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 really 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.
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
