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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-910597-90-3
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.
Dedication
Jo – I couldn’t do any of this without you!
Chapter One
“Mon amie, Killjoy, come danz wiz me?”
Killian barely glanced at the slender young Frenchwoman wearing the barely-there dress. She had shouted the request at him, so as to be heard above the loud and throbbing music being played in this packed Paris nightclub.
Having received no response, the woman grasped hold of his hand and attempted to pull him toward where a sea of bodies gyrated to the music. They appeared slightly grotesque in the colored lights sweeping across them from overhead.
This persistent woman only attempted to pull Killian, because at six foot four inches tall and weighing in at a little over two hundred pounds, most of which was muscle, no one was moving Killian unless he wanted them to. Right now, he was exactly where he was supposed to be, close enough to act as bodyguard to the woman dancing with her friends. His two men, Evan and Luke, were positioned elsewhere in the nightclub and both watching the same woman.
Besides, at the age of thirty-five, being stuck in the middle of all these alcohol-high twenty-somethings was literally his idea of hell.
“My name’s Killian, or Mr. Price,” he rasped without taking his attention away from the woman he was here to guard.
“But Natalia, she call you Killjoy all ze time?” the pretty young thing looked and sounded puzzled.
Natalia Brunelli, the same woman Killian was currently keeping a close eye on as she moved her voluptuous body around the dance floor in another barely-there dress.
She called him a lot of things.
But, as Natalia’s father, Leonardo Brunelli, capo dei capi of the Italian Mafia and based in New York, paid Killian a lot of money to be his daughter’s personal bodyguard twenty-four-seven, she was allowed to call Killian whatever the hell she wanted. Didn’t mean he would always answer her, of course. That young lady was far too fond of having her own way, and she took perverse pleasure in trying to annoy him.
One day she would go too far, and that was when she was going to end up over Killian’s knee, having her deliciously rounded bottom spanked. But not before he’d enjoyed squeezing and caressing those twin globes first.
While he still could.
Because once Leon learned Killian had spanked his precious daughter’s ass, he doubted he would still have a job with the Brunelli crime family, let alone as Natalia’s personal bodyguard.
The tingling of Killian’s palms, just thinking about spanking Natalia, told him it might be worth it.
In the meantime, Natalia’s favorite name for him at the moment was Killjoy, and she took delight in calling him that whenever she wanted to get a rise out of him. Mainly because she resented any attempt on his part to prevent her from doing exactly as she pleased. Unfortunately, that included just about anything. Natalia always did whatever she wanted, and damn the consequences.
They were only in Paris right now because she had decided to stop off here on her way back to the States after attending her father’s wedding in London.
Leon Brunelli had remained a widower for the twenty years since Natalia’s mother died giving birth to her. But the older man had recently fallen in love with a young woman who had proven herself more than up to the task of becoming the wife of the capo dei capi.
Natalia liked her father’s new wife, thank God, or Leon’s transition to being a newly married man might not have gone as smoothly as it had.
Killian’s lids narrowed, his body tensing when he saw Natalia had stopped dancing and was forging a path through the dancers to the side of the room where Killian was able to continue watching her without being too oppressively noticeable. In his own eyes, that was. Natalia had made it clear, many times, that she thought him being in the same room as her was too close.
These past two years of being Natalia’s personal bodyguard had been…interesting.
When Killian and his three cousins, Jericho, Liam, and Kieran Price, left Ireland ten years ago, none of them had any idea what they were going to do next. They only knew they didn’t want to become part of the Irish Mob, like both of their dead fathers before them.
He gave a self-derisive snort at how well that had turned out. Instead of staying with the Irish Mob, they had gone to New York, and ended up becoming Leon Brunelli’s personal security team. The Italian-American preferred his bodyguards not to be Italian and thus bribable by any of the other regional capos with their eyes on his position as capo dei capi. The Price cousins were totally loyal to Leon and always would be. He had taken them in when no one else had trusted the four cousins and their connections to the Irish Mob.
When Leon’s daughter, Natalia, graduated from the private school she attended as a day pupil two years ago, Leon had put forward the idea of one of the cousins becoming permanent personal bodyguard to the then eighteen-year-old young woman. Killian got the job by default. None of his cousins had wanted it.
Killian had taken lead on the protection detail, but he had two younger guys working with him, brothers whom he had personally trained and trusted to back him up on evenings like this one, when it required more than just one pair of eyes to ensure Natalia’s safety. Evan was currently standing next to the bar and Luke near where the DJ was playing music, and both of them had their eyes fixed on Natalia. The two men also took over on the days Killian could be sure Natalia was staying put, allowing him to take some hours off for himself.
Tonight, Natalia was, as usual, surrounded by a group of her Parisian friends comprised mainly of men. She was beautiful, with a curvaceous figure and a bright and intelligent personality that drew men to her like bees to honey.
Which was probably the reason that during the last two years, Killian had found several gray strands amongst his shoulder-length brown hair and gained a few frown lines he hadn’t had before then either.
Natalia was—
“Get the fuck away from him!” Natalia slapped the other woman’s hand away from Killian’s arm, gray gaze blazing.
—a handful would be putting it mildly, Killian finished the thought with an inward chuff of derisive laughter.
Although Natalia’s adverse reaction to Killian being touched by one of the French friends, she “just had to see” before she returned to the States, was new.
Marie—Amelie? Killian had an in-depth security file on all these so-called friends back at their hotel—gave a disappointed pout. “’E is ’ot, and I only wish to danz wiz him.”
“Find someone else ’ot to danz with.” Natalia’s eyes flashed again in warning. “Killian is going to dance with me.” She lifted
her chin in challenge as she looked at him.
Killian inwardly tensed. If he refused to dance with her, Natalia would lose face in front of the other woman. But if he accepted, Killian knew he was the one who was going to end up losing more than his face.
Because Natalia enjoyed nothing more than piercing holes through the professional client/bodyguard barrier Killian preferred to keep between himself and the person he was protecting. In this case, Natalia. It was even more difficult not to blur that line when the two of them were together night as well as day.
It wasn’t so bad when they were in the apartment in New York or on the family estate just outside the city, because Natalia had her own suite of rooms within those highly secure locations.
Unfortunately, she was never there for long, preferring to attend all the fashion shows around the world. During those times, the two of them shared a hotel suite. On Leon’s orders, and Killian agreed. He couldn’t protect Natalia if he was in a different hotel room to her. Evan and Luke always shared a room on the same floor as Natalia’s suite, one of them always standing guard in the hallway and ready to offer assistance if there was a problem.
Leon, like Killian, didn’t trust Natalia to stay in her room once she had supposedly gone to bed for the night. She was too fond of trying to slip out of the hotel and disappearing off to a nightclub, completely unprotected.
That wasn’t happening on Killian’s watch.
Which was why she had given him the name Killjoy.
It was difficult, at the best of times, to remain distant from the person you were paid to protect. Even harder when that person was the rebellious and deliberately provoking Natalia Brunelli.
Killian knew that maintaining a distance between the two of them could prove impossible if he agreed to dance with this beautiful and sexy woman.
Especially when she was wearing that almost fitted black thigh-length dress, her luscious dark hair a tumble of curls down her spine, long dark lashes surrounding those mesmerizing gray eyes, and her full lips colored with a tempting red gloss. The four-inch heels on her strappy black sandals added to her height and emphasized her shapely legs, but the top of her head still only came as high as Killian’s shoulder. Even her voice was fucking sexy, being naturally low and husky.
Besides, agreeing to dance with her wouldn’t just breach that professional line between client and bodyguard, it had the potential of trampling it underfoot.
Because, no matter what Natalia might think to the contrary, he was a man as well as a bodyguard, and Natalia, even though she behaved like a spoiled brat a lot of the time, was also one of the most sensually alluring women Killian had ever set eyes on.
A fact he’d been totally aware of and fighting reacting to for the past two years of their close—sometimes too close—proximity. The alternative of passing the lead of this protection detail on to one of his cousins was equally unacceptable. He allowed Evan and Luke to take over for a few hours when they were on the Brunelli estate, but otherwise, Killian simply didn’t trust anyone else to guard Natalia as well as he did.
Killian is going to refuse to dance with me, Natalia realized with an inward groan of disappointment.
She’d spent years lusting after this man, long before he became her personal bodyguard.
He and his three cousins had actually been her father’s personal protection detail for several years, and during that time, they’d all taken it in turns to accompany her in the limousine each morning and then to collect her again in the afternoon, to the gated school she attended. The times it was Killian’s turn were the ones Natalia looked forward to the most. All four Irishmen were gorgeous to look at, but there was just something about Killian, something more, a repressed wildness, that had drawn Natalia to him like a moth to a flame.
As a consequence, she’d been infatuated with the big lug for more years than she cared to think about.
And the bastard was now going to humiliate her totally in front of one of her friends by refusing to dance with her. Damn Amelie for daring to touch him in the first place. If she hadn’t then Natalia wouldn’t have felt the need to rush back to Killian’s side to issue the challenge and end up looking a fool—
“Okay,” Killian rasped.
Natalia blinked, sure she had misheard. “Okay?”
He raised a mocking eyebrow. “You asked me to dance, and I accepted.”
She knew that, damn him, it was just that, having issued the challenge, she’d never in a million years thought Killian would agree to dance with her. He was always so damned professional, keeping his distance and, more often than not, hiding his thoughts, in the daytime, at least, behind dark glasses. He couldn’t do that in the already darkened nightclub, allowing her to stare into his gorgeous green eyes.
The two of them continued to look at each other, Natalia only vaguely aware of Amelie’s disgusted tutting before the other woman flounced off back into the melee of dancing of bodies.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind?” Killian was the one to now challenge softly.
Natalia’s lids narrowed. The bastard was playing with her. She could clearly see the mockery now glinting in Killian’s green eyes, as well as that derisive and infuriating uptilt of his chiseled lips. It didn’t need a mind reader to know Killian thought she was going to back down from the challenge.
He really should know her well enough by now to have realized she’d never backed down from anything in her life.
“I haven’t.” She quirked a dark brow. “I just realized you might feel out of place, being so much older than everyone else in the nightclub?”
His smile turned mocking. “I seem to remember that French count you were so enamored with when you were in Paris a month ago, and came to this same club with several times, is even older than I am.”
“Henri is different.”
“In what way?” Killian grated.
Her chin tilted even higher. “Henri is like an expensive and matured wine,” she admired. “Rich, with a full-bodied heat, and a magnificent finish.” She virtually purred the latter part of her deliberately provocative description of the Frenchman.
Killian’s humor faded as if it had never been, his eyes narrowing. “I didn’t ask what sort of lover he was.”
Just as well, because Natalia had absolutely no idea whether or not Count Henri Asselin was a good lover. She was inclined to think no woman knew that. But it was fun letting the far-too-uptight Killian Price think that she knew.
She narrowed her eyes as an emotion ghosted briefly across Killian’s piercing gaze, but it was gone too quickly for her to be able to discern what it was.
“Are we going to dance or not?” She knew her expression was daring him to ask more questions about her relationship with Henri.
In actual fact, the Frenchman was one of the fashion designers Natalia admired, but the two of them had only ever been friends who shared a love of fashion and clothes. They were a little more than that at the moment, she reminded herself, but even so that closer relationship didn’t include anything sexual.
She suspected that Henri was involved in a relationship with his male personal assistant. That young man certainly always glared at Natalia whenever she was with his employer.
None of which was Killian’s business.
Besides, he really should have realized during these past two years of being her constant companion that she’d never been alone with a man long enough to be involved in a single physical relationship, let alone with the Frenchman. She might like to flirt, but that didn’t mean she was promiscuous. She gave a snort at the realization she was the opposite of promiscuous: a virgin, pretty much without a clue. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t, and hadn’t always been, completely physically aware of Killian Price.
“I’m not concerned by the age thing,” Killian now assured her. “I have the moves if I need them,” he dismissed confidently. “But are you sure you want your sophisticated friends to see you dancing with this bogtrotter of an Irishman? Especial
ly when you obviously prefer a ‘fine wine,’” he added in a hard voice.
Natalia actually preferred and appreciated the company of older men. Probably because it had just been her and her father for so many years. That had changed now, of course, with her father’s remarriage, but Natalia still gravitated to and was attracted to men who were several years older than her.
Tall, muscular, and ruggedly handsome men like Killian, who made her feel protected and sexy at the same time.
Her gaze met his steadily. “Guinness beer also comes from Ireland, and as every discerning woman knows, it’s dark and smooth, with a creamy aftertaste.”
Killian scowled. “Your father’s new wife had the right of it when she said you should have been spanked more as a child.”
Natalia gave a satisfied laugh at the increased Irish lilt in his voice. It was only noticeable at all when he was angry or displeased. And Natalia loved nothing more than eliciting a reaction from Killian. Any reaction. “She meant that with admiration, because she’s is as independently minded as I am.”
“God help your father,” Killian acknowledged dryly.
“He loves it and her,” Natalia dismissed without rancor. She totally approved of the woman her father had married. “Come on, let’s dance.” She smiled her satisfaction when Killian made no effort to resist, as he had Amelie, when Natalia grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the dance floor.
God, she’d been so angry when she’d spotted the other woman’s hands on Killian earlier.
She knew virtually nothing about Killian’s private life except that he guarded it almost as fiercely as he did her. She did know that being the lead on her bodyguard detail didn’t allow him much time for anything else. In fact, Natalia made sure of that by traveling constantly and ensuring the need for Killian’s presence whenever she went on those trips.
Killian (Dance with the Devil 3) Page 1
