Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (28 page)

Mick
smiled.
 
And nodded his head.
 
“More like,” he said.

“How did you
even know who he was?
 
I mentioned him in
passing one time, but that was months ago.
 
How could that have stayed with you?”

“Because of
the effect his actions still had on you.
 
You may have mentioned what he did to you in passing.
 
But what he did hadn’t passed.”

Roz
nodded.
 
“No.
 
It was a sad chapter in my life.
 
Before I got involved with you, it kind of
was a big part of my life.
 
But lately,
after having you in my life, I haven’t given that joker a second thought.”

“Good,” Mick
said.
 
“But I have.
 
I had Danny track him down for me.
 
And then I paid him a visit.
 
He has since removed all of your images from
the internet.
 
It’s not a zero sum game,
you understand.
 
There are undoubtedly
photos out there somewhere that will never be found.
 
But it’s as close to perfect as we’re likely
to get.”

Roz felt
such a strong onslaught of emotions that she had to fight back tears to contain
them.
 
Mick had yet to tell her that he
loved her.
 
He, in fact, just verbalized
to her that she was his lady.
 
But his actions,
once again, eclipsed his words.
 
He
walked the talk.
 
She’d never met a man
quite like him.
 
“Thank you,” she said.

Then Mick
smiled.
 
“And I beat his ass too,” he
added.

Roz
laughed.
 
“Even better,” she agreed.

And then she
lifted up, leaned over, and kissed him.

After they
ate dinner and left the restaurant, those feelings of joy remained with the
couple.
 
They sat in the backseat of the
limousine, side by side, and held hands as Deuce McCurry took them on a slow
drive back to Mick’s estate.
 
They were
both facing forward, with their heads leaned back.
 
Mick had business that needed to be taken
care of.
 
There was never a time when he
didn’t.
 
And if this was any other lady
in his limo, he would be on his phone the entire ride.
 
But this wasn’t any lady.
 
Rosalind was in his car.
 
Yes,
his
Rosalind.
 
He was too busy dealing with
the fact that his feelings for her were growing with each passing day, and he
had to deal with that.
 
He was not a man
who verbalized his feelings.
 
Even when
he was enraged, he didn’t discuss why.
 
But he needed Rosalind to know.

He turned
his head toward her.
 
She turned her head
toward him.
 
“I have a friend.
 
Reno Gabrini.
 
He owns the PaLargio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.”

Roz could
hardly believe the rarified air she now traveled.
 
Her boyfriend was a friend of a man who owned
the PaLargio.
 
The PaLargio!
 
Her boyfriend owned the Carson-Benning, which
was a huge deal too, but the PaLargio was in a class by itself.
 
And Mick just casually said that the owner
was a friend of his.
 
She actually
pinched herself.

“Reno is a
tough guy,” Mick continued.
 
“I’m very
impressed with him.
 
They don’t make’em
any stronger.
 
He and I are a lot alike
in that department.
 
But he did something
that I never dreamed was possible for guys like us.
 
He managed to convince a lady, a great lady,
to fall in love with him.
 
Not in love
with his money.
 
Not in love with his
dick.
 
In love with him.
 
And they’re a great couple.
 
Reno and Trina.
 
The best.
 
They fight like cats and dogs, but they love each other.”

Roz smiled.

Mick
frowned.
 
“But it got me to thinking,” he
said.
 
“If Reno could be this lucky,
maybe I can be too.
 
Now I know there’s a
difference.
 
I know I’m harder around the
edges than Reno, and he’s a man of honor, while I’ll never make that
claim.”
 
Mick gave Roz a hard look.
 
“I know I’m not there yet, but my hope is
that one day I’ll become the man you can respect and love the same way Trina
loves Reno.
 
I pray that one day you can
look at me and declare me good, even though I’m not.
 
But because you believe it, I’ll work my ass
off to become that man.
 
I’ll become that
man.
 
That is my dream of dreams,
Rosalind.
 
One day, I pray, we can get
there.”

Roz stared
at Mick and smiled a smile more fraught with the burden of reality than the
levity of fantasy.
 
She placed her hand
on the side of his strong jaw.
  
She
looked at his thick swath of brown hair, his super long eyelashes, and his
beauty.
 
He was beauty
and
the beast.
 
“You silly man,” she said with a shake of her
head, her big brown eyes staring into his big green ones.
 
“That day has already come.”

Mick’s heart
squeezed with a kind of emotion that he had never felt before.
 
He stared into her eyes, and saw so much love
and caring there, that he realized he was living a dream.
 
And he placed both his hands on the side of
her gorgeous face, and kissed her.

Roz closed
her eyes and moved into his kiss.
 
Just
to feel his mouth on hers was a powerful appetizer for the feelings she knew
were soon to follow.
 
Because just as
surely as Mick was giving his all in his kiss, he was never so far removed that
he didn’t know how to handle his business at the same time.
 
He reached down to one of the buttons in his
limousine as he continued to kiss her, and the blackout shades went up around
the entire backside.
 
Those eyes on the
outside were prevented from seeing them now, as well as the eyes of the driver
inside.

He slid her
onto his lap, still kissing her, and cradled her in his arms.
 
Roz was so into his kiss that she didn’t realize
he had also unzipped her dress until it was slinging off of her shoulders, and
her bra was being lifted above her breasts.
 

Roz found
herself leaning backwards as Mick kissed her neck, her chest, and then kissed
and sucked her breasts.
 
And what she
loved about Mick’s lovemaking was his staying power.
 
He didn’t suck a few sucks and was done.
 
He feasted on her breasts.
 
He kissed them, he fondled her mounds, he
sucked her nipples until they were so hard and filled with so much sensuality
that Roz thought she was going to cum just from the way he fed on her.

But Mick was
slick with it.
 
While Roz was still
enraptured by his mouth on her mouth and her neck, and his wonderful treatment
of her breasts, Mick’s hand was now under her dress and was massaging her
vagina.
 
She was so into the attention he
was giving her upper body, that she didn’t realize he had removed her
underwear.
 
She didn’t realize it until
she felt his fingers rub her clitoris.
 
By the time they slinked inside of her folds, and was soaking in her
wetness, she could feel the pulsations.
 
But if she thought Mick was ready to put his penis in and be done with
it, she was wrong.

Mick laid
her onto the elongated seat, opened her legs, and moved his head between her
legs.
 
When his tongue began to lick her,
she smiled and closed her eyes.
 
It felt
like a familiar wonderment.
 
But soon he
was eating the way Mick ate: heartily.
 
He was giving her not just tongue, but a tongue lashing.
 
She was pushing down on his head, trying to
push away from the heightened sensuality, but Mick held her down as he
mouth-fucked her.
 
She wasn’t going
anywhere.

Mick loved
the way she tasted too much to give her an inch.
 
He knew it was intense.
 
He knew she loved it more than she thought
she could bear.
 
But he knew she could
bear it.
 
And he kept eating her until
his cock was so stiff it was unbendable.
 
He knew then it was time.

He pulled
down his pants, and then guided his penis slowly into her wetness.
 
As soon as they connected, her wetness with
his pre-cum and his stiffness, it was another world for them.
 
And when he began to fuck her, when he began
to glide his cock deeper and deeper inside of her, they both were moaning and
grunting to the rhythm of his every move.

They were
fucking long and hard.
 
Mick held her
hips as he moved his own hips with every thrust of his dick inside of her, and
Roz reacted to every thrust with movements of her own.
 
They were completely together now.
 
The world was literally outside their window,
and would have been shocked to see her legs so wide open and his naked ass so
tight as his cock fucked her, but neither one of them could ever feel more
humbled.
 
Sex might have been in the air
of that limousine, but love was in their hearts.
 
Roz had been in love before, even though it was
nothing like this, but Mick never had.
 
He wasn’t used to fucking the woman he loved, or even the woman he cared
this greatly about.
 
He’d never come
close to this.
 
And it was
exhilarating.
 
It was everything he could
have hoped for and so much more.
 
He
looked at Rosalind as he fucked her.
 
He
stared at Rosalind as his cock sank into her wetness and made that beautiful
sexual sound.
 
It was Rosalind.
 
His
Rosalind.
 
She was the one who made them
pop.

And they
popped until they came.
 
They made love
until they were both fucking so fiercely that even Mick thought he wasn’t going
to be able to bear it.
 
And by the time
they finished, with his cock red and sore, and her pussy red and sore, they
thought it was going to be painful.
 
They
had gone too far.
 
But it wasn’t painful
at all.
 
It was too beautiful to bear
pain.

But by
weekend’s end, the wonderment frayed.
 
It
started when Roz received a call from Marge, her assistant teacher and the
person she had tapped to take over as the instructor of record.
 
The students were rebelling that
decision.
 
They didn’t sign up for Marge,
they said, they signed up for Roz.
 
And
Roz knew the students were right.
 
They
signed up to learn acting from Roz Graham, a lady who had had a taste of
success, not Marge Whitfield, a lady who had not.
 
She had to return to New York.

But she also
knew that Mick was not going to like it, and might not want to let her
leave.
 
But she had an obligation to
conclude and a charge to keep.
 
And she
was going to keep it.

It was a
Monday morning meeting in Vito DeLuca’s office.
 
Carp Bianchi was there.
 
Teddy
Stefani too.
 
Mick was late, as usual,
but nobody complained.
 
They were a part
of his inner circle at his pleasure, and each one of them understood that.
 
But when Mick came in, not excusing his
lateness or even discussing business, but humming a tune, they looked at each
other.

Then he
started singing what he was humming: “
For
once unafraid
,” he sang, “
I can go
where life leads me.
 
And somehow I know
I’ll be strong
.’

When he
realized the Dons were staring at him, he smiled.
 
“You’re afraid?” Carp asked him.
 
“What are you afraid of?”

“He said he
was unafraid,” DeLuca responded.
 
“Not
afraid.”

“Carp’s
right,” Teddy said, disagreeing with DeLuca.
 
“He said for once he was unafraid.
 
That means all those other times he was afraid.
 
Just not this time.”

Mick
laughed.
 
“You guys,” he said, as he sat
at the head of the conference table.
 
It
was DeLuca’s table, but he sat at its head.

“Good morning,”
Teddy said.
 
“The meeting started at ten,
and it’s already eleven, but so what, right?”

“Right,”
Mick said, and nobody took it any further.

But as the
meeting progressed, as they discussed the fallout from the Provensano hit, and
how pleased they were that there was no notable fallout, Mick was humming
again.

All of them
looked at each other and frowned at Mick.
 
“What?” Mick asked when he saw them staring disapprovingly at him.

“You’re
humming,” DeLuca said.

“So?”

“So stop
it,” Teddy said.
 
“What do you think this
is?
 
The PTA?
 
Cut it out!”

Carp
smiled.
 
“He thinks he’s in his sewing
circle,” he said.

Teddy and
DeLuca expected Mick to go off on Carp.
 
Carp always took it too far.
 
But
Mick was in such a good mood, even Carp wasn’t going to rain on his parade.

“Just give
me the threat assessment,” Mick said to Carp.

“There is no
threat,” Carp said.
 
“Not even chatter on
the line.
 
Nothing.”

“Provensano’s
loyalty was only as deep as those men you took out,” Teddy said.
 
“You were right, Mick. He was a powerful man
who didn’t understand his power.
 
His
reach was only surface deep.”

“What about
the families in business with him?” Mick asked this as his cell phone began
ringing.
 
“Do we have all of them
onboard?” He pulled out his phone and looked at his Caller ID.

“We have
them all,” Teddy said.
 
“They prefer to
be in league with us anyway.
 
They know,
with you in our corner, the sky’s the limit for them.
 
Provensano gave them the sky to, but there
were limits.”

The call was
from Mick’s office.
 
He ignored it.
 
“They understand that I’m not taking them
anywhere?
 
Do they understand that you
three are going to run the operation?”

The three
Dons glanced at each other.
 
“Yeah,
sure,” DeLuca said, and Mick’s cell phone rang again.
 
When he looked at the Caller ID and saw that
it was Deuce McCurry, he answered quickly.
 
Deuce was Roz’s driver now.

“Hello,
Deuce, what is it?”

“Miss Graham
has told me to prepare the car, sir.”

Mick
frowned.
 
“So why are you telling me
this?
 
Do what she told you to do.
 
Are you under some kind of misguided
impression that she can’t tell you what to do?”

“Oh, no
sir.
 
Never that.
 
But it’s where she wants to go, sir.
 
And the fact that she’s packing her bags.”

Mick’s heart
dropped. “Where does she want to go?”

“She wants
me to drive her to New York, sir.
 
She
apparently is going back home.”

Mick felt as
if he had been sucker punched.
 
Just when
he thought they were crossing over to that place of love he’d never been, she
was leaving him?
 
“Don’t take her
anywhere,” Mick said, with bite in his voice.
 
“I’m on my way.”

And despite
the protestations of the three Dons, Mick got up and left.

DeLuca,
especially, was beside himself with disbelief.
 
“Over a dame?” he asked with incredulity in his voice.
 
“You have got to be kidding me!”

“I wonder
what he’s
gon
’ do to her?” asked the oldest maid.

“Beat her
ass, what else?” said the younger one.

“Give her a
black eye, you can count on it,” said the youngest.
 
“Mr. Mick ain’t
gon
’
stand for this.”

They were in
the parlor, scrubbing down the entire room, and the talk of the house was Mick
and Roz.

“He tells
his whole household staff that she’s moving to Philly,” the middle maid said,
“and she ain’t here but a week before she’s looking to leave again.
 
I know you’re right.
 
He ain’t
gonna
stand for that.”

“Y’all don’t
know nothing about nothing,” the oldest maid said as she wiped down the window
sill.
 
“So stop all that gossiping.”

“Who’s
gossiping?” asked the youngest maid.
 
“I
was standing right by Deuce when he was talking to Mr. Mick.
 
I heard Mr. Mick tell him that woman wasn’t
going no-where and if she tried he was
gonna
kick her
ass.”

“Quit
lying,” the oldest maid said.
 
“That
don’t even sound like Mr. Mick.
 
You need
to quit.”

“That’s him
now,” said the middle maid urgently and they all hurried to the front window of
the parlor as Mick’s Lamborghini sped up to the big house and stopped near his
limo.
 
Mick hurried out, spoke to Deuce,
who was standing by the limo, and then hurried inside.

“Button it
all,” the oldest maid said, “and get to work!”

All three
maids began working feverishly as Mick entered the house.
 
But he didn’t give his parlor, or them, not
even a glance.
 
He hurried upstairs.

Roz was in
his bedroom, putting the last of her clothes into her suitcase, when he walked
in.
 
Like the maids downstairs, she heard
when he drove up too, so she wasn’t surprised by his presence.
 
Nor his anger.

He tossed
his keys on the dresser, opened his suit coat, and placed his hands on his
hips.
 
He looked like a man beside
himself, not with anger, but with pain.
 
“What’s going on here, Rosalind?” he asked her.

“I was going
to call you,” she said.

“And tell me
what?”

Roz
exhaled.
 
She knew he wasn’t going to
like it.
 
“I’ve got to go back to New
York and stay until the end of the semester, Mick.”

Mick
frowned.
 
“What are you talking
about?
 
We took care of that before you
left town last week.
 
You put your
assistant in charge.
 
Your assistant
agreed.
 
Why are you back on that again?”

“Because the
students won’t agree.
 
Marge called.
 
She said the students are rebelling.
 
They don’t want her.”

“Then
tough!
 
That’s who they have.”

Roz knew he
wouldn’t understand.
 
“It’s not tough,
Mick.
 
That’s not how this works.
 
It’s something I have to take care of.”

“You took
care of it.
 
You put that woman in charge
and they will have to live with that.
 
I’m not having you in one state and I’m in another ever again, I told
you that.
 
I don’t care how close they
are.
 
That part of our life is over.”

“Everything
is so black and white with you.
 
But it’s
not that simple.
 
I can’t just leave
those students hanging like that!
 
They
signed on to work with me.
 
They don’t
want to work with Marge.
 
Since they’re
paid up for this semester, it’s my duty to teach them until the end of
term.
 
Then they can either sign up with
Marge next term, or go elsewhere.
 
But at
least I would have finished what I started and they can’t complain about that.”

But Mick
felt frustrated.
 
Because she wasn’t
seeing this from his perspective at all.
 
She wouldn’t just be going to those students, he felt.
 
She would be leaving him.
 
She would be alone in a different state
without the same protections he could give her here.
 
That was the part that stung.
 
That was the part that she wasn’t addressing
at all.
 
“I thought we agreed that that
part of your life is over, Rosalind.
 
You
are staying here where I can look out for you.”
 
Then he frowned.
 
“What’s with you
anyway?
 
Have you already forgotten what
happened last week?
 
Do you realize what
kind of jeopardy you were in?
 
What if I
was out of the country and couldn’t get back before that DA filed charges?
 
What if she couldn’t back down after she
filed because the victim was a Broadway Director and the public wouldn’t accept
the fact that she filed charges and then changed her mind?
 
You would have been looking at years in
prison, Rosalind.”

Roz nodded
her head.
 
“I understand what you’re
saying.
 
But everything you just said
could have happened right here in Philly too.”

“No, it
could not have,” Mick said.
 
“Philly is
my territory.
 
I have businesses in New
York, but I don’t wield the same power there.
 
That’s why it took me nearly twenty-four hours to get you out of there,
and I was on the verge of a heart attack the entire time.
 
If it would have happened here, on my turf,
you would have never been arrested.
 
Be
assured of that.
 
You’re safe here.”

“It’s only
for a couple months, Mick.
 
Just until
the end of the semester.”

But Mick was
shaking his head.
 
The idea that she
could be away from him, and some calamity happened again, was too much.
 
His number one job was to keep her safe, and
that was what he intended to do.
 
“No,”
he said.
 
“You aren’t taking that
chance.
 
You’re not going.
 
Period.”

Roz was
angry now.
 
Who did he think he was?
 
“I have to go.”

“The only thing
you have to do is what I just told you to do.
 
You aren’t going, Rosalind.
 
Period!”

Roz knew
what she had to do.
 
If she didn’t stand
up to him now, she would crawl through their entire relationship.
 
He would come to hate that in the long run.
 
She zipped her luggage.

Mick
frowned.
 
“What do you think you’re
doing?
 
I said you’re not going.”

“I’m not one
of your men, Mick.”

“You’re not
going!”

“Watch me,”
Roz said defiantly, slung her suitcase off of the bed, and began heading out of
the room.

Mick was so
amazed by her defiance that it took him a few seconds to fully realize it.
 
She was actually leaving?
 
When he realized that she actually was, he
was furious.

“Rosalind!”
he yelled. “Roz!”

But she was
already on the landing and heading down the three flights of stairs.
 
Mick hurried behind her, but didn’t catch her
until she was nearing the front door and the maids were coming out of the
parlor.