“Are you coming up from under there, or waiting for me to get hard again?” his teased.
Carla eased back from his slowly softening cock. “Depends how long that’s going to take,” she answered truthfully.
Leon chuckled. “Not long at all if you’re going to keep pumping my cock and squeezing my balls.”
Which, Carla realized with self-derisive snort, was exactly what she was still doing.
“Sorry.” She released him before sliding her body back up to the top of the bed and lifting her head and shoulders above the duvet.
“Don’t ever apologize for giving me pleasure,” he drawled.
Leon looked… Debauched, probably best described the messy gray hair, blown pupils, flushed cheeks, and slightly parted lips. His chest rose and fell erratically as he breathed shallowly.
A smile curved his lips. “That was—incredible,” he murmured. “Are you okay?” he added worriedly.
“Perfect,” she assured him.
“I asked how you feel, not how you look,” he teased.
“Flatterer,” she derided. “Besides which, my hair is a mess, I have a gauze bandage covering one temple, and I’m wearing a borrowed nightgown two sizes too big for me.” She gave a snort. “Hardly perfect.”
Carla had woken just as daylight was starting to filter through the two windows she already knew were made of privacy glass. Leon hadn’t said as much, but she wasn’t stupid and had guessed they were also bulletproof.
Adding to her feelings of safety.
And allowing her the indulgence of looking at Leon stretched out on his back beside her, one of his arms still about her shoulders as he held her anchored firmly against his side.
Carla’s head no longer ached, it just felt a little sore where the butterfly bandages were. She still didn’t remember the shooting itself, but she was sure even that would come back to her eventually.
In her nightmares, most probably.
She had gotten up in the night to use the bathroom. The swaying from a loss of balance when she stood was enough for her to send a quick text to her deputy manager telling her she wouldn’t be in on Monday, and probably not Tuesday either.
After that, she’d returned to the bedroom to lie next to Leon as it became lighter and lighter outside, enjoying him as Leon the man, rather than Leonardo Brunelli, head of the Mafia.
He looked years younger with his hair tousled and the lines smoothed from beside his eyes and mouth. His body was a sculpted work of art. Utterly delicious, in fact.
Carla had waited as long as she could before giving in to the yearning she felt to touch and taste him.
Which was why Leon had woken to the feel of her mouth engulfing the silky heat of his already aroused cock. Carla had reveled in every groan Leon made, along with the sinuous arching of his body, as indication that she was giving him pleasure.
Benny hadn’t been into the giving or receiving of oral pleasure. Carla had occasionally managed to reach a climax during their missionary-position sex, but not always.
Now that she thought about it, there were so many things Benny wasn’t into that she couldn’t help but wonder what the hell she’d ever seen in him, let alone why she’d agreed to marry him.
He hadn’t been violent or mean to her, and yes, he had been very handsome with his black hair and dark eyes and muscularly defined body. He had also been fun when he wasn’t working and she eventually managed to drag him away from watching the latest football match on the television. He hadn’t been too much of a slob to live with either.
But were any of those things reason enough for marrying someone?
Hadn’t she felt more humiliated than heartbroken when she found him in bed with another woman? A woman she now realized she should probably have felt sorry for rather than angry about if Benny had given her the same lack of physical pleasure and consideration he’d given to Carla.
“Where did you go?” Leon turned on his side to lean on his elbow and look at her searchingly.
She smiled up at him. “I’m right here.” She’d never felt more here than when she was with Leon. He made her feel very much alive and utterly desirable with just a look from those expressive gray eyes.
“Yes, you are,” he murmured softly, his hand moving up so that his fingers could lightly stroke the warmth of her cheek. “I want to give you pleasure now. Can I?”
She made a choking sound in her throat. “Has any woman ever dared to say no to you?”
His fingers stopped caressing, his eyes darkening and his lids narrowing. “I don’t recall it ever happening,” he grated. “But I would hope that wasn’t because the woman daren’t say no to me.”
Carla winced at the underlying anger in his tone. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh, I think you did.” Leon rolled onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.
He’d had sex with dozens of women in his twenties and early thirties. All beautiful. All willing, for whatever reason. And yes, he’d known that many of them had just wanted to bed the son of the then head of the Italian Mafia, whether for personal kudos or for their own gain or for that of someone close to them. Leon had never disappointed them, either physically or in granting whatever it was they wanted from him.
But it had been a method of exchange which had quickly palled for him, which was why he hadn’t felt the need to bed any woman since he’d taken over as head of the Mafia from his father ten years ago.
Until Carla.
Leon had wanted her from the first moment he looked into her angrily flashing dark eyes.
He turned his head to look at her now from between narrowed lids. Why was she so different? She was undeniably beautiful, but it had to be more than that. Was it because she wasn’t a part of his world? Because she saw his role as capo dei capi as something that detracted rather than added to her attraction? She certainly didn’t display any fear of that position, as demonstrated by the fact she never held back from saying exactly what she meant to him.
“Now you’re the one lost in thought.” Her palm was warm against his chest as she drew his attention back to her. “In this room, there is just you and me. Leon and Carla. Who we are outside this room isn’t important.”
“No?”
“No,” she insisted firmly. “You—” She broke off as there was a loud banging on the door.
Leon recognized it as being a fist against the wood. “Yes?” he responded tersely, inwardly deciding whoever was on the other side of that door, interrupting when Leon was about to give Carla all the pleasure she could handle, was going to have his balls handed to him.
“I need to speak with you, Boss. Urgently.”
Leon’s annoyance faded at the sound of Jericho’s insistent tone and that firmly added “urgently.” It instantly put him on full alert.
“You’re to stay in bed until the doctor says otherwise,” he instructed Carla as he got out of bed to walk naked into the adjoining bathroom to collect one of the complimentary robes hanging behind the door. “I’ll send him in to you. No matter what the doctor’s verdict is on your condition, if I have to go out for a while you’re to remain here at the hotel until I get back,” he added distractedly as he left the bedroom.
One look at the grimness of Jericho’s expression and Leon knew he wasn’t going to like what the other man had to say.
He didn’t.
Chapter Seven
Carla felt irrelevant, forgotten, when Leon strode out of the hotel bedroom without so much as another glance in her direction.
As for him telling her to stay put…
She’d already been in bed for long enough. It was now time, despite what Leon might have decided to the contrary, that she took herself back to her own apartment. She might not be going to work for a couple of days, but she couldn’t stay here.
The slight swaying when she got out of bed confirmed that she wasn’t going to be able to go to work anytime soon, but that dizziness eased after a few seconds, reinforcing her decision to go home
.
Leon obviously had enough going on his life—most importantly, discovering who had tried to shoot him yesterday, and why—without adding having to think about what to do with her into the mix. Mafia business took priority with a man like Leon, and Carla had no intention of lingering like some hanger-on waiting for him to notice she was still here.
She would just have to learn to live with the aching in her chest at the thought of not seeing him again after today. Hopefully, by the time Grace and Matteo had their first baby in a couple of years’ time and then invited them all to the christening, this time with Leon would have become just a memory to Carla and he would be someone she could meet socially and be polite to, but nothing more.
Although somehow, she doubted that was going to happen.
Leon simply wasn’t the type of man to be easily forgotten. Or, she would hazard a guess, forgotten at all.
“Papa isn’t going to be pleased that you’re disobeying his instructions and not doing what the doctor told you to do,” Natalia drawled, looking up from the fashion magazine she’d been idly flicking through, the moment Carla entered the main sitting room dressed in another one of the hotel’s complimentary white toweling robes. “Having spoken to the doctor myself earlier, I know the plan was for you to remain in bed for the rest of the day.”
“If I gave a damn about disobeying Leon or the doctor, perhaps I’d be worried,” Carla snapped.
Natalia grinned. “I knew I liked you.” She chuckled. “But seriously…” She sobered as she threw the magazine onto the coffee table in front of her. “It isn’t a good idea to go against Papa’s orders.”
“You know that from experience, hmm?”
“Oh yes,” Natalia answered with feeling. “And before he left, taking Kieran and Jericho with him, he was quite clear about what those orders were in regard to me and you. I’m leaving for the airport shortly to return to the States, accompanied by Killian, and you are forbidden from leaving this suite or the hotel.”
“Your Papa can kiss my—” Carla broke off abruptly, heat blooming in her cheeks.
“Just realized what you were about to say, hmm?” Natalia taunted before giving an “ew” grimace. “And I really, really don’t want to know what you and Papa do together in bed that might involve your ass.”
Carla’s discomfort increased. “Did you say Leon left the hotel?”
The younger woman nodded. “He had business to attend to.”
She remembered the bodyguard’s earlier insistence of needing to speak with Leon urgently. “Mafia business?”
The younger woman shrugged. “Something to do with yesterday’s shooting, yes.”
Carla’s attention sharpened. “Did they find the man who tried to shoot Leon?”
“I believe so.”
“What will they do to him?”
“Question him, initially.”
“And after that?”
“Now if I told you that, I’d have to instruct someone to kill you,” Natalia drawled, and then burst out laughing at the look of alarm Carla felt sure was on her face. “I was only joking! I have no idea what they’ll do to him, but I do know Papa wouldn’t let anyone harm a hair on your head without retribution.”
“Mafia humor,” Carla derided. “And no doubt, if anyone’s going to harm me, he’d prefer to do it himself!” she dismissed distractedly, knowing that if the man who had shot at them yesterday had been caught, then Leon and his men were probably at the same warehouse down by the docks where Carla had burst in on them a couple of months ago.
Not that she had any intention of going anywhere near there ever again. She had absolutely no wish to know what Leon and his men were doing to the man they’d captured.
Natalia gave her a rueful glance. “You don’t know my Papa very well yet, do you?”
“Nor am I likely to,” Carla answered the statement briskly. “Do you know what happened to my bridesmaid dress?”
“It’s covered in your blood and no longer wearable.”
She winced. “In that case, can I borrow some more of your clothes for a few hours?”
The other woman gave her a considering glance. “Everything I own is going to be big on you.”
“Well, as all your clothes fit you like a glove, I don’t see that as being a problem for the short time I’ll be wearing them.” Her apartment was only a couple of blocks away, which was why she hadn’t been booked in, like the majority of other wedding guests, to stay the night at this hotel after the wedding reception. A bookstore manager’s wages didn’t stretch as far as staying the night at a five-star hotel.
As it happened, she’d stayed here anyway. In the same bed as Leon.
Her breath caught in her throat every time she thought about that. Touching him. Caressing him. Tasting him.
She thrust her shaking hands into the pockets of the toweling robe. “I’ll get them dry-cleaned afterward and make sure they’re returned to you.” All of Natalia’s clothes had a designer label in them and a hefty price tag to go with it.
Natalia gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Don’t bother, I have plenty more clothes.” She gave Carla an up-and-down glance. “I bought a pair of white jeans in Paris a couple of months ago I was hoping to slim into but haven’t. I also have a loose red blouse you can wear over a tee that should go perfectly with them.” She grimaced. “I’ve accepted I’m never going to be slim enough to wear them.”
“Then why buy them?”
Natalia avoided meeting her gaze. “Some men prefer…slimmer figures.”
Men like Killian, Carla would surmise. Although the way that man looked at Natalia when she wasn’t aware of it, as if he would like to eat her, said he liked Natalia’s figure exactly as it was.
The younger woman stood up. “Come with me.”
Natalia’s bedroom looked as if a cyclone had ripped through it and then a bomb had been dropped on it!
“My God…” Carla muttered as she stood in the middle of the room, looking at the chaos around her. “I thought you were leaving for the airport shortly?”
There were clothes and shoes everywhere, draped over furniture, under furniture, on the unmade bed. The open doors on the wardrobe also revealed that was filled with yet more clothes on hangers, with matching shoes lined up underneath.
“I hate packing, and I have other clothes at home,” Natalia dismissed, expertly flicking through the few clothes left on hangers in the wardrobe before removing two of them, one with the red blouse on, the other the white jeans. “Here you go,” she announced triumphantly as she laid them on the bed before rooting through the drawers for a matching red bra and panties. “Use the shower and dress in my bathroom if you want to. And make sure you speak to the doctor before you go, or he could end up an unfortunate casualty of your decision to leave.”
Carla hesitated. “What about you?” The last thing she wanted was to be the cause of trouble between father and daughter.
“I’ll be gone before Papa gets back, but if he ever turns on me, then we’re all fucked,” Natalia predicted lightly.
After showering and dressing in the borrowed clothes, Carla did as Natalia requested and talked to the doctor. After checking and redressing the wound, he begrudgingly acknowledged she didn’t seem to have suffered any long-term effects from being shot. He agreed she could either go to her own doctor or the local A&E to have the wound checked again, if necessary. He also saw no problem with her returning to work later in the week if she continued to recover as quickly as she was now, but to desist if she had a headache or consult a doctor if she felt the least discomfort from her wound.
After all that positivity, he then strongly advised Carla remain at the hotel “until Mr. Brunelli returns.”
In return, Carla strongly advised the doctor to get the hell out of Dodge while the going was good, and in the end, the two of them left the hotel together.
As if in mutual support for the other’s actions, Carla acknowledged with a huff of self-derisive laughter. She knew that w
ouldn’t save either of them from Leon’s wrath if he decided he was angry with them.
The possibility of which might account for Carla’s restlessness once she was back in her apartment, despite now wearing her own clothes. She was also pacing the sitting room rather than resting as the doctor had advised.
Everything seemed…less after being with Leon. Less colorful. Less vibrant. Less immediate. Less aware. Less sexual tension. Less every-damn-thing.
Carla knew the reason for her frustration and anger was the promise she’d made herself a year ago after ending her engagement to Benny. That she would never again need a man, any man, in order to complete her happiness.
And she’d kept to that resolve, concentrating on her career and refusing any invitations to go out on a date. The only invites she accepted were the regular Friday night drink with her work colleagues, but even that was only for a couple of hours. In return for that single-mindedness, she’d been made manager of the book store after Grace left, and there was enough of her wages each month, after paying all her bills, to treat herself to new clothes and shoes every now and then.
She gave a self-derisive snort at the thought of the jeans and top she’d taken off and put in a bag ready to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow so she could return them to Natalia. A glance at the designer label had told her that a single one of those items of clothing would pay the rent on this apartment for a month, and there would still be some money left over.
To hell with it. She’d had enough of the four walls of her apartment already. She sometimes went for a swim on a Sunday, and while she might have to be careful and keep the gauze bandage on her temple dry, there was no reason why she shouldn’t have a leisurely swim up and down the pool for a few laps.
Alternately, she could do some food shopping.
Either way, she had to get out of her apartment for a few hours.
Leon stared coldly at the unconscious young man strapped to the chair in front of him. His face was bruised, and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth.
Leon (Dance with the Devil 2) Page 6