by Megan Crane
And she’d have known exactly what they were without all those signs, she thought. Wolves who masqueraded as men were still wolves in khaki shorts and polo shirts, with or without tattoos. This life was imprinted on their faces, their bodies, the way they moved through the world and surrounded the car. And it was imprinted in her brain, too.
Ajax didn’t speak as he turned off the engine. Sophie didn’t question him. He slid that cool blue look her way, and she imagined she felt it like another touch of his big, battered hands, and then he climbed out of the car. She heard the low rumbles of male voices that she identified in an instant as friendly, and then she watched the complicated rituals of masculinity performed before her in a series of intricate handshakes and shoulder bumps, man to man.
Sophie followed him more slowly, feeling the sultry bayou air slide over her skin like a caress as she got out and shut her door. She waited there, content to lean a hip against the car and watch the men from a safe distance. Because this wasn’t the Priory, where being Priest’s daughter had given her a certain amount of insulation in any given situation. And she didn’t see any other women around, which could mean any number of things either way. Better to hang back and wait and potentially be thought shy than rush in, cause some insult or misunderstanding, and then have to worry about unpleasant consequences.
The last hint of light was disappearing into the inky black bayou sky and she thought that meant something, as she watched it go. One whole day had passed without her father in the world. The first in all her life. She felt the loss of him hard, deep in that empty hollow she thought she was going to have to find a way to get used to, vibrating there in her gut. Raw and electric.
Grief, she thought. It felt like the weight of the whole southern sky, pressing her down into the rich and fertile earth below. She wanted to lie down under it. She wanted to let it win.
She heard her father’s name, like a kind of whisper on the night’s scant breeze, but she didn’t look around until she heard Ajax say hers.
“This is his daughter,” he told the men standing around him, jerking his chin toward her. “Sophie.”
Sophie nodded a greeting, still on her side of the car. The men started toward the building, but she waited until Ajax, in conversation with the one she’d picked out at a glance as a club officer—young to be president, she thought, though it was probably only a matter of time if he wasn’t already—beckoned her over to him with a seemingly casual curl of his fingers.
Ajax didn’t look at her as she obeyed. He held his arm out and headed toward the building as if he planned to shepherd her through the door. He was still involved in his conversation and she thought he’d drop his arm when she drew close. He did, but not at his side. Ajax draped his big arm loosely around her shoulders instead, anchoring her close beside him.
And there was absolutely no need for a wild, bubbly joy to burst open inside of her at that, searing through her limbs and pooling hot and low in her belly.
Sophie knew that this was, at best, an indication of those inconsistent southern manners Ajax had mentioned earlier. Maybe a show of respect to her father. It could certainly mean nothing to him that she was wrapped up in him then, the heavy weight of that sculpted arm hot and heavy over her shoulders and the rest of him sleek and solid, almost too close to bear. That she could smell him again, and this time, that clean male scent brought back those moments in the Priory, Ajax rocking hard between her thighs and the whole world disappearing into that rough magic he’d woven so easily around her.
This was biker politics, nothing more. She knew it, told herself she hated it even if she understood it, but there it was.
Unattached, unclaimed women who wandered into rough and tumble biker clubhouses like this one, way out here with nothing but swamp in all directions, could expect a significantly earthier sort of welcome than one who walked in tangled up with Ajax. Sophie said nothing, because that was the smart move, and there was nothing to be gained by acting dumb in a place like this. Only a whole hell of a lot to lose.
She walked with him, telling herself she didn’t notice how easy it was to match his pace, as if they were tuned in to each other when she knew it was really a matter of biology and stride, not fate. You dumbass. She took in the club logo she thought she vaguely recognized on the back of the man in front of her that read DEVIL’S KEEPERS. She let Ajax usher her inside as if he spent a lot of time walking around with her snuggled up next to him like one of his bitches.
Sophie ruthlessly stamped out the little spark of temper that ignited deep inside of her, and shoved her hands in her pockets. This wasn’t the place to get into all her complicated feelings. About bikers and their clubs and their stupid fucking rules. About this particular biker next to her, who buzzed with a particular kind of power that even all these hard, dangerous men recognized. Ajax was lit up with it. They were all scary and threatening but he was something more than that, and it was obvious.
Ajax is the High King of Threats, a little voice whispered inside of her, like a taunt. And how many daddy issues do you have that you think that’s hot?
There was nothing in Sophie that wanted to answer that. She concentrated on what was happening around her instead.
The warehouse they walked into was no different than all the other ones she’d been in over the course of her twenty-eight years, though as the daughter Priest had tried to shelter from the life in his inconsistent way, she’d never been at a clubhouse like this one unless it had been a planned family event. Old ladies and kids everywhere, various and sundry friends of the club in attendance, sometimes curious civilians along with them. Picnics and barbecues and wholesome games out in the yard. Catch and corn hole and horseshoes. Like Sesame Street in studded leather.
It was the peculiar dichotomy of the biker life, she was well aware—family men when it suited them and evil fucking bastards when it didn’t.
And here in the Devil’s Keepers’ clubhouse in the middle of nowhere, it was definitely not family night.
She looked around while trying to appear as if she wasn’t looking too closely at anything in particular, a skill she’d picked up a long time ago while growing up in the French Quarter. There was a big central area that the brothers clearly used as their hangout space and was, to her mind, decorated like a very lethal version of a fraternity house. There was a bar on one side of the room that she imagined prospects or the girls were expected to tend at the brothers’ whim, couches everywhere to facilitate a lot of hanging out around a few TVs and a couple of pool tables, and then a hallway that went off toward the back. That would likely lead to their offices if they had a legitimate business connected to this warehouse, bedrooms if the brothers wanted to stay here or fuck here or both, and no doubt whatever space they used for church, the full-patch-members-only meetings most biker clubs held at regular intervals. The building across the back courtyard from the Priory had been the Deacons’ clubhouse while Sophie was growing up, and she’d seen perhaps a bit more of what had gone on there than she should have—certainly more than Priest would have liked. These days, the once sacred Deacons’ clubhouse contained an eclectic art gallery.
She had to bite back her smile at that—and more, at what Ajax’s reaction was likely to be when he discovered that small fact.
“I’ll tell him you’re here,” the man who’d led them in told Ajax. Which meant he wasn’t the president after all. She focused on his cut. SERGEANT AT ARMS. “He’ll want to pay his respects.”
“Appreciate that,” Ajax said in that low rumble of his.
The man looked at Sophie then. He didn’t introduce himself. She suspected that he was rarely in situations where he wasn’t instantly known. He nodded at her, his gray eyes grim.
“I knew your dad,” he said gruffly. “He was a good man.”
“Thank you,” she replied, surprised to find she meant it. “He was.”
Ajax didn’t let go of her when the other man walked away. He steered her across the room, headed for the
bar, and Sophie knew enough to keep her expression neutral as they navigated the typical nighttime detritus of a place like this.
Two brothers were playing pool and drinking beer with two women wearing nothing but lacy thongs and their nipple piercings. Another brother was slumped low in an armchair in front of a big-screen television, with a woman crouched down between his legs, sucking him off while he gripped her idly by the hair and watched the game. Across the coffee table from him were two couples sitting on a low-slung couch, drinking a few beers and laughing. Like any couples anywhere except that in this case, one of the women was leaning back astride one of the men with her skirt raised up and her legs spread open while the other woman bent over her, licking busily between her thighs.
Sophie shifted as they walked, so she could lean a little closer to Ajax and make sure no one overheard her. “On a Tuesday?”
She felt the rumble of his laughter in his chest beside her and the rich vibration of it as it moved along that hard arm that she was a little too comfortable with, heavy on her shoulders like that. It was almost as if his laughter was inside of her, too.
“We’re deep in Cajun country, baby,” he said, and his gaze was brilliant and too blue as it met hers. “They don’t fuck around.”
“Warning received,” she replied, and maybe her tone was too sharp, though she didn’t think it was, not here where she knew that would be suicide. Maybe he just felt like it. Either way, he hauled her closer to him with an easy tug, so without a chance to react she was suddenly straddling his side and he held her neck in the crook of his big arm. Her belly was flush against his hip, smooth and sculpted and then the faint bite of his waistband against her belly ring. She balanced herself with one hand on the flat, taut expanse of his stomach and the other on the hard plane of his lower back and the heat of it all was like a Louisiana sunrise, instantly sweltering, rocketing through her, making her have to stop to catch her breath. Hard.
Blue, she thought in a daze, with his face so close to hers. His eyes are so fucking blue.
“Be a good girl,” Ajax told her, his mouth hovering over hers so she thought she could taste the words, taste him, and she shuddered at that idea. Or maybe it was the memory of before, still kicking through her. “And I might give you a reward.”
“A little reward?” She sounded needy and soft. Ruined, maybe, and that knowing gleam in those wicked eyes of his told her he knew exactly what he did to her. Sophie tipped up her chin in yet another show of pointless mutiny against her own weakness and was sure she fooled neither one of them. “That sounds awesome. Like this is a biker field trip.”
He bent his head and nipped at her chin.
It was cute when domesticated creatures like cats did things like that. Adorable, even.
Ajax was no kitten.
Sophie felt the scrape of his teeth everywhere, the scratch of that close-clipped beard. Her pussy clenched. Her nipples ached. Like he was electric and he’d flipped a switch, sending fire charging through every part of her, whether she liked it or not.
And she understood in that instant that this was the drug. He was. Her mother was a junkie and no matter how many times her father told her otherwise Sophie had always figured that she must have it in her too, that impossible need. That longing. That empty hole only one thing could fill, and Ajax was it. She knew it.
Worse, she thought he knew it, too.
And the scariest part was how little that scared her at all.
She didn’t realize she was digging her nails into that flat stretch of his hard abdomen, and not gently, until he laughed and tugged her hand away. He didn’t let go of her, as if he didn’t quite trust she wouldn’t do it again. He only ran his thumb over her nails, back and forth.
“I like claws,” he told her, amusement and approval making his low voice warm. “And, baby. Believe me. It’s not little.”
—
Ajax was a little bit cunt drunk.
He sat at the table in another part of the clubhouse, talking Priest’s death and club politics with old friends, but he was keeping an eye trained on Sophie.
She was safe enough. The Devil’s Keepers were old allies going back to the formation of both their charters in southern Louisiana, and they’d put a prospect on the bar while Sophie waited for him, in case anyone got any ideas. All perfectly normal.
What wasn’t normal was Ajax giving a shit what a piece of ass was doing with herself when he wasn’t fucking her.
Then again, nothing was normal anymore. Priest was dead, and the sheer wrongness of that was like his ribs had been ripped out through his own chest and he didn’t think that would ever really heal. He’d had to look at another body of another old friend, lost for no good reason. He’d had to bear witness to yet another corpse—this one, someone he actually gave two fucks about—and Ajax was having trouble shifting the stain of that off him. He’d been back in Louisiana less than twenty-four hours and he already knew he was staying. He had no need to return to Houston. He hadn’t cared where he’d lived if it wasn’t New Orleans, so Houston had been as good of a bad choice as anything else. It had taken being back where he belonged to realize that for him, there had only ever been one home, and that was the Priory.
And the Deacons.
He’d grabbed his shit from behind the bar where he’d left it earlier this morning and the first thing he’d done, after telling Sophie where to sit and enjoying her obedience maybe a bit too much, along with the little sting where her nails had dug into him, was take out his cut and put it back on. Where it fucking belonged. He’d hated walking through his city streets without it. He had no intention of doing that again.
And he’d caught Sophie staring, like his cut was a ghost. Or he was.
Sick fuck that he was, it had made him hard.
Then again, everything she did made him hard.
He listened to the men around him, the officers of the Devil’s Keepers who’d earned his respect a long way back—and again this morning when he’d showed up out of the blue.
Heard you bailed on the life, his old friend and former army buddy Greeley had said, because if Ajax had, maybe rolling up here in a cloud of dust, still wearing his cut, wasn’t the brightest idea.
No one “bailed” on the life. You went out the way you came in. With blood.
Priest had to hand out a few prison sentences back in the day to clean up a mess, Ajax had said. He’d crossed his arms over his chest and he hadn’t looked away. But Priest is dead. I’m on parole.
Now he tried to concentrate on what they were saying, rather than on the way Sophie’s long hair slipped this way and that over her sweetly rounded, temptingly bare shoulders—an issue he’d never, ever had before in his entire life. For Christ’s sake.
Ajax didn’t get distracted by pussy. He’d never understood it when other men did. Ajax had never been anything even close to drunk on cunt in his life, and why would he be? Women were in endless supply. Why get tangled up with one in particular?
But Sophie sat there across the big room like a bright light. Like there was no one else here, and he was fucked.
The Devil’s Keepers had moved on from condolences and had started talking shit about mutual enemies, including the Deacons’ old rivals, the Graveyard Ministry. They’d been based out in LaPlace when Ajax had been a prospect with the Deacons but had been making inroads into the city of New Orleans ever since.
“They’ve been in the French Quarter since after the storm,” Greeley, who was the Devil’s Keepers’ enforcer, told Ajax now. “Priest stepped away from the outlaw shit.”
“He was headed that way before I left,” Ajax said. Across the room, Sophie shifted on her stool, and he needed to pay attention to this conversation, not her ass. “Wanted to keep the club focused on the bar and the strip club, where the money was consistent. Didn’t want the hassle of that deeper bullshit any longer. Too many bullets, not enough bitches.” He laughed. “That’s a quote.”
The other men laughed too, and they all
drank to Priest, which was as it should be. And Ajax wondered if the old man had been thinking about other things when he’d given the exile order, like a daughter who’d been coming of age back then and the kind of things that happened sometimes to the families of outlaws. But after the president and VP left the table to Ajax and Greeley, the talk came back around to business again. It always did.
“That motherfucker Blade is running the Ministry,” Greeley said.
Ajax shook his head. “Not that sneaky little bitch.”
“For years now.” Greeley rolled his beer bottle between his hands, then jutted his chin at Ajax’s cut. Where his VP patch rode. “What about you? You got aspirations?”
Ajax couldn’t pretend he hadn’t thought about it already. Priest had never replaced his officers after Katrina, and he should have. Instead, he’d let the Deacons…drift. Almost like digging out from under the storm and eighty-sixing his four best men at the same time was more than he could handle. Or something he hadn’t wanted to do at all—but Ajax had decided a long time ago to let the paranoid shit go. There was no other way he’d have survived his ten-year stint in exile, surrounded by lethal motherfuckers who’d have put a bullet in him without blinking.
“I’ve been back for less than a day,” he said after a moment. “Have to put my president in the ground. I figure after that is the time to look around and think about making plans. After respects are paid.”
“Just saying, the top spot is empty, that creates a vacuum. Priest was a legend. He earned a little space and he got that, these last ten years. But with him out of the Quarter and no one stepping up…”
Ajax raked his hair back. “I hear you.”
They sat awhile and had another beer while the clubhouse started to get rowdy. Caught up on all the shit that had happened over the past decade and before, stretching all the way back to when they’d met in basic training. And only when Ajax stood up to take his leave did Greeley shoot a glance toward the bar.
“Priest’s daughter’s not a little girl anymore.”