MOB BOSS 3: LOVE AND RETRIBUTION (10 page)

And it was good. It was al good. Until my clothes were too revealing. And my hair, so long and flowing, was a tad too sexy. And I talked too loud at parties and who was that guy that was undressing me with his eyes and why did I let that other guy whisper in my ear and who are those girlfriends of yours and why do you have to have a
girls night out
and why do you have to be a cop anyway?” She exhaled. Caught her breath. “Then it became as simple as one question: what kind of a job is that for a woman?”

She closed her eyes. “And little by little I submitted to this good man Alex. I loved him and loved him unconditionaly. He loved me that way too, before we got married. Before the ultimate commitment came and I became his. He stil loved me, but with so many conditions that I forgot where he ended and I began. And I realized he didn’t love me at al because he spent our entire marriage trying to destroy my image, and mold me into his.”

She frowned, just remembering that life. “So for the sake of my marriage I resigned from the police force. Gave up a job I loved. I had been on my own since I was a teenager, had nobody, and the thought that I could be loved by such a wonderful man made me want to please him. I mean I was going to do everything I could to hold onto my marriage. But you know what changed my mind? What made me get up and do something? It was a very minor thing. We were dressing for his parents’ anniversary party. And I knew I was dressed exactly the way he loved me to dress. Hair, makeup, jewels, al had his prior approval. And we were standing outside, waiting for the car to come around. He kept looking at me. Then he told me to go back inside of the house and change perfumes.”

She smiled a bitter, painful smile. “I already had the perfume on. How in the world was I going to change it? Scrub it out of the skin it had already penetrated? But I did. Like the good little foolish wife I went back into the house, up the stairs, into the master bathroom, and began to scrub off my perfume. Until I looked at myself in the mirror and asked myself, ‘what are you doing, fool? You are scrubbing off perfume, idiot!’ And I realized how unhappy, how unfulfiled I was. I gave up a job I loved; I gave up friends I adored; I gave up my style, my flair, everything that made me ShoShawna Shanks, to become Mrs. Alexander Grant.”

become Mrs. Alexander Grant.”

Her smile left. “I stopped scrubbing, just like that. I walked out of that bathroom, down those stairs, out of that front door, and kept on walking. He was caling me, teling me the car was here and what the F did I think I was doing. But I kept walking. Eventualy hailed a cab and kept going. Because I realized what I was doing. I wasn’t scrubbing away perfume. I was scrubbing away everything that made me who I was. Until, when I looked at myself in that mirror, I was unrecognizable.” She shook her head. “I can never go back to being that person again.”

“And you think I would try to turn you into that person?”

“No. But I never dreamed Alex would try either. You’re not Alex, I know that. But you didn’t see what I saw when he changed.”

She had to take a moment, as the memories began to flood her again.

“When you decided that we’d be exclusive,” she continued, “and you suddenly wanted to change the rules and commit, something from the beginning we both said was off the table, I began to see those same tel-tale signs in you.” She shook her head. “You’re an alpha-male, Tommy, which is fine. The only kind of man I like. But after Alex I became an alpha-woman. Which means, the two of us together,” she shook her head. “It won’t work. Not the way you want it to work. Not the way I would want.”

Tommy’s heart was hammering. “How would you want it to work?” he asked her.

She didn’t skip a beat.

“Just like it’s working now,” she said.

SIX

The next morning, Reno lifted Trina into the warm water of the garden tub and sat down behind her.

“You don’t have to do this, Reno,” she said as he began to bathe her.

“I don’t have to do it? Of course I don’t have to do it. I wanna do it. I love doing it, are you kidding?”

Trina smiled.

“I get to rub your gorgeously toned arms,” he said, bathing her arms.

“And your fine, flat tummy,” he said, bathing her there.

“And your wonderful, fat, ham-sized thighs--”

Trina laughed. “Quit playing, boy!” she said as she pushed her body against his, effectively wedging his penis between her crack. And Reno was laughing too.

But they both closed their eyes when they realized the sensual position there were now in. Especialy when Reno’s lathered hand moved down to her womanhood, and began bathing her there.

He knew he had said that he would wait; that his wife had been through such an ordeal in Nevada that the least he could do was wait until he had her out of Nevada before he started banging on her again.

And he knew this bath wouldn’t make it any easier. But after holding her al night, and after the way she slept like a baby in his arms, he wanted to keep pampering her, to let her know that he would be by her side as long as the good Lord gave him strength.

So he decided to bathe her.

“Reno, it feels so good,” Trina said, as her bare back leaned against his muscular chest, as her womanhood reacted to his expert massage between her folds.

“Oh, babe,” Reno said as he took a finger and plunged it into her vagina; as his penis began to expand against her ass; as he could feel the moistness of her vagina began to saturate his finger. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” Trina asked, her body now sliding along the tub’s bottom as Reno’s finger penetrated deeper and deeper.

“I don’t know,” Reno said, his voice barely discernible now, “if I can hold out.”

“You don’t know?” Trina asked, as Reno slid a second finger inside of her while his thumb massaged her clit.

“Oh, Tree,” he said, as his movements increased, “I don’t think I can hold out.”

“Then don’t hold out, baby,” Trina said, her body sliding so hard that Reno’s penis was now sliding up and down her crack, moving right along with her.

And when she said that, when she gave him the permission he sought, he lifted her toned body upward, slung his now rock-hard penis between her legs, and entered her womanhood with a slide-in that made them both sigh in sex-starved lustfulness.

She was effectively seated on his lap as he drove deeper and deeper into her. The water began slouching violently against their naked bodies, and then cascading up and over their bodies as his big hands continued to grip her smal hips and thrust her forward and back, forward and back, faster and faster and faster stil, until some of the water began to careen completely out of the tub.

“You know how to do me, Tree,” Reno said with an ache in his voice as he fucked her; as he looked down to see his thick penis enter in and almost out of her, over and over, taking on the silky stream of her pussy wetness even despite the wet water around them.

Trina leaned back against the ribbed abs of his stomach, her head on his shoulder, her hand on the side of his face, and let him fuck her hard. This was what she needed. She knew it the instant he entered her. And it felt so good to her, so needful to her, that now she was riding him: moving her hips herself, feeling that rod so far up inside of her that it felt sweetly wedged there.

They rode and they rode: Reno and Trina. Husband and wife. The two of them against the world. And they were doing it on a day when they should be in mourning. On a day when they should be

frightened and unhinged and so concerned about how in the world were they ever going to get back to the way they used to be, not just a few days ago, but over half a year ago. Before al of the craziness of this world decided to pay them a visit.

They just rode.

To hel with it, they both thought, as they rode.

Later that same morning, Reno had rode her so hard that he dried off, laid across the bed, and fel back asleep. Trina was up, dressed and in the kitchen of the smal safe house. Her parents, Cecil and Earnestine Hathaway, had arrived in Vegas early that morning, even after she had pleaded with them not to come. She had told them she was fine and in good hands with Reno.

But they came anyway. They wanted to pay their last respects to Bele Gabrini by attending her funeral, was their reason for coming, but Trina knew them too wel. They also wanted to eyebal their daughter and see for themselves that she was al right.

They were now seated at the smal kitchen table with her, sipping coffee, and the conversation quickly veered from gratitude that she wasn’t seriously hurt to a hard plea for her to return to Mississippi with them.

“We’ve been talking about this, thinking about it long and hard, baby girl,” her father, a kind, thoughtful man, said. “And we’ve decided we just can’t keep alowing this. You can’t keep alowing it.”

Trina realy didn’t want to hear it, not any of it, but they were her parents. She had to let them have their say. “I can’t keep alowing what?” she asked her father.

Her mother, however, by far the more aggressive of the two, answered. “You can’t keep letting that man put you in mortal danger,” she said. “That’s what!”

Trina stirred her coffee, doing al she could to maintain her cool. “I’m not in any mortal danger,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” Earnestine asked. “Then why are you here? Why aren’t you stil at that fancy PaLargio your husband owns? Why are you in this little rinky-dink place where bodyguards are al over the street, al around this house, where a helicopter circling the place like you some mafia boss in hiding or something. Oh, but I forgot. It’s your husband, the mob boss, who’s realy the one in hiding.”

“Nobody’s in hiding,” Trina said, and looked up at her mother. “And Reno had nothing to do with what happened to me.”

“How could you fix your mouth to lie like that?” Earnestine asked her daughter and Cecil quickly placed his hand on his wife’s hand, to calm her down.

He, instead, looked at Trina. “Then why did it happen to you, baby girl?” he asked. “That’s what we’re trying to understand. Why did this happen to you?”

Trina exhaled. She looked at her father. Relatively speaking, she had always been far closer with him than she had ever been with her mother. And he, she felt, deserved an explanation. “Reno’s sister, MarBeth, was hanging out with the wrong crowd. There was some kind of drug shooting or something, and she was caught up in it.”

“His sister?” Earnestine asked. “So it’s not just him anymore. It’s his sister too. She’s a mob boss too now?”

Trina was shaking her head. “It’s nothing like that, Mama,” she said.

“Then you need to tel me more than what you’re teling. What does this sister’s connections to some drug shooting have to do with you? Why were they shooting at you?”

“They weren’t just shooting at me,” Trina tried to point out, although she knew she was, if that gunman was to be believed, the intended target. “They shot at everybody in the penthouse. I was the only one who wasn’t shot.”

“Thanks to that cousin of Reno’s, that Tommy person. If he wouldn’t have been there you would have been dead. That incredible fact may make you feel warm and cuddly at night, but it only makes me more enraged.”

Trina was getting a little enraged herself. “Enraged with who?” she frowningly asked her mother. “Me?”

“Reno!” her mother yeled. “For putting my baby girl in this position!” Tears were now in her mother’s eyes. “He should have never married you, Katrina. I’m sorry but it’s the truth. That man has put you in harm’s way for life.”

“Reno loves me.”

“We know he loves you,” her father said. “But love ain’t got nothing to do with this, Tree. His lifestyle has put you in danger. He has put you in danger, that’s just a fact. And we, your mama and me, think you need to consider leaving this marriage and coming back home to Dale with us.”

But Trina was already shaking her head.

“It’s Reno they realy want,” her father continued, despite her protestation. “After you leave the scene, and they realize the marriage is over, then they’l leave you alone.”

“No,” Trina said.

“He put blood on your hands, Katrina!” her father suddenly said with uncontroled explosiveness in his voice. “You kiled two people because of him, baby girl. Two of God’s children. How can you live with a thing like that over your head? How can you say no?”

Trina just sat there, clutching her coffee cup. She knew she had kiled two people. And she knew they were God’s creation. But they should not have come to her home, with guns, trying to kil her. It was awful, and she would have preferred it never happened. But she didn’t go to their homes with guns, they came to hers. She didn’t invite this fight, and she wasn’t about to lie around crying over something that wasn’t her fault to begin with.

“How can you say no, baby girl?” her father asked her again, calmer now.

“Because Reno loves me---”

“You said that already,” her mother said snidely.

“And I love him,” Trina continued, ignoring her mother. Then she looked at both of her parents. “I don’t think you guys understand,” she said. “If I didn’t have Reno, I wouldn’t wanna live. He left me seven months ago by listening to the same kind of advice you’re giving me this morning. He, too, believed that he was too good for me and was bringing me down and I was better off without him. And when he left, I didn’t think I was going to make it. It was a nightmare for me. A seven month long nightmare. It felt worse than death for me. And you’re asking me to leave him?”

“Yes!” her mother said. “His chickens have come home to roost. He’s bad news, Katrina!”

“No, he’s not. I reject that out of hand! Reno is not bad news. He’s a great man. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That’s what he is. The best thing.”

“No, he’s not. I reject that out of hand! Reno is not bad news. He’s a great man. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That’s what he is. The best thing.”

Trina exhaled, to calm herself back down. “I know you mean wel, Mama, and I know y’al love me and al that. But you are so wasting your time. I’m not about to leave Reno. No way. No how.”