Her age of twenty-five, eighteen years his junior, was a little off-putting, but he only wanted to fuck her, not have a relationship with her.
He could just imagine the look of disgust on his daughter Natalia’s face if he started dating a woman only five years older than she was!
“Am I amusing you?” Carla now challenged.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever!” she returned spiritedly.
His answer was to spin her so that her back was toward him before placing one of his arms about her waist while the other remained on her hip. He now held Carla so that her back was pressed tightly against his front from chest to thighs as they continued the erotic snap and sway of the salsa. Her ass pressed provocatively against his totally aroused cock.
Leon bent forward slightly until his mouth was close to her ear. “Come upstairs with me to my hotel suite.”
She gasped. “Absolutely not!”
“Fight me all you want, little cat.” His lips kissed along the hot length of her bare throat. “But I am going to have you, and sooner rather than later.”
“You are not—” She broke off with another gasp, becoming suddenly tense in his arms.
Leon was pretty sure he hadn’t done or said anything to cause that reaction this time.
Chapter Two
“What is it?” Leon demanded as he turned Carla to face him.
She looked as if she had seen a ghost: pupils blown, face paper white, even her sensual lips having lost some of their color.
“Carla?” he prompted harshly as she ripped out of his arms, probably bruising herself in the process, before hurrying off the dance floor.
She looked neither left nor right, nor acknowledged the clapping of the other guests in appreciation of their display, as she hurried toward the glass doors leading out of the spacious room. They were currently closed to prevent admittance by any random hotel guests not invited to the reception.
Leon stepped off the dance floor to follow her.
Natalia stepped in front of him, her hand on his forearm. “What’s going on, Papa?” She frowned her concern.
“I’m not sure,” he muttered, gaze still fixed on where he could see Carla had come to a halt outside in the hallway. “Stay close to Killian, hm, baby?” he added distractedly before he followed Carla outside. His two personal bodyguards stepped back at a dismissive shake of Leon’s head and resumed standing at a respectful distance.
Carla’s face was still deathly white as she glanced first left and then right along the marble hallway. As if she was looking for something. Or someone.
“What is it?” Leon demanded again when she stared at him without seeming to recognize him. “What did you see?”
“I don’t— I’m not sure,” she managed to choke out.
“Want to try that again?” he demanded.
A spark of anger brought the beginning of a rebellious glitter to her expressive eyes. “I said I’m not sure,” she bit out between clenched teeth.
“Okay, what or who did you think you saw?” he repeated patiently.
“Nothing. No one,” she added quickly. Too quickly.
“You don’t sound very certain about that.”
“I am,” she snapped, while inside, a voice was shouting I thought I saw my worst nightmare.
Except it couldn’t have been him.
There was absolutely no reason for Benny to be in this prestigious hotel. They had both grown up in the East End of London, which meant Benny was no more accustomed to being in exclusive five-star hotels like this one than she was.
She had to have been mistaken in thinking she’d just seen him out in the hallway in conversation with another man, both of them dressed in formal black suits. Benny loved working in the sports bar where there was no dress code; Carla wasn’t even sure he owned a suit. Of course, he could have changed his job and now worked in one of the bars at this hotel. There were three, she believed.
Or perhaps the explanation was simpler than that and it was because she was at the wedding she’d thought she’d seen Benny again? After all, the two of them would have been married by now if Carla hadn’t found out about his involvement with all those other women.
In retrospect, wouldn’t that have been the mother of all cock-ups!
Talking of cocks…
Maybe what she needed was another man to take her to bed? Someone capable of making her forget all about the two-timing unfaithful Benito Calabro, but at the same time being no risk to her cynical heart.
Someone like Leon Brunelli?
No, not someone like Leon Brunelli, Carla answered her own question, but the Leon Brunelli.
She gave a decisive nod as she looked at him. “Okay.”
Leon eyed her cautiously. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll go up to your hotel suite with you.” She turned on her four-inch-heeled sandals and set off in the direction of the elevators.
Leon admired the sway of her hips and that glorious ass for several seconds before beckoning over one of his bodyguards. “Who was in this hallway when Miss Andretti left the reception?” he demanded of Jericho Price. The younger man was one of several Irish cousins who worked for him.
Jericho shrugged. “Just some of the dons’ bodyguards.”
“No one else?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no.”
“Find out for certain, and then report back to me as soon as you have that information.” He didn’t wait for an answer but strode purposefully toward where Carla now waited beside the elevators for him to join her, that reckless glitter in her eyes having intensified.
Leon had no problem with a woman having her own agenda when he took her to bed. It could be tiresome, but it was to be expected. What he did object to was being a substitute for another man. That glint in Carla’s beautiful dark eyes said that was exactly what he was for her.
As a means of getting over this other man, perhaps?
Or maybe as a way of punishing him?
Whatever the reason, Leon knew Carla had only changed her mind about going to his hotel suite after seeing whatever or whoever had been outside the reception room.
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” she taunted when Leon joined her.
“Not at all,” he assured dryly.
“Which floor are we going to?” She pressed the button to call the elevator to the ground floor.
“Wrong elevator,” Leon drawled as he lightly grasped her arm to take her with him. He walked a short way down the hall before removing a key card from his trouser pocket and sliding it into the slot beside a single P. The elevator doors opened instantly.
“The P stands for penthouses, I presume?” There was no missing the derision in Carla’s tone as she stepped inside the mirror-walled elevator.
“Penthouse, singular,” he corrected, repocketing the key card as he joined her and pressed the button that would take them up to the forty-fourth floor of the building. There were only the two buttons, up or down. Jericho and his cousin Kieran would now have moved into place outside the elevator.
Her eyes widened. “You’re occupying the whole of the top floor of this massive hotel?”
He shrugged. “Me, Natalia, half a dozen of my own men, plus Natalia’s bodyguard, Killian. Killian’s cousins, Kieran and Jericho, are part of my own protection detail.”
“Interesting choice of bodyguards.”
“I don’t adhere to the saying ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer,’” he dismissed harshly. “The cousins grew up poor on the streets of Belfast, and they have absolutely no interest in rising in the hierarchy of the Italian Mafia.”
“That’s—” Carla broke off what she’d been about to say as Leon moved to stand mere inches in front of her.
Leon placed his hands on the mirrored wall either side of her head. The throb of the pulse at the side of her throat visibly increased, her breathing becoming shallow, her cheeks infused with a delicate blush, and her soft lips parted slightly.
> A reaction and response that Leon had no doubts was completely on his behalf.
He slowly leaned forward to close even the few inches that separated them. “I like my privacy,” he murmured against her perfumed throat. Leon wondered if she was aware she had instinctively bared that throat to him by the tilting of her head.
“The walking-around-naked sort of privacy, or for your protection?” she prompted nervously.
He huffed a laugh as his lips slowly kissed and tasted the smoothness and heat of Carla’s throat. “I doubt Natalia would appreciate seeing her father walking around naked.”
“For your protection, then,” Carla said knowingly.
Leon raised his head to look at her. “Does that bother you?”
Her laugh lacked humor. “That you’re not only one of the most powerful men in the world, but also one many people would probably like to see dead?”
“I sincerely hope there aren’t as many people wanting the latter as you’re implying,” he drawled.
“No?” she challenged. “Name me one of the dons or underbosses downstairs who wouldn’t like to take your place as capo dei capi.”
“I see you’ve been doing your homework on my organization.”
“I’m Italian. I was born knowing the Mafia hierarchy,” she dismissed. “So, name one.”
“Matteo.”
“Apart from your new nephew-in-law.”
Leon didn’t answer as the elevator doors swished open on the top floor of the building. He took hold of one of Carla’s slender hands to take her with him as he stepped straight into the main sitting room. A wall of windows looked out over the river and the London skyline. For all that she acted tough, and romancing a woman wasn’t Leon’s thing, he had a feeling Carla would appreciate the view.
She had also, probably without realizing it, touched on a subject he would have preferred to avoid on his niece’s wedding day.
Because someone, and Leon had no proof yet as to which of the New York underbosses it was, had their eye on becoming the next capo dei capi. Which, as Leon wasn’t dead yet nor had any intentions of being so in the near future, was more than presumptuous. It was downright dangerous.
Unfortunately, there were shipments of drugs being received into New York from cartels Leon had instructed they would never deal with. Cartels that also dealt in the misery of the trafficking of children as well as adults, all destined for the sex trade.
Leon was the father of one beautiful woman and uncle to another, and the thought of either of them, as a child or adult, being treated with such disregard for human dignity made him nauseous.
But someone else in his organization was disregarding his instructions and not only bringing those drugs into the country from banned cartels, but also the poor wretches who, once in the States, would be locked up in brothels. They would then be forced into becoming addicted to drugs so they would comply with whatever was done to them until their usefulness was over. At which time, they would be thrown out onto the streets, usually to meet an untimely death from bad drugs or an overdose. Or at the hands of other vagrants for the little they might possess, which in most cases was only the clothes and shoes they were wearing.
Leon already had his suspicions, but they had been confirmed when a woman had escaped from one of those brothels. She’d been lucky enough to be found and taken in by one of the women’s shelter groups. Word of her plight had eventually reached Leon, and he’d had the woman brought to his estate just outside New York so he could speak to her.
She’d been dazed still and had no idea where she’d been held for the past three months. Only that it was somewhere in New York, which Leon already knew.
She’d told him that she and a dozen other women and children had been taken from a village in Colombia and brought into the States on a cargo ship along with a hundred or so other women and children. The care on the ship had not been good, no food and very little water, and her ten-year-old daughter had not survived the journey. Although the loss made the woman weep, she had again thanked God for saving her daughter from suffering the same cruelty and degradation she had since she’d arrived here.
Leon never again wanted to hear a woman so desperate, she thanked her God because her child had died.
The woman had turned down his offer to provide transport for her to return to her village in Colombia, because she had no one left there. Her husband and the other men in the village had been killed when the village was invaded, and the women and children rounded up and taken away from everything they knew.
As an alternative, Leon had offered to set her up in an apartment and help her find employment within one of his own businesses.
She had again refused and instead asked if it was possible for her to work as a maid on his estate. She explained that being there was the first time she’d felt safe since she was captured.
There were five underbosses here from New York to attend the wedding of Leon’s niece. He just didn’t know yet which one of them was operating against his instructions and causing this human misery. There was also the possibility it could be a don from one of the other major cities in the States, who also answered to him but were trying to muddy the water by bringing that forced prostitution to his city.
No, Leon had no idea yet who was working against him, but once he did, they would know the full force of his displeasure.
“Leon?”
What the fuck was he doing thinking about the unrest of one of his dons or underbosses when he was with a beautiful woman he wanted to give all his attention to.
“Champagne?” he invited lightly as he moved to take a bottle from the temperature-controlled glass cabinet.
“Why not?”
He deftly opened the bottle before pouring the pale pink bubbly wine into two fluted glasses, and then carried them both over to where Carla now stood looking out the wall of windows at the beauty that was London at night. “To Grace and Matteo,” he toasted huskily before taking a sip of his champagne.
“To the happy couple,” she echoed, also sipping the chilled wine.
But Carla wasn’t fooled for a moment by the way Leon seemed to have switched back into seduction mode. He’d become introspective after her comment about one of his own people wanting him dead, and his expression as he seemed lost in thought had definitely boded ill for someone.
What must it be like for him?
Always alert. Always wary. Never knowing quite whom he could or couldn’t trust.
Obviously, he could trust his daughter, Natalia, and his niece, Grace. Her new husband, Matteo, was definitely loyal to Leon too. Grace had mentioned a new alliance between the London bratva and the Italian Mafia, and she knew several of the wedding guests were part of the bratva. But surely anyone else was open to the bribery of money or power, including the bodyguards who were closest to Leon.
What was she doing? Carla wondered self-disgustedly.
Leon was arrogance and power personified, danger personified, and he was rich beyond imagining. He certainly didn’t need or want her or anyone else’s pity. The penthouse apartment he was staying in could comfortably house ten families without any of them ever having to meet. Carla had never seen such opulence before, in a home let alone a hotel. And Leon lived like this all the time.
Besides, she’d come up here with Leon so he could seduce her and show her how an obviously experienced man could make her forget all about a selfish idiot like her ex-fiancé.
No pressure, Leon!
Carla couldn’t hold back the snort of laughter that thought evoked.
Leon gave her a questioning look.
She chewed briefly on her bottom lip before explaining. “I was just wondering if you were capo dei capi in all aspects of your life.”
Humor lit up his gaze. “As in am I the boss of all bosses in bed too?”
Her cheeks heated. “No pressure, of course,” she repeated her thought of a moment ago.
“None taken, and that will be for you to decide.” Leon’s humor
faded as the air between them suddenly grew tense. His gaze held hers as he took the fluted glass out of her hand and placed it, along with his own, on the coffee table behind them before taking her hands in his. “These are privacy windows. We’re able to see out, but no one can see in,” he explained.
She huffed. “Who could possibly see in here anyway when we’re forty-four floors up?”
Leon shrugged. “Don’t ever underestimate the paparazzi’s ability to improvise. Hiring a helicopter to fly up here so they can take photographs through the window would be the easiest thing in the world if they decided to do it.” He wasn’t about to share with Carla that the windows were also bulletproof. It wasn’t only members of the press who were capable of hiring helicopters, nor were the “shots” taken always photographic.
Twenty years ago, the whole of the Mafia hierarchy, including his own father, had been attacked by gunmen in helicopters as they were sitting down to a meeting in the penthouse of a New York hotel. Miraculously, no one had actually died during the attack, and the police had brushed it off as arguments between the various mob families. But ever since that time, the Mafia ensured they owned a hotel in each major city and that all the windows in the penthouse of that hotel couldn’t be seen into and were also bulletproof. Including this one.
Carla’s brows rose. “Have any of the paparazzi ever tried to do something like that to you?”
His mouth quirked ruefully as he nodded. “Even I don’t own or control the sky.” His cars were all bulletproof too. Something else Carla didn’t need to know.
“That is so intrusive.”
He gave another chuckle. “You sound indignant on my behalf.”
“That’s because I am.” She scowled. “Everyone is entitled to their privacy.”
“Even me?”
“Of course.”
Leon tilted his head questioningly as Carla suddenly went silent. The way she now refused to meet his gaze was also cause for concern. The fact that her hands were trembling slightly in his even more so. “Have you changed your mind about spending the night with me?”
Leon (Dance with the Devil 2) Page 2
