by Megan Crane
He and Prince had glared at each other while the tourists veered around them.
Get out of my face, Ajax had growled.
With pleasure, Prince had retorted. He’d looked at Blue. I’ll be at my hotel. Still not giving a shit.
Blue had grunted, which could have been anything from commiseration to a raised middle finger, and Prince had pranced off to go play grab ass with himself and his shiny new suits. Dick.
Then Ajax and Blue had celebrated their homecoming the way it deserved to be celebrated. With blood.
“What do you want to know?” Boner asked again now, his voice getting higher as Blue moved toward him with that dark intent Ajax recognized and had missed. He’d really missed it all. His brothers. His life. “Come on. I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Anything!”
Ajax grinned, and pushed himself away from the wall. Vacation time was over.
“Oh,” he said quietly, and with great satisfaction, “I know you will, Boner.”
And then they went to work.
—
It was already light out when Ajax climbed back up the stairs to the rambling old apartment above the quiet Priory and let himself in. He was tired and hurting a little bit in that bone-deep, satisfying way that meant he’d kicked some decent ass over the past few hours but hadn’t yet stiffened up. That would come. He kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his cut in the kitchen, taking care to hang it neatly over the nearest chair before he moved to the sink to wash the dried blood and the dregs of too many scumbags off his knuckles and his heavy rings. Then he moved into the living room and dropped onto the sofa, clicking on the television and inspecting his battered hands in the morning light.
Not bad, he thought.
He didn’t look toward Sophie’s fucking bedroom door, no matter how it loomed there, taunting him.
He didn’t get instantly painfully hard at the thought that she was right there on the other side of a slab of wood that he knew he could kick open in an instant, the way he’d been taking turns doing all night all across the city—not that any amount of knocking heads together had made him forget about Sophie for even a second.
He didn’t ask himself why he hadn’t wrapped shit up a little earlier so he could get his ass home to all that sweetness of hers, made that much better because it came wrapped up in so much attitude.
Because all of that was fucking crazy. The ramblings of some loser handcuffed to a nine-to-five life with some housewife door prize. Not Ajax. Not ever.
He wasn’t here for some bitch, no matter how hard his cock got at the thought of her. He and Blue had spent a long night taking stock of every lowlife who had managed to live through the storm and the past decade who’d had any kind of connection to Priest or the Deacons. Taking stock and taking note. Building a new map of this city that had rolled right along without them. Marking down every betrayal that needed to be addressed and filing away every scrap of information they could beat out of the scumbags who oozed along the streets and into the gutters, hopped up on junk and preying on whatever they could find a little lower down than themselves.
Things looked a little bit different today, here in New Orleans. And Ajax knew that his idea of a satisfying night on the town would have repercussions all over the city this morning. He was counting on it.
He was flexing his hand out flat in front of him to see if it actually hurt or was just aching a little when Sophie’s door opened, and everything inside him went hard. Tight and tense. He told himself it was just him getting a little pissed at the interruption, the way it should have been, but his dick knew better.
Ajax scowled at her. She looked like she’d just rolled out of that soft bed of hers and, God help him, he didn’t want to be sitting on this couch. He wanted the life where he walked in after a long night and found a little peace between this woman’s soft thighs. Where he could pound out the rest of his aggression into her hot little pussy and make her scream until the blood was out of his head, and then he could haul her close and wrap himself around her and—
What. The. Fuck.
He was no fucking house cat. He hated that shit.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Sophie said.
It only made things worse. She was in a pair of cotton shorts and another one of her goddamned tank tops, all soft and rumpled and sexy, everything a little jiggly and sleepy. All her dark hair was piled high on her head, her legs were long and formed like a fucking wet dream, and he wanted to put his beat-up fists through the wall.
“Don’t recall putting a collar with a bell on it around my dick,” Ajax growled at her.
Sophie blinked.
She shifted, but only slightly, and only someone who was already paying too much attention to her would have noticed anyway, it was so gradual. Her green eyes darkened as they focused in on him. Her chin lifted into a much haughtier line. She eyed him for a minute like he was one of the pieces of shit he’d kicked around all night, with the stink of the gutter still on him, and then she turned and walked into the kitchen instead of answering him.
As if she was all alone in this apartment and he’d never said a word.
And Ajax fucking hated that.
He seethed, trying to keep that driving fury in him under control, and punched out new channels on the television without paying any attention to whatever the hell was happening onscreen. It took everything he had to stay where he was, sprawled out on the couch like he was relaxing, instead of going in there and expressing his irritation all over her. It was a hard, vicious battle and it only pissed him off. And while he sat there fighting himself, he could hear Sophie moving around the kitchen with a certain efficiency that rubbed at him like sandpaper. Like she was doing it to him.
It only took her a few moments to come out with a mug of coffee from that one-cup coffeemaker on the counter, but it felt like years to Ajax. Very angry, bitter, infuriating years.
“What’s the problem?” he gritted out. “You pissed off that I didn’t come sniffing around after you, Sophie? You wait up for me and cry into your pillow when I didn’t show?”
She took her time sauntering over to her doorway, and he got that she was always going to be a handful. That there was never going to be a surrender, not from this woman. And that might even be why he couldn’t take his goddamned eyes off her for even a second.
Sophie turned to look at him, very slowly, and in that moment Ajax didn’t know what he wanted more. To get the hell away from any woman who could look at him like that or to get up close to that expression on her face instead. Tough and cool at once, like she could chew nails and though she knew he wasn’t made of metal, was already sinking her teeth in deep.
Of course, that image only made his cock ache even more.
“Are we dating?” she asked coolly, after a moment or so of that look. Not the slightest bit afraid of him, unlike all the assholes he’d spent the night joyfully reeducating. It was as good as her tongue in his mouth, her hands on his cock. Hot and carnal, and he’d never know how he managed to sit there and smirk at her instead of closing the distance between them and testing that theory.
“I don’t date, babe. I fuck.”
“I ask because you sound like a guilty boyfriend,” she replied in that same fuck you tone of voice. “And I don’t need your shit, Sean. I said exactly one sentence. I wasn’t planning a fucking wedding. You might want to take it down a notch.”
And then she strolled into her room without a backward glance over her bare shoulder and closed her bedroom door behind her.
Quietly. In case he’d missed that she was flipping him the bird.
Ajax sat there and took it, because the other alternative was taking the door down and teaching her some manners—which would only end one way. He knew that. His cock knew that. Sophie probably knew it, too.
You’re either pussy whipped or you’re not, he snarled at himself.
And since he refused to live in a world where he was pussy whipped in any way, where some woman coul
d get in his head when all he wanted was to get in her pants, he had no other option but to sit there and prove that he wasn’t.
Whether to Sophie or to himself, Ajax didn’t know.
—
That night, Sophie went out hard.
She worked her usual shift behind the bar at the Priory and this time, she was a lot smarter about it. She sent a different bartender over to deal with the steady stream of tough-looking men who came in and took up residence in that dark far corner with Ajax and Blue and the obviously reluctant Prince. She acted as if she didn’t notice when the fourth of the four brothers who’d been sent away ten years ago, Cash, showed up and made his way over to them—also dressed in civilian clothes and with an unhappy look on his face. She pretended it was the way it always had been back in the day, when her father had held court there and she’d been ordered more than once to keep her eyes to herself and to mind her own business.
Nothing that happens over there is any of your concern, angel, her dad had told her gruffly. You keep your nose out of club business.
Sophie had always found that hard. She’d preferred these last few years when there was almost no club left. But tonight it was easy, because she’d had more than she could stand of the Deacons of Bourbon Street in general and their swaggering ass of a VP in particular. She was not a junkie, she told herself sternly. She was not her mother, in thrall and addicted to something she knew she could never control. She’d been grieving, that was all. Ajax was one long night, nothing more. So when she finished her shift she went upstairs and poured herself into her most revealing dress, because it was time to prove how little one night mattered in the scheme of things.
The dress was ridiculously hot. What little of it there was clung to her body but left large cutout holes everywhere else. On purpose. This meant she showed acres and acres of skin—more than she’d showed when she’d wandered through the French Quarter in pasties and hot pants, in fact. This also meant no underwear. At all. Sophie eyed herself in her bedroom mirror and then she strapped on very high, very sleek sandals to complete the look.
Skank factor ten, she told herself. Perfect, in other words, for the night she had in mind. A night that would not include Ajax or his attitude problem.
She put on a whole lot of smoky eye makeup, blew her hair out big and a little bit wild so it slithered around her when she moved, and then she headed out to make the most of a Thursday night on Bourbon Street.
Because Sophie had understood one thing very clearly this morning when she’d opened her bedroom door to get an eyeful of Ajax, sprawled out on her living room sofa like a vengeful god in a moment of uneasy rest. His blue eyes had been wild, his hands freshly battered, and she’d learned a few things about herself in that stunning moment when all she’d been able to do was look at him.
All that crap she’d been telling herself her whole life? About how much she hated bikers and the life and the things they did and the violence they trailed along behind them like the smell of garbage on a Louisiana summer morning?
Bullshit. It was all bullshit.
Because all it had taken was one look at Ajax, a little bit bloody and oozing his over-the-top maleness and sheer aggression from every pore—and Sophie had been so wet, so hot, so achingly aroused that she’d been a little bit shocked Ajax hadn’t been able to see it from across the room.
It had horrified her, but that had only made her nipples pull tight and ache too, and she’d had no choice but to march herself into the kitchen to conceal her reaction—even as her pulse shuddered through her and her legs felt weak beneath her—or retreat into her bedroom as if he’d hurt her feelings.
Which he had, but what did that matter? That was who he was. She’d known that going in. All she could do was throw his shit back in his face, because like hell would she roll over and play dead like everyone else he encountered probably did. Like hell. Her daddy hadn’t raised a little bitch.
Priest had taught her not to crumple in the face of overwhelming masculine aggression—not even his own.
You show fear, you might as well lie down and play dead, angel, he’d told her more than once while she’d been growing up. And God knows what will happen to you then.
Fuck you, she’d retorted once, memorably. She’d been about twenty. Her father had stared at her in open astonishment, and Sophie had laughed. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?
Good girl, he’d grunted at her, but those eyes of his, green like hers, had gleamed. Now watch your fucking mouth.
It had been a long day with a lot of deeply unwelcome honesty, after that moment with Ajax. Sophie had taken her time getting dressed and when she’d left her room again, Ajax had been passed out on the couch, looking something like ten years younger, if no sweeter, without that trademark scowl on his face. And so absurdly beautiful, stretched out there in the morning light, that Sophie found she had a lump in her throat as she’d sneaked past him.
The whole day had been like that. Sophie had been forced to confront a whole mess of things she hadn’t wanted to face. Like the police, who wanted to talk to her about the funeral tomorrow, because they were expecting a shitload of bikers and didn’t want any trouble.
“You can understand our position,” the officer had said, standing a little too close to Sophie in the funeral director’s office, his pudgy hand on his weapon like he expected that to intimidate her. Idiot. She’d literally fucked scarier dudes than he could dream of becoming, without blinking. “We don’t want a situation.”
Sophie had smiled at him, not particularly nicely, and he’d clenched that gun even harder. “That’s a little bit like staring up at a big, black thundercloud and hoping for a sunny day, don’t you think?”
“I think you’d know how to make sure that sun shines better than anyone, Ms. Lombard,” the cop had oozed at her, emphasizing the word Ms. like they both knew he meant biker whore instead. “Your father being who he was and all.”
Sophie had merely shrugged. “Bikers are bikers. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and even if they could be corralled? I’m not the one who could do it. Do I look like a sheepdog, Officer?”
But her own words had stuck with her as she’d noted the increase of biker cuts on men in the French Quarter as she’d walked back home, and not just from the local clubs. Just like she’d noticed the little leap her heart made at the sight. The truth was, she liked bikers back on Bourbon Street. In force.
Bikers were bikers. She knew that. She’d always told herself she hated it—and yet here she was, still tending bar deep in Deacons territory. She’d never fought her father’s wishes too hard. And so she was still living this life where she was known as Priest Lombard’s daughter first, last, and always. Whereas she could navigate a pissed-off Ajax in another MC’s clubhouse the way a southern debutante could handle a garden party, and with as little sweat or tears. Whereas, after a long string of mediocre boyfriends and boring attempts to feel something with any of them, the first biker who’d ever gotten in her face she’d let straight into her pants—and she couldn’t regret that. Hell, she wanted more.
Who was she kidding? Her father had raised her up to be a biker bitch no matter what lies he might have told himself or her, and that’s exactly what she was.
And exactly what she intended to erase tonight. Biker philosophy was pretty clear when it came to fucking. It was all the same in the dark—and Sophie intended to explore that theory. The French Quarter was bursting with men. Men who thought motorcycles were noise pollution and those who rode them were dangerous criminals. Men who considered themselves motorcycle enthusiasts because they dreamed of keeping a bike or two in their suburban garages. Men who would have no idea who her father had been. Men who wouldn’t pull that biker bullshit Ajax had on her in the morning—they’d just leave. Hell, they might even call the next day. Or send a noncommittal text, like a normal person. The world was filled with far more palatable men and Sophie was going to find them or die trying.
Or
maybe you can just flash your tits in true New Orleans style, drama queen, she told herself drily as she made her way down the stairs in her very precarious shoes. It will have about the same effect.
But she was a little too human and maybe a little too vain besides, and that was why she took a short victory lap through the Priory on her way out. Just to make sure everyone she knew was well aware that she was going out on the prowl.
Everyone.
She didn’t look over into that sacred corner to see if Ajax was watching her—because she didn’t have to look. She knew. She could feel the slam of his instant attention like a body blow as she breezed in from the back hall. She prickled all over as she leaned against the bar and told her manager not to text her tonight unless it was a dire emergency. She was afraid her knees were about to give out when she stepped back and shook out her hair, because the searing blue of Ajax’s gaze was like a strobe light all around her. She was shocked no one else was reacting to it.
But she certainly wasn’t planning to react to it, either, at least not where he could see it. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He and his collarless, bell-less dick could go fuck themselves.
And with a last wicked smile at her friends behind the bar, without so much as a glance into the corner where Ajax and his dark temper sat and brooded loud enough to drown out the hard rock from the speakers, Sophie set off to debauch herself in all the sin her hometown had to offer.
—
A few hours later, Sophie was packed in tight on what passed for a dance floor in a very sweaty, very smoky French Quarter establishment that hadn’t quite made up its mind between dive bar and dance club. The result was very drunk, very bad dancing, and very handsy.
She swiveled her hips away from yet another grope toward her breasts and reminded herself that this was why she was here, dancing to some atrocious Top 40 anthem laid down on a dire dance beat. The entire point was to suffer as much groping as possible, and wash the imprint of Ajax right off her.
Clearly, she thought darkly as she detached herself from yet another drunken fool who wanted to rub his dick against the cutout that snuck down toward her ass, she wasn’t nearly drunk enough to enjoy this the way she should.