Reno watched her as he fucked her. He watched the way her beautiful hazel eyes couldn’t stay open. He watched as her perfect full lips quivered. He watched as her gorgeous, dark brown skin glowed from the wonderment of her passion. She belonged to him. He remembered all of the women, and all of the tricks of the trade they tried to win him over. But not Trina. She didn’t try any tricks at all. She was herself. She remained true to herself. And for that simple act of genuineness, she won Reno’s heart.
He remembered that genuineness, and the first time his lips touched hers, and he started kissing her again as he fucked her. They were feeling the sensation. They were at that magnificent place where his release was near, and her climax was on the verge, but it wasn’t quite there. They had that wonderfulness of time to drag out the feeling. All they could hear in the quiet room was the sound of lovemaking. Of the bedsprings whining and their grunts and groans, and the slushing of their saturated juices. All Trina could feel was the fullness of Reno’s thick dick sliding against her vaginal walls with gliding strokes. All Reno could feel was the tightness of Trina’s cunt, squeezing around his rod, until it was time. Beyond time. And they had to go there. He had to cut loose.
Trina, knowing the time too, held onto Reno tightly as he began thrashing into her. It felt like she was on a wild bull. It felt like she was on a wild ride. Her little body was being pounded and her breasts were unable to stop bouncing as Reno put it on her with an edge that made her scream in delight. Sweat poured from him as he pounded into her. He leaned up on his hands, to look at her, as he, over and over again, thrust into her.
Every muscle between her legs was clamping down, and her legs were opening wider and wider, until the pinned-up sensation finally burst. Then Reno’s dick swelled to its highest possible thickness, and he spilled out too. He poured into her. Like an exhale after a long intake, he released his all into her. And then he thrashed even faster, and thrashed even harder, and they both felt as if they were near the point of too much intensity. Too much sensation. It was love for them: their love. And they held on, until they both poured out.
The pulsations never stopped, but they slowed enough for Reno and Trina to finally breathe again. They couldn’t regulate their breathing, but they could breathe again. They would remain like this for nearly five straight minutes. And then Reno finally found enough strength within himself to lift his head, and look at her.
“I’m baack,” he said with a smile, and in a singsong voice.
Trina smiled too. “Oh, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Big time.”
“Well, big man, if you’re so back, then what are you laying there for?” She asked this as she placed her hands on the side of his head, and pulled his face toward hers. They stared into each other’s eyes with a shared look of love and pain and joy and happiness. All of their emotions were laid bare right before their eyes. And she kissed him gingerly on the lips.
He looked into her hooded eyes and tears appeared in his. And he kissed her back. Gingerly at first, and then long and hard. He couldn’t stop kissing her. And, remarkably, he was throbbing as he kissed her. He was getting aroused yet again as he kissed her. So aroused that, after kissing her with a passion he was certain he was too drain to conjure up, he found himself guiding his penis into her vagina again.
Trina was amazed by her own passion too, and was running her hands through his thick hair as they made that ultimate contact. And just like that, after one round that left them reeling with exhaustion, they were kissing and fucking again. And it wasn’t a quickie either. It was almost as long-lasting as the first time.
Neither one of them could believe just how badly they needed, and missed this.
CHAPTER THREE
“That’s it over there,” Jimmy Mack said to Trina as he pointed to a rundown, single-wide trailer near the end of the narrow street.
But Trina bristled. “That’s not it,” she said. “It can’t be.”
“That’s it,” Jimmy insisted. “5928. It’s written right there. That’s it, Ma, I’m telling you.”
Although Trina wore her prescription glasses for better night vision, she still had to squint to see perfectly. It was only then did she see it too. “My goodness, you’re right,” she said, as she stopped, backed up, and then drove her Mercedes onto the graveled driveway of the single-wide.
Trina shook her head as she looked at the dilapidated trailer on a street of severe dilapidation. Not that poverty was anything new to her. Before she met Reno, she was barely making ends meet herself. She’d lived in worse holes than this. But Fran was the one who phoned and begged Trina to come and pick her up, and Fran was born into privilege. She didn’t have to be anywhere near this part of town. She was hanging out here, and being around here, just for the fun of it. Which Trina wasn’t trying to understand. People were working hard and struggling to get out of a place like this, but spoiled brat Fran was doing everything in her power to get in. Trina shook her head again.
Jimmy didn’t get it either. Why was his aunt always fooling with guys who lived in environments like this, had messy criminal records as long as her legs, and worked professions that weren’t legal any day of the week? And they were always young and buff, like her current beau, who was even younger than Jimmy’s twenty-one years. But that was who she liked. Redneck hotheads in questionable trades. Or they didn’t have a trade at all and relied on her to support them.
Jimmy looked beyond the trailer they were now parked in front of, two trailers beyond, and saw a group of white boys leaned against souped-up cars and pickup trucks. They were drinking beers, playing cards, and listening to loud country music. He looked just as one guy apparently said something another guy didn’t like, so the guy jumped up and coldcocked him. Then the other guys got up to keep them apart. “Yep,” Jimmy said as he nodded his head. “Dad is going to kill us. It’s a certainty now. Dad is going to kill us dead.”
Trina laughed as she grabbed her Dior bag from the backseat. “Stop being so dramatic, Jimmy.”
“But did you see what that guy just did to that other guy?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“And?”
“The guy has a good left hook,” Trina said.
Jimmy looked at her as if she was insane. “A good left hook?” he asked. “What are you talking? If Dad finds out where we are he’s going to kill us!”
“He’s not going to kill anybody, stop saying that.”
“Okay, correction,” Jimmy said. “He would never harm his precious Tree, you’re right. He’d never harm a hair on your head. But he’s going to kill me if he finds out I let you come to a place like this.”
Now it was Trina’s time to look at Jimmy as if he’d lost his mind. They were only thirteen years apart in age, and as close as a stepmother and stepson could possibly be. But there was no mistake about it: he was NOT her equal. “You let me come?” she asked him.
“Yeah!” Jimmy said, not getting the significance of his words.
“Boy you better get your life,” Trina corrected him. “You can’t let me do anything, you hear me? I’m a grown-ass woman. I do as I please.”
“You know what I mean! He keeps you on a short leash. It’s the only way he knows how to handle the situation.”
Trina frowned. “What situation? What are you talking about, Jimmy?”
“I’m talking about Dad! I’m talking about the fact that he’s Reno Gabrini! You don’t know how he can get when it comes to your security. And if he finds out you’re in the for real hood like this, at this time of night, and I didn’t try to stop it, he’s going to have my head on a platter served up with new potatoes.”
Trina laughed out loud. That Jimmy. He worried more than an old lady. “I’ll handle your father,” she said as she started getting out of the car. “You just bring your narrow ass on.”
Jimmy was always amazed at how calmly Trina took such serious matters. He sat there wondering why she was never as terrified of Dad as the rest of them were. One wron
g word sometimes and he’d knock you through a wall. And Jimmy knew it firsthand too. He’d been knocked through that proverbial wall a time or two himself. And Trina wasn’t completely immune to Reno’s wrath. He’d seen Reno put her over his lap and give her backside a wallop too. But she still did whatever she was big enough to do and acted like there would be no consequences, when Jimmy knew there would be plenty.
But when he looked up to see if she was at least rethinking her carefree strategy, his heart dropped. Trina had not only gotten out of the car without him, but was walking swiftly across the sidewalk toward the front door. And those guys two trailers down were now looking at this well-dressed, good looking black woman as if she was bait for the catch. Or for the rope.
Jimmy quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and hurried to her side. It was going to be bad enough if Reno found out he had allowed her to come to a place like this, but if something was to happen to her while she was here, it was going to be hell to pay. That was why, once he made it up to her, he immediately placed his hand on the small of her back just in case the guys had any ideas otherwise.
Trina was amused at Jimmy’s protectiveness as she banged on the door of the small, rusty trailer. Fran, with a cigarette in her hand, eventually opened the door. But she opened it and then stood behind it as Trina and Jimmy walked in.
“You took your pretty time answering,” Trina said to her as they walked in. She also had a great suspicion why Fran was hiding behind that door. When Jimmy closed the door and Fran was exposed, Trina’s suspicion was confirmed.
“Oh, Fran,” she said with heartfelt compassion when she saw the state of her sister-in-law’s bruised face.
“Damn,” Jimmy said when he saw it too.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Fran insisted as she moved away from the door and back toward the sofa, where her purse and jacket were. “Don’t judge. It’s not that bad.”
“What do you mean it’s not that bad?” Trina asked with a frown on her face. “You look like Mike Tyson got a hold of you.”
“It’s nothing like that okay?” Fran said. Then she nervously puffed on her cigarette and folded her arms. “It was an accident.”
“An accident?” Trina asked. “What? You accidentally ran into his fist?”
“There was no fist involved, Tree, so don’t bring that here. That’s not what happened. What happened was that I slipped in the kitchen.”
“You slipped?”
“That’s right. That’s what happened. I slipped and I fell over the, over the dog, see, and the refrigerator was right there, right in the way when I fell over the dog, so I hit my head on the refrigerator.”
“That darn refrigerator,” Trina said, shaking her own head. “How dare it be in the kitchen.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Fran said. “But that’s what happened. I fell over the dog and hit my face on the frig.”
“I thought it was your head,” Trina said.
“My head, my face, what’s the damn difference?” Then Fran puffed even harder on her cigarette.
“But what dog you fell over?” Jimmy asked, looking around. “I don’t see any dog around here.”
Fran rolled her large eyes. “It didn’t happen here, Jimmy, all right?”
“It didn’t happen anywhere,” Trina said. “All right? At least not that story you’re telling us now.”
Fran looked at Trina as Trina stood there in her perfectly tailored white pantsuit and heels. She had it so together, while Fran felt like a basket case. She wished she had Tree’s strength and self-possession. But she didn’t have either. Tears began to appear in her eyes, and she plopped down on the sofa.
Trina hesitated. She was so over Fran and her abusive boyfriends. But then she went over to her younger sister-in-law and sat down beside her. She didn’t hug her or coddle her or tell her everything was going to be all right. That was the problem. First Fran’s father, and then, when her father died, Reno, had been coddling her all of her life. And nights like this, where some dude had undoubtedly tried to rearrange her face, were all too common.
“What really happened?” Trina asked her. Jimmy sat in the chair across from the two ladies, wanting to know that answer too.
Fran slung her long black hair out of her pretty, Italian face, and then she doused out her cigarette in the ashtray on the side table. “I thought he loved me, Tree,” she said with a distressed look on her face.
“You thought who loved you?”
“Pac.”
Trina was surprised. She didn’t think Fran was still with the little convict.
But Fran kept talking. “I thought we were going to make it work, you know? I’m tired of running from guy to guy and Pac was the best one so far. Almost as good as Dirty.”
Trina knew she heard that wrong. Dirty was Fran’s deceased husband. “Almost as good as Dirty?” she asked. “What was good about Dirty? That man used to beat the crap out of you, Fran.”
“I mean in bed,” Fran said unabashedly. “He’s almost as good as Dirty was in bed.”
“Oh,” Trina said, and she and Jimmy exchanged a glance. And Jimmy shook his head. Leave it to Aunt Fran, he thought, to think that sex, not strength of character, was the most important thing.
“So Pac beat you?” Trina asked her.
Fran nodded.
“Where is he now?”
“His ass probably in hiding now. I ran over here as soon as I managed to get away from him.”
“This isn’t his trailer?”
“No. Hell no! This nice place? Pac could only afford a place like this in his dreams.”
Again Trina and Jimmy exchanged a glance. Although this place was decently furnished inside, it was a rundown dump of a trailer outside. And Fran, a woman who was born into wealth and never had to want for anything, was praising it? In a way, that was the very thing that Trina loved about Fran. She judged no one. She put on no airs. And she loved Reno and Trina’s two children deeply. Her choice in men left a lot to be desired, but Trina also knew nobody was perfect. Everybody, as she loved to say, had shit to bury.
“So who lives here then?” Jimmy asked his aunt.
“A friend of mine. I ran here and banged on her door and she let me in. She had to go to work so I promised to lock up when I left.”
Trina shook her head. “Running away from some man because he beat the crap out of you is no way to live, Fran. How in the world can you stand it?”
Envy rose in Fran like a tidal wave. And the claws came out. “I tried to call Reno, before I called you, but he wasn’t answering his phone.”
Trina tried to phone him too. “I know,” she said.
“So where is he?” Fran asked.
Trina looked at her. “What do you mean where is he? How the hell should I know where he is?”
“Where his ass at this time of night?” Fran wanted to know.
Trina wanted to know what she was implying. Was she attempting to take the spotlight off of her relationship by putting it on Trina’s? “He’s handling his business,” Trina finally responded.
“At this time of night?” Fran asked. “He’s not in any office at the PaLargio, and he’s not in the casino either. I called all over that place and nobody, not even his staff, knows where he went. But you know what I figure?”
Trina stared at her, refusing to answer.
Fran decided to answer her own question. “I figure he’s either in one of those hotel rooms with some female, or he’s completely away from the PaLargio, out of the way of prying eyes, with some female. And you have the nerve to ask me how can I stand this? How can you stand that?”
Jimmy looked at Trina. All of those rumors about his father’s infidelity had to hurt her to her core, and he knew Fran knew it.
But Trina wasn’t about to play any tit-for-tat game with Fran. She stood up. “Get your things and let’s go,” she said.
Fran looked at her. The bravado, the get Trina attitude was now gone as quickly as it had reared up. Terror was now in
Fran’s eyes. “I love Pac,” she said.
Trina considered her. “Yeah, I know,” she said.
“You can’t tell Reno,” she said. “I’m glad he wasn’t around. I’m glad they couldn’t find him. He’ll kill Pac if he sees me like this.”
But Trina frowned. “What I don’t understand is why your ass didn’t kill Pac when he put a hand on you. Why do you let these dudes beat on you like this, Fran?”
“What was I supposed to do? I can’t fight no man!”
“But if you don’t do something it’s never going to change! Dirty treated you the same way, and every dude you’ve been with since Dirty. When is it going to end? When they kill you? When I get a call to come down to the morgue to identify your body rather than to pick you up?”
But Fran began shaking her head. “It’s not easy like that, Tree,” she said. “You talk like I want this for my life. I don’t want this for my life! But what am I supposed to do?”
Trina stared at her younger sister-in-law. There was only a four-year age difference between them, but sometimes Trina felt like an old woman compared to Fran. Because Fran honestly believed she had no options. She honestly believed she had to choose between men who could fuck her right, or men who could love her right. Fran was asking for trouble, Trina knew, if sex was her priority.
“What Pac and I have is special, Tree,” Fran went on.
“Special?” Jimmy asked, astounded that she would think such a thing. “He beats on you, Aunt Fran. What’s special about that?”
“But that’s not all he does. He makes me feel young again.”
“You are young!”
But Fran shot back. “I’m thirty years old,” she blared. “That ain’t young!”
“Yes, it is,” Trina fired back. “But go on.”
“Yeah, we get into it sometimes,” Fran went on. “But you and Reno get into it too, Tree. And Reno always wins. You always end up doing exactly what he makes you do. But you don’t see me judging you, or acting like you should leave Reno just because he bosses you around. You’re just as much Reno’s bitch as I’m Pac’s.”
RENO AND TRINA: GETTING BACK TO LOVE (The Mob Boss Series) Page 4