In The Pink: (Valleywood Series Book #23, page 1
In the Pink
Virginia Kelly
Copyright © 2023 by Lynn Van Dorn
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Edited by Jood Singer
Cover Art by Cate Ashwood
Contents
Also by Virginia Kelly
Writing as Lynn Van Dorn
Synopsis
Dedication
1. Beau Likes What He Sees
2. Dmitri Meets the Neighbors
3. Beau Learns the Tea
4. Dmitri Is Assaulted
5. Beau Pinkus: No Omega Too Big Or Small
6. Dmitri Can't Find Good Help
7. Beau Gets Some Discipline
8. Dmitri Gets His Way
9. Beau's Safe Word Is Pineapple
10. Dmitri Is Done
11. Beau Is Up For Anything
12. Dmitri Is Reluctantly Impressed
13. Beau Is Put On Display
14. Dmitri Wants To See Beau Shatter
15. Beau Has Had Enough
16. Dmitri Misplaces Something
17. Beau Is Birdnapped
18. Dmitri Visits His Father
19. Beau Is Retrieved
20. Dmitri Is Seussed
21. Beau And Dmitri Conduct Negotiations
22. Dmitri's Bathroom Is a Work Of Art
23. Beau Comes Clean
24. Dmitri Makes No Promises
25. Beau Likes His Captivity
26. Dmitri Wants Rules
27. Beau Fails To Watch a Movie
28. Dmitri Is Never Enough
29. Beau Gets the Vapors
30. Dmitri Faces Facts
31. Beau Listens To a Story
32. Dmitri Stakes a Claim
33. Beau Gets a Biology Lesson
34. Dmitri Needs Beau's Assistance
35. Beau Forgets Something Important
36. Dmitri Gets the Point Of Knots
37. Beau Defends Pickles
38. Dmitri Changes His Mind About Pickles
39. Beau Loses His Temper
40. Dmitri Doesn't Have a Stopwatch
41. Beau Makes a Promise
42. Dmitri Is Not Pleased
43. Beau Gets Everything He Ever Wanted
Dmitri Gets the Epilogue
Also by Virginia Kelly
Writing as Lynn Van Dorn
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Also by Virginia Kelly
Forbidden Desires (with Piper Scott)
Clutch
Bond
Mate
Forbidden Desires Spin-off Series (with Piper Scott)
Swallow
Magpie
Finch
Peregrine
Raven (coming November 2023)
Valleywood
In The Pink
Writing as Lynn Van Dorn
North Shore Stories
Be My Mistake
Damage Control
Daddy Issues
Out Of Control
Misconduct
The Oleander Chronicles
Reunion
Rebound
Misconduct
Novels
Wild By Nature
Now You See Me
Royally Screwed
Straight To the Heart
Shorts
Rule 47
Meet Me At Midnight
Synopsis
You’d think winning the Powerball would be the most exciting thing to happen in a poor flamingo shifter’s life, and it was, until my family moved from Florida swampland to glamorous Valleywood. Swimming pools, movie stars, and every flavor of supernatural you can think of. Where a family of shifters can live in a huge pink mansion and not worry about normal human riffraff.
Unfortunately, the famous actor next door, Dmitri Barlovski, is not only the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, but also turns out to be a territorial swan shifter. When my little brother gets caught playing in the swan’s koi pond, things escalate between me and Dmitri until I punch him in the face and he threatens to have me put in jail. Fun times.
As Dmitri and I get to know each other, different kinds of sparks start flying between us despite a ton of reasons why we don’t belong together. His dad, a goose mafia kingpin, hates me. I’m not Dmitri’s type—at all. We’re not even the same species.
None of that matters because Dmitri and I belong together and no one will stand in our way. Not Dmitri’s homicidal father, two terrifying cassowary bodyguards, or my well-meaning but crazy relatives. Not even Dmitri himself when he tells me over and over he’ll never have a mate.
In the Pink is #23 in the multi-author series Valleywood. It’s an urban fantasy MM romance with a redneck flamingo shifter, a Valleywood movie star swan shifter with stabby tendencies, murderous geese, massive Australian bodyguards, a flamboyance of nosy—and noisy—flamingos, a sex demon, and really excellent shrimp salad.
Dedication
This book is for my mother, who told me all about rosy spoonbills.
1
Beau Likes What He Sees
“It’s pink!” Crystal squeals.
“It could be painted over, of course,” Connie, our real estate agent, says. “We could even work the cost of that into an offer. I can make some calls and get an estimate of the price of repainting the exterior.” The house is two stories and in a hacienda style, complete with those red tiles that look like a bunch of flower pots cut in half. It’s also very, very pink. But in a good way, if you know what I mean.
“How ’bout we just take a look at the inside, first?” I already know that if we buy this mansion that the outside color won’t be getting changed. The only one in the family who doesn’t like pink is Henny, but that’s because she’s a misunderstood and downtrodden kid who wants to do nothing but contemplate the misery that is existence. And make sure we’re getting a good enough interest rate on the money we don’t have invested. But mostly she looks into the void and dares it to look back.
She, of course, would paint the house black.
Everyone says she’ll grow out of it, but I kinda dig on her adorable emo existence. It’s cute. And I know her dark little soul loves me back because she forgives me when I forget and call her Henny instead of whatever she’s decided to call herself this week. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to deadname her or anything, but she never picks something easy to remember and she changes it before I can try to memorize it. This week I think it’s Night Moon Goddess, which sounds like an anime character to me. I’m sure she’ll be changing it soon because of the look she gave me when I pointed that out.
Connie holds up a set of keys and shakes them a little. “Alright, then. Let’s go.”
The place we’re looking at is the sixth one today. I had no idea buying a mansion in Valleywood would be so difficult. Well, I mean, it used to be impossible, due to us not having a pot to piss in and all stuffed inside a double wide in a trailer park in Homestead. That’s south of Miami and smack dab near the Everglades in case you don’t know Florida. It was cramped, but it was home, and near the water. That’s really important.
Then I won the Powerball. I was the only winner in the Powerball. I was the only winner in the Powerball after it had gone unwon for months on end. Henny told me to take the cash payout, so I did, and then we had taxes to pay, but I found someone to help us—okay, to help Night Moon Goddess—get it all done nice and legal. Henny already had a plan in place for if we ever won the lottery, who knew? But her ideas seemed pretty solid to me, so we followed them step by step. After getting my hands on the money, although not in cash because I think it would take up a whole pole barn to store and that’s just a fire waiting to happen, even in Florida, I invested it where she told me and put the rest in an account that earns interest. I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but that’s why I have Henny.
The next item on Henny’s list was to move the family far away and not tell anyone where we were going. Crystal suggested California, because it was about as far as you could get from Florida and still be somewhere warm. I thought Hawaii would be good but Zeke started chanting “Valleywood. Valleywood. Valleywood,” until the rest of the family joined in, even Henny, so I gave in and here we are.
“It’s been a while since the home has been decorated, but I think an interior designer would do absolute wonders here. This is one of the original Valleywood mansions and it’s almost a hundred years old. There’s a four-car garage, two swimming pools, and an inner courtyard. There are three bedrooms downstairs, including the master suite, and an additional five bedrooms on the second floor.”
Enough rooms so none of us have to share any more, thank fuck. I’ve been sleeping on a futon ever since the twins were born, and they’re eight now. My back is looking forward to a real bed. Not to mention somewhere I can have sex without an audience. It’s been a long-ass eight years, let me tell you. That and Zeke sleeps on the couch in the living room with me and he snores like a motherfucker.
Or he did, I should say. Lately we’ve been staying at this rental p
Most of the mansions we’ve looked at so far have been huge but with barely more bedrooms than we had at home. We don’t need an indoor hockey rink, for fuck’s sake. Just some place quiet to sleep for once in our lives.
Connie opens the massive front door with a flourish. “Ta da!” The door is solid oak and looks like it could withstand siege engines.
Crystal, Henny, and I follow Connie inside to an entry all done in pink marble. Crystal coos happily and Henny makes a face, but she isn’t outright objecting so far.
Nothing looks all that dated to me, but what would I know? The kitchen is huge. Hell, everything is huge, including all those bedrooms. And after seeing the bathroom in the master suit, which will become the Beau suite once we move in, I know we’re going to buy this place. Unless Henny’s eagle eyes see something I don’t.
“It’s very pink,” is the worst she can come up with, and she’s not wrong, but still. Not liking pink is unnatural.
Whoever owned this place before us was a huge fan of pink. All the shades from dogwood blossoms to the inside of a conch to that dark magenta you get in the sky just before the sun sets and everything in between. It’s a metric fuckton of pink, but like I said, in a good way.
“I know,” Crystal gushes, looking around her with hearts in her eyes. She’s already in love with the place, I can tell.
What clinches the deal, however, is the indoor pool at the back of the house. There is another pool in the central courtyard, very narrow and rectangular. Doable, yes, but when Connie opens the door to the indoor pool all our jaws drop open.
Connie beams. “I saved the best for last. Now is this a pool or what?”
We told Connie straight off that we needed as many bedrooms as possible and a big pool. I have no fucking clue where the nearest wetlands are. We can’t just fly a few miles and be somewhere we can feel at home. But this… this is beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
All of the exterior walls and the roof are glass. Inside someone, who now has my eternal gratitude, had a whole tropical paradise built. One of the interior walls is covered rocks to make it look like a cliff or some shit and there is an honest to fuck waterfall that drops into the pool. From the pool flows a cross between a natural stream and one of those waterpark lazy river things. It rejoins the pool, but also spills over into another series of waterfalls until it collects in one last pool that’s lined with underwater benches and a fucking bar. Planted all around the rocks are a jungle of plants. It smells green in here, which I know doesn’t make sense, but it also smells like home.
“The pools are filled with saltwater. If that’s a problem, I believe they can be converted to chlorine.”
The girls make identical faces of disgust. “Ew,” Crystal says.
For once in agreement, Henny adds, “Chlorine is bad for your skin.”
“It also bleaches out my feathers,” Crystal complains.
Connie blinks then says, “Bird shifters?”
“Flamingos,” Henny says with a sigh.
“Except for Zeke. He’s—“ Henny kicks Crystal’s shin. “Ow. What the fuck?”
“Zeke is family,” I say quickly, then change the subject. “This is the one. I want to make an offer. Today, if possible.”
Connie forgets all about Zeke with the prospect of a commission on a thirty-million-dollar property.
“Don’t you dare offer what they’re asking,” Henny butts in.
“What?” Connie asks faintly.
This is the typical response of most people with their first experience of Night Moon Goddess, financial genius. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t have much to work with before I won all that money. If not for Henny, we probably would’ve had to make choices like “should we pay rent or buy groceries or pay the electric bill?” She kept us all afloat with food and an air-conditioned roof over our heads. Now that she has some real money to play with, she’s becoming something of a financial tyrant, but someone has to and it’s not gonna be me. Or Crystal. Or Zeke. Or Meemaw. It’s too soon to see about the twins, but I think they’re normal, like the rest of us.
While Henny and Connie discuss offers and potential counter-offers, I look out the window, which shows the edge of the valley it’s built on and also a partial view of the backyard of the mansion next door. Mostly what I can see is its pool, which juts over the valley in a gravity-defying kind of way. It gives me the willies just looking at it. There is a figure swimming in the pool. All I can make out is pale hair, black briefs, and skin that looks like it’s never been touched by the sun. He must bathe in sunscreen. Like SPF 1000 or some shit. He’s almost pale enough to be a native Floridian.
After who knows how many laps, he reaches the side of the pool and lifts himself out of it in one fluid motion and all I can do is stare. His body is beautiful and perfect, like one of those Greek statutes of some hot naked guy with a little dick. It’s way too far away to see if the guy has a little dick or not, but I’m not too concerned because all I can see is the perfection of his ass. I want to eat it for lunch.
Crystal comes to stand next to me. “Oh. That’s why you’ve been staring out the window for like the past ten minutes. That ass. Wow.”
“Do you think he’s an omega?” I muse.
Crystal licks her lips. “Do you think he swings your way or mine?”
We’re both alphas, and mostly this doesn’t cause problems. Our tastes in omegas haven’t really coincided much, until now. She likes the pretty ones—always has—and gender is irrelevant to her. As long as they’re attractive, she’s in. I go for height and muscles. Sometimes I hook up with alphas, which never works for anything besides sex, but mostly I stick to the beefiest omegas I can find. The more muscles the better. This guy isn’t my type at all. But fuck me. That ass.
“He’s mine,” I say.
“Excuse me? You can’t just go around claiming people you’ve never met.”
She’s right, and this is not like me. But still. “He’s mine,” I repeat.
Crystal rolls her eyes. “We better hire a super-hot pool boy.”
“Anything for you, sugar,” I say.
“Except for him,” Crystal points out.
“Except for him.”
Because I’ve decided. He’s going to be mine.
2
Dmitri Meets the Neighbors
My phone rings and I look over to see it’s my father—again—so I let it go to voicemail. Let him shout into the void if he wants. I’m not going to listen to it. He knows it, and I know it, so I have no idea why he keeps calling. If doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, my father has been crazy as far back as I can remember.
I know what he’s upset about, anyway, and it’s not like I have any control over the situation. Dad and I were in a bidding war over the pink monstrosity next door and we both lost out to some nobody who won the lottery. But between the two of us, Dad lost out on more than I did. While I’ll have to put up with no doubt obnoxious neighbors, the pink monstrosity is still a buffer between us. Or rather me and his goons, who pretend—poorly—not to be goons.
It’s so obvious they’re goons it’s sad, really.
Thank god I bought this property, which is at the end of the street that dead ends pretty much at my driveway. I have the pink monstrosity on my left and the valley to my right and behind me. With the pink monstrosity off the market, Dad’s lost his last chance to have eyes directly on me. Well, except from a bird’s eye view, of course, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I can be seen when I swim, and that’s it. But from the second floor of the pink monstrosity, you can see much more of my property. I would have had to stop relaxing and eating outside. I would’ve been a prisoner in my own house.
The only saving grace of my father’s incessant meddling is the inadvertent security he provides. The only way to get to me is through his goon security detail. Paparazzi can be relentless and tricky, but even they rarely have a death wish. Everyone knows that when my father makes a problem go away, it stays away—at the bottom of a lake, wearing cement shoes, and wrapped in chicken wire. My sperm donor is nothing if not thorough when it comes to problem disposal.
