Lola & the Millionaires: Part One (Sweet Omegaverse #2)(106)

“I will work on it,” I said.

Leo patted my hips and grinned. “I’ll take it. Now, what should we do with our last hours in Malta?”

I blew a soft breath out and imagined it was the stress I was carrying. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but it helped a little.

“I think you should tell me you love me again, while we shower. Maybe a few times? And then I think I’m going to need a few more rounds with cannoli,” I said.

Leo laughed, and his arms tightened around my waist, lifting me with him as he got us off the bed and toward the yummy tiled en suite bathroom.

“I love you, Lola,” he said in my ear, nipping the lobe.

“I love you,” I answered, taking a deep breath of his scent on his neck, finding the faintly sweet, clean breath of him twice as soothing. “So much, Leo.”

“I’ve been biting it off for weeks,” Leo said, laughing. “Time to make up for all those times I didn’t say it.”

The words grew soft under the steam of the shower, Leo and I entwined from head to toe. Every repetition of the words, the feeling, brought a little spike of worry in my heart. What if I broke this? What if Leo had to choose between me and his pack? I would walk away just to save him that.

But first, I’d fight to keep hold of him, and of the others. For my own sake.





Thirty-Four





Lola





“This isn’t you running, right?” Leo asked as I moved to slide out of the car that was idling in front of my apartment. We’d gained a little time coming back from Malta, although it was still midnight on a Sunday, and my neighborhood was dead quiet.

“It’s not like that,” I said, shutting the car door again and turning to face him. “I’m not trying to avoid you or the pack. But if I come back to the house tonight, I’m going to fall right back into the cycle of enjoying one moment and panicking about the inevitable end in the next. Also, I really need to do laundry. But I promise I’ll come tomorrow night. I just need to do some thinking, and start looking at therapists.”

“Okay, well now I sound unreasonable,” Leo said, laughing. “Fine, get some rest tonight. Hey, wait!” He caught my hand, and I raised an eyebrow at him until he grinned and said, “I love you.”

I bit my lip and a bubble of warmth rose up in my chest. That feeling definitely hadn’t gotten old yet. “I love you too.”

“See you tomorrow,” Leo said, leaning in for a last kiss.

Wes had given me the key to my new front door lock right before I left for Malta with Leo, and I used it gleefully now. No one in the building would know I was the catalyst for our landlord finding his motivation at last, but at least we now had a functioning lock and buzzer system on our front door.

Desperate to fall into my own bed, even if it was just for a minute before I gathered up my laundry, I raced upstairs and unlocked my door. It wasn’t until I was inside, sliding the chain into place, that I caught the first whiff.

Just a whisper, bitter and sour, but enough to stir a painful onslaught of memories.

Indy.

My brain spun in circles, fingers gripping on the chain as I faced the door and debated running back out into the hall. Was I imagining his scent here? The apartment was dark at my back, street lights glowing from the outside and casting my own shadow on the wall to my right. Was I alone?

My heartbeat pounded in my ears as my hand slid down the door and over to the light switch, fingers trembling as I listened for the slightest shuffling step, waited for the breath on the back of my neck. When it never came, I flipped the switch—eyes wincing at the sudden light—and turned slowly around to face my living room. There was no stirring in the apartment, no sound but my own rushing pulse. The only sign of the disturbance, the only proof, was the scent burning in my nose and the soft scattering of yellow feathers trailing down the hall to my bedroom.

I whimpered behind pinched lips, digging into my purse as my travel bag dropped to the floor. I pulled my phone out and moaned at the dark screen, the room blurring as tears rose to my eyes. My breath hitched as I sucked in a gasp and held it in my chest, trying to gather control again. My phone was dead, of course, and I had barely thought about it for the whole weekend. A weekend that seemed so distant from this moment. So impossibly safe.

I slid down the wall in front of the door, fingers fumbling in my bag for my charger.

He’s not here. He’s not here, I repeated to myself, a steady refrain that failed to soothe me at all. He was here. Indy had been here. He’d not only made it back to the city, but he’d found me.

I crawled down the hall to the nearest outlet, ridiculously and humiliatingly terrified of those stupid yellow feathers. I fumbled the plug into place and hooked up my phone, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to organize my mind.

Lock the door. Call…Leo. Leo was closest.

The phone buzzed to life and I jumped in place, gasping and eyes flying wide as if I expected to see Indy standing in front of me, looming over me, hands reaching with those awful rings on his fingers.

There was a voicemail from UNKNOWN waiting, and I swiped with a shudder, bile rising in my throat.

“Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl…” Indy’s voice droned softly over the phone, the whisper scratching at my skin and dragging another whimper from my lips. My eyes fluttered, but it was too easy to imagine him at my ear if I couldn’t see for sure that I was alone, so I forced them open.