Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright © 2020 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatting: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-910597-87-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
My husband, Peter
Chapter One
“Dance with me.”
Those three words were a command rather than a request. Nor did Carla need to glance away from the person she was conversing with to know who had made it. She would recognize that husky after-good-sex and smoky voice anywhere. She had never seen the man smoke so much as a single cigar, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that at forty-three, he’d had plenty of sex, with dozens of women.
Leonardo Brunelli.
Powerful and ruthless head of the New York Mafia.
Capo dei capi.
Boss of all bosses.
Because that’s what he was. Not just the don of the New York Mafia but the worldwide capo of all the Mafia organizations around the world.
Except he wasn’t in New York today, but in London, attending and celebrating the same wedding and reception as Carla, that of his niece, Grace, to Matteo Zalotti, head of the London Mafia. The wedding ceremony had been earlier this afternoon, followed by this evening reception at one of London’s leading hotels.
Carla had watched earlier as at least a dozen men had bent the proverbial knee to Leon when they arrived at the wedding reception at this prestigious hotel, in confirmation of his place as head of the Italian Mafia. Some of those men were older than Leon, some younger, but all, without exception, showed deference to their capo.
“I asked you to dance.”
Carla drew in a deep and steadying breath and then murmured a polite “Excuse me” to whichever one of the six Steele brothers she’d been talking to—they were all so handsome, but unfortunately also married or engaged; she couldn’t tell them apart—before turning to take in all the power that was Leon Brunelli.
At six feet tall, he was far from the tallest man in the room, nor, despite having defined muscles in his fitted morning suit, were his shoulders and chest the widest. He had been a widower for twenty years, and his hair had gone prematurely iron-gray, as had the trimmed beard covering his strong jaw. But both those things only added to his attraction rather than detracted from it.
But it was the innate aura of power surrounding this man that made him stand head and shoulders above everyone else in the room. Including the two burly bodyguards out in the hallway who were normally not far from his side but had been ordered to take a step back today. No doubt so as not to impinge on the bride and groom’s happiness. The bodyguards of the other dons present had also been banished from the room to roam the hallways of the hotel.
Carla had noted that neither of Leon’s bodyguards looked to be of Italian descent. When she had asked Grace about them, her friend had explained they were Irish, because Leon preferred to employ bodyguards outside the Mafia organization and hoped there was less chance that way of betrayal or divided loyalties.
Whatever their nationality, Grace had assured Carla that none of those bodyguards would be carrying guns today. Partly because they weren’t licensed to do so in the UK, but also out of deference to a request from the groom. Most of the bodyguards didn’t look as if they needed a gun in order to kill someone anyway.
But older than Leon or younger than him, a don or otherwise, Carla doubted there was anyone in this room who didn’t know Leon could wield his power with literally the snap of his fingers to any one of those unarmed bodyguards.
In fact, she was surprised he hadn’t brought one of those men into the room and sent him over to ask her to dance, rather than putting himself to the trouble of doing it and risking being told no.
Except, that air of personal danger Leon exuded was a warning to all that only the stupid or reckless would ever say no to him.
Carla was neither of those things, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated by him or any other man either. Been there, done that, got the mug and the T-shirt and a diamond engagement ring. The latter she had removed and thrown at her fiancé after finding him in their bed with another woman.
As it turned out, Carla had later learned this wasn’t the first time for him, either. Carla worked late on Thursdays at the bookshop, and it also happened to be the day Benny worked the lunchtime shift at the sports bar and had the evening off. Carla’s humiliation had been complete when she learned from neighbors and friends that on those evenings, Benny invited random women he’d met at the bar earlier in the day to join him in their bed for a couple of hours. Just his luck that particular Thursday Carla hadn’t been feeling well and came home early.
Benny had left their engagement ring on the bedroom floor after Carla had thrown him and the woman out of their apartment. Carla had picked it up and pushed it to the back of a drawer until she could bear to look at it again. In the end, selling it to a secondhand jeweler had covered losing the deposit on their apartment when she moved into a new one without giving notice. It had also covered a new bed and bed linens, because Carla had dumped the old one during her move.
None of which changed the fact that Leon Brunelli was now standing only feet away, one brow arched as he waited for her to speak.
Carla forced a pleasant smile to curve her lips. “I didn’t hear you ask a question.”
Those piercing gray eyes narrowed to slits. “I asked if you would like to dance.”
“Did you?” Carla feigned surprise. “‘Dance with me.’” She did a recognizable facsimile of the gruffness of his voice, causing his eyes to widen incredulously at her daring. “It sounds more like an order than a request to me.” She ignored a muffled throat clearing from behind her as the Steele brother she’d been talking to—Lucan, that was his name!—no doubt tried to warn her against antagonizing the other man.
Which, from the tightening of Leon’s sculpted lips, along with the narrowing of those cold gray eyes, told her that was exactly what she’d done.
But she’d only spoken to this man once before, and at the time, he’d been holding her best friend prisoner and tied to a chair with a bag over her head while he threatened to have his men kill her if she didn’t do as she was told and stay away from his future son-in-law.
Not exactly an auspicious first meeting!
Oh, that situation had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and no one had died, thank goodness, but Leon Brunelli still wasn’t a man Carla wanted anything to do with.
She was Italian—with a name like Carla Andretti, she had to be—and she knew her Uncle Vinnie had worked for the London don, Matteo Zalotti’s father, before now working for the son. But her uncle was the only one in Carla’s family who worked for La Famiglia. None of her other relatives wanted anything to do with the criminal underworld.
Even if Carla found Leon the sexiest and most intense and enticing man she’d ever met, she had no intention of letting herself be s
educed by him.
One broken heart was enough for a lifetime.
Not that she hadn’t been totally aware of him during today’s wedding service. Of course she had. Impossible to miss Leon when he exuded that unmistakable don’t-fuck-with-me-or-mine attitude.
She’d also felt his piercing gaze on her several times during the ceremony, to the degree it had been enough to put her whole body on sexual alert. Her nipples had hardened inside the bodice of her dress, and between her thighs had become hot.
But Leon Brunelli was too much. Of everything.
Too hot.
Too sexy.
Too dangerous.
Too damned sure of himself and his own powerful attraction.
Even if he wasn’t all those things, Carla doubted many women ever refused his attentions. That they ever wanted to refuse. Why would they when he was the promise of hot and raunchy sex on two strong and powerfully muscular legs?
Even his stillness was unnerving. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Probably on someone’s throat!
Which, Carla recognized self-disgustedly, wasn’t an altogether unsexy thought…
As evidenced by the fact her nipples were tingling again and that heat between her thighs was making her panties uncomfortably damp.
“Isn’t it traditional for the bridesmaid to dance with the uncle of the bride?” he drawled.
Yes, she was one of Grace’s two bridesmaids, and she was wearing a tomato-red, ankle-length, figure-hugging gown to prove it. Even so… “It’s the best man who traditionally dances with the bridesmaids, and we both know that isn’t you in any way, shape, or form.”
His mouth quirked at her insult. “How do you know unless you try me?”
Carla felt the warmth color her cheeks at his deliberate innuendo. “I have no wish to ‘try you.’”
“No?”
She wasn’t fooled for a moment by the mildness of his tone. “Absolutely not. If you wish to dance, I suggest you ask the other bridesmaid, your daughter, Natalia.” She still found it hard to believe this sexy man was the father of a twenty-year-old daughter.
Carla had discovered during the weeks before the wedding, when the two women were required to go for fittings for their bridesmaid dresses, that Natalia was spoiled and slightly reckless, but also impossible not to like. The way she tormented her gorgeous Irish bodyguard, Killian Price but called Killjoy by Natalia, was hilarious.
“I asked you,” Leon rasped.
“You told me,” Carla insisted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lucan and I were in the middle of a conversation before you interrup—” She broke off as, having turned, she discovered Lucan had very wisely left them to it and rejoined his wife and brothers across the room.
The Steele brothers, all six of them, owned and ran the Steele Security company, and the reason the whole family was here today was because Matteo Zalotti’s sister, Bella, was married to Bryce Steele. The rest of the wedding guests were comprised of members of the New York and London Mafias, along with those representatives of that organization from all over the world. Noticeably there were also members of the London Bratva present. Gregori Markovic was its head, and his second-in-comment, Nikolai Volkov, along with their beautiful wives.
But of these dangerous men, Leon Brunelli was without a doubt the most powerful and intimidating. Capo dei capi indeed.
Gray eyes glittered with his amusement. “I guess Lucan is wise enough to know when his company is no longer necessary,” Leon drawled.
“By you, perhaps, but I was enjoying— What are you doing?” Carla squeaked as, obviously running out of patience with her, Leon grasped one of her wrists to pull her across the room toward where couples were dancing to the music being played by a quartet of classical musicians, three violinists, and a cello player.
“Cutting out the crap,” Leon snapped as he came to a halt in a space—surprise, surprise!—in the middle of the dance floor.
The same dance floor where, a short time ago, Grace and Matteo had danced the tango together for the first time as man and wife. To say it had been sensual to watch the two of them would be an understatement. Whew.
Carla hadn’t been able to look away from them, or deny the feelings of wistfulness and longing for someone to dance with her as if they weren’t aware of anyone else, in the same way that Matteo had looked at Grace.
Inwardly, Carla knew her look-but-don’t-touch vibe meant she would never dance with any man as intimately as that. Besides which, most men her age didn’t dance at all, let alone something as sensual as a tango.
The salsa, she learned as Leon placed her hands on his shoulders and his hands on her hips, before sweeping her away to the rhythm of the music, could be equally, if not more sensuous.
Especially when it was Leon Brunelli’s hands grasping her hips, holding her thighs against his as he easily guided her movements so they perfectly matched the erotic and smooth snap and sway of his hips and thighs.
“Don’t,” he rasped, his hands on her hips tightening to bruising level as she would have pulled away. “Not unless you want everyone in the room to be aware of my response to you by revealing the telling bulge at the front of my trousers after you walk away.”
Carla was five feet eight inches tall in her stockinged feet, but the four-inch-heeled red satin sandals she was currently wearing put her on a level with Leon. Allowing her to feel every inch of the heat of his very large and engorged cock throbbing against her. She was also completely aware of the way that cock slid up and down her mound and pressed hard against her swollen clit with each snap and sway of their hips.
She gave a shake of her head. “That’s because this is—”
“Fucking to music,” he growled his satisfaction.
It certainly was, the way he danced! “I was about to say unacceptable,” she snapped.
“Were you?”
“Yes, I—” Dear God, if Leon didn’t stop rubbing his cock against her clit, Carla was literally going to come in the middle of the dance floor.
A dance floor that, a quick look round revealed, only they now occupied. To her consternation, the other dancers had all stepped back and were now watching the two of them much as they had the bride and groom a short time ago.
Carla briefly closed her eyes before opening them again. “I hate having attention drawn to me in this way,” she muttered uncomfortably.
“If I worried about having people look at me, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning,” he dismissed.
People watched him because he was the Mafia capo. Carla didn’t at all like being included in that curiosity.
“Ignore them.”
She gave a choked laugh. “How am I supposed to do that when they’re all staring at us?”
“Look at me and not them.” His words were accompanied by the raising of one of his hands as he placed it beneath her chin to lift her face up toward his. He instantly and easily held her gaze with the intensity of his. “You are so fucking beautiful, you take my breath away,” he murmured gruffly. “You’re the whole package. Beautiful. Feisty. Unafraid.”
Carla’s pulse raced, her heart pounding so loudly, she could hear it over the music and was sure Leon must be able to too. “Really? Because you’re one very scary man, Leon Brunelli.”
“Only when I need to be.”
“Then you must need to be all the time.”
“You’ve never been scared of me.”
“Then I’m a better actress than I realized and maybe I should think about going on the stage.”
He smiled slightly. “Instead of which, you’ve now taken over as manager of the bookstore where Grace worked.”
Impossible for her to miss the mockery in his tone. “Is a bookstore manager too boring for you?” she taunted.
“Not in the least.” Leon knew exactly what Carla was trying to do. And he wasn’t easily distracted from something he wanted as badly as he wanted Carla Andretti.
From the first moment he’d set eyes on her—was it reall
y only a few weeks ago?—and she had answered him back in the same sassy tone she was using now, Leon had known he wanted his cock buried deep inside her curvaceous body. A curvaceous body currently being shown to advantage in a figure-hugging gown of blood red.
Leon had thought about her a lot during the weeks in between that meeting and this one, time he’d necessarily spent in New York. The moment he saw Carla again in the church today wearing this revealing gown, his cock had taken notice and remained half-hard ever since.
It had sprung to full and throbbing attention when they began dancing together. So any attempt on Carla’s part to dissuade him from wanting to continue dancing with her was a waste of her time and his.
Leon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this attracted to any woman.
Damn it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been inside a woman.
Women had been queuing up to be with him even before his father died, but once he took over as capo, they had swarmed around him like bees to honey. Leon wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d taken advantage of that plethora of willing women for a couple of years. He was a widower, so why not. But having those yes-women in his bed became old very quickly, and it was impossible to know whether they were attracted to him or the power he wielded as capo dei capi. A power those women often wanted him to wield on their behalf.
Applying his right hand to his need for physical release became easier, and far less messy, than being with a woman he couldn’t get rid of afterward without resorting to the cruel truth that she meant no more to him than the same satisfaction he felt taking a shower every morning and night.
Carla Andretti, with her beautiful glossy dark shoulder-length hair, deep brown eyes, ivory complexion, and curvaceous rather than willowy body, was the first woman he’d felt this attracted to in a very long time.
Leon (Dance with the Devil 2) Page 1