Strip You Bare

by Maisey Yates

  “What exactly do you think you need to protect me from?” she asked, looking from Micah to Ajax.

  “That’s the thing,” Ajax said. “We don’t know exactly. We think your grandfather ordered the death of Priest. That means we may have to protect you from gun-wielding psychopaths.”

  “Is that all?” she asked, her voice thin.

  “I could be wrong,” Ajax said. “It could be knives.”

  “That’s . . . helpful. My grandfather is not going to let anything happen to me.”

  “Sure, but you also didn’t think your grandfather would order the death of another man, I trust,” Ajax said.

  “Of course not,” she looked down at her shoes, shiny black patent-leather pumps that made an interesting contrast with the dull tile.

  “That means I don’t trust anything, and there’s nothing I don’t think he’s capable of.”

  “I feel the same way,” Micah added.

  “You’re not allowed to storm my Christmas party. I have a tree. It’s decorated. If you mess up my tree, I’m going to get pissy,” she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.

  She didn’t know how to handle any of this. Didn’t know how to process the fact that her grandfather might be involved in some seriously shady stuff, didn’t know how to deal with the fact that her long-lost cousin had suddenly proven to be not very lost at all.

  But, most especially, she didn’t know what to do with Micah’s declaration of possession. She had always known that her association with him would be at odds with the life she had been brought up in. But she hadn’t anticipated it actively pitting her against her family. She hadn’t realized she was stepping into a war with the Deacons on one side and the Delacroix on another.

  How could she choose this man she barely knew over her own flesh and blood?

  But that just made her think of the brunch. Where everybody smiled, and told lies, and insulted each other behind polished, friendly looking façades. Her family was no better, they never had been. They would rather her have married Charlie and simply keep with the status quo even knowing he was unfaithful. Even knowing he didn’t love her.

  Micah didn’t expect her to hide anything. It hit her then, what was so striking about the Priory. It was nothing it didn’t appear to be. It was real. It accepted its patrons for what and who they were without any questions asked. There was more honesty here, among outlaws, than she had ever found within the walls of her family homes. She felt a deeper, more real connection with Micah than with people she had known her entire life.

  “We’ll start the party if we have to,” Leon said. “We’ll do our very best to keep most of it outside. That’s why Prince is going to handle things from the inside.”

  “Yes, because he does a very good impression of the gentleman,” Sarah said, her tone dry.

  Ajax regarded her closely. “I would have imagined you would be crying on the floor about now, all things considered.”

  “I would have thought someone would have educated you a bit better on southern women,” she said.

  He rubbed his chin, a smile on his lips. “I’m pretty familiar.”

  “Steel magnolias and all that shit,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.

  “Good. There’s no room around here for people who get easily crushed.”

  “I’m not easily crushed.” And she was surprised to discover that she meant it.

  She was stronger than she’d ever believed. Stronger, and more.

  Whatever happened after this, nothing could take that away.

  Chapter 13

  Micah was still trying to figure out exactly what had possessed him to take Sarah down to the Priory this afternoon. Even now, with a glass of champagne in his hand, walking around the ballroom in the Delacroix mansion, acting like he belonged, like he was one of them, he still couldn’t quite figure it out.

  Well, there was the sex. What had happened in this very room earlier today had been . . .

  He wasn’t Blue. He wasn’t a monk—not even close. But that had been the best, most intense sex of his life.

  Every time with her was.

  But it went deeper than that.

  He’d been imagining what her face might look like when she found out about her grandfather. Because shit was going to go down tonight. At her Christmas party. And all he’d known was that he couldn’t face that moment, not with her unprepared like that.

  He’d been imagining her standing there in the middle of her success, her triumph, then watching as he led her only remaining family member to the metaphorical gallows.

  It was his job to get information out of the senior Leonidas Delacroix, and he had known that he would use the Christmas party as an opportunity to do that. Initially, he hadn’t thought much about Sarah’s reaction. About what it would mean to her. But now, it was all he thought about. He had pledged to protect her, and when he had made that pledge, he had only imagined it being physically. But now it was more. She was more. That was why he had needed to take her before the brothers and declare her his.

  Temporary, of course, but necessary.

  The club recognized her as his property now, and the club protected its own.

  She was his own. And he would protect her.

  Right. Prick. You’re turning her grandfather over to the MC.

  Well, he was a prick. But he was doing the best he could with his divided loyalties.

  Who the fuck knew he even had loyalties anymore?

  He would protect her and serve the club, and bringing her to the Priory had ensured he could do both of those things. He didn’t know what he had done to earn her trust. He didn’t deserve it. But after today, he couldn’t deny that she did trust him. Looking back on the physical side of their relationship, he realized that she had from the beginning. Because he had played rough, commanding games with her that no gentleman would ever subject a virgin to. She’d had to trust that he would only push as far as she wanted him to, that he would read her feigned reluctance correctly, and recognize when it was real.

  Yeah, he didn’t deserve that. No doubt about it.

  He probably deserved a spot in hell since he was about to shake down a septuagenarian at a Christmas party.

  Fortunately for his soul, the septuagenarian in question was probably a murdering bastard.

  Of course, he was going to wait until the tree lighting to usher her grandfather out. Wait until people were distracted so that there would be no scene. Not out of respect for everybody’s cheerful evening. What he did, he did for Sarah. She would know what was happening, but, God help him, she wouldn’t see it.

  Micah put his hand on his side, checking the position of his firearm. Ever since he’d arrived in New Orleans, that had stayed packed away. But not tonight. Another waiter walked by and held the tray underneath his face. Heaven help him, if one more fuck in a rented tux offered him something wrapped in bacon, he was going to shoot the tray right off his hand.

  “No thanks,” he said instead, because he knew better than to draw his gun and shoot a tray of food at a party. If only just. Everything he’d learned in San Francisco, everything he’d become, had faded away.

  He’d once thought of New Orleans as the moon, the full moon that called to the wolf inside of him.

  He’d been in the full moon for too long. He was more wolf than man now, he couldn’t deny it.

  He looked away from the waiter, across the room at Sarah. He’d told her he wouldn’t be leashed, and yet, here he was, respecting her desire for distance. She hadn’t reiterated it, and yet he found he didn’t want to forge an unnecessary connection between the two of them here at the party. Not when shit was most certainly going to go down with her grandfather. He and the other Deacons would protect her if necessary, but if her grandfather had no reason to suspect a connection between the two of them, all the better.

  Keeping his distance was proving to be a difficulty, though. She was beautiful, all the time. Whether she was dressed in those prim dresses she favored
, or wearing nothing at all, panting, flushed and naked in his bed. But tonight, she was something else altogether.

  She was wearing a black satin dress that molded to her curves, flaring out at her knees and ending in a swirl of fabric that billowed around her feet like smoke rolling over the water. Her dark hair was swept back, her eyes accentuated by black liner, her lips painted like currants. She was a Gothic fantasy come to life. Nothing could have appealed to the wolf more.

  Later. He would have her later.

  Assuming you don’t have her grandfather’s blood all over your hands.

  He gritted his teeth, setting his focus on the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by her. Couldn’t afford to take any reservation or fear of regret forward with him.

  A woman in red moved toward the grand piano, where a man had been playing music quietly for the past hour. The volume increased on the piano, and she began to sing. That was the signal for everyone to gather around the tree. It was his signal to get the senior Leonidas Delacroix out of the ballroom and out the back where Ajax was waiting.

  Blade would be waiting there too, along with the traitors.

  He tore his focus from Sarah and set his sights on the sharply dressed older man, standing straight and tall in the back of the room. He wasn’t stooped, by age or shame. He bore the air of a man who knew full well that his demands would be met, that he would be deferred to. He was every inch old money.

  Of course, he had paid Ministry guys to do his dirty work. Men as rich as he was didn’t have to work, after all. They didn’t clean their own houses, they didn’t mow their own lawns, and they sure as hell didn’t kill their own enemies. No, they were too sophisticated for that. Blood on the hands of other men, on their souls, but never on their skin.

  Micah had committed his fair share of sins, but at least he had the integrity to commit them with his own hands.

  They were on no one else’s hands but his own, and while he couldn’t spare sympathy for the Ministry traitors, he felt an extra helping of contempt for Delacroix. For not being man enough to own his transgressions. For not being man enough to dispatch his enemies on his own.

  He had involved the Deacons and put the entire Ministry in danger when Ajax had suspected the hit had been led by them. Now Sarah was in the crossfire. All because of an old rich coward.

  Everybody’s focus was on the tree, and no one paid any attention to him when he moved from his position and headed toward Delacroix.

  Without any warning, he reached out, grabbed Delacroix’s arm, and began to lead him from the room.

  “What in hell—”

  “Mr. Delacroix, if you don’t want to get shot here and now, I suggest you keep walking, and don’t make a scene.”

  The older man was no match for Micah physically, but he really would rather not have to contend with whatever security detail might be present. As it happened, Delacroix was shocked enough that he didn’t start protesting or struggling until they were out of the ballroom.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” Delacroix was clearly shocked and outraged that anyone would dare lay a hand on his aristocratic person. Sadly for him, he’d gotten himself tangled up with a whole lot of people who dared to do whatever they wanted. Who dared to do what needed to get done.

  The thing that made bikers so dangerous was that they didn’t care about the rules. Other people spent their whole lives bound up in ideas about what they should or shouldn’t do. The Deacons didn’t live that way. Sure, they all had to answer to their president. There was a clear hierarchy. A way things were done. It was what kept people alive. But beyond that?

  Micah didn’t give a shit about Delacroix’s position. Didn’t care about the cut of his suit, or how expensive the fabric was. It wasn’t a power that the Deacons acknowledged.

  There were a few people lingering in the antechamber of the mansion, and they saw him drag Delacroix through, but he silenced them with one hard, well-placed look. It was possible those witnesses would cause trouble later, but he doubted it. They would be much more likely to create excuses around why what they’d seen wasn’t any of their concern. That was how people operated. More people who were bound up in comfort, in appearances.

  Just as he had been for the past ten years.

  Not now.

  Delacroix started to struggle, and Micah reached beneath his jacket, grabbing his handgun and jamming it into the older man’s rib cage. “Let’s not make a mess on the walls,” Micah said. “I hear this house is very old.” They kept on walking, down a narrow passageway that led to the servants’ entrance, Delacroix silent now. “Oh, but it isn’t your house now. It belongs to the Deacons, I believe.”

  “What do you know about that?” Delacroix asked, his tone cultured, hushed, not at all the tone of a man with a gun pressed to his side.

  “Quite a bit. Considering I’m one of them.”

  “What do you know? They put a suit on a pig.”

  Micah felt a smile curve his lips. “More like on a wolf.”

  They pressed on through the hall and out the back door. Ajax was there. So was Blade. Blue and Cash. The courtyard was lit with small white lights that were strung between the trees, everything neat and pristine, and at odds with the current situation.

  “We just have a few questions to ask you,” Ajax said, stepping to the forefront of the group.

  “I don’t have to answer to you,” Delacroix said.

  “You answer to me, or you answer to your maker. I’m not particular which. Remember, my version of justice is not necessarily the same as that of the United States government. You have no right to a fair trial with me, Delacroix.”

  “I have no idea what you want with me.”

  “Let me refresh your memory. Blade here has discovered traitors in his midst.”

  Blade took a step forward. “You hired my men to kill Priest Lombard. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? I look after my own. And I keep track of my business.”

  “What do you think you can do about this? You have no proof of anything. Priest,” Delacroix said, the name dripping with disdain, “was nothing more than a washed-up outlaw biker. No one cares about his death.”

  That was when Blue stepped forward. “Unfortunately for you, we care. Last I checked, Ajax and I weren’t too concerned about the law. I think we can do plenty about it. Do you think you’d be the first man I ever put a bullet through?”

  Micah shifted his hold as Delacroix tried to pull away. “I know I wouldn’t be,” the older man said. “You’re all killers. You killed my son.”

  Silence settled over them, a chill rushing through as though a ghost had come to join them.

  “Now, you wouldn’t be the first man I’d put a bullet through, that’s true, but I think I would remember if I had shot a Delacroix,” Ajax said.

  “It’s the reason you were all disbanded in the first place. Or did your beloved president never explain that to you?”

  Micah tightened his grip on the gun, his palms suddenly sweaty. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. There was no way. No way in fucking hell.

  That meant it was Sarah’s dad.

  Sarah’s dad was the reason they’d been banished.

  You boys killed the wrong man . . . You have to get the hell out.

  The wrong man. A fucking understatement. They’d killed a Delacroix.

  Sarah’s father.

  And now he had a gun to her grandfather’s head.

  “So you’re going to claim this as a revenge killing?” Ajax asked, clearly unmoved. But then, why would he be moved? It wasn’t his lover’s father they’d put in the ground. He was avenging Sophie’s father . . .

  He was Sarah’s father’s killer.

  He’d been the one.

  He’d been the one to push him over the balcony. He’d been the one to stand there, looking over the edge as that man’s body had crashed to the cement floor below, landing like a twisted, tortured marionette.

  He hadn’t regretted it. They were just fin
ishing a job for Priest and everything had gone to hell. They’d had to protect themselves, protect the club.

  They’d torched the place after. Got rid of the evidence. But it hadn’t been enough. Never before had Micah seen Priest lose it. But when all that shit had come tumbling down on their heads, he’d lost it then. The club had all but disbanded over it. And now, it all made sense.

  “No,” Blue said, moving closer to the old man. “That isn’t it. You’ve never cared about them. About your own sons. But you do care about your fortune. Your name. I should know. I gave up everything to escape what our family really is.”

  “You think you did,” Delacroix said, clearly unsurprised that he was facing his grandson for the first time in nearly twenty years. “But you went straight out of one family home and into another. How do you think this club got its start? How do you think it got its money? The roots are deep in your family history, boy. Whether you realize it or not.”

  Ajax reached into his jacket and pulled out a handgun, pointing it at Delacroix’s head. “Okay. I’m just going to kill this motherfucker.”

  “Wait,” Blue said.

  Ajax said nothing, but some of the tension in his body lessened. “I’ll give him about a minute,” he said finally.

  “Priest was involved in the family’s side business for years. But then he wanted to go legit. That didn’t necessarily present any problems to me, but he had one more job to do, which you all botched. You killed my son. Priest is lucky I didn’t bring the wrath of God down on you then. But I didn’t. He got you out of the city. Mark my words, that’s the only thing that kept you alive.”

  “Why didn’t you kill him then?” Blue asked.

  “Kill one son to avenge another? I wasn’t about to do that.”

  “What?” This time it was Micah who couldn’t hold back.

  “Priest was my son. Birthed by one of the many low-class whores I spent my time with in my school days. I paid just enough to keep her sweet. To keep her mouth shut. And then I did the same with him. Turned out, he was useful, because he had a great many connections in the Quarter. And we forged something of a business alliance. So even when everything went wrong, I let him live. Until he started asking for more. He was threatening to expose all of this if I didn’t give pieces of my legacy to him. To his ill-bred bitch of a daughter.”