Page 69 of Awakened by Sin

“Friends who slow dance on the floor and get lost in each other?”

“I cheered him on when he was a scrawny loser. I even helped him when he was in a tight spot financially. We’re close. I call him Connie.”

“You can’t call Cormac Hart, Connie! You’re emasculating him.”

“Exactly. He can stand to be taken down a peg or two.” She bit back a groan as she rolled out of bed and glanced at her makeup smeared sheets. Damn. She hobbled into the bathroom and stripped as Luci chattered.

“I’m so disappointed. I wanted to know his fucking routine.”

She paused with one foot in the tub. “Fucking routine?”

“Yeah. Like does he fuck you right after his fights? What kind of positions can he do? The other day, I was watching this porn with this woman doing a handstand, and he’s fucking her upside down. I think it’s called the wheelbarrow. I figured Cormac would be great at it because he has amazing core strength. The woman in the porn had a big ass, and it was jiggling while—”

Carmen smothered a laugh as she turned on the shower. She poked her head out periodically to comment as Luci rattled on about sex positions.

“What site is this?” Carmen bellowed through the curtain. “And what keywords should I use?”

When she scraped all evidence of last night’s adventure off her body, she slipped into a robe and went searching for her mother. The house was empty, but when she glanced at a clock, she saw it was nearly noon. No surprise that her mother had already started her day. She dressed in a blue jumper with matching heels and kept her makeup rosy and fresh. She pinpointed her mother at a nearby Italian restaurant through a locator on her phone. The shower went a long way to making her feel better, but she was starving. She would crash her mom’s lunch with her friends and then bum a ride to The Strip to collect her car. She put Luci on hold while she called for a pickup and then resumed their conversation.

“When are you coming to New York?” Luci asked.

“I don’t know.” Now, she really wanted to go. Luci was a hoot and a woman after her own heart.

“You let me know as soon as possible,” Luci said and then asked, “So if you didn’t have sex with Cormac, who did you screw?”

“What makes you think I fucked anyone?”

“Girl,” Luci drawled. “You looked like a million dollars. No man who’s any man would let you leave without getting some. So, who was he?”

“He’s …” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Marcus wasn’t a friend. He wasn’t a boyfriend. He was a fuck buddy of sorts, but it was more complicated than that. They were Nora’s godparents, and he was Vinny’s replacement …

“At a loss for words?” Luci sounded delighted. “This is gonna be juicy!”

“He’s … He works for Gavin.”

“At the casino or in the underworld?”

“The casino.”

“Oh,” Luci sounded disappointed. “I’m guessing he’s hot.”

“Very.”

“You have a picture you can send me?”

“No.”

“He works for Gavin? Is he on the company website?”

Carmen held the phone away from her ear and stared at it a moment before she brought it back. “Do you work for an investigation agency on the side? Geez.”

“I’m good like that. Come on, what’s his name?”

“Marcus Fletcher.”

“Was he good?”

She smiled and slipped into the back of the car that pulled up. “Very.” An image of Marcus’s eyes rolling in his head made her nipples tingle. She clamped her legs together and confirmed the restaurant address with the driver.

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