Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 Read online

  Reno laughed. “It was easy?”

  “Easy my foot,” Trina said, smiling too.

  “It was real easy,” Dommi doubled down. “I could have beat her with my hands behind my back.”

  Reno leaned back, stretched out his legs, held his daughter tighter, and laughed his head off. Jimmy, Val, and Quinn were laughing too. Trina was shaking her head. It wasn’t that funny to her.

  And as Mick sat there surrounded by unbridled laughter, he realized all at once what he most wanted but never had. Love. The most overused word in the world, the most underused word in his life. Love. He wanted to love, he wanted to be loved. He wanted a family of his own, something he swore off his entire life, but he wanted it now. He wanted his own Trina. He wanted his own Dommi. He wanted his own family. Because, as he sat there, he accepted an inconvenient truth that plagued him now: Many people respected him. Many more feared him. Nobody, not on the face of this earth, loved him.

  And after dinner, as Mick’s chauffeured limousine drove him and Quinn to Quinn’s nice home in suburban Las Vegas, Mick couldn’t stop thinking about that inconvenient truth. He was not a good man. Reno had his faults, but he was a good, loving father to his children and a good, loving husband to his wife.

  Mick had children, too, and he supported them financially just as soundly as Reno supported his. But he never raised them. He was never there for them emotionally which he knew was far more valuable to children than money. He was not a good man.

  And when he and Quinn entered her home, he needed to find an outlet for the aggression that uncomfortable truth often caused him to display. Quinn, like most women who wanted to be with him, was more than willing and completely ready. He was going to take it out on her.

  She was about to head to her bar, to prepare him a drink, but he took her by the hand and pulled her back. “Where’s your bedroom?” he asked her. “I need to release.”

  She looked down, at the growing thickness between his legs, and she smiled. She adored real men who didn’t beat around the bush. He wanted her and he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t. She loved that.

  “Follow me,” she said, unable to hide her own lustful excitement, and led him into her bedroom.

  If she thought she would get a gentleman in bed, she was wrong. Just as blunt as he was about telling her he wanted some, he was going to be equally blunt taking it.

  He sat down on the edge of her bed. “Take it off,” he said to her, and then watched her undress. When he saw that there were no secrets beneath those clothes, and that she had enough going for her to do it for him, he began to undress as well. But as soon as he pulled down his trousers and briefs, and Quinn saw his dick dangle out, she did as many women did when they first saw his member: she knelt down and began sucking it.

  Mick lifted his shirt over his head, his final piece of clothing, which revealed a tanned body and ripped abs, with not an ounce of fat on any part of that body, and then he laid back on the bed and let her do her thing.

  She wasn’t good at it. She was trying too hard. And more than once he had to take his hand and guide her head so that her mouth could move up and down along his rod, rather than simply smother it. But that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate her effort. He appreciated it. But he was not an altruistic man and therefore did not ascribe altruism to others. She wanted that dick inside of her, that was why she was so willing to give him head, and that was all there was to it to Mick. Women could tell him all day long how much they wanted him, and how much they cared so much for him. But he knew better. It was never about him. It was always about them. They wanted what he could give to them. Be it money, position, power, or sex. One or all of those. Quinn, he decided, wanted his sex. And since that was all he wanted from her too, he got on with it.

  He had her naked beneath him, and was pushing his condom-covered aroused dick into her, within moments of the end of her oral. She was already soaking wet. Just being with him took care of that. And she needed no individual attention. He fucked her.

  She was moaning and giving off those fake you know how to do me sounds he knew women felt a need to demonstrate, as if all of that noise was going to make a man feel more manly. Mick didn’t need it, nor did he want it. Because he wasn’t thinking about Quinn. She wasn’t what this was about. He wanted her beneath him, he wanted this release, because he couldn’t stop thinking about Trina. Katrina Gabrini. The woman Reno called Tree. He envisioned her beautiful brown body beneath him, with her big, bobbling breasts, and her beautiful brown face against his, as he fucked Quinn. He had to fight hard against the urge to say her name, as he put it on a wonderful woman he was sure, but a woman he was no more interested in than the bed they were fucking on.

  Until he came. He wanted to say her name. But he held on. And just thought about her, thought about that mighty woman called Tree, as he came.

  At the Gabrini estate, Reno and Trina had already said their goodbyes to Jimmy and Val, had long since put their two little ones to bed, and Reno had showered and was already naked and in bed. Trina had taken a long, hot bath in their Jacuzzi tub and decided, after drying off, to get him back for making her the brunt of his jokes most of the evening. Not that they weren’t funny jokes. They were. But she enjoyed needling Reno just as much as he enjoyed needling her.

  She came out of the bathroom wearing a nightgown.

  Reno was lying on his back as he watched her walk around to her side of the bed. He was looking at her as if she was a Martian. “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  Trina wanted to laugh so hard because Reno looked so baffled, but she maintained her stoic expression. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m coming to bed.” She got in bed beside him.

  “But what’s with the get-up?”

  Trina had to smile on that. “It’s not a get-up, Reno. It’s a nightgown. And believe it or not, this is what most women in America wears to bed each and every night.”

  “Not my woman,” Reno said, turned toward her, and attempted to sling it over her head. But he only got as far as her neck, because Trina fought back.

  “Quit, Reno,” she said, trying hard not to laugh. “I want to wear it!”

  “Why all of a sudden you have to wear something? It’s bedtime!”

  “And I feel like wearing a gown to bed. What’s so baffling about that?”

  But Reno was already looking at what he wanted. She was naked from the breasts down. His penis, once asleep, began to stand up on its own as he looked up and down the length of her beautiful black body. He began to massage his balls, and rub his penis.

  When Trina realized what he was doing, she attempted to shove her gown back down over her body, all in silly fun, but Reno was over it already. There was nothing funny to him. He shoved the gown back up as far as she would let him, which was only to her small shoulders, and he continued to massage himself as he slowly moved his mouth toward her breasts.

  When he began kissing her breasts, and sucking her nipples, the joke suddenly died for Trina too. Because as soon as he removed his hand from himself and squeezed one breast while he kissed and sucked the other one, a different feeling overtook Trina. And it wasn’t funny to her anymore either. She lifted that gown over her head, and threw it across the room.

  “That’s my baby,” Reno said appreciatively as he opened her legs, settled his body between them, and got on top of her. She could feel his dick rubbing on the outside of her vagina as he kissed her mouth long and lovingly, and as he wrapped her in his protective arms. They moaned and groaned together as they tongue-kissed and mouth-kissed, and Reno rubbed his lips against Tree’s.

  And then he moved down, between those legs, and licked her so slow and lovingly that Trina became drowsy and completely relaxed from the affectionate way he was doing her. He wasn’t trying to make her cum, he was trying to make her feel his love. And she felt it. She closed her eyes, as his tongue glided even slower across her wet pussy, until he began moving his tongue between her folds, licking her, and kissing her
clit.

  She opened her eyes then. Because the feeling changed. It wasn’t that faint air of sensuality anymore, but more extreme sensations. She didn’t just feel his tongue anymore. She felt the texture of his tongue. She didn’t just feel his mouth sweep against her, she felt his mouth go deep in, sucking her clit, and then eating her wetness. He was now moving them into the realm of cum. And he could feel his fully aroused dick to prove it.

  He laid down on his back, put her on top, and eased his dick in. Trina sat up on top of him, leaned her body and hands back, and began riding him in inches until every inch of his cock was all the way inside of her. It was always, at first, a joyous pain for Trina. Reno was so big. But the more she moved up on his cock, and eased down, the less pain she felt. Until she felt no pain at all. Her joy overwhelmed it. And she was riding him in a rhythm that had Reno’s hands on her hips, and his muscular chest inhaling and exhaling in deep, halting breaths. She was riding him just that hard.

  She came first.

  Reno watched as her juggling breasts turned harder and harder, and as her flat stomach pushed in and out in spasm-style jerks. He laid her onto her back, before her cum reached its apex, because he knew he had to take control to take her to her highest peak.

  He took her there. He thrashed into her with such heightened passion that she was arching and wiggling beneath him. She was tightening so tight around his rod that he could hardly move. But he moved. He pounded her until he couldn’t maintain either.

  And then he was cumming too. “Tree,” he was saying, as he laid down on top of her, squeezed her body against his, and poured out. He wasn’t thinking about any other woman. And she wasn’t thinking about any other man. Many were in their respective homes, with their various women or men, wishing it was Trina, or Reno, beneath them. But Reno and Tree didn’t have such thoughts. They wouldn’t dream of it. Nobody else was even in the vicinity of their radar, as they joined their sweet and sweaty bodies together, and came.

  That next morning, when Quinn woke up, Mick was gone. When she showered and dressed and hurried into work, hoping to see him again and see where it all might lead next, she was floored to discover that he wasn’t at the PaLargio either. He and his entourage had checked out of the hotel and, as swiftly as he had arrived, had left.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “She’s on her way up to see him,” the downstairs receptionist said, “and she’s in a mood.”

  “She just arrived?”

  “She just arrived. And man is she upset.”

  “Don’t worry,” Quinn said into the phone. “I’ll handle the bitch.”

  The other assistants in Reno’s outer suite of offices looked at her. But then they got back to work. She was the senior executive assistant, which made her their boss, and all of them knew not to cross Quinn. Especially since she was already upset about the sudden decampment of the man she thought was going to sweep her off her feet, when all he did was sweep her under a rug.

  And when Trina arrived inside of Reno’s outer offices, Quinn had the nerve, the gall some of the ladies thought, to step in front of her. “He’s in,” she said to Trina, “but he’s extremely busy right now. Perhaps I can help you?”

  Trina couldn’t believe the nerve of this woman. She was already angry. “Perhaps you can get out of my face,” she said, “before I slap the shit out of yours.”

  The other assistants in the room, who long since thought Quinn was too big for her britches, smothered their laughs.

  Quinn stepped aside. Trina gave her one of those girl, you better be glad I have bigger fish to fry looks, and then headed into Reno’s office.

  As was almost always the case, Reno was not alone. His managers and other senior personnel were all over his office. Some on the phones, some at the conference table, others surrounding him at his desk. When he looked around them and saw Trina, he could see her mood. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, as she stood in front of his desk and folded her arms.

  “Everybody out,” Reno said. He had an idea what it was about, and if he was right, it was personal. Because his staff knew his ways, they didn’t hesitate either. They hurried out, closing the door behind them.

  “What is it?” Reno asked her.

  “You’d better tell Quinn to watch it,” she said. “I almost fired on her ass.”

  Then she got to the main reason she needed to see him. “Why did you threaten Amy?” She still couldn’t believe it. “Why did you tell her that you would harm her if she came to work for me?”

  Reno leaned back in his chair. “She’s bad news, Tree.”

  “And Quinn isn’t? Where do you get off deciding who I can and cannot hire, Reno? You don’t own Champagne’s. You have no say in how I run that company.”

  “Like hell I don’t! I have a say in every aspect of your life, and you have a say in every aspect of mine. She’s not working for you, Trina, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Why, Reno?”

  Reno frowned. “What do you mean why?”

  “What I said. Why? Why are you so against her?”

  “She tried to play my own business associates against me, and you’re asking me why I’m against her?”

  “And?”

  “And? That’s enough. That’s more than a fucking ‘nufff!”

  But Trina was shaking her head. “No, it’s not,” she said. “Not for you to be threatening that woman and treating her like that. No. This is personal with you. This is specific.”

  Reno nodded his head. “Damn straight it’s specific. Somebody mess with my money, with my livelihood, what do you think it’s going to be? General?”

  Trina looked her husband dead in the eye. He wasn’t coming clean and she knew it. “What happened, Reno?” she asked him. “What’s the real reason why you fired her?”

  “What’s with you and this suspicion? I told you the reason, Tree. I told your ass a hundred times! What, I’m lying to you now?”

  “You told me one reason. But you didn’t tell me the main reason.”

  “Yeah, whatever you say, Tree. Believe whatever the fuck you want. But she will not be working for you. Believe that."

  Trina was fuming now. The nerve he had! “You are such a hypocrite, Reno. If I try to pull half the shit on you that you pull on me, you’ll beat my ass. But I’m supposed to stand by and let you deal in dirt and I can’t say shit about it?”

  Reno was getting livid too. “What’s that supposed to mean? What dirt I’m dealing? What shit I’m pulling?”

  Trina wouldn’t respond. She just stared at her husband.

  “Don’t answer. Just stand there like some wooden soldier. But she’s not working for you, you can stand there all day if you want to. She’s not working for you and that’s final!”

  “But you can’t decide that for me. That’s not your decision!”

  “Wanna bet? You hire her and I declare, Trina, I’ll shut that whole motherfucking place down! She’ll be the last hire you make!”

  Trina couldn’t believe it. “You’ll shut me down?” Astonishment was in her voice.

  “I’ll shut it down,” Reno said, refusing to clarify what he said.

  And that did it for Trina. “I want your ass to try,” she warned, and then hurried for the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Reno asked. “Trina! Trina!” He hurried from around his desk. “Tree!”

  But she slammed the door behind her. By the time he made it up to the door and opened it, she was already gone. “Gotdammit!” he said loudly, and all of his assistants who worked in his outer suite of offices, and all of the managers who were waiting to get back into his office to discuss some contract, some dispute or other, heard him.

  But he didn’t care. Especially when he saw that Quinn was in there too. “Come here,” he ordered her.

  She glanced at the other staffers, whom she knew would love to see her put in her place, and hurried to Reno. “Sir?” she asked him.

  “What did
you say to my wife?”

  Quinn glanced, once again, at her fellow staffers. None of them were looking at her, which meant all of them were. She looked back at Reno. “I told her that I would take a message because you were busy at the moment that she arrived.”

  “First of all,” Reno said, “you don’t tell her shit. You hear me? That’s my wife. She tells you. And second of all, consider this your warning. You will be fired if I have to warn you again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said, and then Reno went back into his office, and slammed the door.

  The managers looked at each other. “Can we go in?” one of them asked. But none of them dared answer.

  Trina was still livid and waiting under the PaLargio’s portico for the valet to bring her car around. And as soon as the valet stepped out, she hurried into the Mercedes her husband purchased for her and sped off. She could hardly contain her fury. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t want Amy working for her that was most galling. It was the fact that he wouldn’t tell her the real reason why. And she was for damn sure certain that all of that shit about going behind his back wasn’t it.

  All of their marriage, Reno had all kinds of crazy going on. It was the nature of his business and she got that. But as soon as she had so much as a suggestion about how he might do things differently, he’d listen politely- she’d give him that, but then he’d always do it however the hell he was going to do it originally. Since the PaLargio was his baby, she didn’t trip about that either. But Champagne’s was her baby. And she wasn’t about to let Reno trip about what belonged to her. It wasn’t his way or the highway the way he claimed.

  If that was the case, she was taking the highway, she thought, as she drove with all deliberate speed toward Dommi’s country day school. She was already running late, but when Amy didn’t show up for work at all that day, and she finally phoned later in the afternoon, Trina was shocked by what she heard. Reno had threatened to do Amy bodily harm if she accepted the job. Bodily harm! Amy was heartbroken, she had said, but she was more afraid of Reno. Trina wanted to tell her to show up tomorrow anyway, and to fuck Reno, but she couldn’t go that far. She knew her husband. He was not the kind of man who made idle threats. Why he would be so upset by Amy working for her, and would be upset to this extent, was still that unanswered question for Tree. Was those rumors of their having an affair true? Reno would have pitched a fit if she so much as brought that up again, especially after he told her already that it was utter nonsense, but it worried Trina now. Something was wrong. Something more than some business hiccup had Reno this hot and bothered.