“I still have two days of classes to teach. I told you that.”
“And I told you I’ll have you back in time to teach your classes. What does that have to do with anything? You aren’t staying here. They banned me from walking through their door. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Oh, Sal, come on! It’s not as if they don’t have a reason. They could lose millions if they get a reputation as a hotel with crime issues.”
“What crime issues? It was a just a fight, a gotdamn fight. What’s the big damn deal?”
Gemma frowned. She could tell he was overreacting, but his anger still created hers. “Don’t get all up in my ass,” she said with her own brand of anger. “I’m just saying why they banned your ass.”
“Just shut the fuck up and get your things. What’s your problem?”
“You shut the fuck up, and I don’t have a problem.”
“Then fine,” Sal said angrily, walking around to the driver’s side. “Forget you anyway!”
“Forget you too!” Gemma yelled back.
Sal jumped into his car, cranked up, and sped off. Gemma felt awful. She really was looking forward to spending time with him. But she wasn’t about to let him handle her like that. He could be tough, and she respected his toughness, but she wasn’t going to just roll over and be his lapdog. There was no way he would respect her if she allowed him that kind of power.
So she began heading back to her hotel. Forget him, she thought as she walked. But that sinking feeling kept trying to overtake her. She was disappointed.
To her amazement, however, Sal’s Ferrari was driving back up to the hotel just as she made it up to the front entrance. She stood there and looked. The valets looked too, ready to tell the manager if he tried to come inside.
But she knew that wasn’t his aim at all. He stopped the car under the portico, got out, and walked around to the passenger door. He opened it for her. “Are you getting in, or what?” he asked.
Gemma stared at him. “Do you want me to go with you, Sal?” she asked him.
His anger rose again. “What the fuck you think I came back for?” he blared, to the shock of the valets who were already on their guard about him. Then he calmed himself back down. “Yes,” he said. “I want you to come with me.” She wasn’t going to make it easy.
She knew she could push this further. She knew Sal would probably go to even further lengths to get her in his car. But she also knew what it took for him to go this far. She got in.
When he sat her down on the passenger seat, and he got on the driver’s seat, he looked at her. “I was wrong,” he said. “I apologize for that.”
She looked at him. “Apology accepted.”
“I’m not what you call diplomatic, and sometimes it shows.”
Gemma smiled. “You think?” she asked.
Sal smiled too. “Sometimes, yeah. But I don’t mean to be disrespectful. That’s where I draw the line. That’s the last thing I mean to be. But there’s also something you need to understand.”
Gemma looked intensely at him.
“You need to understand, Gemma, that I will not be handled by some female. And that includes you. Nobody handles Sal Luca Gabrini, all right? Nobody. I never played the chump before, and I’m not about to start playing it now. You got me?”
Gemma smiled. She once told Trina that she wouldn’t mind being in a relationship where she had the power, to the tune of a seventy-five, twenty-five split. Now she realized how ridiculous that assertion was. No real man was going to let her, or anybody else, lord it over him like that. And she was actually glad that Sal was making that perfectly clear.
“I got you, Sal,” she said. “I will not try to handle you. But you can’t try to handle me either.”
Sal looked at her as if she had lost her mind. She smiled. “Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Says who?”
“Says me,” Gemma said, laughing. “And I’m serious.”
“No, you’re not,” Sal said, cranking up and then putting on his sunglasses. “There is no way in hell you can possibly be serious about that. Me not handle you? In your dreams, baby,” he said, and sped off. Gemma was laughing as they went.
After a long drive around Seattle, where Sal became her tour guide, they ended up at Diamante’s, the upscale restaurant he owned with his brother. The staff behaved as if the President of the United States had entered the building as soon as Sal walked in, and she found them humorous too. But there was no denying it. Diamante’s was a lovely place.
“This is nice, Sal,” she said as Sal helped her into her seat.
“Thank-you,” he said as he sat down too. He looked at the waiter standing beside his chair and placed their drink orders. The waiter left. “It’s Tommy’s baby, but I’m here more than he is.”
“You and Tommy are partners in everything?”
“Almost everything, yeah. You have to be able to trust your business partner. We trust each other. I trust Tommy above any human being alive.”
“I hope he’s doing better today. He was not happy with you last night.”
“He’s never all that happy with me to begin with. But he was dealing with his own issues last night.”
“About Grace?”
“Apparently.”
“What do you mean apparently?”
“He’s not talking. Which isn’t unusual either. I tell Tommy all my shit. He don’t tell me shit.”
Gemma laughed. “A big brother’s prerogative.”
“Well whatever. But it’ll all come out eventually. It always does. And I’ll be the last to know, you’d better believe that. Reno will know before I do.”
“He and Reno are close?”
“Very. But enough about that. That’s my other life. I wanna know about this life.” He looked at her. “About you.”
“You know about me.”
“I know the checklist, yeah, I know that. I know you’re a lawyer and your mother’s a lawyer and your old man’s a banker. I know you co-own that boutique with Trina. But what about you? Have a husband, any kids?”
Gemma lifted her drink as if she was going to throw it at Sal. He ducked and laughed. She smiled. “No, I do not have a husband. And if I did, after last night, I won’t be having him much longer.”
“Come on now. What he don’t know, won’t hurt him.”
“Yeah, but I’ll know. And it’ll hurt me.” Then she looked askance at him. “Surely you don’t condone something like that.”
“Like what?” Sal asked.
“Sleeping with a married woman.”
Sal shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.”
“No whatever. Do you or do you not condone it?”
“Condone what?”
“Sleeping with married women, Sal, you know what I’m saying.”
“What you want me to say? You want me to tell you I’m some altar boy? Well I’m not. Nowhere near it. If I see a woman I want, I go after her. I don’t ask questions. Why the fuck should I care if they’re married or not? They can say no. I don’t put a gun to their heads. If they have a husband at home, that’s on them. That’s not on me.”
Gemma understood what he was saying, but she didn’t understand it too. Sal could see her confusion.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Disappointed that I am who I am?”
“No. Of course not. But you speak as if you can absolve yourself of your moral responsibility just by not asking questions. I find that . . .”
“What?”
“Reprehensible actually.”
Sal felt bad. He wished, at that moment, that he was a better man than he’d been. He nodded his head. “Thank-you,” he said.
She didn’t expect that. “Thank-you for what?” she asked him.
“Thank-you for not settling for my bullshit. I don’t want you to ever let it be okay with you.”
Gemma stared at Sal. She didn’t know quite how to take that.
And after dinner, Gemma still didn’t know what to think when Sal took her back to
her hotel, rather than to his house.
She looked at him. She expected him to ask if he could come up. But he didn’t even go there. He got out, opened the door for her, and kissed her goodnight. Then he stood at his car and watched her as she got on the elevator. When the doors closed, she exhaled. It had been a good night, and she enjoyed their conversation. But it felt kind of like a letdown too. What happened, she wondered. In a way it was a good thing. Maybe he was trying to prove to her that he didn’t just want her for her body. But it was disappointing too. Because, in a way, she wanted him for his.
But she went into her hotel room and got in the shower. A shower could cool her back down. But when she stepped out, and dried off, knocks were heard on her room door. She grabbed the bathrobe and hurried to it.
“Who is it?” she asked as she looked out of the peephole. When she saw that it was Sal, she smiled and opened the door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
He walked in and closed the door. “What do you think?” he asked. “You think I was going to let you get away from me that easily?”
He moved up to her, pulled her into his arms.
“But you’re banned,” she said with not an ounce of conviction.
“Yeah, right. Money talks sweetheart. Flash enough money under the noses of employees around here, and they move faster than a running back in the NFL. It was a piece of cake.”
Gemma smiled and ran her hand through his hair. “Good,” she said, “because I wanted you tonight.”
Sal’s heart began to pound. “Not as badly as I wanted you.”
“Then why didn’t you take me to your place after dinner?”
“Why do you think? I wasn’t gonna let you think I only wanted you for your body.”
His logic, Gemma thought. “But you’re here. To have my body.”
“Yeah, but I had to work to get to this body.” He began to kiss her. “I had to show just how badly I wanted you.”
“You want me?” she asked him as their kissing escalated.
“Oh, baby,” Sal said as he pulled her closer and kissed her harder, “you’ll never know how much I want you. Every inch of you. And I’m going to have you,” he said as he lifted her in his arms, and carried her to the bed.
CHAPTER SIX
The bed was squeaking and about to unbolt from its perch as Sal fucked Gemma. He had her naked and on her stomach, and he was naked and fucking her hard. His hands were underneath her, squeezing her breasts as he thrashed her, and she felt the sensations of his fuck and squeeze to the very depths of her being.
She closed her eyes and immersed herself into Sal’s brand of lovemaking. He was not a gentle man. He was tender, at the start, but it was a tenderness filled with passion that wasn’t static. It was a passion that grew and grew until they both began to feel euphoric. They both knew they had to push the envelope and push the envelope until they got to where they wanted to be. Until the bed was rocking and trying to unhinge, and they were on the verge of an explosion with every stroke he stroked her with.
Sal’s style made Gemma feel alive. It was hard and sometimes rough, but it was also so intense that every time he pounded into her, every time she felt his dick stroke against her vaginal walls with swipes he’d perfected, her sensuality heightened. Her entire body pulsated for his sex, the more he put it on her.
And Sal knew he was putting it on her good. He loved how she felt underneath him. He loved how her body responded to his gyrations. Her breasts were so taut, and her ass was so tight, that he couldn’t stop squeezing her on one end and fucking her on the other. And it was a hard fuck. They had started across the bottom half of the king-sized bed, but were now at the top, near the headboard. At one point, in fact, he was thrashing her so hard, and the headboard was banging against the wall so forcefully, that Gemma’s hotel neighbor started pounding on the wall, yelling for peace.
But Sal and Gemma were both too far gone to heed it. Sal kept stroking her. He kept thrashing into her. The saturation of her cum all over his sheath penis felt almost as loud as the distressed bedsprings that seemed to be singing every time Sal shoved into Gemma. Until Sal came too. His back arched and his ass squeezed as he poured out in such a rush and flow that he broke the condom.
And he drenched her.
He pulled out, and she turned onto her back as his cum mixed with her cum and it began to ooze down her thighs. And the white milky substance didn’t do a small drip out and stop, but it continued to puddle around her folds and then pour out. Gemma was so filled with Sal’s love, so saturated, that it took nearly an entire minute before the draining finally stopped.
Sal dropped onto his back, too, and he was breathing so hard that his sweaty chest was heaving. He’d never had a condom break on him before. Not ever. This was the absolute first time. But he’d also never fucked any woman as long as he fucked Gemma. Usually twenty minutes tops and he was done. But not with Gemma. He’d been going on and on with her, at that heightened intensity, for well over an hour.
He looked at Gemma and she looked at him. Somehow they both knew that the breaking of that condom was systematic of the kind of relationship they would inevitably have should they choose to walk down that road. It was going to be volatile and messy, and unbelievably fulfilling. All of that and more.
But as Sal put his arm around Gemma and pulled her to him, kissing her on the forehead and then staring off into the distance of his own mind, he shuttered to think where this could lead. Had he found the woman of his dreams? Could she be the one? In his mind he had always envisioned a beautiful blonde, who would sweep into his life like a gentle wind, and would capture his heart just by being sweet and innocent. Sort of the white version of Tommy’s woman Grace.
But Gemma was no Grace. There was nothing gentle and sweet and innocent about her. Grace might have been like the gentle wind, but Gemma was more like the hurricane. She was more like gale force winds. She was well experienced and tough, and wasn’t going to let Sal get away with shit.
And Sal knew it. She was going to give him all kinds of fits, and he knew that too. She was going to force him to put his foot down time and time again, and battle her every inch-by-loving-inch of the way. That was what he was going to get if he decided to fully commit to this woman. He knew it already. Their relationship was at the very beginning stages, but he already knew what he’d be in for.
But it wouldn’t just be the volatile part. It would also be the loving part. He knew he’d be in for something special there too. Gemma was a passionate woman who could probably match his own intense level of passion. In Sal’s eyes, that condom didn’t break for nothing. It made him realize just how different this relationship was going to be compared to what he was used to. The power, the passion, the work that he would have to put into a romance like this one would make for a hellava ride.
But it would also make for a hellava imprisonment. No other women, no freedom to not tell her where he was on any given day, no sense of control. That could be a hell in waiting, if he wasn’t careful.
Unless, he thought as he looked at her, she’d be open to his style of romance. He could protect himself, and have her too.
He sat up in bed, his back against the headboard. She looked at him, and then sat up too.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him.
He played with her nipple, then looked into her eyes. “The condom broke,” he said.
She smiled. “I know. And you know what’s crazy? Whenever I handled paternity cases, I used to hear that excuse all the time. The condom broke, those young men used to love to tell me. They didn’t mean to get anybody pregnant. The condom broke. And I never believed it. No condom had ever broken while I was having sex with anyone. I thought it was the biggest lie this side of living. Until now.”
Sal smiled too, and placed his hand on the side of her face. “I’m clean, don’t worry. And I know you are. And don’t you dare go take that morning after pill, either.”
Gemma looked a
t him. “And why not?”
“Number one, it wasn’t long enough contact for that to happen. And if it was,” he said just as Gemma was about to object, “we’ll deal with it. You hear me? If you happened to have gotten pregnant, which is highly unlikely, but if it happened, then we’ll deal with it. So don’t go taking any pill. That’s not necessary.”
Although Gemma didn’t respond verbally to that, her inward response was undeniable. Because she knew the deal. She knew that she would be the one who had to carry that baby for nine months, and go through all of the pain and anguish that pregnancy would entail. She would be the one who would be “dealing” with it. She didn’t argue with Sal about it. She didn’t even acknowledge his opinion about it. Because in the morning, if not tonight, she knew she would definitely be taking that pill.
“That’s what’s worrying you?” she asked him. “The fact that we had that raw contact?”
Sal remembered how it felt too. It was brief. He lingered when it first broke and his head came in direct contact with the warmth of her pussy, but it was enough to give him a taste of what was to come. If he thought sex with Gemma was intense now, he knew it was going to be off the chain when they became a couple and could do it in the raw. But then he caught himself, because that wasn’t where he wanted to go right now at all. Not at all!
“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I’m worried about our future. And what’s going to work for us.”
He looked at her when he said that. When a man talked about what would work for them, Gemma knew where they were headed. They wanted it both ways. Sal wanted her physically, she had already worked that part out. But he wasn’t ready for that all-out commitment, just as she feared.
But the idea of not having exclusivity with Sal bothered her. She didn’t think she could do it. And what was even odder to her was the fact that she didn’t think he could do it either. After the way he made love to her convinced her. She didn’t believe for a second that Sal would allow some other man to have his way with her. She didn’t believe it.
ROMANCING SAL GABRINI Page 9