Page 88 of Cognac Secrets

It was beautiful, and uniquely hers. Artificial flowers dripping from the ceiling around her bed which was on the floor. Her bed covered in a whimsical purple hippy tapestry thing with the tree of life printed on it over old, well-worn quilts and a few layers of blankets.

“Stay with me?” she begged me. “Just until I fall asleep?”

“Baby, I’ll stay for as long as you need me to,” I murmured and she smiled a bit sadly.

“Forever is a very long time,” she said and I smiled.

“Not long at all when you’re in love with someone as much as I am with you,” I told her. “When you’re happy and experiencing something as good as this, it’s gone in what feels like a fucking flash… you know?”

“Stop it!” she chided, but she was smiling, a pleased glow about her that did my heart some good.

We cuddled up in her bed and I sighed in contentment at how her ear covered my heart and how shelistenedto my heartbeat.Her fingertips idly stroking over the tattoo along my ribs, tracing the letters, over my hip. She adorably fell asleep with my dick in her hand, and that was more than alright.

It was hers anyway.

CHAPTERTHIRTY

Sandrine…

The next week was an absolute blur of madness. It started with me, Bennie, True,andGerard low key fighting over me going into work the next day. I couldn’t afford to take the time off and those three were relentless in making every damn excuse under the sun as to why I was some kind of invalid incapable of smiling and pushing buttons on a cash register because I had one arm in a sling.

Wasn’t the first time I had my dominant hand in a sling. I was practically ambidextrous with how often it had happened as a child. Granted, my handwriting was shit with my left hand, but I was proud to say it was at least still legible.

At the one-week mark after Louie’s death, the guys held his wake. Let me tell you, biker funerals werewild.At least with the Voodoo Bastards they were. There was booze, liquor, you name it. Women running around half dressed, sex right out in the open, and in the center of it all was a big portrait of Louie, a mugshot of him with a stupid grin on his face and his middle finger in the air, his teeth stained with blood and a fat lip.

Stories were swapped, about how they’d done some dumb shit to him as a prospect, and some of the dumb shit he’d pulled or gotten into.

The mugshot was taken after he’d mouthed off to the cop arresting him for drunk and disorderly so spectacularly that the cop had punched him in the mouth.

I guess the city had let him go after he sobered up with many apologies and some, ah, compensation to Louie’s satisfaction – read hush money.

“Dumb shit took it, too—” Bennie said.

“Why was that dumb?” a girl in Cypress’s lap had asked.

“We all saw what happened, if he’d taken that shit to a lawyer, he could have been sitting on a payday a lot prettier,” Hex had explained.

Speaking of lawyers, I had one of those now, too. My brother’s had been arrested just over the Mississippi border by Mississippi State Troopers after trying to pull that run from when I’d jumped out of the back of their truck.

During questioning, they’d let slip that a cop from the New Orleans police department had told them where I was. Had given them my address and everything. So nowIhad a pending lawsuit against the city and Corliss had welcomed me to the club.

The amount of money that was being thrown around in settlement negotiations I couldn’t even wrap my head around… but my lawyer who was the same as Cor’s, assured me that I would be living comfortably for quite some time.

Bennie assured me I would be living comfortably for the rest of my life and had tried explaining how investments and everything else worked but it all sounded like alien from outer space translated into Greek to me.

All I knew is that I trusted him when he said that he could set me up for life if I wanted him to, which yes, I wanted that – but no, I didn’t want to quit working for Rowan. She was honestly only a few years from retirement and had been discussing it starting late last year. She’d taken a chance on me when it felt like no one else would and so I was pledged to see things through with her until the end.

Alina, Cor, and Jessie-Lou had asked about that. About potentially working with Rowan to take over the shop’s lease since she had something like six years left on it and rebranding it into Swamp Witch Designs.

We were working on the finer details and Bennie was helping Corliss with the figures. It was a big thing the club was trying to do. Now that Bennie was certain I wasn’t going anywhere, he opened up a little more about that. About how the guys had all decided they weretiredand ready to slow down and live life to the fullest and how that meant getting out of some of the not-so-above board dealings in and around the city.

He talked about the distillery, Voodoo Spirits, that they were trying to get off the ground and open, naming each flavor of moonshine after varying people and characters out of Louisiana voodoo lore.

I was intrigued by Marie Laveau’s Love Potion No. 9 which was going to be an herbal infused blend with rose hips at the fore of some kind of gin. It sounded interesting – something I wanted to try even if gin was an acquired taste that I hadn’t quite acquired yet.

Gin and tonic is what I had ordered when I was under age and drinking at some of the bars with a fake ID a boyfriend had gotten me that honestly, I didn’t knowhowI had gotten away with using that thing. Still, I figured no eighteen- to twenty-year-old would order gin and tonics, and so even though I was sucking down what tasted like pine-sol cleaner, I’d honestly never gotten caught.

The only time I managed something tastier was when someone else was buying for me.

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