And he fucked her like the valuable possession she was. He fucked her long and lovingly. He kissed her and fucked her and they both felt a magnificent ease with every glide his dick made. Until those glides stopped feeling like sweet pricks, and began to feel like drips of fire.
And suddenly, easy became intense, and they were inflamed with passion. Sal began to fuck her harder, which was his usual way, and she began to want him to fuck her even harder, which was her usual way. And they gave each other what they wanted. They went rough. The bed began bouncing, Sal was thrashing into her, and their love making became so emotional that it felt like a rollercoaster ride. Only they never came down. They rode high, they rode higher, until Gemma rode that cock to its highest peak. And they went over, and came.
They rarely came at the exact same time, but tonight, after what could have been nothing but strain and stress in their relationship, they came together. And they came hard. When Sal had poured all he had to pour into her, he looked at her. She opened her big, soft, wonderful brown eyes. And he smiled. They were on the same page again.
“Happy birthday, darling,” he said to her. “Happy birthday.”
CHAPTER TEN
Rory opened the door to his hotel room enthusiastically. Because he saw through the peephole that it was Gemma, and he was pleased to see her. But the look on her face, after he opened the door, tempered his enthusiasm.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Hi,” Gemma said. She hated to do this, but knew she had to.
“Come in,” Rory said, taking her by the arm and ushering her in. She wore a gorgeous white pantsuit that contrasted beautifully with her dark skin. He closed the door behind her. “Now what’s the matter, dear heart?”
Gemma handed him back his keys. “I can’t accept the Bentley,” she said.
He frowned. “But why not, Gemmanette? It was a gift for your birthday. That’s all it was.”
“I know that. And I appreciate it. But I can’t accept it.”
Rory considered her. “Is it you who can’t accept it, or that firecracker husband of yours?”
“I can’t accept your gift,” Gemma said. “It’s all on me. I can’t accept it.”
Rory shook his head. “I’m very disappointed in you, Gemma Jones. Very disappointed.”
Gemma would have asked him why, but she didn’t.
“My wife of thirty years died last year,” Rory said. “And I decided I needed to come back to Vegas, where we used to call home, and start fresh. Within days of my return, I run into my old protégé, a young lady I have nothing but respect and admiration for, and my heart is happy. I saw in you a sign, Gemma, that I had made the right move. Then I remembered that you had a birthday coming up. And I was thrilled beyond measure to get you a special gift. The same way a father would get his daughter a special gift. And you throw it back in my face as if there’s something dirty and wrong about that?”
Gemma felt awful. “It’s not that, Rory,” she said. “You know how much I admire and respect you too. I’m not questioning your intentions at all. But I cannot accept that gift. And I will not. Thank-you, but I can’t take it. I had my assistant follow me here in my car. Yours is in the parking lot out front. I hope this doesn’t interfere with our friendship, but if it does, I’ll understand.”
Rory shook his head. “No good deed,” he said. When he said that, and had that look on his face, Gemma knew it was time for her to go. She turned to leave.
But he grabbed her by the arm and turned her back to him. “This is how you repay me?” he asked her. “For all I did for you. For all the calls I made for you. For all the connections I gave to you when you first started out. This is my reward?” Then he pulled her to him, slamming her small body against his big body, scaring her, and he began kissing her.
Gemma fought hard to be free. But when he wouldn’t let her go, she kneed him in the groin, causing him to let go. And she pushed him away from her. She stared at his face. Her disappointment stretched far wider than his ever could. Sal was right. When it came to the behavior of men, he always was. She pointed her finger at Rory. “Stay away from me,” she said. And she left his room, slamming the door behind her.
She was still reeling from what happened, still hurt that he would go there with her and reveal his true intentions in giving her such an elaborate gift, when she saw Sal. He was standing outside of the hotel’s lobby, just standing there like some loiterer, and her heart swelled with emotion. She’d never go against his wishes again. They had their disagreements about many things, but she would never disagree with him when it came to these men. If Sal had a problem with them, she was leaving them alone. She was going to trust his judgment, at least on that count, from here on out.
She smiled when she walked outside and up to him. The valets were looking, but she didn’t care. “Hey,” she said. “Are you stalking me?”
Sal pulled her into his arms. “Hell yeah,” he said. “What do you think?” Then he looked at her, his face more serious now. “How did it go?” he asked her.
She revealed a hard-to-read expression. “It went,” she said. “I gave him back his keys.”
“He didn’t like it?”
Gemma hesitated. “No,” she said.
Sal nodded, staring into her eyes. “What did he say? What did he do?”
“He didn’t like it,” was all Gemma was willing to say.
Sal nodded again. “Okay,” he said.
Gemma’s BMW drove up at the curb, with her assistant, Curtis, behind the wheel. Sal opened the passenger door for her.
“Call me later?” Gemma asked before she got into the car.
“Yeah, sure,” Sal responded, although she knew he never hardly ever called her like that, unless something was bothering him.
They kissed on the lips, Sal said hello and goodbye to Curtis, and he watched as they drove away, passing his Porsche, which was parked further away from the hotel’s entrance. But instead of Sal leaving too, he headed upstairs.
Rory thought Gemma was returning, it was such a fast turnaround, that he opened his door without checking the peephole first. As soon as he realized it was Sal, he tried to close the door back. But Sal blocked the door with his very expensive, and very large shoe. He let up, and Sal walked into his room, closing the door behind him.
“What do you want?” Rory asked him. “To level more false accusations against me, perhaps?”
But Sal was all business. He always was when it came to Gemma’s wellbeing. “You can’t have her,” he said.
Rory looked at him curiously. “I can’t have who?”
“That couch, motherfucker,” Sal said with a flash of anger. “Who do you think? You can’t have her.”
“I don’t want her,” Rory lied.
Sal stared at him. Then he nodded his head. “Yeah, you want her bad. Real bad. Your old lady died, now you see my wife as her replacement. You remember how virtuous Gemma was, and how beautiful and sexy. And you want her. But that ain’t gonna happen, pal. Not in your lifetime. Not in mine. Forget about it.”
“There’s nothing to forget. I don’t want Gemma.”
“She’s off limits,” Sal said, refusing to buy into Rory’s lies, “she’s unavailable, it’s not up for debate. Not in a million years will you put your sweaty palms on my woman. You’ll have to go through me first, and you’d have an easier time going through a brick wall, before you get pass me.”
Rory was beginning to sense the danger. He did his homework. He knew there were rumors swirling around about Sal Gabrini’s affiliations with mobster types. Some even suggested that Sal himself was a mob boss. But he didn’t believe it. Sensible Gemma, he knew, would never marry a man like that. But now, looking into this man’s cold, blue eyes, made Rory rethink his calculation. “Whatever she told you,” Rory said, “is not true. Yes, I was disappointed when she returned the car, but that’s all I was. Nothing happened.”
Why did he have to say that? To Sal’s ears, it meant that this guy tried to make some
thing happen. So Sal felt he had no choice. He took his fist and hit Rory hard, directly in the gut, causing Rory to double over in pain.
“Why did you do a thing like that for?” he asked Sal, his eyes round with shock.
“Just in case something tried to go down,” Sal said, “I wanted to make sure I made it clear to you that you’re fucking with the wrong family.” Sal smiled. “But according to you, nothing went down. So you’re fine. But stay away from her. Go out of your way to stay away. Or the last thing on this earth you’ll be is fine.”
Sal made sure he had perfect eye contact with Rory when he made that last statement, then he walked out of the hotel, and left. Gemma probably defended her own honor just fine against that old ass creep. He knew it. But he fired a warning shot all the same.
It was the end of closing arguments. The defense made their impassioned plea, the prosecution made theirs. The judge read the jury instructions, and it was all done. It was out of their hands now.
Gemma and her client rose from the defense table. The prosecution and her staff rose from their table too, as both sides watched the jurors retire to the jury room to begin deliberations. After the jurors were gone, Rabina looked at Gemma and hugged her neck. “Thank-you so much!” she cried. “You were brilliant!”
Gemma didn’t see where she was all that brilliant, but she wasn’t going to disparage a compliment. As a defense attorney, she got so few. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Remember to stay around the courthouse. Sometimes verdicts take hours, sometimes days. Hopefully it won’t take too long, and hopefully we’ll have a successful outcome.”
“Oh, we will,” Rabina said confidently. “You tell your husband thank-you,” she added.
Gemma was puzzled. “My husband?” she asked.
“Yes! You tell your husband I will not forget. He came through for me with those jurors, and I will come through for him. Tell him that please.”
“But what are you talking about? What jurors did he come through with?”
Rabina smiled. “Just tell him thank-you,” she said, and hurried toward the back of the courtroom, where Ted Coggan, who made it his business to stay as far back as possible, stood. They left out together.
Gemma was floored. Sal had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he did not have a sexual relationship with Rabina Chen. He told her that he didn’t even like the woman, especially after some bad business deal he had with her. Then why was he involved in her case, if she was to be believed? And why behind Gemma’s back?
She gathered up her briefcase, and hurried out of the courtroom too.
“Is he in?” Gemma asked as she entered Sal’s suite of offices on the top floor of the Gabrini Office Complex.
“Yes, ma’am,” one of his assistants quickly told her, and then hurried to open his door for her. Sal had made it clear: whenever his wife arrived, somebody had better acknowledge her presence, open his door for her, and then get out of her way.
Gemma entered his office, closing the door behind her.
Sal was on the phone, but he motioned Gemma to come on in. And he didn’t hesitate. “I’ll call you back,” he said on the phone, and then hung up.
“Hey, babe,” he said with a smile. “I thought you had closing arguments all day today.”
“It didn’t take all day.”
“How did it go? Come here.”
Gemma walked around his desk. He pulled her down on his lap, and kissed her. “How did it go?” he asked again.
“It went well, I thought. My closing was tight, the prosecution’s closing was scattered, and the judge read the jury instructions and then dismissed the jurors to the deliberation room.”
“That’s good, right? Or is it?”
“It was good,” Gemma said. “It was all good. Until my client told me to thank you.”
Sal’s heart dropped. “To thank me?” he asked.
“To thank you,” Gemma said. “She told me to thank you for coming through for her, as she put it, with those jurors.” Gemma looked at him with undeniable concern in her eyes. “What jurors, Sal?”
Sal could beat that woman’s ass mentioning any of that to Gemma. But she was a smart bitch, Sal thought. She waited until the jury was deliberating.
“Sal?” Gemma asked again. “What was Rabina talking about? What jurors?”
Sal let out a harsh exhale. “I had a conversation with a few of the jurors.”
Gemma frowned. It couldn’t be! “What kind of conversation?” she asked him.
“A conversation,” he said.
“About what?”
Sal exhaled again. “About the case, Gemma, what else was it going to be about?”
Gemma jumped up from his lap. She was dumbstruck. “Are you telling me that you tampered with my jury?”
“Tamper,” Sal said. “What tamper? I had a conversation with a few of them.”
“Oh my God!” Gemma cried, holding her forehead in disbelief. “How could you, Sal?! I could be disbarred for this!”
“Nobody’s going to disbar you,” Sal said, standing too, “now you stop that now! You know I wouldn’t put you in that kind of risk.”
“But you put me there! By tampering with the jury, I’m already there!” Gemma still couldn’t believe it. “I’m going to be disbarred!”
“No, you’re not! They won’t say a word, and you know Chen won’t.”
Gemma looked at him. Was he that far gone? “Don’t you understand? They don’t have to say a word. I have to say that word! I have to notify the court of what has happened, Sal. You don’t realize what you’ve done!”
Sal went to grab her but she jerked away from him. “You could go to jail for jury tampering. That’s a serious crime, Sal!”
Sal grabbed hold of her. “You stop that now.”
“You could go to jail!”
“Stop it!” Sal ordered as he shook her. “Look at me,” he said.
Gemma couldn’t look at him. She was too busy looking at all of the implications.
“Look at me, Gemma,” he said again.
She finally turned her big eyes toward him. She was amazed at the confidence in his own eyes. It did work to keep her from total panic.
“What do I do for a living, Gem?” he asked her.
But her brain was still too scattered.
“Answer the question. What do I do for a living?”
Her distress was too heightened. Sal knew he had to answer that question himself. “I handle things, Gemma,” he said. “That’s what I do. I handle things for the Gabrini Corporation in Seattle, and I handle things for my own private ventures across this country. I handle things. I handled this. I know what I’m doing.”
Although Gemma was still floating around in a world of doubt and confusion, she had one thought of clarity. “Why?” she asked her husband.
Sal found it an odd question, but given her distress, he understood. “Why do I handle things?”
Gemma searched his eyes for clues. “Why are you handling things for Rabina?” she asked him.
Sal had stepped right into that one. And as he looked into her troubled, stormy eyes, he knew he couldn’t bullshit her. Not about this. He frowned. “It’s not what you think,” he said.
“You said you weren’t having an affair with her.”
“I’m not. It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?” Gemma wanted to know. She had to know. He couldn’t get away with ambiguity this time. Everything she worked for was on the line. His own freedom was on the line! “What is it about, Sal?” she asked again.
Sal ran his hand through his thick hair. “Sit down,” he said to her.
“I can stand.”
Sal looked at her with that hard, cold look.
She sat down in the chair behind his desk. He leaned against the desk, facing her, his legs stretched out. But it still would be a few moments before he began talking. “I met Rabina Chen several months ago.”
“Where?”
“In California.”
“On business?”
“No. I received a call about a tape.”
A tape? Gemma didn’t expect him to say that. “What kind of a tape?”
“A videotape,” Sal said.
Gemma stared at her husband. Was all of this about sex after all? Some sex tape somebody had on him? “What was on the tape?” she asked him.
Sal hated to go there, but he knew he had to. Gemma was involved now. Heavily involved. “Rabina and her people, whoever they are, managed to get their hands on video showing me . . .”
Gemma’s heart began to pound. “Showing you what? Having sex with somebody?” Somehow she was wishing that was it. She was so far gone with concern that she was hoping it was a sex tape!
“It shows me killing a man, Gemma.”
Gemma’s heart dropped. “Killing a man?”
“He was a piece of scum, and he got what he deserved. But the Feds won’t see it that way.”
“But how did she get such a tape?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t been able to trace her associates yet, and we’ve been trying for months.”
“And she’s blackmailing you with this murder tape? This tape of you murdering a man?”
“Murdering several men.”
Gemma couldn’t believe it. Not that she didn’t know what Sal was up to when he had these excursions beyond his duties at Gabrini, Inc. But the idea that he had been filmed, that there was tape out there, that he could potentially get the Death Penalty if those tapes surfaced, stunned the life out of her. She looked at him. No wonder he seemed under so much pressure lately! “What are we going to do?” she asked.
Sal took her hand. The idea that she said we warmed his heart. But he couldn’t let her think that meant he was letting her into that part of his life. He wasn’t about to. “First of all,” he said, “we aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to continue to do what you’re doing. Second of all, I need you to understand that every single one of those men I had to kill, had to be killed. These were no choir boys. These were no innocents. They were stone cold killers who were trying to take me out before me and my men took them out. And third, I’m going to handle it. Don’t you worry. I have to. My men are on those tapes too, and nobody’s fingering them. They will not go down.”
Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 Page 11