Leon (Dance with the Devil 2) Read online

  In the meantime, he really did have to take that shower Natalia had twice mentioned him needing.

  After which?

  Leon had no fuck—damned idea!

  He gave a snort of self-derision for having automatically corrected himself. Because Carla had commented on his use of the word fuck when he was agitated.

  “Bella,” he murmured softly as he gave her brow another gentle kiss before standing up. The bedroom had an adjoining bathroom, so he wouldn’t be far away. “Mia bella,” he added possessively.

  Carla had no idea what had woken her, but she felt a little more lucid when she opened her eyes than she had when she demanded the doctor remove the cannula from the back of her hand. She’d hated them since she had her appendix removed when she was twelve. They were somehow insidious, and now that the doctor was no longer filtering a painkiller into the mix, there was absolutely no reason she couldn’t deal with her own intake of fluids orally.

  Talking of which… She turned onto her side so that she might reach the ice water the doctor had insisted she drink lots of. She ignored the slight throb in her right temple as she sat up to sip some water before taking in her surroundings.

  She was in a bedroom, but not the one she’d been in earlier with the blue décor. This room had cream walls and gold-colored bed linen. The furniture was also cream, delicate Regency style, rather than the heavy dark furniture in Leon’s bedroom.

  Her smile became self-derisive at the realization Leon’s hotel room was where she had intended being last night. Just not under these circumstances. Nor, in her earlier fantasies, had she been alone in bed.

  Leon wasn’t even in the same room, she acknowledged after a brief look round. The lighting was dim, just two small lamps switched on across the room, but it was enough for Carla to be able to see she was completely alone.

  But the chair pulled up as close as it could be to the side of the bed said that someone had been sitting beside her earlier, so perhaps…

  She turned her head on the pillow as a door opened to her right and Leon walked out of what was obviously an adjoining bathroom. Steam from a hot shower followed him into the bedroom as he was towel-drying his hair. Another white towel was wrapped loosely about his hips.

  Carla’s mouth went dry as she took in the drops of water on the tanned bareness of his muscular shoulders and chest. The latter was covered in a light covering of the same iron-gray hair as his head, a T-shaped dusting of hair across his pecs and abdomen, before it disappeared beneath the towel wrapped about his waist.

  Was Leon naked beneath the towel?

  Duh, if he’d just taken a shower, and he obviously had, then yes, of course he was naked under the towel.

  Was it wrong of her to wish the towel would loosen itself before falling off completely?

  She gave a soft snort of self-derision at her lascivious thoughts. She might be down, but she definitely wasn’t out!

  Leon looked up at the soft sound of her laughter, his pensive expression immediately brightening. “You’re awake.” He threw the towel he’d been using to dry his hair onto a chair before striding toward the bed. “And drinking.” He gave an approving nod toward the half-full glass of water she still held.

  Carla didn’t even blink, keeping an eye on the towel about his hips while placing the empty water glass on the side table. She was silently willing the towel to come loose as he walked toward her—

  “Are you checking me out?” Leon murmured incredulously once he was standing beside the bed.

  Her gaze shot up to meet his mocking one. “I… Well… Of course not.”

  “No?”

  She gave a frustrated frown. “Someone might have shot at us earlier but I’m not so out of it I can’t appreciate looking when there’s a half-naked man in the room!”

  “And she’s back,” Leon noted with a pleased grin.

  A grin, along with his tousled hair, that gave him an almost boyish appearance. He certainly no longer looked like the suave and sophisticated—the ruthless—Mafia capo Leon Brunelli.

  “I wasn’t aware I’d been anywhere,” Carla came back instantly.

  “I meant the Carla who takes no shit is back,” Leon drawled.

  She knew exactly what he’d meant. But she was enjoying the verbal exchange too much to lose it just yet by thinking, or talking, about the reason she was lying here with a gauze bandage on her temple and feeling as weak as a newborn kitten.

  But still one with claws, she hoped.

  “I never really went away,” she assured lightly.

  “So, what was the verdict?”

  She gave a puzzled frown. “Verdict?”

  “On the half-naked man in the room.”

  Carla moved her gaze slowly—very slowly—down the length of his body. From that tousled iron-gray hair and chiseled features, to his wide shoulders and muscular chest, lean waist, the towel covering his hips and the tops of his thighs, to his bare legs and feet beneath.

  Leon might be in his early forties, but it was obvious from the musculature and leanness of his body that he kept himself fit. His complexion was also a combination of a natural olive and an allover suntan.

  All over?

  Carla hadn’t seen any tan lines, even when he’d walked across the room. Which had to mean Leon had either sunbathed nude or he wore the tiniest pair of briefs.

  Whoa, now there was an image that was going to keep her awake nights.

  Her gaze moved up to meet his once again. “Gorgeous.”

  Leon hadn’t expected such bluntness. But he should have. Carla had been outspoken and honest to the point of insult from the moment they first met.

  Which meant she was being honest now too?

  Leon didn’t doubt the attraction between the two of them. That had also been apparent when they first met, and that same frisson of awareness zinged between them again every time they were in the same room. Aware of Leon’s interest, most women of his acquaintance would have played hard to get in the belief it would pique his interest more. He should have known Carla wouldn’t even attempt to play those types of games.

  He lifted one eyebrow. “Gorgeous enough to share that bed with you tonight? Only share the bed with you,” he clarified as her eyes widened. “I have every intention of staying in this room with you tonight anyway, and I’ve already had enough of sitting on that uncomfortable chair.”

  Carla frowned as an image flashed inside her head. The return of her memories? She certainly hoped so. “I remember you were covered in blood earlier…”

  “Your blood, yes.”

  “There goes the deposit on your wedding outfit!”

  “It wasn’t hired,” he drawled.

  Carla should have known that. Any more than Matteo’s suit had been hired, or any of the Steele brothers’.

  Hiring the wedding regalia was what normal people did for weddings, and this was just another reminder that all these men came from a different financial background than she did. If she had needed one. Which she hadn’t.

  “You… Oh God, I don’t remember the shooting at all, but I do remember I was violently ill earlier.” She gave a self-conscious groan. “Please tell me it wasn’t all over you and that’s why you had to take a shower?”

  “I took a shower because my daughter told me I needed one,” Leon reassured with a grimace. “But we did have to move to another bedroom.” He’d made sure it was another one of the rooms with a king-size bed rather than two singles.

  Carla lifted her hands to cover the blush in her cheeks. “How embarrassing!”

  Leon gave another grin. “The doc and I cleaned you up. But as first dates go, this has been pretty memorable.”

  “It wasn’t a date,” she defended. “We just happened to be at the same wedding.”

  “Anyway, the doc said you were sick because you had a reaction to the morphine he’d given you for the pain. He’s changed it to something oral and less…unacceptable to your system.” The doctor had made the change under threat of having
some morphine injected into him somewhere he really wouldn’t like it.

  Leon had been too furious at the time to be reasoned with. Carla was already in enough discomfort without adding to it.

  So far, the morphine replacement hadn’t caused the same violent physical reaction in Carla, and she didn’t seem to be in too much pain either.

  “That’s good.” She was still a little red in the face.

  She also hadn’t answered his question. “Do I get to share the bed or not?”

  Carla deliberately gave the question some thought. “That depends on whether or not the towel is coming off,” she challenged.

  “This towel?” Leon pulled it from about his waist and dropped it onto the carpet.

  Oh. My. God.

  Carla couldn’t stop staring at a completely naked Leon—and she’d been right, there were no tan lines.

  Not only was Leon naked beneath the towel, but his cock was also erect and fully engorged as it jutted up to his navel from a nest of trimmed salt-and-pepper curls.

  In response to her?

  She really hoped so.

  She also hoped that was as big as his cock got, because it had to be at least eight inches long and almost as thick around as her wrist, with a thick and pulsing vein running along its length. Heavy balls hung beneath it.

  She might be twenty-five, but her experience with men was still limited. It was comprised of just two lovers.

  One brief night had been with a guy when she was eighteen. At the time, she’d thought, as her friends were all doing it, she should punch that pesky V card too. She’d had plenty of time since to regret giving it to a man she hadn’t wanted to see again after that night.

  Then five years later, Benny came into her life. He had been light-hearted and fun, and the man she had thought she was going to marry, before he’d totally betrayed what she had considered to be the commitment of their engagement.

  Those mistakes aside, neither of those men had a cock anywhere near as long or thick—and beautiful—as Leon’s.

  “Carla?” he prompted gruffly, still leaving it to her to decide whether he joined her in bed or not.

  Chapter Six

  Carla steadily held Leon’s gaze as she turned back the duvet beside her.

  An invitation Leon didn’t hesitate to accept as he slid beneath that cover and lay down beside her. Once settled, he lifted up the arm nearest to her. “No sex,” he reiterated. “Tonight, I just want to hold you close and know that you’re safe.”

  Carla’s heart was thundering loudly as she scooted across the small distance that separated them and put her head against the silky warmth of his shoulder. Her arm automatically draped itself across the muscled hardness of his abdomen.

  “Better.” Leon gave a sigh of satisfaction as he settled back against the pillows with her held securely at his side. “Will you be able to sleep like this?”

  Would she?

  Leon had stated quite clearly that they weren’t having sex.

  The night she lost her virginity had been a single time of clumsy passion which had become even more awkward once the deed was done.

  So no cuddles there.

  Her ex-fiancé hadn’t been much of a cuddler either.

  Benny was more of a “wham-bam, thank-you, ma’am” kind of guy. Except he usually rolled over in the bed and went to sleep after sex, and without saying the thank-you!

  Just cuddling in bed with a man was a totally new concept to Carla. Not an unpleasant one. Not when it was Leon doing the cuddling. Being in his arms made her feel warm and safe. At the same time as she was totally physically aware of him and the heat given off by the naked length of his muscular body stretched out beside hers.

  “I think so,” she answered him. “You?”

  Leon couldn’t ever remember being in bed with a woman and just holding her in his arms. Even when he had been married to Rosa, for the year before she died giving birth to Natalia, the two of them had separate bedrooms. Rosa had never taken the initiative, so Leon had always visited her bedroom for sex before leaving to sleep in his own room. He preferred it that way.

  Leon had claimed the arrangement was because he didn’t want to disturb Rosa when he never knew at what time he would be able to fall into bed at night after taking care of his father’s business. But the truth was, Leon had liked his privacy, and his bedroom had provided exactly that.

  Theirs had been an arranged marriage, rather than a love match, between two powerful Mafia families. It was what the men of the Mafia did with their daughters. Rosa’s father had been the don of California and Leon’s the capo dei capi in New York. Rosa’s eldest brother, Angelo, had now taken over that role from his father, as Leon had from his own father.

  Oh, Leon had grown to care for Rosa, those feelings becoming genuine affection when she became pregnant with their child. He had been saddened when she died in childbirth, but not devastated on his own behalf, only on Natalia’s. His daughter had been denied a mother’s love and care. Despite being pressured into doing so, he had refused to even consider marrying again simply to give Natalia a mother and to increase his ties with the other dons. Instead, he had hired a nanny he could trust and whom Natalia grew fond of so that she had a female influence in her life.

  Which, Leon now realized with a wince, hadn’t exactly been fair to Rosa. She had only been nineteen when they married and she moved to live with him in New York, and just twenty when she died a year later. Rosa hadn’t been any more in love with Leon than he was with her, but if she had lived, that affection might have deepened between them, in time.

  As it was, Leon had spent the past twenty years bedding random women when he felt the need and ignoring them when he didn’t. Mostly, he ignored them.

  It had been impossible for him to ignore anything about Carla from the very first moment the two of them met.

  Having her lying in bed beside him now, the warmth of her body pressing against his, her breasts soft as a pillow against his side, the slight weight of her arm an anchor about his waist, was strangely both erotic and the most at peace Leon could ever remember feeling with anyone. In or out of bed.

  “I think so,” he echoed her reply to him.

  She snuggled in closer. “Good.”

  It was good, Leon agreed drowsily.

  More than good. It felt like perfection holding Carla in his arms. Like finding a quiet oasis in the midst of a raging storm.

  Leon didn’t need to open his eyes to know it was morning. He was aware of the daylight infiltrating his closed lids.

  But it wasn’t the impending daylight that had woken him.

  No, that was completely due to the feel of a slender hand fondling his balls!

  Carla’s hand.

  And it was the warmth of Carla’s breath he could feel traveling down the length of his chest, over his abdomen, and then lower—

  Dear sweet Mother of…!

  Leon’s back arched, his mind going completely blank, as the wet heat of Carla’s mouth engulfed the bulbous tip of his aroused cock. Her tongue was a moist rasp over and against that sensitive flesh, before she took the pulsing and heated length to the back of her throat. Her slender fingers curled around the inches she couldn’t fit inside her mouth, her other hand continuing to fondle the tautness of his sac.

  If Leon had thought holding Carla in his arms during the night was perfection, then this was exquisite torture. The softness of her hands and those caressing fingers, her tongue swirling and licking against and around his cock, was enough for Leon to feel the familiar tingle at the base of his spine as a warning of his impending release.

  He almost released the moment he raised the duvet to look down at Carla, her eyes black with her own arousal as she gazed back at him. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips were red and swollen about the girth of his cock. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” he rasped. “You were shot yesterday.”

  She arched a brow as she slowly lifted her mouth off his cock. “It’s a flesh wound.”
/>   “Even so…”

  “Do you really want me to stop?” she teased.

  “Fuck no!” Leon was pretty sure that if Carla stopped now, he was either going to spontaneously combust, something he hadn’t done since his wet dreams as a teenager, or suffer with blue balls all day. Neither or those things boded well for his temper or anyone who managed to piss him off today.

  She gave a husky laugh. “Then be about your business—which is lying back and thinking of England, or in your case, New York—and leave me to carry on with mine.”

  Leon chuckled as she gave a dismissive wave of her hand for good measure. In response, he obediently lowered the duvet and dropped his head back on the pillow to give himself up to the pleasure of having Carla’s hands and lips on him.

  Her mouth was hot and very wet about his cock, her fingers firm about the base of his hard length, her other hand once again cupping and caressing his balls.

  Leon had never before considered the latter as being an erogenous zone for him, but having Carla touch him so intimately, gently squeezing and rolling the heaviness of his balls inside his sac, made him groan and arch his back as waves of pleasure coursed through his whole body.

  The delving of her tongue into the slit at the top of his cock, accompanied by that squeezing and rolling of his balls, brought his release to an explosive climax.

  Carla kept her lips tight about Leon’s cock as she swallowed down the pulsing of that release to the back of her throat. She relished its thickness and creamy taste, sure she was becoming addicted to it as she continuing to suck and lap up that release until she was positive there was no more left inside him. For now.

  After all, Leon had said his plans to leave today had been changed and that she was staying right here with him.