Page 42 of Keys

“She wanted you all gone before she came back from the bathroom. She demanded either you guys be gone or her and Quickshot were going to have to leave. She must have added to that vitriol when she got back,” Sweet explained.

“Can you take your shot?” I called out to Tash, feigning boredom with the scene that played out across the room. Honestly, I was glad the bitch fucked up because I wasn’t sure how much faking it was capable of. Having to witness another woman draping herself all over Quickshot wasn’t really what I thought I’d have to deal with tonight. I’d been under the impression that he was still out of town on a run. Sure, we had only hooked up a few times and chatted semi-regularly, but I had started to catch feelings for him. That became evident after his words had such a major impact on me, and I felt the loss of him over these past few weeks, hell it was months at this point.

He, obviously, didn’t have the same problem with his feelings since it didn’t take that long for him to start hooking up with Ashley, or whatever the fuck her name was. I refused to glance in his direction. After a few rounds of Air Hockey and Pool with the girls I couldn’t help glancing back to the bar, curiosity won out after all.

Quickshot had been posted up there since the diner chick was kicked out. Tash had updated me about the amount of shots he was doing – ‘a lot’ was the official number. Knowing that he was probably plastered at that point, did nothing to ease my aching heart when I glanced back to the bar to find him moving on just fine – once again – with one of the club whores. She was standing in front of him, pushing his knees apart. He sat on the stool looking down his nose at her with a sloppy, amused grin on his face.

A touch on my arm pulled my attention away from the scene. “Are you okay?” Tash asked. A quick check of my surroundings told me she was the only one to notice what had grabbed my focus away from the game. I nodded as I turned away from where I saw Angel and Sweet making out too.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Nothing to say. Apparently, he moves on fast from everyone.” I shrugged, playing off my nonchalant attitude. Fake it till you make it, right?

Tash sighed. “I like Quickshot, normally, but he has been slamming back the shots over there for quite some time now.” Her disapproving glance toward the bar made me look again.

So. Damn. Weak.

Suddenly, I wished like hell that I had never looked. The asshole was getting sucked off, right there, in plain sight for all to see. The man’s head was thrown back, eyes closed, as his hands were in some woman’s brassy hair, pulling tight as she bobbed her head up and down in Quick’s lap. A shudder of revulsion rippled through my muscles just as he tipped his head forward again, eyes meeting mine as he did so. I hissed out a disgusted sound, snatched up my leather jacket, and turned to Tash. “I can’t stay here.”

“Go on. I’ll handle our end here. If we ever have our little meeting. Seems sex is in the air tonight,” she nodded to Sweet whose hand had disappeared somewhere in Angel Girl’s pants. I was going to have a chat with her about fucking her man on her own time, and not when we were supposed to be having a joint club meeting. Well, considering I was leaving, because my prior fuck buddy was getting a blow job out in the open, maybe I didn’t have much room to talk. Then again, if we had moved straight to our meeting instead of social hour first, my leaving now would never have been an issue.

“Call if you need me,” Tash told me before I hauled ass out of the Aces High Clubhouse.

~*~

Even though it probably looked like I was a runner, based on the way I dipped out on my family when I was a teenager, it wasn’t true. I faced down the shit I didn’t like about life and found ways to either make it better or make those who deserved it suffer.

It felt like I ran from the Aces High Clubhouse though. There was no way I could have stayed there and watched that shit go down in front of me. Hell, I was still trying to reconcile the man I saw tonight with the one I had started falling for before everything went to shit.

I knew, from experience, that what I needed was a distraction of epic proportions to forget the images playing out in my mind. I was giving both Quickshot and the whore he had sucking him off far more credit for their antics in my imagination than had actually been going down.

The fucked-up part was that I had no right to be pissed, jealous, or anything else when it came to him. None whatsoever, because I hadn’t taken his calls, allowed him to apologize, or forgiven him for a mess that my own rules and demands had created.

The only thing that could possibly take my mind off the bullshit with Quickshot was to dive into work and hopefully find a few people who had gone missing. Two of our employees from Paramour, the exotic night club we owned, had been taken while the majority of us were in Tennessee tracking down what was left of the dirt bag MC that had been part of a human trafficking ring. We still hadn’t been able to track the girls down by that point, and it was killing me to know that my involvement in financially draining these fuckers before was the reason they were so cautious and hard to pin down this time.

“Hey Keys,” Paul called out to me as I entered the building and started moving through the various security scanning stations we had set up. Paul’s sister, MiMi, had been one of the women we recovered from the original trafficking ring, and she came to be a part of our MC. Her brother, a former spec ops man, came to work for Redemption Inc., our security force. “Thought you guys were headed over to the Aces High Clubhouse tonight?”

“I went, I saw shit, I came back early wholly unimpressed.” I offered with a roll of my eyes.

Paul chuckled. “That bad, huh?”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t okay with sitting around watching assholes get blow jobs from nasty club whores, so yeah, that bad.” Paul wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“I will never understand the way those guys can share women the way they do. It’s hard enough for me to get past a woman’s exes when I’m with her.” He shook his head. “I have a jealous streak a mile long though. I’m guessing those guys don’t.”

“It’s all about the brotherhood when they share,” I tossed out the party line I’d heard some of the guys use before.

“Nah. That’s a load of shit. I served with my brothers in arms, slept with them, ate with them, took a shit with them, and watched each other’s backs so that we all made it back in one piece. I still wouldn’t share a woman with any one of them. That’s just not okay.”

I laughed at how profoundly disturbed Paul was by the idea of sharing a woman with his buddies. Once my electronics were all checked into what we called the vault, Paul buzzed me through to the next level security room. “You know, you’re one of four people with access to the backdoor so you don’t have to go through all this bullshit with the security protocol.”

“I know,” I answered him with smile. “I don’t mind doing it. Every once in a while, we need to let you guys know we’re not above the protocols you have to endure.” I offered the last bit with a wink and a grin.

Paul slapped a hand against his chest. “Be still my heart!” He screeched out in an overly southern, feminine voice. I laughed as I finally made it through the last stage of security checks. The computer’s artificial voice called out the weapons I had on my person. Paul gave me a little head nod of approval.

“How have you been fairing with that piece on the range?” He asked of my 38 caliber Ladysmith I had strapped into the ankle holster of my boot.

“It’s not too bad. Although, I have it for emergencies. If I ever have to use it, I’ll be up close and personal with my target, so accuracy won’t be an issue.” Paul nodded his head once more, keeping silent about that revelation. “I’m headed to my think tank for a bit. If you, or one of the other guys, could give me a head’s up if someone shows up looking for me, I’d be grateful.”

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