Sal Gabrini 3: Hard Love

by Mallory Monroe

Carmen backed off, and she and Gemma exchanged a knowing smile. Then Gemma went to him, he placed his arm around her body, and together they made it to the living room sofa. When she sat Sal down, he pulled her down, beside himself, and kissed her on the lips.

  She had helped him with his bath earlier that morning, a routine that tired him out, but that made her remind him of just how virile a man he still was. He was beginning to smell like the old Sal: cologne and all. And she was appreciating the fact that she knew how to take care of him just as he would want to be taken care of. No drop-offs, as he once told her. “You smell good,” she said.

  “Coming from you that’s a compliment,” he said, as he kissed her again. “You always smell good.” Then he put his arm around her and leaned against her. She knew he had to be exhausted, so she placed her arm around him, snuggled him closer, and held him. He ended up falling asleep, snoring in her arms.

  When he reopened his eyes, nearly forty minutes later, his head was on her chest and he was staring at her cleavage. Her juicy mounds, the ones he remembered so well, were partly visible above the top cut of her blouse. He missed those.

  So much so that he sat erect, and told her to get on his lap. “Sal,” she said. She missed him that way too, but she wasn’t about to rush it.

  But Sal was insistent. “Come on, Gem,” he said. “You aren’t heavy. I can hold you.”

  She was reluctant to go this far with him, but it had been months now. And she was horny too. So she got on top of him, and he held her. He didn’t grimace, which was the sign she was hoping to see. She was now slightly higher than he was, and his face was at her breasts. He looked up, into her face. “It’s been a while, my love,” he said to her. “How have we been coping?”

  She smiled. “You’ve been sleeping.” He laughed. “You’ve been coping just fine.”

  “And you?”

  “Not so fine, but I’m okay.”

  “None of these young bucks around here tried to come onto you?”

  Gemma smiled. “They tried.”

  Sal frowned. “They tried? Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sal. They’re just doing what men do.”

  “Hit on my woman? Not a man who works for me! Who did it?”

  “They don’t work for you, how’s that?”

  He stared at her. “I’m worrying about nothing, aren’t I?”

  She smiled. “As usual.”

  “A woman who stands by me the way you stood by me is a keeper, you know that?” He squeezed her. “You aren’t going anywhere, lady. I consider you family. My family. Sal’s family. Tommy has his lady, and Reno has his family, and I have you. I consider you the closest thing to my own family that I’ve ever had.”

  Gemma was touched by that. And she understood it. “I consider you my family too, Sal,” she said.

  He was going to make it official too, he’d already made up his mind about that. But not until they found out who had fired those shots into his mother’s home. Not until he found out if he was the target, if she was the target, or if his mother was the target. After that, and if she would have him, he was going full steam with this woman. He wasn’t losing her.

  But right now, as he looked at those juicy mounds again, he began to unbutton her blouse. Her tits were calling his name. When he opened the blouse, and lifted her bra, her big breasts spilled out as thick and juicy as a steak, and as tight as a rubber band snapping back. And he placed his hand on one of her breasts, squeezed it, and lifted it up to his mouth, and began to devour it.

  Gemma closed her eyes as soon as she felt his touch. It had been so long. She groaned when his mouth made contact with her nipples and the feelings felt intensified. He reached his hand down, inside her pants, and began to rub her clit as he sucked her breasts. She was feeling it on both sides of the aisle, and she leaned back and enjoyed it.

  But she knew he needed to feel it too. That was why, in the midst of his suck and rub, she got off of his lap, got on her knees in front of him, and opened his robe. His dick, as she suspected, was already springing tall and stiff, fully aroused. It was as if it was waiting for her tongue.

  And she didn’t disappoint. Sal inhaled a hard intake as she did him. She was licking him in that slow, luscious way of hers, and every time her long tongue trailed over a vein point, he opened his mouth wide and sighed with pleasure. And when she took him all the way inside of her mouth, when she went all the way down on him, his legs kicked out. He didn’t know if he could stand it.

  But he did. He enjoyed it too much to fight it. She was mouth-fucking him in that way that made him guide her head further down onto his rod. He wanted her to take him in full over and over again. And she did it. She ate his pre-cum and did it. Until he knew he couldn’t bear it a moment longer.

  “I’ve got to put it in, Gem,” he said to her. “I’ve got to put it in.”

  She removed her pants and panties and got back onto his lap. He opened her legs wide, to where they were on either side of his body. He guided his dick to her slit, and then pushed it, forced it, inside of her.

  They both let out loud sighs of joy when he entered her. Carmen was somewhere in the house, the last time Gemma noticed she was headed back upstairs, and she could have heard them or even seen them. But they didn’t care who saw or heard. They had to get it out. It felt like they were filled with a combustible liquid, that had to spill out.

  And it spilled. Sal began fucking her so hard that he thought he was on the verge of losing control. Her pussy felt like fresh meat on a desert island. He could feel the texture of her. He could feel the constrictions and the friction of her wonderfully narrow passage. She was even tighter than he remembered. Ever since they met he’d never gone this long without fucking her. He was making up for lost time. He was fucking her the way a man fucked his last fuck, and then was fucking her even harder. He was groaning and moaning with every stroke, with every gyration, with every push that took him deeper and deeper down. “Gemma,” he kept saying over and over again, and not as a scream, but a whisper, as he fucked her.

  When they finally came, he held her tighter and poured into her. He didn’t think he would have the energy to continue pounding her as he came, but he found the energy. He continued to thrash her as he came. His cum mixed with her vaginal juices and her climax was just as thrilling, and just as exhilarating, as his.

  They were still cumming, they were still in the latter throes of their cum, when the doorbell rang.

  They knew it had to be either Tommy or Grace. They were the only two people, other than Gemma herself, who had permission to come up to Sal’s penthouse without being announced. But Sal kept pounding her, to get out that final cum. He couldn’t stop fucking.

  But when the door was unlocked, he had no choice. Gemma jumped off of his lap, putting back on her pants, and pocketing her panties as she did. She pulled down her bra and blouse. Sal, still reeling from the sex, just barely managed to close his robe by the time the door opened, and Tommy walked in.

  Tommy was surprised to see them sitting there. “Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” he asked.

  “Yeah, we heard it,” Sal said. “So what?”

  Tommy closed the door and began walking toward them, staring at them as he came. It was obvious they’d been fucking. Sal always glowed when he fucked Gemma. But that wasn’t what surprised him. “You’re downstairs,” he said. Sal’s presence downstairs was the surprise.

  “He did it all by himself too,” Gemma said proudly.

  “No shit,” Tommy said and smiled. “I’m impressed.”

  “So what brings you to my neck of the woods?” Sal asked, trying his best to regain his calmness.

  Tommy sat down across from them. “I received a phone call from your estate manager.”

  “Ulysses? What was he calling you about?”

  Tommy looked at Gemma.

  Sal looked at her too. “What?”

  “I was going to tell you. I fired him today.”

  Sal stared at her. She fi
red his estate manager? That was some news to tell. But he knew her. He looked at Tommy. “I don’t know why he ran to you. His ass got what he deserved.”

  Tommy smiled. He would not have expected anything less from Sal. “And you know this how?”

  “Gemma fired him. You know how serious this woman is. She’s a straight shooter. She would have never fired him if he didn’t deserve it.”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

  “Damn straight,” Sal said, pleased that his brother didn’t fall for any excuses. “Prick running to you when every last one of them knew Gemma spoke for me. Her actions were my actions, and he especially knew it. Damn straight his ass got fired. I don’t even need to know the details. I trust Gemma. Period. End of discussion.”

  Tommy motioned as if he was tipping his hat to Sal. “Couldn’t agree more.”

  “For the record,” Gemma said, “he was allowing tenants to live in your building rent free for months on end.”

  Sal frowned. “Rent free?”

  “Most hadn’t paid in three months. Some it was five and one was six months.”

  “I’ll be damn,” Sal said. “And he didn’t initiate eviction on any of them?”

  “Eight in all. Zero evictions. Or even warning letters.”

  Tommy nodded. “You can pick’em, Sal. Guess he was a friend of yours too?”

  “He needed a job and I helped him out. He used to be real good. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Your absences happened,” Gemma said, “and he laid down on the job. He wanted to be well liked, rather than do his job well.”

  Sal shook his head. “He’s gone now?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. “I told him to leave the premises and not come back. He serves at the pleasure of the owner, and the owner wants him out.”

  “Thanks, Tommy,” Gemma said.

  “Anyways,” Sal said, beginning to feel the fatigue of the activity he and Gemma had just completed, “any new news to report?”

  “Nothing,” Tommy said. “Up and down the line. There’s no chatter, no dots to connect, no talk whatsoever. Nobody knows a damn thing.”

  “What about Ma?” Sal asked his brother.

  Tommy hesitated. “What about her?”

  “What is she saying?”

  “What she’s always saying,” Tommy said. “She’s still lying. She’s still insisting that the boogey man named Noose did it when no way is it Noose.”

  Sal exhaled and then grimaced.

  Gemma looked at him. “You okay, babe? Need to lie down?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “She can help us, Sal,” Tommy went on, “but she won’t. That’s the kind of woman she used to be. That’s the kind of woman she still is.”

  “What are you jumping down my throat about it for? I didn’t say she changed. I know she doesn’t give a damn about us, I know that.”

  Both Tommy and Gemma knew how hard that was for Sal to admit.

  “She’s bad news, Sal,” Tommy said, “that’s all I’m saying. If you wouldn’t have dropped everything and ran to Jericho just because she asked you to, this wouldn’t have happened. And I blame her for that.”

  “It’s not her fault.”

  “It is her fault.”

  “It’s not her fault.”

  “It is her fault.”

  “How can it be her fault, Tommy? What gun did she shoot? What bullets did she send flying through that window? She could have died too! I didn’t jump on her. I didn’t try to save her like I tried to save Gem. She could have died.”

  Tommy and Gemma both looked at Sal. “You feel guilty about that?” Tommy asked him.

  “It’s not about me. I’m sure she feels bad about that. She’s my mother, the only one I get, and I didn’t try to save her.”

  “But you knocked her out of the way too, Sal,” Gemma said. “You did save her.”

  “I was saving you. She was secondary. She knows it.”

  “Who cares what she knows,” Tommy said. “What, you prefer Gemma to be secondary? Is that it?”

  “No. Hell no! She’d better be glad I did what I did do! But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done more.”

  Tommy shook his head. “I give up. You’re one of a kind, Sal. I couldn’t care less what she thinks or how she feels. She doesn’t care what we think or feel. You nearly died, in her house, because you came to help her ass, and she hasn’t even picked up a gotdamn phone and called you! I don’t give a fuck about her!”

  Gemma had never seen Tommy so enraged. Even Sal was taken aback. But he understood where it was coming from. And he knew Tommy was right. But that was still his mother.

  “Don’t let it get to you like that, Tommy,” Gemma said. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

  “It’s just that it’s infuriating. And nothing’s turning up. No matter where we look, we still don’t know who fired those shots through that window. We still don’t know if Sal was even the target. It feels like . . .”

  “Like we’re going around the world,” Sal said, “but only getting around the corner.”

  “Exactly!” Tommy said.

  But it touched a nerve with Gemma. She looked quizzically at Sal.

  “What?” he asked her.

  “I remember when I did work for the public defender’s office. We sometimes would get these cases where we think this is big. We need a dragnet on this case, it’s so far reaching. And then we investigate and investigate and realize that the answers weren’t far at all. We ended up right where we started from, and the answers were right there.”

  “You mean local?” Sal asked.

  “Yes,” Gemma said. “Like at the original scene of the crime.”

  Sal looked at her. “Jericho?”

  “Jericho,” she said. “Maybe that’s why Sprig won’t talk. It’s painful. It’s too close.”

  “She’s protecting somebody?”

  “Maybe,” Gemma said. “Maybe she planned to tell you when she called you to come up there, but then she backed out by the time you arrived and concocted this tale about the Noose.”

  “But she had to know that Sal had been warned about the Noose,” Tommy said. “Somebody told her the backstory.”

  “Or it could have been a coincidence,” Gemma said.

  “No such thing in our world,” Sal said. Then he exhaled again. “I’ve got to go see her,” he said. “She’s got to tell me the truth.”

  Although Tommy and Gemma both objected to any talk of Sal going anywhere right now, they knew, when he was back on his feet, he would be unstoppable.

  Two weeks later, he and Gemma were back on the plane heading for Maine, determined to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Two weeks later Sal was unstoppable.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The same Maserati Sal had used the last time he was in Jericho, was parked on Sprig’s driveway now, and Sal was knocking on the door. It was dark out already, nearly eight at night, and Gemma stood beside him, holding his hand and staring at him. He was dressed as if he was in a Ralph Lauren ad, with the dark brown pants, the light-brown pullover V-neck knit shirt, the chain around his neck, and the Rolex on his arm. Gemma had placed a scarf around his neck, because there was a cool breeze in Jericho, but Sal had discarded it. On nobody’s planet, he told her, was he going to be wearing that.

  Gemma wanted to smile just thinking about just how completely the old Sal had returned. But as she stood there, thinking about what happened the last time they were there, she felt more jittery that joyous. Just coming back to this house had her unsettled. But Sal, who took the absolute brunt of the pain, physical and emotional, seemed unfazed. It was as if he had a job to do and he wasn’t going to be sentimental while he was getting it done.

  Sprig finally opened the door, and seemed surprised, in a bad way, to see them. But without saying a word, she opened her door further so that they could walk in.

  But Sal just stood there, staring at his mother. Gemma looked at him. It seemed as if
he was waiting for her to show at least an ounce of motherly affection and comment on his recovery, or something about that incident. But she didn’t say a word. She moved aside to allow them passage in, and that was all she was willing to do.

  They eventually walked in. Although Sal looked like his normal tough guy self, it was instructive to Gemma that he continued to hold her hand. Even when the door was closed and they were standing in that house, he refused to let her go.

  Sprig looked marginally sober for a change, although her house still reeked of alcohol. And she folded her arms, as if she was the one affronted. “What brings you back here?” she asked.

  Sal shook his head. What a bitch, he thought. “It’s good seeing you again too. It’s good to see you alive and well.”

  “What’s so good about it?” Sprig wanted to know. “You come to town and somebody shoots up my house, and I’m supposed to be glad to see you? I’ll never be that far gone.”

  Sal couldn’t believe it. This witch was blaming him. And he started to take her bait. He started to go down that road of accusation with her. But he didn’t. He wasn’t a hundred percent just yet. He wasn’t wasting his energy on sideshows and distractions.

  “Who was the shooter?” he asked her.

  “Why are you asking me? That’s the question I should be asking you. That’s the question Brent should have asked your ass before he let them airlift you out of here.”

  The lack of concern she had for her own son was astounding to Gemma. Not in a million years, a zillion, could she imagine her parents treating her this way.

  But Sal was so used to it that it saddened Gemma. “Who was the shooter?” he asked his mother again.

  “I don’t know. How should I know? I tell y’all it was Noose, but y’all don’t want to believe me. So I don’t know. Believe that?”

  When Sal and Gemma continued to stare at her, and it was obvious they weren’t buying what she was selling, she began walking toward the sofa. “Nick the Noose---”

  But Sal released his hand from Gemma’s, grabbed his mother from behind, and slung her back around. “Cut the bullshit!” he yelled. “You know the Noose didn’t have shit to do with this! Who are you protecting? Who means so much to you that you don’t give a damn about anybody else? Who are you protecting?”