the cameras, removed the HOLD on the elevator, and pressed the Lobby button instead of any up keys.

  “But what about the restroom?” Yvonne asked.

  Sal looked at her. Was she stupid? That needing to use the bathroom talk was code for she wanted to fuck. She knew that. Didn’t she understand that he knew it, too?

  But whether she understood or not was of no consequence to Sal. He rode her back downstairs to the lobby where he found her, escorted her out of his cousin’s building, and then got into his Mercedes and drove away. He could kick himself for going down that road with her in the first place. Tommy was right. He deserved better, and Gemma sure as hell did.

  Gemma Jones looked at her Caller ID. When she saw that it was Trina Gabrini, she smiled and answered. “Good evening.”

  “Is he there yet?”

  “Not yet, Tree.” Gemma was sitting in a booth seat in Miff’s, a Vegas bar. She already had her drink and, before the call, had been reading a text message.

  “He’s late, right?” Trina asked. “I’ll call and see where his butt is.”

  Gemma smiled. “Don’t you dare! He’s not that late. If he doesn’t show up in a timely manner, I know how to get my ass up and leave. There’s no need to call him. If he wants to be here, he’ll get here.”

  “Girl, you’re a better woman than I am. Because if Reno pulled that late shit on me early in our relationship, we wouldn’t be married today!”

  Then Gemma’s smile left, as she thought about it. “And that would have been an awful thing,” she said.

  There was a pause on the other end. “You are so right. Um! I never even thought of it that way.”

  “I’m learning myself,” Gemma said.

  “Learning what?”

  “To stop expecting too much from these men. I mean, I have my standards and plan to keep them. But I can’t keep letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. If I find a good man, and I’m not saying in any way, shape or form, that Sal Gabrini is that man, I plan to do all I can to keep him.”

  “You deserve a good man, Gemma,” Trina said. “And I can say, in every way, shape, and form, that Sal Gabrini is that good man.”

  Gemma laughed. “Oh, please.”

  “You’ll see. Time will prove me right.”

  Gemma thought about it. In a way, she hoped so. But she’d hoped many times before and was crushed by the weight of that thing called reality. She wasn’t getting her hopes up again. Not yet.

  Then she looked up, and saw that Sal had arrived and was heading for her table. “It’s a false alarm, anyway,” she said to Trina. “He’s here.”

  “Oh, good. Talk to you later, girl. And if he wants some, give him some for crying out loud! Me and Reno did it on our first date!”

  Gemma smiled. “Bye, girl,” she said, and ended the call.

  As Sal made his way around table after table to get to her booth, she sighed. He looked sooo gangster! He was wearing a double-breasted suit with bling to boot. He looked more like a godfather, in the Mafia sense, than the businessman he was known to be. And she was an attorney? An officer of the court? What in the world was she doing so much as even considering a relationship with a guy like him?

  But she liked him. She didn’t know why. He wasn’t even her type. Every man she had ever been truly attracted to in the past was black. Now she was interested in this Italian? And not exactly an upstanding Italian citizen, either, if she were to be honest with herself. But the truth was the truth: she liked Sal. That night he drove her home from Reno’s get together, and spent hours talking with her even after she turned down his request for sex, impressed her.

  But she felt it was more than that. It was the ease with which she could talk to him. It was his sense of humor. It was the fact that she sensed a decency about Sal that the most pious of men couldn’t match. And that, for her, was what mainly kept he
r interested. But she had no clue if her instinct would be proven wrong, or proven right?

  For Sal’s part, he was taking it easy, too. He was late, but he wasn’t going to apologize. He’d look like the sap Tommy was accusing him of being if he couldn’t even be late to meet this woman. But then he saw the woman, and his outlook changed.

  She was stunning, he thought, as he made his way toward her booth. So elegant and sharply dressed. She was even wearing reading glasses, those half-moon kind that sat on her small nose, and that gave her a look of smartness with her sharpness. And her high cheekbones, and flawless black skin, she was radiant. Sal was struck by her beauty. And for the first time in his life, as he walked up to her, Sal Gabrini felt as if he was out of his league.

  “Sorry I’m late,” was the first thing out of his mouth, and he could have kicked himself for saying it. The very thing he declared he would never say, he already said. What the fuck, he wondered, was wrong with him?

  Gemma removed her glasses and sat her phone aside. “How have you been?” she asked with genuine affection.

  Sal felt it. “I’ve been good,” he said with a smile, as he took his seat across from her. “And you?” He stared at her, as if she was about to give him a life or death answer. He felt awkward as hell, like he was too big for the seat.

  “It was a tough day in court,” Gemma said, “but that’s the life of a defense attorney. You don’t pick your clients. Your clients pick you.”

  “And they’re always guilty anyway, right?” Sal asked.

  But Gemma shook her head. “No, not always. Not all of them. The system can be pretty rigged against the poor. But I know what you’re saying. Everybody claims to be innocent. But sometimes they are innocent.”

  “I hear ya.”

  The waiter arrived and Sal ordered their finest wine. After the waiter left, he leaned back and stared at Gemma. He suddenly didn’t know what to say. The kind of women he usually dated weren’t conversationalists either. They were bed-hoppers. What would you talk to a lawyer about anyway, he wondered, except how she could get you out of trouble?

  “How’s Seattle these days?” Gemma finally asked. “That’s where you’re from, right?”

  “Right. And it’s okay. Nothing to write home about, but good. But, to be honest with you, I’m out of town more than I’m in town lately.”

  “Out of town on business?” Gemma asked.

  “Yep. Among other things. So, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so good anymore.”

  Gemma smiled.

  “But it’s home,” Sal added.

  Then the conversation died once again.

  After the waiter arrived, opened the expensive bottle of wine and filled their glasses, and then left the bottle on ice, both quickly took sips as if they needed a drink. For Gemma, she was surprised that Sal wasn’t more verbose. He seemed to have a lot to say when she first met him. And when they talked at her apartment the night he took her home, he was full of conversation then, too. But now that they were on their first real date, if that was what this was, he was behaving as if the cat had his tongue. She didn’t know what to make of this guy. She honestly didn’t.

  For Sal, he was oddly nervous. This date was going downhill fast. And for some strange reason, he was super-anxious to resurrect it. He really wanted to get to know this woman in more ways than one. But just when it looked as if Gemma was going to take another sip of her drink and announce that she’d better get going, Sal was saved by the bell.

  It was a slow song blaring over the bar’s stereo system: the 5th Dimension singing Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s One Less Bell to Answer, and couples were hitting the floor. Sal noticed immediately that Gemma was beginning to sway her luscious body from side to side, too. And he suddenly had an inspiration. He could dance with her on this slow song and kill two birds with one stone: prolong their date, and cop a feel at the same time.

  “You dance?” he asked her.

  Gemma nodded. “Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, I love to dance,” she said.

  Sal stood up and extended his hand. “Let’s do it then. Fuck this. Let’s dance!”

  Gemma smiled. Sal Gabrini dancing? Reno and Trina made him seem like this super-tough guy who wouldn’t be caught dead being sensitive, so she shouldn’t expect any sensitivity whatsoever. At least not until he really got to know her. But this Sal, this quiet, endearing, gorgeous man, was a pleasant surprise.

  She took his hand, rose to her feet, and they walked onto the dance floor.

  When Sal placed his hand on Gemma’s waist, and then eased her against his body, he suddenly felt ten-feet tall. He felt as if he’d won some prize. And the sweet scent of her. And the way he pulled back a little, just to make sure she was okay, and she smiled that brilliant, bright-white smile at him. He inwardly cheered. He was going to enjoy fucking her!

  Gemma was feeling some kind of happy, too, as Sal slow-dragged with her. It wasn’t because she wanted to go to bed with him, although she saw that as a definite future possibility. But there was something oddly remarkable about the way she was feeling as he held her. She felt good in his arms. Protected even. As if this character called Sal Luca could actually be the one. It made no sense. It was vastly premature! But that was exactly how Gemma felt. Sal Gabrini, of all people on the face of this earth, just might be the one and only for Gemma Jones. She smiled, even shook her head, and then laid it onto his big, broad shoulder.

  When she laid her head upon Sal’s shoulder, and he could feel her heartbeat against his chest, and the fragileness of her body against his hand, something changed within him. He felt a yearning for this woman. And it was a yearning that wasn’t just sexual for once in his life.

  It frightened him at first. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t. And his first instinct was to get away from her and get away fast. This yearning and these odd emotions for a woman he barely knew were troubling to a man like him: a man who made it his business to hide his true feelings from every human being on the face of this earth, except maybe from his brother.

  But he couldn’t deny the feelings. That would have been troubling, too. And he so wanted to hold this woman for as long as he possibly could. He removed his hand from her hand, and placed both of his arms around her body. As they danced, he blanketed her with his arms.

  “One less

  bell to answer.

  One less

  egg to fry.

  One less man

  to pick up after.

  I should be happy.

  But all I do is cry.”

  After several dances, and a little more conversation, they both decided it was time to leave. When Sal could see that men were ogling Gemma as they walked out of the bar, his anger flared. But what the fuck was he angry about? This wasn’t his woman! But he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. He placed his hand on the small of her back, claiming ownership although he didn’t own her. But it worked. The men, who glanced her way and was about to give her a second look, glanced at Sal and looked no further.

  Once outside, the valets drove up with her car, a BMW, and his car, a Mercedes, and he tipped both valets and helped Gemma into her vehicle. When the door closed, and she pressed down the window, he still yearned for her. “Maybe I’ll come over,” he said, “for a nightcap.”

  Gemma knew what he meant. He wanted sex. But she was no way ready for that. She was actually interested in him. Giving it up so easily to a man she liked never bode well for her. Maybe it was her father who always told her that men weren’t paying for something they could get for free. Maybe it was her own instincts. But she told him no.

  Sal was a little irritated that she turned him down again. What the fuck did she think she had in those drawers? Gold?

  But he still yearned for her.

  “I’ll follow you anyway,” he said, “just to make sure you make it safely inside your home. You can never be too careful.”

  Gemma smiled. She would feel she owed him if he did that for her, and she didn’t want
that, either. “I’m good, Sal,” she said. “But thanks so much. Have a nice evening.”

  Sal was embarrassed. He was actually embarrassed! Any other woman and he would have cussed her ass out right in front of those valets. But she wasn’t any other woman. She was Gemma. And he still yearned for her! “I’m going to be leaving town soon,” he said, “but maybe I’ll give you a call.”

  The idea that he would be leaving town upset Gemma, but it was further proof that giving herself to him would not be the right move right now. But the fact that he offered to give her a call, even after she turned him down, was encouraging. “That would be nice,” she said, and he smiled too. Then she drove away.

  Sal felt all kinds of emotions as he made his way to his car. Did he want a long-distance relationship with a woman who was so different from him in every way? She was a lawyer, for crying out loud. She was highly education, sophisticated, gorgeous, and, he also had to admit, black. Did he really want to be in an interracial relationship when he knew nothing about the cultures of other races? Or was he overstating it? Gemma was as black as they come, but it was never an issue whenever he was with her. It almost seemed, to his own shock, beside the point.

  But when he got into his Mercedes, and began to drive away, he had a different issue to deal with. And it had nothing to do with Gemma.

  A man was in the backseat of his car, and sat up. Sal, shocked, saw him through his rearview. “What the fuck?” he asked, ready to reach for his own gun.

  But the man quickly placed a gun to the side of Sal’s head. “Don’t even try it, asshole,” he said. “Just drive. I’ll tell you where.”

  Sal knew it was going to be bullshit as soon as he stepped out of his car under an overpass and saw Fast Eddie Bronson standing beside his old lady, the woman Sal allowed to give him head earlier that night, Yvonne Welker.

  Fast Eddie left her side and walked over to Sal Luca. They knew each other only in passing. But Sal wasn’t worried. Fast was a lot of things, but he was no fool. He knew not to fuck with a Gabrini.