Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5

by Mallory Monroe

  But as soon as Sal cleared the exit, Marty Dim jumped out of bed in his boxers, and he and his backup firepower hurried out into the corridor, stepping over Alfie’s dead body to make it out. They were going to blow that motherfucking Sal Gabrini away from this earth if it was the last thing they did tonight. Had everybody fooled into believing he was some legit businessman when he was more of a thug than they were. And now he was going to muscle them out of territory they had just as much right to as he had? Wasn’t going to happen. That was why they began to head down that corridor toward the stairs. The stairwell, they both knew, would be a perfect place for Sal Gabrini to die.

  But they forgot to clue in Sal Gabrini. Because as soon as they turned to head toward the stairwell, a shot was fired that caught Dim’s partner in the back of the head. He dropped like a loaf of bread. Dim turned quickly, ready to fire back, but he knew it was too late. Sal wasn’t in any stairwell, but he was behind them, and his gun was pointing straight at Marty Dim’s heart.

  “Sal,” Dim said, tossing his gun aside, suddenly wanting to reason with him. But he was wasting his time because Sal wasted no time wasting him. He shot him as he walked toward him. He shot him and he shot him until Dim dropped the same way Dim had dropped Alfie. And then Sal stepped over his dead body, as he made his way toward that stairwell.

  When he got downstairs, and ran through the hotel’s back exit, sirens could be heard in the distance. But Nard was still there. He hadn’t left Sal behind. Sal jumped into the SUV, and they took off. Sal leaned back in the backseat, his hand still covered in Alfie’s blood, and silently screamed.

  Crawley looked at Nard. They wanted to know what happened, but dared not ask.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Don’t trust men,” Liz Mertan said to Gemma as they sat at the bar and had another round of drinks. Or at least Liz had another round. Gemma was still on her first glass. “No matter what they say to you,” Liz continued, “don’t trust them. You know why?”

  Gemma didn’t respond. She only met Liz for drinks after she called in a desperate state. And she remained in a desperate state. Tears were in Liz’s big blue eyes.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Liz went on. “They’re dogs, that’s why. Every man that has ever lived is nothing but a dirty dog. And I have the bite marks to prove it.”

  Gemma considered her business partner. They were friends from way back who co-owned, along with Reno Gabrini’s wife, an upscale clothing store. Liz was married to a respectable dentist, but neither she nor her husband had ever been faithful to each other. But whenever he was caught red-handed, it was always like the end of the world for Liz. “What happened this time?” Gemma asked her.

  “The same thing that happened the last time. He screwed a girl and lied about it. Nothing new happened to him. He screwed yet another female, what else is new? I’m just tired of him screwing me.” Then Liz looked at Gemma. “Because of you,” she said, “his new piece on the side is black.”

  Gemma frowned. “Why would that be because of me?”

  “The bitch he’s sleeping with this time around is black or, excuse me, African-American. And it’s all because of you.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes, you!” Liz was angry now. “He talks about you all the time. ‘Did you see how nicely she dressed today? Did you see how smooth her black skin is? Did you see how perfect her teeth is?’ It’s disgusting!”

  “It is disgusting,” Gemma said. “On his part!”

  “So because of his infatuation with you, he decided to go black too.” Liz began to cry in that sing-song, tearless cry of hers. “What if he doesn’t come back?” she cried.

  Gemma took a sip of her drink. She couldn’t take Liz seriously even if she wanted to. Liz cheated as much as her husband did. What was with the fake outrage? “He’ll be back,” Gemma said confidently.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because he always comes back,” Gemma responded. “And you always forgives him, and he always forgives you, and it always starts all over again.”

  Liz smiled and took a sip of her drink. Then she looked somber again. “You don’t get tired of it?” she asked her.

  “Tired of what? Your husband cheating?”

  “No!” Liz shot back. “Your husband cheating. Don’t you get tired of it too?”

  Gemma wasn’t about to tell her that her husband didn’t cheat, since she could not possibly be certain of that. But just the thought of Sal treating her that way was too painful to even think about.

  “Well don’t you?” Liz asked.

  “Don’t I what?” Gemma responded.

  “Get tired of Sal cheating on you? And please don’t you dare declare that he’s so different than any other man alive and he’d never cheat on you. Please don’t make yourself out to be the biggest fool this side of living with a response that lame.”

  Gemma pointed her finger. “Don’t go there, Liz,” she warned.

  Liz was puzzled. “Don’t go where?”

  “Don’t go there,” Gemma said again. “Don’t turn your problems into mine. We’re here because you wanted to talk about your troubles. My husband has nothing to do with this, and neither do I. So don’t go there. Don’t get it twisted.”

  Liz, however, took it a different way. “So what you’re telling me,” she said, “is that you’re in denial. If you don’t talk about it or don’t think about it then it’ll just magically disappear. That’s what you think, right?”

  “What I think,” Gemma said as she gathered up her cell phone and purse, “is that I’m going to get out of here.” She stood up. “I’m sorry about you and your husband, but you aren’t roping me into your madness. Have a nice night.” And Gemma walked out of the bar.

  She wasn’t in her BMW a good minute before she received a text. It was from Sal, which meant it was blunt. Where are you? Then: Bring your ass home.

  Gemma smiled. She had a good idea what he wanted to do with that ass when she brought it home. She also had no idea he would be back in town a day early, but she was thrilled. On my way, she text him back, and then gladly got away from Liz and her fake-ass umbrage.

  Sal tossed his cell phone onto the sofa after reading Gemma’s text, and he continued to pace around their living room like a man with a chip on his shoulder. He had changed and showered and had on his bathrobe, and he was doing everything in his power to stop thinking about Alfie and how it all went down in that hotel in Jersey. He didn’t leave his men behind. That was something he never did. But not only did he have to leave Alfie behind, but he had to use Alfie’s dead body as a human shield to get out of there alive himself. All because he didn’t do his homework. All because he walked right into a trap he should have seen a mile away. And now one of his loyal men was dead. He needed Gemma, not only because he always needed her, but tonight he needed her to make him feel better. Because right now, Sal felt like crap.

  He paced that floor and paced that floor. He must have walked ten miles in his living room. And when he heard Gemma’s car drive up, he walked and made a beeline to the front door.

  He opened it just as she was about to turn the knob, and as soon as he saw her again, his heart hammered with love and lust and he couldn’t begin to describe what else. He took her by the hand and pulled her into their home.

  The door slammed shut almost exactly as he slammed her back against the door.

  “Where were you?” he asked with a distressed look on his face that worried her, but he didn’t give her time to react. His mouth covered hers in a searing kiss. He kissed her with a gusto Gemma could not possibly return because it was coming from a place she could not possibly understand. But she knew Sal. He returned from a business trip a day early, he wanted her home immediately, and when she arrived home he couldn’t even wait to get her upstairs. He needed her, not her comments. He needed her.

  “I met Liz,” she finally said when he stopped kissing her on the mouth and began rubbing his lips against hers.

  But h
e was still driven by lust. “Yeah,” was all he could manage to say as he recaptured her mouth for another long, searing kiss. He even untied and opened his bathrobe, revealing his naked body, as he kissed her.

  She knew it was going to happen right here, in their foyer, because Sal was already too far gone. The idea of carrying her upstairs, or even to a couch, was as foreign to him now as the idea of not doing her right here and right now. He wanted her, and he was going to get her.

  He lifted her body, with her back sliding higher against the door, and then he tore the seat of her panties with his bare hands. He began to rub and finger her as he kissed her.

  Now Gemma was getting into it too. He didn’t give her a chance when he first pulled her in, as the sudden thrust into lust had startled her. But as soon as he began to rub her clit, and two of his fingers shoved inside of her while he kissed her passionately, she was all-in too. This was Sal. This was the man she loved above any human being on earth. She wrapped her legs around his muscular body, giving him fuller access, rubbed her fingers all over his thick, brown hair, and they kissed with that kind of nobody else but you emotional love-release that made Gemma all the more convinced that Sal could never do her wrong. She didn’t care what Liz believed.

  He kissed her and fingered her with the kind of heightened passion that he knew no lesser woman could handle. But he needed her, and he knew she knew it. That was why his love for her continued to grow even as he was certain he couldn’t possibly love her more. That was why he was kissing her harder and harder, and fingering her harder and harder until her vaginal juices oozed out and covered his digits. When he was well saturated, he pulled his fingers out, and put them into his mouth. He wanted to eat her, she knew how much he adored eating her, but he knew he wouldn’t last that long.

  He entered her through the ripped seat of her panties. He slid in with a wave of thickness that took Gemma’s breath away. She arched her body as she took him in. And as he began to move inside of her, she laid her head against the door and allowed her eyes to roll back into that calming, relaxing, sensual haze.

  Sal pulled out her blouse that had been tucked into her skirt, lifted it clean over her head, and then lifted her bra. Her beautiful dark breasts stood at attention, taut and ready. And Sal began to suck those breasts as he fucked her pussy. He wasn’t playing now. He wasn’t trying to go easy on her or prolong that wonderful feeling. He wanted to heighten that feeling. And he did.

  Gemma didn’t think it was possible, but Sal’s movements inside of her and his mouth ravaging her breasts, took her to yet another level of sensuality. He took her there. He pushed deeper in and almost out, deeper in and almost out, as he sucked and licked and massaged her breasts with every ounce of passion he had. He took her there.

  Gemma was near tears as he sucked and fucked her. He was putting it on her in a way that made her understand the beauty of it even as she experienced the eroticism of it. Her body was moving with his pounding and they both felt as animalistic as they felt calm. They were in the quiet of their massive living room, with no sounds but the sounds of their fucking, and they were enjoying each other in a way that only love could allow.

  Some of Gemma’s friends often told her that their lovers gave them so much sex, that they were jaded by sex. They now needed to do weird and crazy things just to get an orgasm. But Gemma’s experience was the exact opposite. Sal gave her a lot of sex, but he gave her love with his sex, and that made it powerful, not common. And even in this desperate time, when she knew there was much more going on with her man than love for her, he was still loving her through his desperation. Something awful had happened on his trip, and Gemma knew it, and she also knew that he needed her body to make him forget.

  As she continued to open herself to him, she gave him what he wanted in the foyer of their living room. She gave him her body. As good as Sal had been to her, as much as Sal had done for her, she would have laid her body down like a doormat, if he would have needed her to.

  And then it was time for them to cross over. When Sal’s dick moved inside of her with that special glide that always hit the spot dead-on, she came and pulled him over. They came together. There was no greater feeling of elation for Sal than when they came together. They were fucking in tandem, in complete unity, and it was mind blowing sex. His eyes were rolling back as his body strained out his cum with a wonderment not just of release, but of love. Love for Gemma Jones-Gabrini.

  He looked into her intelligent, sincere, big brown eyes, and she looked into his intense, earnest, big blue eyes, and it was that connection of love and respect and support and trust that brightened their eyes with unshed tears. Neither one of them had ever thought that they could love like this. Neither one of them would have put money on ever finding their soul mate. But it was true. No bond could mean more than the bond Sal had for Gemma, and the bond Gemma had for Sal.

  Sal’s body arched and strained with release from the horrors of the things he sometimes had to do, as he poured and poured into his loving wife.

  An hour later, after showering with Gemma, Sal was once again in his bathrobe. But the anguish was gone. Now he was sitting at the window in their kitchen nook, eating a wonderful dinner prepared by Gemma, and ready to take on the world again. He looked at Gemma. She sat there looking simply sumptuous in one of his white dress shirts. Her hair had fallen across her face into a bang, making her look about twelve. She ate absently as she read over what was obviously an important text message on her cell phone. And Sal wondered, for what had to be the millionth time, what did he ever do to deserve a woman like this. But he didn’t wonder long. He just thanked Jesus for having her in his life and continued to eat his meal and look out across the spruce trees and Black-eyed Susans that surrounded their beautiful home.

  Then he looked at Gemma again. She was still reading her text. “Work related?” he asked her.

  “Yup,” she said and then sat her phone aside, placed one of her bare legs in the chair beneath her butt, and turned her attention to Sal. His hair too had pooled around his forehead, making him look years younger. But she could still see some of that stress around his eyes. “You’re back early,” she said.

  “A day early,” he responded. “Eat your food.”

  “I am eating my food.”

  “You’re playing around with your food the way you always do. Eat. I don’t want no skinny-ass wife.”

  Gemma smiled. She was never skinny, but she was slender. “Then you should have never married me.”

  Sal gave her that serious look she knew not to play around with. “Eat,” he said.

  She ate.

  After several bites, she looked at him again. There was always an elephant in the room whenever Sal returned from one of his business trips in that kind of anguished state, and now was no exception. But Gemma would be stunned if Sal told her about it. But that never stopped her from asking. “How did it go?”

  Sal could have played coy and asked how did what go, but he never did. “Okay,” he responded.

  “Just okay? You were gone for two weeks, Sal.”

  Sal continued to eat his meal, but did not continue that line of conversation.

  It was a bone of contention in their marriage, something they never saw eye-to-eye on, and Gemma knew trying to get him to tell her about his dealings and associations and what exactly went on whenever he went on his business trips would be an exercise in futility. But that didn’t mean it didn’t bother her.

  Sal looked at her. He knew it too. “It was a rough trip,” he admitted. “But I’m okay. There’s nothing to worry about. No blowback, nothing.”

  Gemma looked at him. She knew a “rough trip” meant that he had been in harm’s way, and that reality disturbed her mightily. But that was the lifestyle he lived and she knew it when she signed up to be his wife. He wasn’t going to make any apologies for it, and she wasn’t going to ask him to. “Okay,” she said.

  “What about you?” he asked. “How have things been going for you
?”

  “Okay,” she said and smiled.

  “Very funny,” Sal replied.

  “Things have been going pretty good actually. Guess who paid me a visit?”

  Sal looked at her. “Who?”

  “THE Ted Coggan.”

  Sal waited for more. “Never heard of him,” he finally said.

  “He’s huge. A world-renowned attorney.”

  “Yeah? What did he want with you?”

  “He chose me to work with him as lead counsel on one of his cases. He’ll be sitting second chair, Ted Coggan will be sitting second to me, if you can believe it.”

  Sal was doubtful at best. “He want you to be lead counsel over him? And he’s this world-renowned attorney?”

  Gemma smiled. “That’s right. Why do you say it like that?”

  “Because I love you. Because I’m not bullshitting you.”

  Gemma considered him. Sometimes Sal could be so honest that he could be hurtful. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

  “I don’t mean to be harsh, babe, but you haven’t exactly been on a hot streak lately. According to my count, and I pay attention to your career, you’ve lost a lot more cases than you’ve won here lately.”

  Gemma knew it was true. That was why she never allowed herself to get too excited about her career. “I know that.”

  “Then why would he pick you?”

  Gemma exhaled. “Not Because of my win-loss record, you’re right about that. He feels I’m a highly respected attorney in this town and can present a positive image for his client. It’s my ethics he wants.”

  “Sure it’s not your ass he wants?” Sal asked.

  Gemma laughed. “No, Sal, that man is about business. Every man isn’t after me the way you think.”

  “That’s what you think,” Sal responded.

  “That’s what you used to think too,” Gemma reminded him. “When you first saw me you said yourself you didn’t know if I was the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen, or the ugliest.”