Pink, page 20
She was already coming his way.
Arms wide open.
Smile huge.
“Daddy!”
“Hey, baby,” Lev greeted, stepping forward and kneeling down to catch his daughter that darted away from the crowd of kids. Her little backpack jumped with every step she took, and her sneakers lit up with pink and white lights along the soles. The high ponytail she asked for that morning swung back and forth, wild black ringlet curls bouncing every which way. Once she was close enough, his girl jumped and landed right into his waiting arms. He hugged her close, feeling her little arms tighten around his neck as her legs hooked around his chest. “How was your day, huh?”
“Good. I got a picture I made.”
“I have a picture,” he corrected.
Arely rolled her eyes, already sick of the new thing he was trying to do to correct the way she sometimes spoke. “Same thing.”
“But one is saying it right and one is—”
“I made a picture, Daddy.”
Well …
She didn’t say it the first way.
Or his way.
But she wasn’t wrong, either.
“Can’t wait to see it,” he told her, pressing quick kisses across her grinning, pinked cheek. The tighter she hugged him, the better he felt. It wasn’t like he had ever told anyone before, but he missed his kid every second that he wasn’t with her. “Love you, kiddo. Missed you.”
Arely grinned wide. “Love you, too.”
“So, hey …”
Trailing off, Lev dragged in a deep breath as he started to turn on the walkway to face the woman who had been waiting patiently and quietly to meet the little girl he held. Arely wasn’t looking for Gigi to be standing there when they turned around, but he was. Something twisted hard in his chest when he found Gigi shifting from foot to foot and chewing on her lower lip while she fidgeted with her manicure.
Like she was nervous.
She shouldn’t be.
“Somebody wanted to meet you—say hi and stuff,” Lev told Arely who was now trying to pull her backpack off while he balanced her in his arms. God, he sounded like a fucking idiot. “She’s a friend. I thought she could have supper with us tonight, maybe?”
“Huh?” Arely peered up from her bag, and her gaze landed right on Gigi who had pulled off her sunglasses and smiled hesitantly.
“Hi, Arely. I’m Gigi. Your dad told me so much about you. I wanted to say hello.”
From his arms, his daughter quieted. He thought maybe Arely would look to him, like she usually did, for direction but she didn’t. Her stare continued to linger on the woman just two feet away before Arely prattled out, “I like your hat.”
Gigi’s smile bloomed in the best way. “Yeah?”
“Like that show, Daddy. Miss Poppy—you know?”
Lev nodded. “Yeah, same kind of hat.”
He shot Gigi a wink.
She relaxed a bit.
Setting his girl to the walkway, Lev kept a tight hold on Arely’s tiny hand. She stared up at Gigi, her brow knotting like maybe she recognized the face looking back at her. But again, she simply rattled out something random.
As sweet as it was.
“You’re very pretty,” Arely whispered.
Gigi let out a breathless, soft laugh and dropped down to be at eye level with Arely. Reaching out a hand, she brushed one of Arely’s curls back over her shoulder. “And so are you—I wish I had curls like yours.”
“They always tangle.”
“Yeah?”
Arely shrugged. “But I like ‘em.”
“Me, too.”
His daughter tipped her head back, meeting his smile with her own when she asked, “Gigi is coming for supper?”
Ah, so she had heard him.
“She is, baby.”
“Okay!”
That was that.
Kids, man.
• • •
“Which color do you think would work?”
At Gigi’s question, Lev shot a peek over his shoulder to the girls currently huddled over the pile of items on the table. Or rather, Gigi’s things that Arely had managed to convince the woman to let her play with. Makeup, a bottle of nail polish, and a few other things that seemed foreign to Lev because he didn’t even know what they were called.
Women.
It wasn’t lost on him how comfortable his daughter was with Gigi, though. Or how easily they bonded over simple, pretty things. Not to mention, that he liked it.
“That one,” Arely said, pointing at something with glitter.
“Why?”
“It’s sparkly.”
“Guess I should have known that, huh?” Gigi asked, looking Lev’s way as though she knew he was watching them. “Somebody is all about the sparkles.”
“And yellow,” he added from his spot at the stove. “Loves yellow. You saw her room.”
The potatoes he had boiling would go well with the cheesy chicken currently baking in the oven, and it was one of a handful of things his kid didn’t complain too much about. Pickiness was a real thing with kids. A real thing he didn’t appreciate when he spent an hour or two cooking just to have Arely look at the food like he’d taken a dump on her plate.
But what could he do?
As he was told, it would pass.
“And pink, too,” Arely added, her tone offended. Likely because nobody had asked her. “I like pink!”
“Speaking of pink …” Gigi’s amused tone didn’t translate to Lev.
Lev cleared his throat, shoulders tensing as he put his attention back on the boiling potatoes. “As in the color or the … noun?”
Because in his life, pink was both.
A color.
And him.
To some people, anyway.
“What?” Arely asked.
“Nothing, baby.”
“Hey,” Gigi said, the sound of her fingernails tapping a beat to the table echoing in the kitchen, “how about you go find me that singing mirror you told me about, and I will show you how we put this lip gloss on, hmm?”
“Yes!”
A chair scraped hard against the floor before pounding feet followed, racing across the floor of his townhouse. Lev still didn’t move, even when the creak of a chair sounded, and Gigi approached from behind until she was leaning against the counter beside him.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I was just making a joke.”
He waved his free hand, muttering, “It’s not you asking. It’s her.”
Setting her chin into her palm, Gigi peered up at him through thick, dark lashes. “What do you mean?”
“All she knows about my work is that her dad looks after an important man named Andino. And that’s really it. She doesn’t understand that I have a whole moniker and persona when I step out of this house.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it? Sometimes, it feels like I’m just lying. Daddy gets to be her hero, right? But what about when she figures out her daddy is really just a paid bodyguard for one of the biggest criminals in North America?”
Gigi let out a woosh of air. “You’re going that deep?”
He laughed, as weak as it was. “I mean, someday she will.”
“Lev.”
“Hmm?”
He kept his attention on the boiling pot. It was made more difficult when Gigi reached out to drag the fingernails on her thumb and forefinger across his cheek and up to his jawline.
“Don’t those men have kids, too?”
Lev did look at her then, only to find her wide eyes waiting for him to answer expectantly. “I mean, they do. What does that—”
“Do you think their kids understand what they are or do? Do you think their little girls wake up one day and hate their fathers when all they knew was love? I mean, I assume they love their kids. Why wouldn’t they?”
“People just see criminals, Gigi. And it’s … fair.”
“That doesn’t change that they’re also people who have lives; people they love; homes they go to at the end of the day. Because that’s the thing, right? All she knows from you is love. Even I can see that. This whole place, this home … it’s just like a little world you’ve created for you and her. Worry about what you’re building inside here with her and less about what’s out there. I promise, this home and you are what she’ll remember the most.”
“Did your dad—”
“Never knew him. And that’s not okay. Dads are so important to their daughters. More than they realize. You’re the first person she is going to look to when she’s learning how to let other people—boys—treat her, you know?”
Lev blinked, heavy in his chest again. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Do,” she replied. “It’s the only thing that matters.”
Without waiting for a reply, she straightened to her full height, leaned in, and gave him a soft kiss on the underside of his jaw as little footsteps echoed from the hallway nearing the kitchen. He turned his head to capture her lips with his own, their kiss slow and steady, building one stroke at a time, until she pulled away first.
Just in time, too.
Her pink cheeks told the truth when Arely ran back into the kitchen with her mirror in hand. The toy was already singing one of the three songs it had prerecorded.
“Found it!”
“Awesome,” Gigi said, her voice lighter than before. “You good?”
Lev nodded. “Perfect. And hey?”
“Yeah?”
Too quiet for his kid to hear, he asked, “Are you staying tonight?”
“I mean, I didn’t plan—”
“You don’t have to, I just wondered.”
“I only need to make a call. Kayla can handle the rest.”
Lev grinned. “A whole team at your beck and call, huh?”
“It’s not always to my benefit.”
Well, Lev didn’t know much about that.
“Stay tonight,” he murmured.
Gigi turned so her back was to the cupboard. Staring down at the floor, she folded her arms over her chest while the noise of Arely climbing back into her chair echoed through the kitchen. “I will. But will it confuse—”
“She’s going to be up and gone by seven. Nessa is picking her up for daycare. She works there, too, so it helps when my schedule doesn’t always work out for me to take her. I think you can stay in bed until then, right?”
“Well—”
“I can make sure you do,” he added, his tone dipping lower.
That pink flush came back to Gigi’s cheeks in a flash. It had him laughing, even when her arm swung out and the back of her hand smacked his side.
“You’re terrible.”
“Hey, I’m just making this even.”
“What did I do for it to need to be even?” she asked. “And since when are we keeping score?”
“We’ve always kept score, and you know it. Also, you’re about to introduce my kid to lip gloss. Sparkly lip gloss. That is a hell even men like me don’t deserve.”
Gigi pursed her lips, nodding. “That’s fair.”
Yep.
• • •
Lev’s gaze drifted between the phone in his hand—and the last text his boss sent—and the little girl snoring away in her bed. His mind, however, bounced back and forth like a ping pong ball from one thing to the next.
The question his daughter asked as he put her to bed; the woman down the hall, showering in his master bathroom; the man waiting for a response from him.
“Will Gigi come back to play again?”
Lev hadn’t known what to say. So instead of fumbling about like an idiot with the wrong words, he simply told his daughter, “I sure hope so.”
Because he did.
And that was terrifying.
He was a man who had spent the majority of his life, but certainly the last few, in a bubble of privacy and protection. Mostly for his kid’s sake. Gigi wasn’t quite the same when her entire life was focused on being a public figure.
How should they deal with that?
He didn’t know.
As for Andino …
That was a different matter.
Lev stepped out of his daughter’s room, closing the door as he went to dull any noise from down the hall, so she would have a decent sleep. Frankly, a hurricane wouldn’t wake that kid up, so he wasn’t exactly too worried.
He put his attention back on the phone in his hand, and Andino’s last text. It simply read Marco Farginpane is flying in next week from Cali for a sit down with me. His new business partner will apparently also be making an appearance. Your presence was requested. Specifically. Be at the restaurant tomorrow first thing. We have a problem.
Lev didn’t need Andino’s last sentence. He already knew they had problems. Shit, he saw that coming when he ran into Jensen Todrey at Gigi’s hotel suite.
The fucking asshole. Something was off with that guy. Beyond the obvious. Tonight just wasn’t the time for him to deal with it.
Sure thing, boss, Lev typed back.
Andino didn’t reply.
That was fine.
Lev’s attention went to the last thing he had to deal with for the evening. The woman who was currently naked and wet in his shower. No doubt, what remained unsaid between the two of them about his job for Andino and how it related to the men she had been having lunch with would soon be all out in the open.
He had to tell her.
It was only fair.
Right then, though, he only had one thing on his mind. And that was getting as close to Gigi as he possibly could while he had the chance because it had become apparent that the private moments they had together were far and few between.
He wasn’t wasting tonight.
Not one second.
Gigi was humming a tune he didn’t recognize when he stepped into the steam-filled bathroom. He didn’t surprise her—couldn’t with the antifog glass surrounding the large shower. She had a perfectly fine view of him coming into the room and stripping down to join her without even asking. Just like he had the best view of her soapy breasts, and the way the suds trailed down over her curves and the length of her legs.
How this godly creature wanted anything to do with the likes of him, Lev would never understand. But she did and he was determined to give her anything she asked.
Or as much as he could.
At that moment, he knew exactly what she wanted. It was all in her eyes. How she stared at him when her gaze drifted from the dark hair dusting his chest straight down to his cock that sprung out from his boxer-briefs, already hard, when he shoved them to the floor. Her throat flexed with a swallow, and that teasing tongue of hers licked at the seam of her lips when he stepped out of the pile of clothes.
Lev entered the shower, the sting of the hot water barely even registering to his senses as he passed right under the heavy spray to get to the woman he wanted. She was already reaching for him, too. The fluffy loofah she’d been using with his bar of soap hit the floor the second his hands found her wrists.
In a breath, he had her against the wall. Pinned with her hands on both sides of her head, her pretty lips parted for his promise of a kiss. He nipped her lip instead, not quite ready to taste her when he hadn’t even taken the time to properly admire her wet and supple and smelling like him.
That did something to Lev. A good kick to the gut, if there was such a thing. The fact she used his soap, despite it being a crisp, male scent … it made his dick harder.
Pulling her hands higher to the wall, he held them both with only one hand. His other explored her. Fingertips gliding down her cheek, over her quivering chin, and then to her lips where she parted them to take the digits in to suck.
“Are we doing this?” he asked, voice husky with need but he had to maintain that control. For just a second longer. “This—us. Are we?”
The pad of his thumb dragged down her bottom lip after he pulled his fingers from her mouth, so she could speak.
“Yeah, Lev. We’re doing this.”
That drove him crazy, too.
Not that she knew.
Without prompting, she told him, “I’m on the shot. I want you tonight. I want you in me … just you, bare.”
Oh, he wanted that, too.
More than she understood.
His hand kept its exploration over the curve of her right breast and across her nipple that had hardened into a tight peak. Her soft hiss when his thumb flicked her nipple had him grinning, but the way her stomach clenched when his fingers danced lower to her navel had his mouth watering.
Already, he could hear the way she’d moan. See her in the throes of her first orgasm of the night. Feel her squeezing the come right out of his dick once he got her on top and let her work his cock how she liked the best in his bed.
“Nobody touches you but me,” he murmured, his gaze snapping up to meet hers. “Nobody, Gigi. You hear me? I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill any man who puts his hands on you the way I do.”
If that declaration scared her, she didn’t show it. It wasn’t a lie, either.
She dragged in a ragged breath, her soapy tits rising and falling heavily. “Then please touch me.”
His fingers tapped just above the hood of her clit, the wet sound bouncing off the walls and then drowning in the rushing water. “Here?”
“There. Everywhere. Just touch me.”
How could he deny her?
Especially looking like she did.
Impossible.
Lev’s hand dipped between her widening thighs at the same time he closed the distance between them to get the other thing he knew she wanted. His kiss. She moaned a prayer against his lips as his fingers worked to fill her pussy. Two fingers, then three.
“Wider,” he urged.
She did, parting those thighs, and her mouth, and even her eyes, too. All of her opened to him, and he found it overwhelming. Her sounds, the way her lips trembled against his with each of his kisses, and even the softness of her pussy grinding into his hand for more.
The speed at which he went from stuffing her full of his fingers to lifting her leg to hook around his hip, so he could fill her with something else shocked even him. He just couldn’t wait any longer, the need to be inside her clawing at his chest in the worst goddamn way.
