TOMMY GABRINI 2: A PLACE IN HIS HEART (2 page)

He
held her tightly in his arms as he guided his fully aroused penis inside of her
tight moistness, and began to stroke steadily.
 
At the beginning, it took all he had not to pound her.
 
It took all he had not to immediately began
thrashing into her.
 
But he didn’t make
love to her just for the feeling at climax.
 
He made love to her for the feelings in total.
 
It was no accident that he lasted longest
with Grace.
 
He loved her and he wanted
more than just the feeling of her.
 
He
wanted to experience all of her.
 
He
wanted to experience that feeling of peace that he always felt when he first
entered her.
 
He wanted to experience her
wetness and her tightness and her sensitive walls.
 
He stroked her so gently, as he pushed in
slightly, and then pulled out slightly, and then inched in further still.
 
That was how Tommy did it, and that was why
every woman who had ever been with him, with Grace chief among them, knew he
was the best.

For
the longest time he fucked her this way, with gentle strokes that packed a
sweeter punch with each new push-in, until he was so deeply embedded inside of
her that every vein of his dick could be felt rubbing against her vaginal
walls.

His
tall, lean body virtually covered hers, as he held her so tightly and fucked
her so emphatically that it felt as if he was marking his territory for any man
out there who would dare to come this way.
 
This belonged to him
, his
every thrust proclaimed.
 

But
even as his body rocked the bed, even as his body overwhelmed hers, she still
managed to look over his broad shoulder at the round mirror that hung against
the backside wall.
 
She could see both of
them through that mirror.
 
She could see
his beautiful ass squeezing and releasing as he moved back and forward inside
of her, over and over, pumping her hard and long, moisturizing both of them
with her own juices and with his pre-cum and creating the sound of passion,
that slushing sound, that always heightened her arousal.
 

She
placed her hand on the back of his blondish-brown hair as it lay silk and
smooth and neatly trimmed at the nape of his neck.
 
When she first saw Tommy at a dinner party,
she could hardly believe how gorgeous this man was.
 
It wasn’t just that he was tall and tanned
and had those odd greenish-blue eyes and that perfectly groomed hair.
 
But he possessed a kind of enigmatic charm
and elegance that went well beyond pretty.
 
He was pretty-plus.
 
He had
whatever “it” was, and he had it in spades.

And
for this man, who could easily have any woman in the room, to have singled her
out for attention, still gave her some pause.
 
She had been so over pretty boys by the time she first met Tommy that it
wasn’t even funny.
 
Cameron Birch, her
boss’s son and the man Grace had dated for many years, turned her against
pretty boys.
 
He broke her heart, in
fact, and she wasn’t trying to go back down that road with anyone.
 
Too many women wanted the pretty boys, and
the pretty boys knew it.
 

After
Cam, Grace made up her mind that she wasn’t going to spend her life looking
over her shoulder, worrying if her man was faithful, wondering if some woman
who looked fifty times better than she did was commanding his attention.
 
But she amazingly not only ended up falling
in love with another pretty boy, but she fell for the king of pretty.
 
She fell for a man who made pretty boys look
unattractive and minor league.
 
And he
was wealthy too, and decent and kind?
 
She pinched herself sometimes.

But
there she was right now, in the arms of the man who had just asked her to be
his wife.
 
And he held onto her too.
 
He had her wrapped in his arms so tightly
that it felt like a possession.
 
It felt
as if he was melding her body to his body until they were dissolved into one
body.
 
This was their engagement fuck,
and it felt as serene as it felt unbearably sensational.
 

Grace
held onto him as tightly as he held onto her, as he pumped into her for an hour
on end.
 
He couldn’t stop rubbing his
lips against the side of her face as he fucked her.
 
He couldn’t stop grunting and groaning as he
fucked her.
 
He kept telling her over and
over how much he loved her and wanted her until the words themselves became
grunts and groans.
 

She
looked in that mirror again, as the most sexually experienced man she’d ever
known made long love to her.
 
He was
pumping his ass off.
 
He was staking his
claim.
 
And the more he pushed his penis
deeper inside of her, thrashing into her now, the more her own thoughts became
as muddled as his words.
 
She opened her
legs even wider, as they swung freely on either side of him, and took his
thickness, his bigness, inside of her tight vagina in full.
 

He
was so full, in fact, that the friction of her tightness against the thickness
of his dick became too daunting for either one of them to control.
 
And he spilled out in climax, which climaxed
her, and they arched together in a cum that lifted both of their sweat-soaked
bodies high, where his dick continued to stroke her to get the last of the
sensations out, and then slammed them both back down.

It
would take several more moments before either one of them could so much as move
a muscle.
 
And then Tommy, his chest
heaving from the intensity, leaned back and looked at her.
 
He smiled that rakish smile of his that made
her smile too.
 
“That, my love,” he said,
in response to the question she had asked at her front door over an hour
earlier, his saturated penis still wedged deeply inside of her, his breath
labored, “is how I feel about you.”

Two
hours later, after they had a second round of lovemaking, this time in a chair,
Tommy was fully dressed and standing beside her bed.
 
He had one hand in his pants pocket and the
other hand on his hip.
 
And he stood
there, lingering, and staring at Grace.
 
She was fast asleep now, comfortably tucked under the sheets and
sleeping as if she was in a fanciful state.
 
She was looking so serene and angelic, it seemed to him, that he
wondered why was he so worried.
 

But
he was.
 
His heart was heavy.
 
What kind of husband would he be, he
wondered.
 
What kind of father?
 
Would he be overly-protective of his loved
ones to a point where they would turn against him, or would he miss the mark
entirely when it came to leading his family down the right path?
 
He was a workaholic.
 
Could he be able to slow it down for
them?
 
His own father was a lousy
example, and so was his mother.
 
Who
could he turn to?
 
He had a few uncles
left, and some cousins, but they were all mobsters or worse.
 
They wouldn’t have a clue about taking care
of a family the right way either.
 
There
was an exception.
 
His cousin Reno was a
good man who was raising his family right, but he had his own problems to worry
about.
 
Tommy had only been responsible
for himself and, at varying degrees, his baby brother Sal, all of his
life.
 
How in the world was he going to
be responsible for a wife and, hopefully down the road, children?
 

But
that was the deal now.
 
Grace McKinsey
was his responsibility.
 
He and she were
now linked together and would soon become as one.
 
She, Grace, would be Mrs. Thomas
Gabrini.
 
And the thought of it, of what
it truly meant, staggered Tommy.

He
knelt down beside her bed as tears came to his eyes.
  
He knew he wasn’t so much as worthy to utter
a single word of prayer, especially given the life he’d led or even after what
he and Grace had done just a couple hours earlier.
 
But he had to.
 
For her sake.
 
He had to.
 

He
began to pray, rambling at first because of a lack of practice, and then he
found his voice.
 
He was raised a
Catholic.
 
He was raised to reverence
God.
 
He therefore prayed that he could
be a man worthy of this special lady.
 
He
prayed that he wouldn’t let his past get in the way of their future.
 
“Make me better than what I am, Lord,” he
prayed.
 
“Make me worthy of Grace.
 
Please make me worthy of this kind, wonderful
person that I am now responsible for.”

And
the more he prayed, the more his spirit lifted.
 
It wasn’t going to be easy, because he wasn’t an easy man, but they were
going to make it after all.
 
He believed
that.
 
With all his heart, he believed
that.

He
looked at Grace even longer, kissed her on the forehead, and then got up off of
his knees and went home.

CHAPTER TWO

The knocks
on her door early the next morning seemed to get louder with every step she
took.
 
By the time she made it up to her
front door and was looking out of the peephole, the knocks were deafening to
her just-awaken ears.
 
And when she saw
that it was Nayla Santiago, her oldest and one of her dearest friends, she
closed her eyes momentarily.
 
It was six
thirty in the morning.
 
Who knocks on
somebody’s door at six a.m., she wondered.
 
Who does that
?
 
And then she opened her eyes again, and
opened the door.

“It’s
too early, Nay,” she said as Nayla smiled.
  

Nayla,
her hazel eyes bright with anticipation, was dressed for work, Grace decided,
in a really cute pantsuit.
 
“You have
company?” Nayla asked, looking down at the male dress shirt Grace wore.

“No,”
Grace said, looking down too.
 
Tommy left
Grace naked in bed last night, so she had to scramble to find something to put
on when that banging on her door woke her up.
 
She wasn’t oriented enough to remember that her bathrobe was in the
bathroom, so she grabbed one of the dress shirts he kept in her closet.
 
She was covered, but barely.
 
“It’s early, Nay!
 
It’s six a. m.”

“You
know I know it,” Nayla admitted, walking on in.
 
“But Jillian’s making all the supervisors attend some seminar on
effective management in Portland today, and I wanted to catch you before I left
town.
 
She claims if we don’t drive those
three hours and attend this boring-ass seminar, we could be fired.
 
Her ass lying, but I can’t take any
chances.
 
But what about you?
 
Why come you aren’t already up on this
beautiful Friday morning?”

“Because
it’s six a.m. Nayla,” Grace reminded her again as she closed the front
door.
 
“Even on a workday I don’t get up
at six a.m.
 
Besides,” she added as she
began walking toward her sofa, “I’m still on vacation, remember?
 
I’m not due back to work until Monday.”

“Monday?”
Nayla asked, following her.
 
“But you
told me you were coming back from Vegas last night.
 
I thought I got a text from you a couple days
ago saying you’d be back in town Thursday night and you’d see me Friday.”

“Right,”
Grace said, sitting down on the sofa.
 
“But I didn’t mean I’d see you on the job.
 
I thought we’d have lunch or something.”

“Oh.
Well. There you go,” Nayla said, sitting down too.
 
“Miscommunication.
 
But I wouldn’t be able to have lunch with you
today anyway.
 
We’re expected to work
through lunch at this boring-ass, waste of time and money seminar.”

“I
hear you.”

“But
you can’t tell that Jillian Birch a damn thing.
 
One of her friends is conducting it so she wants us to support her
friend.
 
Can you imagine running a
business like that?”

Grace
knew exactly what Nayla meant.
 
And this,
she knew, would be the perfect time to tell her friend that Tommy had given her
his forty-eight percent shares in Trammel Transport and, coupled with the ten
percent shares her father had left her on his death, she was now the majority
stakeholder in the company.
 
But she had
already decided she wasn’t going to give Nayla any beforehand information.
 
Tommy, as chairman of the board, said that
Jillian, along with the other board members, would be notified Monday morning
that Grace was now majority shareholder at Trammel.
 
Nayla, and everybody else, would have to be
notified after that.

But
she was still wearing that rock of a ring Tommy had given her last night, which
Nayla’s already pop eyes immediately noticed.

“What
in the world,” she said as she moved closer to Grace and grabbed Grace’s
finger.
 
“What is this?”

Grace
would have preferred to let this wait too, but the cat was already out of the
bag. “It’s an engagement ring.”

Nayla
looked at her friend.
 
“What do you
mean?”

Grace
was a little taken aback by that look on Nayla’s face.
 
It almost looked angry.
 
“I mean, Tommy Gabrini asked me to marry
him.”

Nayla
fell back on the sofa.
 
She was staring
at Grace.
 
“And what did you say?”

Grace
frowned.
 
“What do you mean what did I
say?
 
I said yes, of course.
 
It was the happiest news of my entire life.
 
I gladly said yes.”

There
was a moment, a very brief moment, where that little twinge of jealousy Nayla
always displayed whenever somebody else had better news to tell than she had,
appeared in her eyes.
 
But then she
smiled and hugged Grace’s neck.
 

“Does
Jamie know?” Nayla asked.
 
Jamie Rogers
was a close friend too.
 
Sometimes
Grace’s closest friend.
 

“Not
yet,” Grace said.
 
“He’s still out of
town on business.
 
I want to tell him in
person.”

Nayla
smiled.
 
“He’s going to be so
shocked.
  
I don’t think he likes Tommy
very much.”

Grace
started to say something.
 
Tommy and
Jamie had a wonderful relationship.
 
A
better one than Tommy had with Nay.
 
But
she didn’t go there.

“Anyway,”
Nayla said, “congrats, girl.
 
I really
hope this one works out for you.”

“Tommy
is no Cameron Birch, don’t worry about that.”
 
Cameron Birch, Jillian’s son, was once Grace’s boyfriend until she
caught him in bed with not one, but with two women.
 
She dumped him then and never went back.
 

“Speaking
of Cameron,” Nayla said.
 
“I heard he was
in Vegas right around the same time you were there too.
 
And that he was staying right there at the
PaLargio too.”

“Yeah,
I saw that asshole,” Grace said.
 
It
wasn’t a fond memory though.
 
Tommy and
his cousin Reno, who owned the PaLargio Hotel and Casino, had to handle Cam
when he put his hand on her.
 
They took
him out of her sight, so she didn’t know what exactly they had done to
him.
 
But she was certain it was
unpleasant.

Nayla
looked at her.
 
“You sound like he tried
something with you.”

“Why
would you say that?
 
Because I called him
an asshole?
 
He is an asshole.”

“Yeah,
but you said it with too much gusto, girl.”
 
They laughed.
 
“Something went
down.
 
Tell me.”

“It
was just Cam being Cam.
 
He was
questioning why I was in Vegas, which was incredible to me.”

“I’m
saying!”

“But
I ignored him,” Grace said.

“So
what happened?” Nayla asked.

“I
got away from that zero and went on about my business.”
 

Nayla
stared at Grace.
 
She knew she was
lying.
 
Grace never really confided in
her the way best friends should.
 
But the
truth would come out.
 
She knew a lot of
the same people Cam knew.
 
She’d get the
real story soon enough.
 
“Anywho,” Nayla
said, “I came by early because I don’t have enough butter to cover my bread.”

“Translate
please,” Grace said with a smile.

“I
need to borrow a few bucks until payday next week.”

Nayla
was always good about paying her back so Grace never had any problem with
lending her money.
  
As long as it was
nothing outrageous.
 
“How much?” she
asked as she stood.

“Could
you spot me fifty until payday?” Nayla asked.

“Yeah,
I think so,” Grace said as she went into her bedroom.
 

Nayla
shook her head.
 
The size of that rock on
her finger!
 
Why would Tommy Gabrini want
to marry Grace?
 
She looked way better
than Grace, if you asked her, and nobody was giving her any ring like
that!
 
But innocent Grace got one.
 
What was this world coming to, Nayla
wondered.

“Here
you are,” Grace said as she returned with the cash.

Nayla
stood, accepted it, and gathered back up her purse and jacket.
 
“I’ll call you later,” she said as she headed
for the door.
 
“It’s a three-hour drive
and we’re supposed to get there by eight, so I’d better get going.”

“Okay,
Nay, talk to you later,” Grace said, Nayla left, and Grace closed the
door.
 
Nayla wasn’t right about a lot of
things, she thought, but she was right-on about Jillian’s mismanagement.
 
As Jillian’s chief of staff, even Grace knew
that Trammel was barely turning a profit.
 
Yet Jillian felt it necessary to send well-paid supervisors all the way
to Portland to support some friend of hers?
 
Grace knew, when she did get back to work on Monday, and had access to
the true state of Trammel affairs, she was going to have her hands full.

Sal
Gabrini’s white Ferrari came to a screeching halt inside the horseshoe driveway
of his brother’s home.
 
He jumped from
the car in his sweats and tennis shoes, ran across the sidewalk, and used his
keycard to enter the home without bothering to knock or ring a bell.

“Hennessy,
what’s up?” Sal said with gusto as he hurried past Henry, his brother’s butler,
who had scrambled to greet him at the door.

Henry
was still putting on his liveried jacket as Sal flew past him.
 
“But Mr. Gabrini is still getting dressed,
sir,” Henry said with some degree of frustration.
 
“Sir?” he added loudly, but Sal was already
halfway up the staircase, taking the steps two, even three, at a time.
 

Tommy’s
bedroom was at the end of the hall of the massive home, and Sal hurried across
the marbled landing to the bedroom’s double doors.
 
He swept those doors open too, without
bothering to knock, only to find his brother standing at the front side window,
dressed in his dark brown Armani suit and glossy black imported shoes, with his
hands pushed down in his pants pockets.
 
Sal stopped in his tracks.
 
There
was always something about Tommy’s sereneness that always forced Sal to calm
down too.
 

Tommy
didn’t bother to turn around.

Sal
walked over to his brother’s side.
 
First
he looked out of the window too, at the waterfall cascading down in the middle
of the garden, and then he looked at Tommy.
 

“Good
morning,” he said.

“You
must have flown,” Tommy said.

“I
wanted to make sure I caught you before you left.”
 
Sal continued to stare at his brother.
 
“You were shitting me, though, right?
 
That phone call this morning, you were
screwing around with me, right?”

“And why
would I do something like that, little brother?”

“Little
my ass!” Sal said as if he was offended, and Tommy smiled.
 
Sal was the younger brother, but there was
nothing little on any part of his body.
 
He, in fact, had been out on his early morning jog when he got the phone
call.
 
“So you’re telling me, standing
right here right now, that it’s true?
 
That you actually asked her?”

Even
Tommy’s smile turned solemn.
 
He
understood the gravity too.
 
“I asked
her,” he admitted.

“And
she said yes?”
 

“Remarkably,
she said yes.”

Sal
shook his head as if he was still unable to believe it.
 
“I didn’t think you had it in you,
Tommy.
 
Honest to goodness, I didn’t
think you had it in you.
 
Especially
after Shanks.
 
After Shanks I didn’t
think you’d ever ask another woman to marry you.
 
Not ever.
 
But you asked Grace already.”