Even as he carried her up the glass staircase and into a bedroom almost as big as her entire Vegas home, her vagina was still feeling the sting. From the bedroom they entered the enormous en-suite bathroom. He sat her on the vanity between his two sinks, grabbed and dampened a cloth, and began to clean her of her vaginal juices that had flowed as if she had sprung a leak. He had her legs, once again, opened as widely as they could open, and was between those legs.
At first she thought he would clean her and that would be the end of that. But as he wiped her, and stared into her eyes while he wiped her, they both knew that such a simple maneuver was going to be impossible.
She soon realized that he was no longer using the cloth to clean her, but his bare hand. And then his fingers. And then he was removing and tossing the used condom he wore, he was putting on another one he grabbed from a drawer in that bathroom, and then he was sucking her breasts as he entered her again. She was seated up right as he fucked her this time, with her hands around his head. And it began tenderly again, with both of them enjoying the strokes. What she loved about it this time was the way he didn’t stop sucking her breasts. For the entire time he fucked her, he sucked her. It caused her to lean her head back, push her breasts farther into his face, and enjoy every second of his lovemaking.
Sal knew how to do her to such an extent that it was scary. She’d never met a man so deft at how to sexually please a woman. Most men she ever dated, they were only all about pleasing themselves. If she got hers, fine. If she didn’t, it was no skin off their backs.
Sal, she felt, was different. He, oddly enough, seemed all about pleasing her. He got his all right, but he gave as good as he got. Her father once secretly told her that how a man treated her in bed was how he would undoubtedly treat her in real life. He wasn’t referring to what sexual maneuvers the man would use, but what he meant was how generous the man was to her in bed. Gemma never understood it back then, and he didn’t break it down to her liking. But she understood now. Because Sal fit that bill. Of all the men she’d ever had before, the one she thought would be the most selfish sexually, turned out to be the most generous. And her father was right about another thing too: never judge a book by its cover, he used to always admonish her.
And Sal wasn’t just generous, but great at it too. Because he was tender with her in a way that didn’t feel rushed and the preamble to the rougher stuff, but was as wonderful as the more intense strokes. And he took his time. He grabbed her into his arms, took her to his bed, put her in his bed, and he got in too, both on their sides facing each other. And they made love in that bed for the longest time. He stroked her in such a steady, masterful rhythm that it made her entire body feel as if they were playing with fire. The anticipation of the ignition felt just as good as the ignition itself was going to feel. Which meant every second of her sexual time with Sal Luca was hot.
“Feel that, baby?” he asked her as he began to accelerate his pace. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” was all she could say. Because it was true. There was now an elevation to the feeling the more he accelerated the pace. And soon his dick was so big inside of her that she was clamping around it, making his strokes harder and harder yet faster and faster. Which only intensified the feelings so remarkably that they both couldn’t bear it any longer and came. Gemma and then Sal but almost simultaneously. He continued to pound, and she continued to arch and buck from the intensity, but their volcanos erupted together.
When they finally stopped shaking, and there was no more left to give, they both realized a startling truth. They’d been fucking for hours. First on the terrace, and now in bed. Sal kissed her on the forehead, and pulled her into his arms. He’d never felt this way before. Not ever. And it made him excited. Damn excited. But terrified too.
They both eventually showered together, but instead of Sal feeding her as he had promised, he carried her back to bed, where they both, exhausted, fell asleep.
An hour later and Sal woke up alone in bed. As soon as he looked over and realized Gemma was no longer in his arms as he had remembered her last, he felt a surge of panic and sat up in a quick lift. For some reason the idea of her just leaving like that disturbed him. But then he smelled something cooking, something that was so aromatic he knew it wasn’t some random smell. And he knew she hadn’t left him after all.
He calmed himself back down, took a moment to again get those damn emotions back under control, and then got out of bed.
He saw where his suit of clothes from the terrace had been neatly folded across the chair, which meant to him that Gemma had gone out there, retrieved her own clothes, and placed his inside too. He smiled. In all his years of sex with women, not one of those women had ever given a damn about picking up his clothes from any floor, let alone a terrace. They got theirs, all right, usually stepping over his to do so. But not Gemma. She looked out for him too. He knew it would seem like a small, almost trivial matter to most. He realized that. But it meant something special to him.
He put on his bathrobe and made his way downstairs, tying the belt of the robe as he walked. By the time he followed the aroma and made it into his huge chef’s kitchen, and saw Gemma cooking up a storm at his stove, he smiled.
She was dressed in her white cuffed shorts and yellow blouse again, looking the same, he thought, except for the glow his sex had put on her. He was not a humble man. He knew when he had put it on a woman right. Tonight, with Gemma, was a championship bout as far as he was concerned because not only had he put it on her, but she had put it on him too. And he was glowing too.
“There you are,” he said to her.
She turned, surprised that he was there. His heart squeezed with affection when she turned and seemed so happy to see him.
“Hey,” she said cheerfully. “I can cook in a kitchen like this all day long.”
“You like?”
“Are you kidding? This kitchen up in here is no joke. It has everything. You cook often?”
Sal had to chuckle at that. “Yeah, right,” he said as he pushed himself forward. “About never.” He began walking toward her. “I have a chef to come in whenever I decide to eat at home.”
“Really? And what do you do when this chef isn’t available?”
“No you didn’t ask me that,” Sal said, lifting the top off of one of the cooking pots. “Me and my brother own two restaurants, remember?”
Gemma was surprised by that. “I guess I forgot,” she said. “I thought you were in the security business?”
“I am. But we own restaurants too.”
Gemma began to stir one of her pots. “What kind of restaurants are they?”
“One’s upscale. It’s called Diamante’s. The other one, Taste of Southern, is more down home.”
Gemma smiled. “Taste of Southern? You?”
“What? I like soul food just like you do.” Sal caught himself and looked at her. “I didn’t mean that just because you’re black you have to like soul food.”
“Sure you did,” Gemma said, continuing to stir her food, “but that’s okay. It would be like me assuming you like pasta. That’s just the way people respond to each other. Don’t feel you have to apologize for that.”
Sal was pleased to hear it. But then his look lingered. “Some people actually think I’m some kind of a racist you know.”
Gemma looked at him. “Are you?” she asked.
Sal looked at her. At first he wanted to lash out at her. But the sincerity in her eyes stopped him. “No,” he said, glad to be able to make that clear. “I don’t play that and never have. I mean, sure, I’ve had my moments, I’m not gonna lie to you. When Tommy preferred black women all the time and the Italian girls would come complaining to me, yeah, I might have asked him why wouldn’t he give other ladies a chance too. And when I was a cop I was a badass who too often generalized about the entire black community based on the thugs I dealt with. I was wrong about that too.”
Gemma nodded. “Yes, you were,” she said.
> “Dead wrong. But I know better now. Knew better then, but what can I say? I wasn’t a nice person then. But I also know that no one race has any monopoly on good people or bad people. We’re all just people trying to make it in this crazy, fucked up world. So if you’re asking me did I get it wrong more than I got it right? Yes. I messed up in the past, and I’m man enough to admit that. I was lazy about getting to know different kinds of people. But I also thank God I’m not that man anymore. I thank God I’m not the man I used to be back in the day. But yeah. I’m a work in progress. Hell yeah I am.”
Gemma nodded. She felt the same way too. She’d been guilty herself in the past of using offensive language and other stereotypes to describe or accuse people she didn’t even know. And as she got older she, too, realized the nonsensicalness of all of that hatred. She understood the history of racism in America and the complexities, but oddly enough, if Sal would have told her that he never harbored any type of racial animus in his life, she would have probably looked at him with a more suspicious eye. It was possible, but not bloody likely in America, she would have decided.
But that was why she couldn’t cast stones at Sal or anybody else. She wasn’t pristine in the race category either. He said he wasn’t like that anymore, and she knew she wasn’t. She also knew that only time would tell the truth for both of them.
“So what can I say?” he said again.
“You can say that you’re get out of this kitchen until I finish this meal. You did, after all, promise to feed me. Not feed on me,” Gemma said to laughter from Sal, “but feed me. Or was that first meal what you had in mind all along?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sal said with a smile. “And if you’re gonna be with me, which you are, you’d better get used to it.”
But as quickly as he said those words, he regretted saying them. A look of alarm crossed his face. He did not mean to reveal so much. Gemma saw it, and understood it. She, too, found his comment disconcerting.
“I’ll call you when dinner’s ready,” she said to him.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sal said, glad for the reprieve, and left the room.
After dinner, when they both were stuffed and satisfied, they took wine out on the terrace. Sal now wore a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and was slouched in his chair. Gemma sat erect, with her legs crossed, and enjoyed the mellowness of the evening.
“That was some good eating,” Sal said as he sipped his wine. “That’s all I know. I couldn’t tell you half of what it was I ate,” he added, to laughter from Gemma, “but it had a hellava taste riding with it. Who taught you how to cook like that? Your mother?”
“My father.”
“Get the fuck outta here. Your old man, really?”
“Yup. He’s a chef in his fantasy life.”
Sal smiled. “What’s he in his real life?”
“A banker.”
Sal looked at her. “A banker? And what about your old lady?”
“She’s an attorney like me. Has her own practice.”
“In Vegas?”
“Indiana.”
“Ah. So you left Brady Bunch city to sin city and followed in her footsteps.”
Gemma smiled. “That I did, yes.”
“So you’re just that normal, hun?”
Gemma nodded her head. “’Fraid so.”
“No sad tales about daddy beating you and mama hiding you in a closet, hun?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I don’t know, kid. I don’t know if you and me can get together. You sound too normal for the likes of me. You aren’t damaged enough.”
Although Sal said this with a smile, Gemma paid attention. “What about your folks?” she asked.
There was a hesitation from Sal. “They aren’t bankers and lawyers, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“What are they then?”
“They’re nothing, they’re people. My mother left when we were little kids.”
Gemma frowned. “She left?”
“Yeah. She took off. She got out and left me and Tommy in.”
Gemma smiled. “You make it sound like she left you in prison or something.”
Sal smiled too, but she could see the pain behind it. Her smile left.
“Is she still alive?”
“Yeah,” Sal said. “When I was young I ran away, I ran to where I found out she was staying. But she took a stick and beat me until I was far away from her house. She told me I’d better never come back too.” Again he was smiling. Again it didn’t reach his eyes. “So I never went back. To hell with her too, was how I saw it. She was figuring that I was my old man. I wasn’t, but he had damaged her so much that that was what she thought. But anyway, while she was there, she was a housewife. My old man was, and still is, a cop.”
Gemma wasn’t about to discuss his mother with him. That wound was still apparently as fresh as it was the day his mother left him. But if he thought discussing what had to be a painful childhood would scare her away from questioning him at all, he was out of his mind. “So you and Tommy followed in your father’s footsteps then?” she asked him.
He snorted. “We didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter, thank-you very much. My old man, he wasn’t mafia, but in a lot of ways he was worse. We became what he said we were going to become. That’s just the way we were raised. None of that lip like these young people nowadays have. My old man would have stomped me through the ground if I tried to give him any lip.”
“That was the only reason he wanted you to be a cop? Because he was one?”
“Because it was the direct opposite of what his brother and cousins and other family members became. There were, how do I say it, a lot of less-than-reputable occupations going on in the Gabrini family, and our old man wasn’t about to let us go down that road. We were going to be cops if it killed him. For the honor of the family name. So we became cops. Tommy was actually good at it. He became a captain and everything.”
“And you? Were you any good?”
“Hell nall,” Sal said to laughter from Gemma. “I sucked like you wouldn’t believe. Was a nightmare of a cop. Thugs hated me and I hated them. I wasn’t crooked though,” Sal said, holding up a hand. “I wasn’t on the spill for nobody. But I was lousy. I loved it too much.”
Gemma looked at him. “You loved it too much? What’s the crime in that?”
“The worse cops are the cowboys, the ones who love arresting the bad guys and love chasing the bad guys and love the power of that position. The best cops are the cops like Tommy was. They hated every minute of every hour of every day of that job. Those were the best cops. Because the job didn’t go to their heads.”
“It went to yours?”
“Blew it up like the fucking Hindenburg!” Gemma laughed. “It was already big, I’m not trying to pretend like I was some saint going in, I wasn’t. But that job made it worse.”
In a way, Gemma understood what he meant. As an attorney she had to deal with all kinds of cops. Some good, some awful. And he was right. The awful ones were usually the cowboys.
“What about your father?” she asked. “Was he a good cop?”
“There’s no was in it. He’s still a cop. The top cop in fact. He’s the chief of police. And is he any good, yeah, well. Let’s put it this way: he loves his job with a passion.”
Gemma studied Sal. “You don’t sound particularly close to your father.”
“That’s the understatement of the year. No, me and my old man don’t get along, that’s a fact. I can tolerate him better than Tommy can, but that’s not saying much.”
Gemma was certain that he had his reasons why he and his father didn’t get along, but she was equally certain that it wasn’t her business.
But that didn’t stop her from getting to know Sal better. She, after all, just spent some seriously intimate hours with him. Telling her a few things about himself should be a piece of cake. “Reno’s father, Paulo Gabrini, that was his brother?” she asked.
“That’s right.” Then he looke
d at her. “What you know about Uncle Paulo?”
“I think I once heard he was a mob boss, but that’s about all I know about him.”
“Yeah, he brought dishonor to the family. At least that’s how my old man sees it.”
That was a telling admission, Gemma thought. “You don’t see it that way?” she asked him.
“I did for many years, yeah. But now, I don’t know what I see. I mean, what kind of man gets upset with his own children for refusing to hate his brother’s children?”
“You mean Reno and his sister Francine?”
“Right. I mean think about that shit. These are his brother’s flesh and blood children, and my old man wants nothing to do with them. He hates me and Tommy for having anything to do with them. Even when Uncle Paulo and Joey, Reno’s brother, died, Pops wouldn’t even attend their funerals. He hold grudges like a motherfuck. Never met another human being who hold grudges like my old man does. He’s a trip.”
Gemma stared at him. She could see the uneasiness all over him. “You certainly did a lot with your life, though, Sal, even your father would have to admit that.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t know my father.” Sal said that with a harshness in his tone. “Sometimes I wonder if the reason I do some of the things I do is because of him. But forget it,” he said standing up. “We will not waste our evening talking about me. Let me freshen that,” he said as he took her almost empty glass of wine.
Gemma sat quietly while he went inside the house to refill their drinks. What were those things he did that bothered him, she wondered. Trina once told her that Reno and Tommy were concerned if Sal was involved somehow in mob activities himself. He denied it, Trina was quick to point out, but she said Tommy and Reno weren’t exactly convinced.
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI Page 6