Arsen sauntered into the clubhouse and tossed a magazine into Quinn’s lap. “Nice picture,” he drawled.
On the cover of the Tucson Business Monthly, Quinn was standing in front of the clubhouse, dressed in a suit, with the words The new face of beauty in bold letters underneath.
She looked at the magazine then opened it. “Did you read it?” she asked.
“Yeah. You’d think reading that you ran the whole operation by yourself.”
She giggled in delight and carefully read the article. In the eighteen weeks since they started packaging their product in the new containers, B3 had almost doubled its sales. They were still a small fish, and she had a long way to go before B3 was a profitable as the Blades’ other business, but they were growing fast enough somebody had noticed and wanted to do an article for the local business magazine.
By unanimous vote the club decided Quinn would become the face of B3. She had protested mightily, but everyone agreed it would look better if everyone thought the company was run by a woman since it sold beauty products, and it was her ideas and hard work that had caused the sudden uptick in business. With Michelle at her side, they’d given the magazine a tour of the facility and explained their philosophy of great products at fair prices. They hadn’t exactly hidden that B3 was run by the Blacktop Blades, but nobody was wearing their colors that day and apparently nobody at the magazine questioned the lavish clubhouse as their offices.
“Not bad,” she said as she closed the magazine. She was playing it cool, but inside her stomach was doing cartwheels.
Arsen rolled his eyes. “Not bad, she says! If you were on the cover of Forbes, what would you say? Pretty good?”
She rose from her chair with a giggle, sat her computer aside, and sauntered into his arms to give him a long, slow kiss. “Was that pretty good?”
“Not bad,” he said, but then chuckled. Quinn had been fragile for a few days after the events in the desert, but she seemed well past it now. The dead bodies were found the next day, and made the news, but other than the initial report, nothing else was heard. When, after four weeks, the police hadn’t stormed the Blades compound, they knew they had gotten away clean.
Over the next twelve weeks, the Blades had killed eight more Horsemen, then given up the search when their sources went dry. Word was the remaining Horsemen were gone. Without Stacy and Todd whipping the members in a frenzy of blood lust, those who remained had dropped out of sight. The members might still be in Phoenix, but the Chrome Horsemen, as a club, was dead.
“Just all right?” she purred. “Maybe I can do better.” She pulled him into another kiss, then pulled him backwards until he pinned her to the wall, her leg coming up behind his to hold his hips to hers.
“There’re four rooms right down the hall,” Zane said as he entered the main room, never slowing as he continued past.
Arsen slowly pulled out of the kiss then chuckled softly. It wasn’t the first time they’d been caught making out in the clubhouse. “What do you think? Should we use one?” he breathed.
“No. I’m saving you for later.” She smiled as she licked her lips, enjoying the lingering warmth of his kiss. She slipped under his arm and wondered if they shouldn’t do that someday, make love in the clubhouse, just for the experience.
“I’m getting ready to go,” he said, his cock already hard in anticipation of them getting home and the two torrid kisses.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she said as she sat down again. “I want to finish this thing for Rain Forest. I shouldn’t be more than a half-hour or so.”
He nodded. She had been lobbying for new products, and the first new scent in two years, Rain Forest, was ready. He had made up small samples of various scents, and after Quinn had tested them on the women of the club, she’d gone to a mall and done a blind sample, giving away small vials of their products. When Rain Forest won out as the favorite scent, she had him tweak the formulation, then she’d done the same test again with five variations of the same scent. There had been one clear winner, and they were making a ton of the scented salts for sale right now. If it sold, they would scale up the run to their normal five-ton batch.
He smiled and nodded. “I’ll start dinner.”
“Something light. I don’t want to feel full later.”
He nodded then bent to kiss her again. “Burritos?”
“With that lime chicken you make?” The first meal he fed her, when he brought her home, still held a special place in her heart.
“If you like.”
She kissed him this time. “I like.”
She watched him as he turned and swaggered out of the clubhouse. “Mm-mmm-mmm,” she muttered to herself then dragged her attention back to what she was doing.
***
Thirty minutes later she pulled her new CTS V into the garage. Arsen’s old car had been a total loss. Not only had it been shot up, but the engine was scrapped. Rather than fix the car, they’d dumped the car in the desert, waited a few days, then reported it stolen. The police had found the car quickly enough, and he’d filed an insurance claim. The insurance hadn’t been pleased, but they’d finally paid it.
He’d let her pick out anything she wanted, so long as it was a GM or Ford, wanting another American car. She quickly settled on another Cadillac like the one he had before. It was his car, titled in his name, but she thought of it as hers. She loved the car and kept it spotless.
As the garage rumbled down, she entered the kitchen. The chicken was sizzling in the skillet, but Arsen was nowhere to be seen. With a frown she moved deeper into the house, finding him sitting on the bed. Beside him were several pictures of him with Holly, or Holly alone.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she placed her purse in the armoire.
“Nothing,” he said as he slipped a picture from the frame he had been looking at, and added it to the pile.
“It looks like something,” she said quietly as she sat down beside him.
He added the empty frame to the other four that were lying on the bed behind him.
“I thought it was time to do something with these.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said quietly.
He shrugged, then picked up the photos from the bed and arranged them neatly. “I know. But it’s time.” He opened the bottom drawer of his bedside table and slid the pictures into it and close it. “That’s a past life. I have a new life now.”
“She’s part of you, Arsen. She always will be. I’m not trying to replace her.”
He smiled and pulled her to him for a quick kiss. “I know, but I think it’s time to fill these frames with some new memories, don’t you?”
She smiled as he pulled back from the kiss. “If you’re sure.”
He smiled. He’d never been so sure of anything in his life.
THE END
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