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“No.” She shook her head. “They gave me a warning, and it was gone before the deadline.”
Shame flashed in Lola’s stomach like a lightning storm. “Sometimes… just sometimes… I can go a little overboard.”
Carmen scrambled up her body, straddling her hips and laughing when she sat on her belly. “No… I don’t believe that for a second. Not you.”
When heat rushed up Lola’s chest, Carmen bent over, kissing the flush over her breasts and up her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Carmen whispered, lips on Lola’s jaw as she wrapped herself around her.
Lola tangled their legs together, palms gliding up Carmen’s bare back, skin warm against her touch.
“I’m sorry for ramming into the back of your car in the garage. It was so stupid—”
“We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t,” Lola countered. “And anyway, I shouldn’t have tried to cut you off. Poor Julio. He won’t even make eye contact with me anymore, even though I told him I was sorry like ten times. I didn’t know he was there.”
“I should have just let you go,” Carmen insisted. “And about the Christmas party.”
Lola’s stomach tensed. “We don’t have to talk about that. We can just forget it happened.”
Carmen rolled off of her, but kept her leg hooked around Lola’s thigh, her arm across her chest. “You really think that?” Carmen’s voice was soft and her fingertips softer where they traced Lola’s collarbone. “That we can move forward without going back?”
Taking a steady breath, Lola considered it. She didn’t know how to talk about it. How to undo what had already been done. A surge of panic curled its cold fingers around her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Carmen whispered, her head resting on Lola’s shoulder. “I wanted to call you after that night… actually… I wanted to take you home.”
Lola closed her eyes, remembering the cramped back of Carmen’s SUV. Seats down and their half-naked bodies dripping with sweat, panting, overheated, frenzied. Getting from Bamford’s holiday party in the building’s lobby to Carmen’s car in the garage had been a drunk blur. But she still felt the weight of Carmen’s first touch. Carried like an imprint.
“But after…” Carmen’s voice trailed off.
“I left,” Lola finished her thought, regret drenching her words, making them heavy, making her empty stomach burn.
Carmen stopped running her fingers over Lola’s skin and held her close instead. “And I didn’t tell you to stay,” she replied softly, matching Lola’s remorse. Propping herself up on one elbow, Carmen’s messy, light brown hair fell over her bare chest, making her too beautiful to look at it. She ran her thumb over Lola’s cheek and held her in her gaze. “I regret it,” she confessed, brows furrowed and silently begging Lola to believe her. “I regret it all the time. I wish I’d asked you to stay. To come home with me.” Her smile was lopsided and lazy. “And if I’d known how much better the sex could be in an actual bed—”
“Shut up,” Lola interrupted her with a grin and pulled her down into a kiss.
Carmen kissed her back, lips so full and soft and perfect. “I mean it,” she whispered before kissing Lola again. “I wish I hadn’t let my ego make the decision for me.” She kissed her jaw. “I wouldn’t make the same choice again.” She kissed her neck.
Lola closed her eyes, let herself bask in Carmen’s soft touch. In the rightness of her body slipping between her thighs. In the way it felt to open for her. To let her in. To let her have and take and own.
“Me neither,” Lola admitted, but her confession was lost to the gasp that Carmen’s mouth sliding down her chest triggered. To the sigh she couldn’t stop when Carmen’s tongue found her nipple, and it hardened in her mouth.
She’d lost her ability to speak, unable to tell Carmen that she regretted the time she wasted being stubborn.
She had no suitable alternative but to show her instead. To toss her head back and tangle her fingers in Carmen’s hair and grind against her mouth. To let her see that she never stopped turning her on. That she was hers to take if she wanted. That she wanted her to want.
CHAPTER44
They’d discussed going backto Richvein Ridge on their last day in California. But as she walked over to the café while Lola was in the shower, Carmen convinced herself that Brett’s affidavit was enough. That they didn’t need to waste time searching for anything else. Especially when they didn’t know exactly where to look.
It would probably be pointless, she told herself. She’d already sent an email to her investigator, directing him to look into Fortune’s failed clairvoyant business in Richvein Ridge. He’d find more by searching official complaints and hunting for breadcrumbs on the internet than Carmen would randomly walking around town asking strangers on the street if they knew Fortune. She’d told her investigator to search school records too. To look for the woman who Fortune had almost gotten expelled. That would be more than enough to win their motion for summary judgment and kill her case, she was sure.
A box of pastries in one hand and a carrier with two lattes in the other, Carmen stared at her closed hotel room door. When she’d decided to rush out of the room in sweats and a hoodie to surprise Lola with breakfast, she hadn’t considered getting back in with her hands full.
Glancing down at the floor and the ancient red carpet, Carmen decided against putting either the coffees or the pastries down. Balancing the tray on the box was also out of the question — entirely too much risk that she’d dump it all over herself before getting the door open.
Out of options, she ruined her grand entrance by knocking on the door with the tip of her sneakers. Lola opened it so fast, Carmen suspected that she’d been waiting behind it.
Lola’s dark hair was still wet from the shower and in unexpected waves over yesterday’s tank top. Her big, dark eyes were wide and startled. They shifted from Carmen’s face to their breakfast.
