“Please don’t push me.” I snatched the laptop from him.
“Halo.” He stood, and the space between us shrank. “I know you’re a fighter, and I know you’ve got reasons. But I’m asking you to come with me.”
I studied his face, searching for the flex, the PR angle, the stunt. Nothing. Just steady eyes, locked in, not playing.
“This is too much. We barely know each other,” I said quietly, eyes everywhere but on him.
He glanced at the women, then back at me. “You wanna play that card in front of company, Lo?”
He wasn’t wrong. For somebody I “barely knew,” he’d had his face between my thighs and his hands in all my business. We were very familiar. I shuddered thinking about it.
“And too much for you? Nah.” He tucked a piece of my wild hair behind my ear, fingers lingering just long enough to disturb my breathing. “This is just right for you. But talk to me. What can I do to ease your mind?”
I shrugged, and he pulled me into his body, looking down trying to read past my mouth and into my brain.
“Look, I want you on my arm tonight. Real fucking bad,” he said. “But if you really don’t want to go, I’ll respect that and leave the same way I came.”
“And then what?”
“What you mean, and then what?”
“Does that mean you go with someone else?”
He scoffed, smiling and shaking his head, until he realized I was dead serious.
“No, it means I go alone and take my L on tonight. I’m a baller, baby. All I know how to do is regroup and pivot. I ain’t trippin.”
The shorter woman cleared her throat. “DaVinci, we need at least four hours if you want her ready by six.”
“Four hours?” My voice pitched higher than I intended. “What kind of event needs four hours of preparation?”
“The kind that his mother plans,” the woman with locs said, already unpacking brushes and curling irons. “I’m Tangie, by the way, his cousin. This is Unique.”
“We’re just going to enhance what’s already there,” Unique added, studying my face with the intensity of a surgeon. “Work with your features, not against them. Well, that is, if you decide to go.”
“What’s it going to be, baby?” he asked.
I exhaled. “I guess I’ll go. I can watch my derby footage later.”
Tessa was going to lose her entire mind when I told her. Hell, I was losing mine over the fact that he was doing all this for me.
His whole face shifted. Not cocky, not playful, just glad, relieved. “Yeah?”
“I’d better have the best night. Good food, good wine, I want to dance too. It better feel like prom.”
“Go shower,” DaVinci said, slapping me on the ass with a sly grin on his face. “Wash your hair. Tangie and Unique got the rest.”
“You’re very bossy, you know that?”
“I do,” he shot back, grinning, fully aware of the chokehold he had on me. I hadn’t even had the dick yet. I was tripping.
I opened my mouth to fire something back, but Unique cut in. “Honey, we’re on a clock. You can flirt with him later. Right now, we need you clean and moisturized so we can work our magic.”
I looked at them, then at the garment bag hanging on my coat rack, then back at him. He was just watching me, waiting to see if I’d run or lean in.
I headed to the bathroom. Before I closed the door, I heard him settle onto my couch, chatting with Tangie and Unique about timing, about the dress, about making sure everything was perfect.
I closed the door and leaned against it. I needed to calm down. Something in my spirit said he had something up his sleeve. It was just the type of man he was, dialed the fuck in on everything pertaining to me.
