ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI

by Mallory Monroe

  “I want you to meet my lady, Grace McKinsey. Grace, this is Reno’s oldest boy, Jimmy Mack.”

  Jimmy extended his hand. “Hello, Miss McKinsey,” he said as they shook. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  “You, too, Jimmy Mack. And please call me Grace.”

  “I will, thank-you.”

  The young man seemed really kind and polite, and Grace liked that. What surprised her, however, was that this young man, this son of Reno’s, looked interracial.

  “So where’s everybody? Where’s Baby Boy?”

  “I just put him back in his crib. Dad and Trina’s still in the back. You guys make yourselves at home and I’ll go get them.”

  Jimmy Mack headed toward the back while Tommy sat Grace down on the sofa and headed for the bar.

  “The views here are spectacular, Tommy,” Grace said as she looked at the Vegas skyline through the penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “I know,” Tommy said. He stood behind the bar, grabbed a Collins glass, and prepared to mix their drinks. “One thing you will quickly learn about Reno.”

  Grace looked at him. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The man knows how to live.”

  “So it seems,” Grace said, looking once again out of the window and anxiously awaiting Reno’s appearance.

  Reno was grunting incomprehensible words as he kept pounding his dick into Trina’s pussy. And it was rhythmic and rough. “Ugh! Ugh! Ooo!” he kept grunting.

  They were in the shower, in their master bath, and Reno had Trina’s stomach pressed against the shower tile as he fucked her from behind. Her hands were splayed flat on the tile and her wet, naked body was shaking and slamming hard with every pound.

  And Reno couldn’t stop grunting. He thrashed and he thrashed her. They were in the throes of their highest point of pleasure. She felt his dick with that excitement that always made her moan with joy. He felt her cunt with that elation that always made him grunt with sensual ecstasy. And all that could be heard was the sound of flesh slapping flesh, over and over, as the water poured over them and Trina’s ass bounced like a wave in slow motion every time her husband gave it to her.

  Knocks were heard on the bathroom door just as he was giving it to her even harder. Reno stopped long enough to respond, only because he assumed it to be his son. “Yes?” he asked breathlessly.

  “I didn’t mean to butt in---”

  “Then butt out!” Reno ordered.

  “Uncle Tommy’s arrived!” Jimmy Mack managed to say.

  Reno nodded. He expected as much. “Okay,” he said. “Entertain him, son. I’ll be there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmy Mack said and whether or not he was a good son and left, or hung around to listen, wasn’t something Reno could deal with right now. His manhood was near explosion inside of his wife and all he could deal with was right in front of him. He continued to fuck her hard. He continued to thrash into her with such slapping sounds that it made him want to holler. Since Jimmy might still be outside the bathroom door, and since Tommy was now in the house, he controlled himself. But he didn’t stop. He wasn’t about to stop, and Trina wasn’t about to let him, until they both had had their cum.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tommy was still behind the bar when Jimmy Mack returned to the front room. “They’re coming,” he announced.

  Tommy grabbed the drinks and began making his way to Grace. He leaned toward Jimmy and lowered his voice. “They’re fucking, aren’t they?” he asked as he walked past him.

  “You know it,” Jimmy replied. “Dad gets mad at me for interrupting them, but what else was I supposed to do?”

  As a man who had a ferocious sexual appetite himself, Tommy had a ready answer for Jimmy. “Wait until they stop fucking,” he suggested.

  Jimmy, however, was perplexed. “But you had arrived,” he said.

  Tommy smiled. Jimmy, Reno, and Trina always treated his arrival in Vegas as some kind of major event, which pleased and embarrassed him. He always felt as if he should come with some trick up his sleeve or some circus routine to prove worthy of their high regard. But he never came with anything. And they still honored his visits.

  He walked over to Grace and handed her one of the two drinks in his hand.

  “Thanks,” she said. “What kind?”

  Tommy took the seat beside her and leaned back. “Gin Rickey,” he said. “I make the best.”

  She tasted it, and agreed. “It is good,” she said. “But don’t you think it’s a little early to be, you know, drinking?”

  “Jimmy,” Tommy said and Jimmy Mack walked toward Grace.

  “Uncle Tommy always says it’s never too early for a Gin Rickey.”

  Grace smiled. “He has you trained.”

  “Like a motherfuck,” Jimmy Mack said and Grace looked at him with surprise. Tommy laughed. Most ladies thought Jimmy was so sweet and innocent. And he was. But he was so much more.

  “Go get Dommi, Jim,” Tommy told him. “I want to see that ugly mug again.”

  Jimmy smiled and went to the nursery. When he came back with the beautiful little baby, Tommy grinned.

  “Look at that prince,” he said as he sat his glass on the cocktail table and took the sleeping child in his arms.

  Grace smiled, too, and looked at him. “Oh, he’s precious.”

  “Isn’t he?” Tommy asked. “And look at those eyes. Look just like his Uncle Tommy. “Cause if you would have come out looking like your daddy,” Tommy said in baby talk, “you would have been scaring us to death, wouldn’t you Dommi, wouldn’t you?”

  Although Jimmy Mack laughed out loud, Grace was concerned. All she’d heard about Reno was substantially negative. He was a mob boss, sort of, who would bite even if you barked at him wrong, and now he was so frightfully ugly looking that it was a relief his own son didn’t favor him? She knew they could have been playing, but there was usually some truth to play.

  But she stopped thinking about Reno because of the scene right before her. Tommy was holding the baby and playing with the baby as if he was a natural father. That pleased her no end. She had a pretty good idea what kind of husband Tommy would make: a great one, if she had to say so herself. But she had no clue about his parenting possibilities. Seeing him with the youngest Gabrini gave her great reassurance.

  But that focus on Tommy’s cousin returned when she heard a male’s voice, a voice laced with a thick Italian-Jersey accent.

  “Tommy, my man!” the voice could be heard saying jovially from just behind the sofa.

  Grace’s heart pounded when she heard that voice. Tommy handed the baby back to Jimmy Mack, rose swiftly, and hurried to the sound of the voice.

  “So you finally brought your sorry ass around,” Reno said as he and Tommy shook and then hugged. Grace sat her drink on the table and stood up, too.

  The man Grace assumed was Reno had both hands on Tommy’s upper arms and was looking him over. “You look good, Tommy. Dapper as usual. We should all look as good as you look when we get as old as you are.”

  Tommy laughed and pushed Reno’s arms away from him. “Get the fuck outer here,” he said. “I’m still trying to catch up to you.”

  “Ha!” Reno said and began moving past Tommy and toward Grace.

  “This must be your lady friend,” Reno said as he approached.

  “It is,” Tommy said, following him.

  Reno extended his hand. “I’m Reno, how you doing?”

  “I’m doing good,” Grace said, shaking his hand. “I’m Grace.”

  “Yes, you are,” Reno said with a smile and glanced at Tommy. He approved, Tommy thought fondly, although Grace wasn’t sure what that glance was about.

  “Have a seat,” Reno said to her and she sat back down on the sofa. “I see my son’s gotten you guys something to drink.”

  “Your son got us your other son,” Tommy said. “We got our own drinks.”

  “Good,” Reno said, sitting down in the chair flanking the sofa. “He doesn’t need to
be waiting on you, anyway. You’re family. You wait on yourself.”

  Tommy smiled and shook his head. “Your logic sometimes, Reno, astounds me.” He sat down beside Grace.

  Reno reached for his baby, and when Jimmy Mack handed the baby over, he smiled.

  “He’s great, Ree,” Tommy said. “Just a beautiful baby.”

  “He’s a gift,” Reno said. “A gift from God. And I cherish every second of that gift.”

  Grace’s heart warmed just hearing Reno talk. He seemed so contradictory. He was gorgeous, which surprised her. She had expected him to look like Tony Soprano or some other equally husky, Italian mob type. But he was just as great looking as Tommy. But to her there was something far more fierce and unhinged about Reno. His thick brown hair was slicked back, it apparently had been wet, and his blue eyes weren’t soft and inviting like Tommy’s, but hard and cold. She could see him extracting revenge all day long. She could see him lose his cool at the drop of a hat.

  Yet he spoke of his child so lovingly. And even Jimmy Mack, his older, teenage son, sat on the floor beside his chair, as if he loved being around his father, too.

  And something else Grace noticed that Tommy had not bothered to mention: both of Reno’s sons looked as if they were half black. Which meant, since they had different mothers, those mothers apparently were black, too, or at least had something African going on. And that fact alone made Grace very anxious to see Katrina Gabrini.

  “There she is,” Tommy said with a smile and Grace and Jimmy Mack looked too. Tommy stood up as Trina entered the living room. Grace stood, too, as Tommy kissed Trina on the lips and then pulled her into his arms.

  “So good to see you again, Tommy,” Trina said as she held him tightly. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” Tommy said. “I even missed knucklehead over there,” he added, nodding toward Reno. “Which probably means,” he said as they stopped embracing, “that I need to have my own head examined.”

  “Oh, stop,” Trina said smilingly. “But it’s great to see you for real, Tommy. You keep getting better looking every time I see you. Looking dapper as ever.”

  Reno looked at Grace. “Did he ever tell you they call him that?” he asked her.

  Grace, who was nervously awaiting her introduction to Trina, looked over at Reno. “Sorry?”

  “Tommy. Did he ever tell you that they call him Dapper Tom?”

  Grace smiled. “No, he didn’t.”

  “They do. All the wise guys call him that. Don’t mess with Dapper Tom. He’ll smile in your face, then get you in an alley and cut out your tongue.”

  Grace looked at him with alarm. Tommy and Trina laughed.

  “Don’t listen to my husband,” Trina said as she approached Grace. “He’s always just kidding around.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said as he made his way back beside Grace, “he’s filled with sick, perverted jokes.”

  Reno laughed.

  “Let me introduce you to Reno’s by far better half,” Tommy said. “Grace, this is Katrina Gabrini, although we all call her Trina or Tree. And Tree, this is Grace McKinsey.”

  Trina was impressed with how sweetly Tommy said Grace’s name. That was something. “Hi,” Trina said. Grace extended her hand but Trina would have none of it. She hugged her, instead. “So nice to meet you, Grace.”

  “You too. I’ve heard wonderful things about you.”

  “Don’t believe a word of it,” Reno said and Trina pushed him.

  Grace didn’t quite know how to take Reno. They said he was full of jokes but his facial expressions belied that. There just wasn’t anything easygoing about the man. Or maybe she was prejudging him. Maybe the fact that Tommy said Reno had mob connections was driving her distrust of him. She wasn’t sure. But the jury, as far as she was concerned, was still out on him.

  But not so much on Trina. She was nice. Grace could see that right off. And, as she had expected, she was a beautiful black woman with big, hazel eyes. Her vision of Reno’s wife, when Tommy told her about his background, was that she’d be a tough Italian female with mob connections of her own. But then again, she also had visualized Reno as a Tony Soprano type: husky, not at all attractive, and on the racist side. She appeared to be wrong, so far, on all fronts.

  After Grace and Tommy sat back down on the sofa, Trina took the baby out of Reno’s arms and then sat down, with the baby now in her arms, on his lap. Tommy was warmed by the sight. Reno and Trina together, and Reno’s two sons, one on their lap and one seated on the floor beside them, was a sight to behold to him. Nothing, Tommy felt, could have shown how tight a family could be than that image before him now. He placed his arm around Grace and crossed his legs. It was just the two of them now, but in time, when the right time came, he wanted to have a full house, too.

  “Tell us about yourself, Grace,” Trina said. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m the chief of staff to the CEO of Trammel,” Grace said.

  “What’s Trammel?” Trina asked.

  “It’s a transport company in Seattle,” Reno said before she could. “Tommy owns a piece of it.”

  Trina smiled. “What don’t you own, Tommy?” she asked.

  “The PaLargio,” Tommy said without hesitation, and they all laughed.

  “But about Trammel,” Trina continued. “Is it a transport company like Fed-Ex and UPS?”

  “It’s like that, yes,” Grace said, “but---”

  “But what?” Reno asked.

  “But . . .” Grace thought about it. “I guess we’re exactly like Fed-Ex and UPS.”

  Reno and Trina laughed.

  “Is that how you and Tommy met?” Trina asked. “At a board meeting or something?”

  “At a dinner party,” Grace said, although she’d seen him around the office many times before that party.

  “And it was love at first sight, right?” Trina asked. When Grace didn’t immediately respond, she smiled. “Or lust at first sight,” she added. Grace smiled then, which prompted Tommy to smile, too.

  “And if I know Tommy,” Reno started.

  “Careful, Reno,” Tommy warned.

  But Reno kept going. “If I know Tommy, which I do, I’m willing to bet he’s a maniac in that bedroom, isn’t he?”

  Grace blushed.

  “Reno!” Trina said. “You’re making her blush!”

  “But am I right?” Reno asked Grace. “He wears you out, doesn’t he?”

  “No, I do not,” Tommy quickly interjected, although he couldn’t stop smiling. “That’s pure nonsense from the pit of hell!”

  Reno laughed. “Oh, okay,” he said. “I got your pit all right.”

  Trina looked at Grace. “Don’t give my husband a second thought. He always gets giddy whenever Tommy comes to town.”

  Tommy laughed.

  “Giddy?” Reno asked. “No she didn’t call me giddy.”

  “It fits, Dad,” Jimmy Mack said, laughing too.

  And although Grace was still a little overwhelmed by that force of nature called Reno, she couldn’t help but smile, too. This Reno took some getting used to, Tommy had already warned her that he would. But to know him, let Tommy tell it, was to love him.

  Grace wasn’t there yet, but she was hopeful.

  Later that evening, in their own hotel room, Tommy and Grace talked about his family. Grace was impressed, in different ways, with both Reno and Trina, but she wondered if she left any impression at all.

  “You did,” Tommy said as they dressed for a night out with Reno and Trina. He was standing at the mirror tying his tie, while she was seated on the bed, putting on her heels. She wore a sleek all-white dress, he wore a light-brown suit. “They think very highly of you. Trina says you’re the best female I’ve ever introduced to them so far.”

  “So far? Does that mean she figures there’ll be others after me?”

  “It does,” Tommy admitted. “But I can show them better than I can tell them.”

  Grace smiled. She liked that answer. “W
hat about Reno? Did he say anything?”

  Tommy hesitated. “Yes.”

  Grace looked at him. Her heart began to pound. “What did he say?”

  Tommy smiled. “He said you seem nice.”

  “And?”

  “Why does there have to be an and?”

  But this was important to Grace. Somehow getting Reno’s approval mattered to her. “What else did he say, Tommy?” she asked with a plea in her voice.

  Tommy smiled. “He said you’ve got a very nice ass.”

  “Tommy!” Grace said and threw a pillow at him.

  “What, you want me to lie to you? That’s what he said.”

  “I mean, did he say anything constructive about me? My ass not included.”

  Tommy again hesitated. “He said you look like a heart breaker, but that time would tell.”

  Grace didn’t like the sound of that. “Why would he say that?”

  “That was just his impression.”

  “Is he usually wrong about things like that?”

  Tommy began hesitantly placing his wallet and keys into the pockets of his pants. “Not usually, no,” he said. And then looked at Grace through the dresser mirror.

  Grace stared at him, and he stared at her, and then they both continued dressing in silence.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I’m ready, girl,” Trina said as she came from out of her bedroom. She was dressed in a beautiful two-button blazer and a pair of Cassidy-style pants that made Grace’s dress look like something off a rack. Which, Grace had to remind herself, it was.

  “You look beautiful, Trina,” she said as Trina hurried to the side table and grabbed her clutch.

  “Oh, thanks,” Trina said. “Where’s the boys?”

  “They went downstairs,” Grace said, walking toward Trina. “Reno wanted to show Tommy something. They said they’d meet us in the lobby.”

  “Sounds good. Ready?”

  “I am,” Grace said as she and Trina walked out of the penthouse.

  For the entire elevator ride downstairs they small-talked, although Grace couldn’t help but feel slightly outgunned. Trina had on her beautiful diamond earrings and diamond necklace. Her clutch was obviously designer, too, as was her pantsuit and heels. Grace knew she looked nice, but Trina, she felt, looked elegant.