Reno Gabrini: A Man in Full (8 page)

And when he began to cum, when he began to release inside of her with that sudden burst of sensation that always strained him, he pounded even harder.  He fucked her so hard that bed springs started singing and the bed itself started hopping.  And the sound of saturation, of her juices mixed with his release, filled the once silent room like an echo in a cave.  Because he kept fucking her.  He didn’t stop, he couldn’t stop, until he had absolutely nothing left to keep him going.

But by that time, when there was nothing left, they both sank down into the overworked bed, and could hardly regulate their breathing.  Sweat poured from both of them like rain.

Reno remained on top of Trina.  He continued to stare at her as he fought to breathe.  He could still feel his penis pulsating inside of her, and he could see her half-shut eyes still responding to that pulsation.  He loved how he turned her on.  He loved how his dick alone kept her in such a heightened sensuality.

And he kept staring at her.  He stared until his pulsating began to ebb and she finally opened her big, bright eyes.  When she saw him looking at her, she smiled her beautiful white smile.  But when she realized his look was becoming hooded yet again, she got serious.

“No, Reno,” she said.

He pretended not to know what she meant.  “No what?”

“No more.  Not now.  You’re have me sore if we go another round.”

Reno smiled.  “Who says I want to go another round?”

“Your dick is saying it,” she said with a grin.

Reno laughed and pushed in further.

“Reno!” Trina said, and tried to push him off of her.

He continued laughing, kissed her on the mouth, and then, finally, pulled out. 

SIX

Trina sat at the head of the breakfast table surrounded by Jimmy, Reno’s kid sister Fran, and Dominic, Reno and Trina’s three-year-old son.  Trina had coffee only, while Jimmy and Fran had full course meals.  Dommi was chewing slowly on a slice of bacon.

The conversation had been small talk at best, until Reno came into the dining hall.  As usual, the conversation shifted from general talk about things everybody had to do, to what they wanted Reno to do for them.

“Hey, Daddy!” Dommi said loudly and Reno, who was not a morning person, wrapped his bathrobe tighter and dragged over to his son, who was seated to the right of his mother.  Reno pulled his son’s curly hair back off of his forehead, and kissed him there. 

“Good morning,” he said to his son.

“Want some bacon, Daddy?” Dommi asked him.

“No thanks, son,” Reno said with a smile.  Then he glanced over at Fran and Jimmy.  “Don’t you people have your own apartments?”  He had given both of them a suite of their own inside the PaLargio, paid for by him. 

Fran smiled.  “You know you love it when your family has breakfast together, you know you love it, Reno.  And we all were right here, having breakfast together.  You, as usual, was the missing link.”

Reno glanced over at Trina, and the cup of coffee she was drinking.  “That’s all you’re having?” he asked her.

“That’s all I want,” she replied.

He would normally get on her case about her sporadic eating, but after waking up and going another round with her, he didn’t have the energy.  Even his dick was still hurting.  Trina, however, was bouncing with energy.  She’d already showered and dressed, while he knew he looked like death warmed over.

He grabbed a toast off the center plate and sat at the opposite head of the table.  He took a quick bite of the toast, crossed his legs, and tried to remain awake. 

Trina remembered this morning too.  After their round of sex last night, they barely had the strength to drag themselves to the shower.  But they showered together and then went back to bed.  Reno’s phone started ringing shortly thereafter, and then he went downstairs to handle some disturbance in the casino.  She fell back asleep.  She remembered she was fully clothed in her nightgown, freshly scrubbed, and completely sated when he left to go downstairs last night.  But this morning when she woke up, she was naked as the day she was born, with her gown across the room and her husband’s head buried between her legs eating her as if he’d never had a meal like that in his life.  Then he fucked her as if her cunt was the best new thing in the world to him. 

They suddenly looked over at each other, as if they were remembering that particular round of lovemaking at the same time.

 “Going into the office today, Reno?” Fran asked him.

Reno yawned.  “Of course I’m going in.  What’s it to you?”

“I want you to meet somebody.”

“No thanks.”

“You don’t even know who it is!”

“One of your boy toys.  No thanks.”

“He’s not a boy toy,” Fran said as if she was offended by the suggestion.  “He’s a very nice guy who loves me very much.”

“Then what’s the problem?  He love you so much, he’s a great guy, you’re a grown-ass woman.  What he need to meet me for?”

“Because you’re my big brother.  You’re like a father to me, Reno.”

Reno laughed.  “Yeah, right.  I’m like a father to you.  Until I tell you to do something.  Then what’s the first thing she yells, Tree?”

“
I don’t know who you think you are, Reno, but you are not my father,
” Trina said, imitating Fran’s whiny, Jersey accent.  Dommi and Jimmy laughed.

“Very funny,” Fran said.

“Ah, don’t feel bad, Aunt Fran,” Jimmy offered.  “He
is
my father and he doesn’t like to meet any of my friends either.”

Reno looked at him.  “What friends?”

“My friends.”

“What friends you got?”

“Friends, Dad.  Friends.”

“Like girlfriends?”

Jimmy wanted to roll his eyes.  That was always a bone of contention between he and his father.  Whenever he had a girl, his father was never impressed with her.  Whenever he didn’t have a girl, his father wondered why didn’t he have a girl.  What was wrong with him?  That was why he had been keeping Melita to himself for so long.  She was upset by it, as if he was hiding their relationship, but Jimmy knew what he was doing.  He knew his father. 

“I’m talking about my regular friends,” he said.  “I try to introduce you, but you’re always too busy.”

“What are you talking?” Reno asked him.  “Too busy, he says.  Newsflash: I run a hotel, Jimmy.  I run a big-ass casino.  There’s over a hundred businesses under my roof.   And you think I have time to lollygag with your friends?”

Jimmy looked at Fran.  “Like I said,” he said, “my friends get it too.”

“But Reno, you can at least say hey to Pac,” Fran said, not ready to throw in the towel just yet.  “He’s a nice guy, I’m telling you.  He’s real good to me.  I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Of course it’s what I want,” Reno said.  “When Pops died I knew you were my responsibility.  Everybody at this table is my responsibility.  And just like I want Jimmy to have a good woman in his life, and Dommi when he’s old enough, I want you to have a good man.  But these thugs you like to fuck---”

“Reno!” Trina yelled, motioning toward Dommi.  “Watch your language, please.”

Reno could have kicked himself.  He knew he had to cool it when he was around his child.  “Let’s put it this way,” he said, careful to watch his language, “your thug obsession isn’t the way to find a good man.  A good thug, but not a good man.”

“He’s not a thug.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He’s not, Reno!” Fran said with conviction.

“So he’s clean?  That’s what you’re telling me?  No record?”

Fran hesitated.  “I didn’t say all that,” she said.

Reno laughed and looked at Trina.  “Can you believe this girl?”

“Don’t worry, Fran,” Trina said, coming to her ally’s aid.  She sipped her coffee.  “He’ll meet your friend.  You know how Reno is.  Just bring him by his office and he’ll meet him.”

Fran smiled.  “Thanks, Tree,” she said.

“My friends always want to meet Dad too,” Jimmy said.  “That’s why I’m leery of them.”

Fran looked puzzled.  “Why would you be leery of your own friends?”

“Because I wonder if the only reason they’re my friends at all is because Dad owns the PaLargio.  They bug me constantly about him.  Especially the girls,” Jimmy said before he realized he had said it, and both he and Fran glanced at Trina.  Reno looked too.  Everybody at that table knew about the rumors.  It was no secret in their household.  But it was never discussed openly either.

“There was this one girl I knew,” Jimmy decided to say, moving on, “that didn’t want to meet Dad at all.”

“Oh yeah?” Trina asked as she was about to sip more coffee.   “Why not?”

“Because she thought Dad was gay.”

Trina immediately choked on her coffee and spit out the overflow.  Fran and Jimmy laughed.

“Yeah, ha ha,” Reno said, fighting to suppress his own laughter, “very funny.  Have your little laugh at my expense.  Bunch of losers!” he added, causing them to laugh even harder.  Then he had to laugh himself, and then got angry with himself for laughing.  He tossed the napkin on the table and began rising to his feet.  “I got your gay right here, Jimmy.  Tell your friend that.  I got it right here,” he added.  Then he said, as he began to leave: “Let me take my gay ass to work.”

“Take your gay ass to work, Daddy,” Dommi said, and Reno stopped in his tracks.  Trina, Fran, and Jimmy started laughing so hard they fell out of their chairs in laughter.

Reno turned around and looked at his son. 
What the fuck
, he thought.  Did he have a wise guy on his hands?  Was the kid being too cute by half?  But when he saw Dommi looking down at the people rolling on the floor, and then he looked back up at his father with an adorably confused look on his beautiful face, Reno relaxed.  And smiled.  And went to his son, picked him up, and carried him away from his laughing family.

Shay Grayson sat in Reno’s office like a contrite child.  Gone was her entourage.  Gone was that sense of entitlement and her diva ways.  She sat in front of him as if she wouldn’t know what diva meant.  Although Lee was intrigued, Reno was suspicious.

“Your office is very impressive,” she said as she looked around.  “Do you realize this is the first time I’ve been in your office, Reno?”

Reno just sat there, his reading glasses on, staring at her.  If she wasn’t a headliner at the PaLargio, he wouldn’t be giving her the time of day.  And he knew she knew it. 

“You have more assistants than I’ve ever had,” she went on, still smiling grandly.

Reno wasn’t feeling it.  “What can I do for you?” he asked, without smiling.

“First thing,” she said, “is the apology.  When we last spoke I was making major demands on you, requesting major concessions, and I wanted to apologize for that.  I was wrong.”

Lee looked at Reno, pleased to hear the news.  Reno was staring at Shay.

“That’s it,” Shay said.  “That’s all.  Will you accept my apology?”

“I accept it,” Reno said.  “Anything else?”

Shay didn’t like his brashness, but she continued smiling.  “No, that’s it.  That’s all.”

Reno stood up, prompting Shay and Lee to stand up too.  “You have a performance to prepare for, I believe.”

“Yes, yes I do,” Shay said.  “So I’d better get to it.  The public can be very unforgiving.”  Reno said nothing to that.  “Y’all have a good day,” Shay added in that southern belle accent she could turn on and off at will.  And then she was gone.

Lee shook his head.  “What was that about?” he wanted to know.  “Shay Grayson apologizing?  Now that’s what I call weird.  But it feels good.”

“Not good,” Reno said.  “Odd.  Like I’m being lured into a false sense of security.  Like the calm before the storm.”

Lee laughed.  “But why would she be luring you into anything at all?”

“Hell if I know,” Reno said.  “But that’s what it feels like.”

Lee looked at his boss.  “She’s not a bad kid, Reno.  Why can’t you accept that?”

“Because it’s not true.  She’s a spoiled brat.  She’ll throw her own mama from a train if it’ll get her what she wants.”  Reno looked at Lee.  “Girl with those kind of morals?  Girl who’ll do that to her own mama?  Imagine what she’ll do to me.”

Lee shook his head.  Reno had the oddest way of looking at people.  But he could never recall a time when Reno’s instinct weren’t dead on right. 

“You have a point,” Lee said, and ended any and all thoughts he had about the goodness of Shay Grayson.

Trina sat at the dressing table in her bedroom and began applying her makeup.  She had just gotten out of the shower and was in her bathrobe.  Fran was also in the room, sitting on the king-sized bed, with Dommi sitting on her lap playing patty-cakes with her.

“Reno’s going to be late,” Fran said as she smiled at Dommi and continued to play with him.

“What else is new,” Trina said, flipping up her eyelashes.  “That’s why I told him we had to meet Jimmy and his lady at seven instead of eight.”

Fran looked at her.  “I thought it was at seven too.  You guys aren’t supposed to be there at seven?”

“We’re supposed to be there at eight.”

“So he’s not late then?”

“Technically he’s not, no,” Trina said.  “But it’s already after seven and he thinks we were supposed to be there at seven.  So actually his ass is as late as it can be.”

Fran laughed.  One thing she knew for sure: Trina knew how to handle Reno.  “So who is this woman Jimmy’s so anxious for you guys to meet?” she asked Trina.

“Some girl he’s been fooling around with.  He’s all excited about her.”

“Oh yeah?” Fran asked.  “Is he supposed to be in love with this girl?”

“In lust more like it,” Trina replied.  “But I told him time and time again that he’d better not get any of those fast-tailed girls pregnant.  That better not be the reason he suddenly wants us to meet this particular one.”

“What did he say?”

“
Ah, ma
,” Trina said, imitating Jimmy.  “What he always says.  He insists getting some girl pregnant is the last thing on his mind.  I told him it better be.  I’m still way too young to be somebody’s grandma.”