Before Page 7

So much of it, she was going to explode.

  Surely.

  “Stay still,” she heard him say as he pulled his fingers from her wet mouth. “This is my favorite part.”

  The zipper rattle had her shivering but with one of his palms flat to her back, he kept her upper half low to the bed. Denim shuffled and a wrapper crackled. That palm of his lifted from her back when the blunt head of his cock pressed into her tight slit.

  His favorite part was watching his cock fill her inch by inch while his hands grabbed tight to her ass and hips to spread her wide while he did it. His fingers ached from how deep they dug into her muscles but God ... it felt so fucking good, too.

  He was still big enough to make her squirm.

  To have her clawing at the bed while he made her wait to be stretched to the brim and dying for him to just fuck her. All his praises and the way his tone choked with huskiness had her whimpering into his bedsheets as she clutched at anything to keep her grounded.

  Every single one of his look at you and take that cock, baby wrapped her tighter and tighter until she was a coil ready to break. And when he did finally start pounding into her, Gigi was already flying.

  So fucking high.

  This man was a drug.

  One hit wasn’t enough.

  • • •

  “You know, when you ask a woman to stay the night,” Gigi muttered against the warmth of Lev’s shoulder in his bed, “she shouldn’t have to wake up to someone pounding on your door at ...” She lifted her head just enough to see the digital clock on the bedside table flashing with a time that surprised even her. “How is it only six?”

  On another day, a six AM morning wouldn’t be that early for Gigi, but it was when she had half a dozen drinks the night before, and then spent several hours riding a cock she was sure to feel for a week.

  God.

  She did appreciate the size of Lev’s dick, though.

  No lies there.

  The wall of muscled, warm man beside her shifted with a groan. His arm stretched out before he grabbed the clock and yanked it closer like he was trying to distinguish the time through the darkness of the bedroom. Like he couldn’t see it perfectly fine—same as her.

  “Go answer your door,” she said in a laugh.

  “Kind of don’t want to move.”

  “Me, either, but it’s not my apartment, so ...”

  She left the obvious unsaid.

  Lev groaned.

  Fuck him for it, too.

  It only made her wet.

  Again.

  The knocking continued, however.

  Actually, it got louder.

  “Persistent fuckers,” he grumbled, kicking off the fluffy duvet. Which unfortunately only took the blanket away from her. She gave him a fake glare from the pillow she’d claimed as hers to use for the night, but all he offered her back was a simpering shrug before he tossed the blanket back over her form. “At least it was only someone knocking that woke you up—your snoring kept me up past three.”

  Gigi gasped, the sound distinct and sharp in the quiet apartment. “Lies. I do not snore!”

  He headed for the open bedroom doorway, grabbing a pair of sweatpants from a laundry basket near the door. Over his shoulder, he tossed back, “You do ... but I didn’t mind.”

  Warmth filled her body all the way down to the tips of her toes and fingers. She could feel the heat in her cheeks, too, but she muffled her embarrassed laughter into the pillow. Honestly, she couldn’t be that ashamed that he’d heard her snoring in her sleep.

  Shit, he had her spread wide.

  Tasted every part of her.

  Saw her at her most raw.

  What did it matter if she snored?

  “Probably the building manager,” she heard him say, his voice drifting further away.

  A memory flooded through her sleepy mind without warning. That was right—he mentioned helping the old woman who managed the building and tenants for the landlord when he could. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the lady the night before when she poked her head out of her door to ask if they needed anything the night before, but she did remember Lev speaking warmly to and about her.

  Rolling to her back in the comfortable queen-size bed, Gigi revealed in every delicious ache that woke her up with each movement she made. From the way, her toes cracked when she flexed her feet, to the way she could still feel Lev’s hands bending her body to his will while pounding into her deep and hard until she moaned her way through another orgasm.

  Sleep had come so easily after that.

  Too easy, maybe.

  She had a good mind to see if she might be able to get the man up for another round—maybe they could put his shower to use, seeing as how she still felt the remnants from their fucking the night before. Not that she was complaining.

  The voices that filtered into the bedroom stopped her thoughts right in their tracks. Any and all consideration of sex flew right out the window just like that.

  Shame.

  “Lev Arthur Arsov?” she heard asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Officer Ritchie, Mr. Arsov. Sorry to bother you this early in the morning but considering we just got the information of your address this morning, and the circumstances, we really didn’t think you would want us to wait to find you. And this is my partner—”

  “Is this about the fucking bar?” she heard Lev ask. “Because I already talked to the cops that came in to interview Nickie’s employees. I was told that was it; I wouldn’t be needed for any further statements. A bit early for you to be knocking on my door for shit that’s already done and over with, yeah?”

  A throat cleared.

  The silence stretched on.

  “Mr. Arsov, we’re not here about ... that incident.”

  The officer continued stumbling around whatever he was trying to spit out while Lev barked a bit more of his morning attitude onto the man. All the while, Gigi couldn’t ignore the nosy side of her personality that urged her to get out of bed and closer to the conversation happening on the other side of the apartment. She at least had a good enough mind to bring the duvet from the bed, wrapping it around her naked body like a makeshift dress to cover the bits she didn’t want police officers to see.

  Outside the bedroom, she leaned out the end of the short hallway to peer around the corner. Her presence wasn’t missed by the two officers standing just outside the apartment’s front door with their hands resting in the pockets of their chest vests. Even Lev glanced over his shoulder at her, and while she might have admired the definition in his naked, toned back and how the muscles flexed as he turned to look at her ... she was more concerned with the matching frowns the officers wore.

  “There a problem?” she asked.

  The taller of the two officers smiled but quickly put his attention back on Lev. “Mr. Arsov, I think you should accompany us down to the station so that we can explain this situation further ... in private. It’s a delicate matter.”

  “Am I going to find myself under arrest when I get there?”

  The shorter of the two officers chuckled. “No, sir.”

  “Well—”

  “It’s all right, Lev,” Gigi spoke up. “I can see myself out.”

  He only nodded, but otherwise, said nothing. She really didn’t need him to. The entire strange situation spoke volumes all on its own.

  First, a bar shooting. This time, cops showed up in the morning. As much as she liked sleeping with Lev, she had to admit ... the guy seemed to find trouble. By the looks of it, far more often than he probably should.

  Maybe she should be grateful that her flight to Paris was only a few short days away. At least in Europe, thoughts of this man wouldn’t follow her day in and day out ... or chase her all the way to a dive bar to see him one more time.

  Right?

  What was done was done.

  That’s what she had to tell herself.

  Seven

  THE COPS that showed up at Lev’s apartment had
n’t lied. Their reason for being there had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting at the bar despite the fact he couldn’t think of a single thing else for their presence.

  Certainly not the reason.

  The blue-eyed, six-month-old reason currently being held across the police station in the arms of a social worker, that was. Even from thirty feet away, he’d known it was her when the woman brought the baby girl in through the front doors. Not because the police officer he waited with said so, but rather ... a part of him felt it.

  His heart kickstarted.

  Blood rushed in his ears.

  Space got smaller.

  From all the way across the room, he knew that baby was his. His daughter—a child made from his blood. Her big blue eyes, wide-eyed despite the early morning hour, peered all around with the wonder and curiosity only a baby could have.

  “Six months old,” the officers had explained shortly after they arrived at the station and got him sat down on the other side of one of their desks. For a moment, he thought the two of them were about to play a game of good cop, bad cop with him. It wouldn’t be the first time and at that point, Lev was still convinced they brought him there about the shooting. God. He was such a fucking idiot. “Her mother had a rough time after her birth according to the grandmother. She voluntarily entered a facility three months ago ... she struggled with addiction and mental health before and after the baby was born, but it got worse after Arely arrived. Unfortunately, she came out of the seventy-two-hour hold and was found identified a week later after a fatal overdose.”

  They’d shown him a picture.

  Of the mother.

  And the child that was apparently his.

  Sitting in that hard chair, with officers across from him that seemed to both watch his every move and stare at him with a sympathy he’d never been offered before, Lev didn’t know what to do. He was struck glancing between the two pictures on the desk.

  One of a newborn wrapped in a pink blanket.

  The other, of a woman he remembered too well though her disappearance in his life hadn’t even been a blip on his radar. Dawn Marks was just ... a chick he slept with occasionally and nothing more, really. He hadn’t the time for anything else, and she never suggested she wanted more from him over the ten or so months that they’d been friends.

  “Was she just a hook-up or—”

  He understood the officer’s curiosity and didn’t blame the man for it. “And a friend who lived in the building. I didn’t know she ... had any issues. Not like what you’re saying. She didn’t let on to me. We just had fun when she came to drink at the bar. I mean, we were basically going to the same place when we went home, you know? It was a week after she moved out of the building before I even knew that she was gone. It wasn’t like we were close. I didn’t get offended that she hadn’t said goodbye.”

  But fuck.

  He was mad right then.

  So goddamn mad.

  That was his kid. She got pregnant with his kid, said nothing, and then left ... just gave his baby to someone else to take care of when she couldn’t do it. He tried to sympathize with the situation she must have been faced with and the way she probably felt at the time. Hopeless. Agonized. At the very end of her rope, clearly.

  Maybe she thought he wouldn’t help.

  Or that he wouldn’t want the child.

  “Arely, you said?” he remembered asking.

  Although which officer he asked, he couldn’t say. By then, the room had closed all around him and the whooshing in his ears was far worse.

  Arely Dawn Marks, they explained. That was what her mother named her just before she signed custody of the barely week-old baby—at the time—over to her mother. The pregnancy hadn’t been easy, according to the information the police had and what his daughter’s grandmother explained.

  And then her grandmother got sick. To the point that she couldn’t care for a six-month-old that was starting to move and explore more than she ever had before. The late nights were hard enough, but add in a baby starting to explore and do what babies did, and well ... it was too much for her to handle.

  “At least,” the kinder of the two officers told him shortly before his child arrived at the police station, “her mother had enough understanding of her situation to let the child’s grandmother know who the father was if she needed to find you. All she had was a name and a bar. When the grandmother handed the baby over to social services, it took them a couple of weeks to find you.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Here we are, Mr. Arsov.”

  That was that.

  Then, his baby arrived with the social worker. Just like that, Lev no longer cared to talk about the details because as soon as he laid eyes on her, he knew she was his. And without a doubt, with no question, he had suddenly never wanted anything more in his life than his child. To hold her because he was sure she was scared—things kept changing for her, right? She was only six months old. She had to be scared.

  That killed him inside.

  Because he could have made that better.

  Months ago.

  Of course, he heard the officer’s warnings that there was still a possibility the baby girl wasn’t his as he stood from the chair and headed for the woman holding his child. He understood when they said a DNA test would have to be done, but the grandmother was clear that Dawn Marks had been adamant about the identity of the father.

  Him.

  She had eyes so blue. So blue he drowned in them. Because they were his.

  His eyes.

  Her stare matched his, and it was the first and most prominent thing in his mind as he reached to take her from the woman without even asking if he could. Frankly, he didn’t think he should have to ask—she was his. She belonged with him.

  The social worker did hand Arely over. She kept hold of the pink and white checkered diaper bag that, thankfully, seemed quite full of ... things.

  Holy shit.

  What did babies even need? She probably wasn’t being breastfed, so what did he feed her?

  All those worries drifted away when he had the baby girl in his arms, and his much larger form swallowed her whole. The room became less crowded and loud, and the beats of his own heart started to overtake that anxious rushing in his ears.

  She stared up at him.

  Pretty blue.

  “Hey,” Lev whispered, all too aware of the people watching him but not caring at all what they saw. “Hey, baby girl. I’m your daddy—yeah, I am.”

  “Well, we’ll have to—”

  “It’ll only take a couple of days for the DNA test to come back,” the officer was quick to interject before the social worker could finish whatever she was going to say. “But we’re fairly certain and ... they do say girls take after their dads, don’t they?”

  Lev didn’t know.

  He didn’t know anything about babies.

  But he knew this child was his.

  “Arely Dawn,” he murmured, rubbing the pad of his thumb over her rosy, chubby cheek. It made her smile. He made her smile, and then she laughed, too. “Who’s the prettiest girl in the whole wide world? It’s you, yes it is ... hey, my girl.”

  Her little fingers wrapped tightly around his thumb, and she smiled even wider. He swore to fucking God his heart came right out of his chest and landed in her tiny, chubby hands. The pale yellow flowers on her long-sleeve shirt matched the color of the soft pants someone had dressed her in. And the flower on the headband keeping the dark curls out of her eyes.

  Weren’t most babies bald?

  Not his, apparently.

  She had a whole crown of dark curls—the same as his, if he let the mess grow out. It looked so much cuter on her.

  “Her foster family will be happy to have you visit up until the point when we can prove paternity as well as you can provide proof to show you’re capable of taking care of the baby. I’m sure we can speed up the process considering the circumstances and—”

  All at once
, Lev tightened his hold on Arely, turned his entire body away from the woman he’d just taken his child from, and made no effort to hide the venom in his voice when he said, “You’re not taking her from me. I just got her. She’s mine. Look at her. She’s my child.”

  He’d already missed six whole months. He wouldn’t miss one more fucking day. That was a promise.

  The social worker blinked, her helpless, silent stare passing between him, the baby in his arms, and the officers standing in a very quiet police station.

  “She’s mine,” he said again, the words thicker in his throat because they had to understand. They just had to. “She belongs with me—whatever I need to do, I’ll do it. But can’t she stay with me now?”

  He dared them to tell him no. Most of all, he wanted any of them to look at the baby in his arms now happily chewing on the string of the hoodie he had pulled on before leaving the apartment to be decent, and tell him she shouldn’t be with him.

  Her father.

  “Please,” he said quietly, “let her come home with me.”

  He didn’t have the things she needed. He knew that. Couldn’t he figure it out? So, she needed a place to sleep. Okay, done. Somehow.

  What did it matter?

  She could sleep in his fucking arms, and he wouldn’t close his eyes if that’s what it took.

  And then, the officer who had been the one to break the news, spoke up quickly to say, “We’ll figure it out. I’m sure ... we can figure something out, can’t we?”

  That made his whole day better.

  The baby girl in his arms, though?

  She suddenly became his entire life in seconds and although he had only been holding her for minutes, and knew of her existence for an hour, he didn’t want to remember what it was like before he knew she was there.

  “Brrrr,” the baby babbled, drool wetting her pink lips as she smiled wide when his attention came back to her. “Bababababa.”

  She had two teeth on the bottom that she showed off with her unrestrained laughter when he blew kisses. Not once did he consider that he was twenty-four and struggling to survive when all he had to take care of was himself. Not once did he think you didn’t even want kids, Lev. She was there now. In his arms. His.