by Megan Crane
She made her way out of the heaving dance floor crush to find the jostling pack around the bar no better. But at least here, there was a little more attention to her face on the way down to all those cutouts and a little less straight-out grabbing.
“Can I buy you a drink, sugar?” one man with a mouthful of Mississippi drawled at her as she approached.
He was cute enough, she supposed, in that clean-cut southern boy way that suggested a secret stash of revolting porn and five generations of terrible family secrets, but hell. That was tame by her standards.
You want tame, she reminded herself sharply. You want collars and bells and all that shit. That’s the point.
So even though she’d already rejected ten men just like him tonight for no good reason, she smiled at this one, long and bright and more than a little dirty besides.
“You surely can,” she said, as sultry as possible. “But you should know that I’m cheap and I’m easy. It’s only going to take the one drink. Are you up for that?”
Mississippi’s dark eyes lit up as he leaned toward her, and Sophie could smell the faintest hint of aftershave and a whole lot more beer. But then he froze, an inch away from her. His reasonably handsome face went pale. He muttered something wholly unintelligible, threw up his hands as if someone had pointed a gun at him, and moved away from her. In a hurry.
Sophie gritted her teeth. She pulled in a breath.
And then she turned, very slowly, to see what could possibly have scared off a six-foot-three southern man who’d been that drunk and that close to so much of her bare skin.
But, of course, she knew.
Ajax lounged there against the bar, his mouth set in that evil grin of his—the triangle of his beard made that much worse—his blue eyes a blaze of heat and fury that cut through the crowd and deep into her, too. He’d raked that dark blond hair of his back from his face and he wore his cut with an ease that made the fact of it—of what it so obviously stood for here in the post–Sons of Anarchy world—that much more pointed as it emphasized the impossible width of his hard, heavy shoulders. There was a small ring around him, Sophie noticed, even here in the busiest part of this overcrowded place, as if he’d peed around himself in a circle.
Or more likely, had simply shouldered his way there and glared.
She glared back at him.
That grin of his only deepened, and it was a dangerous, edgy thing. She could feel the scrape of it deep inside of her, making her feel something like drunk in a single, searing instant. Drunk and hot and needy.
So needy it edged over into greed.
Tame will never do, something inside of her whispered. Not for you.
Up above, another pop star wailed about her pain while the blood in Sophie’s body slowed, then ran hot. Ajax’s blue eyes were hooded and intense, and he merely looked at her for a moment that dragged out much too long before he crooked a finger at her.
But she had no intention of running when he called, thank you. She might be a biker bitch down deep in her bones, but that didn’t make her his biker bitch.
Instead, Sophie smiled at the man beside Ajax, who gaped at her, then at Ajax, before turning his back to her. The idiot on her left, who’d spent at least ten minutes drooling over her dress earlier, gulped so loudly she could hear it above the music, and threw himself back into the crowd.
She looked back at Ajax, her eyes narrowed, and he only shrugged, that shit-eating grin all over his face and pure murder in his eyes.
And the truth about all of this, Sophie understood then, was that she’d never wanted anyone more. She couldn’t imagine how she ever would.
She took her time walking to him. Because surrendering to the inevitable wasn’t the same thing as full capitulation. It didn’t make her a junkie if she was choosing this—choosing him—instead of merely succumbing. Or so she told herself.
That look in Ajax’s eyes, darker the closer she got, filled with sex and mayhem and the promise of retribution, told her otherwise.
She slowed down. His gaze heated up. She made sure her hips swung and he really got the full effect of all her cutouts and her bare skin beneath. The one on her side that spanned her hip. The one just below one breast. She felt his hard gaze lick over her and his grin had turned deadly by the time she stopped in front of him, as close to standing between his outstretched legs as she could get without actually touching him.
Then it was as if someone turned off the music, the sound of the crowd, the French Quarter in full wail outside. There was only the jarring thud of her heart and Ajax. Ajax everywhere, so tall and strong and lethal that no one dared get too close to him. Ajax brighter than the moon and the stars and the lights on Bourbon Street, and all Sophie could seem to do was bask in the glare of it. Of him.
He reached over and slid his hand over the fall of her hair, and then held on. Tight, though she refused to react to the yank of it. He never dropped that blistering gaze from hers. He merely began to wrap her hair around his big, battered hand and scraped knuckles, twisting it over his palm, tugging as he went until he had her on a short leash made of her own long hair. All he’d have to do was pull a little bit to bring her sprawling up against him.
She waited, tensed and ready, but he didn’t do it.
And she ached, everywhere. She needed. She was wet and close to desperate, her nipples so hard they made her breasts feel swollen, and she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath.
“Hey, baby,” Ajax said, danger and delirium and something dark like fate in his rough voice, though it spread over Sophie like sweet, hot syrup. “You making new friends?”
Chapter 10
Sophie didn’t respond.
She hung there before him, that tight body of hers on display, defiance in her green eyes, and those lush lips of hers pressed together in a firm line, and Ajax thought that keeping her mouth shut for once was maybe the smartest move she’d made all night.
He made the hand he’d wrapped up in the rope of her hair into a fist and he felt the tiny wince she tried to repress. He could see her pulse going nuts in her throat, like the pinch of it made her hotter. He was sure he could smell her, warm and Sophie and all that hunger that was his, damn her.
It was his. She was his.
He kept his back against the bar and hauled her closer, then tracked those fucking circles of no dress at all that made her as good as naked. He slid his hand over the indentation of her waist that was exposed to the entire goddamned bar, and felt her quiver against him. So he kept going, keeping his hand beneath what little stretchy purple fabric there was, smoothing his way over one cheek of that sweet ass and growling at her as he gripped it, right up against that mouth of hers he was holding so close to his own.
“What the fuck is the point of wearing a dress that isn’t a goddamned dress at all?”
Sophie smiled, damn her. Her mouth curved and her green eyes saw everything, all that shit inside of him he refused to name, and her lips were so close to his that he could almost feel that smile of hers like it was his own.
“This.” He could feel that, too. He could taste her when she spoke. “This is the point.”
He didn’t take her mouth. He gripped that ass like it might be the saving of him and he shifted his gaze, slightly, to fix it on a dumbass businessman bitch gaping at them from behind her.
“You like to watch, douchebag?”
The businessman jolted, took a good look at Ajax, and ran off, the way all bitches did.
“I thought you liked public sex,” Sophie taunted him, like he didn’t have her ass in one hand and her immobilized by the hair with the other. “What did you call it? A public service? What’s the matter—the big, bad biker not feeling like a good citizen tonight?”
This woman was going to kill him.
Ajax couldn’t fucking wait.
He yanked her smart mouth to his and he ate at it, thrusting his tongue deep, taking her over like he was fucking her already, deep and long and hard. So hard. And this was Sophi
e, his Sophie, so she didn’t just stand there and take it. She melted against him. She slid her hands up to dig into his chest, one thumb against one of his nipples for that little bite, and she gave as good as she got.
The kiss was dirty. Raunchy. Wet and carnal and fucked up in the middle of all these people, but she was right. Ajax didn’t give a fuck. Let them watch. Maybe those pansy little bitches who had tried to get their hands on his woman on the dance floor would learn something.
Like how to make a woman this hot moan into his mouth. How to make her writhe against him, sticking her ass back to fill his hand, making him think about the fastest way to get his cock as deep inside her as possible—
But instead he moved his hand lower, curving around her ass to that hot, wet cunt below. No panties. Nothing but wet, greedy pussy and his woman’s tongue deep in his mouth, her hard little nipples rubbing against his chest.
He needed to fuck her.
Now.
Ajax tore his mouth from hers and they both panted there, hot and dark. He didn’t give a shit about the crowd. He didn’t care if more fuckers were watching him, if they could see he’d found her slippery folds. He didn’t care about anything but the way she arched into him and moaned low when he thrust two fingers deep into her, all of that soft, creamy fire so fucking perfect his chest hurt.
He made a noise he’d never heard come out of him before and then he pulled his fingers out, then put them back through that ridiculous hole in her dress.
“If this is a game of chicken,” Sophie said, dark and breathy, right there against his mouth, because she never broke. Not this woman. “You lose.”
“You think?”
He dragged his hand away from the warmth of her body, out of that slinky little fuck me dress, and then he plunged the two fingers that had been deep in her cunt into that smart fucking mouth of hers. She didn’t hesitate. Sophie held his gaze with hers, challenge and that crazy need and a darkness that sang to him besides, and she sucked. She licked. She took her own cream from his fingers and he felt his cock try to claw its way out of his jeans, and she was the hottest fucking thing he’d ever seen.
He took her mouth again. Savage. Desperate.
He tasted her sweet pussy, hot against her tongue. He tasted the drinks she’d had, the spike of rum and that kick that was all her. All of that and Sophie, his fucking match in every goddamned way.
His.
He unwrapped his hand from her hair and then he pushed her back again, shoving away from the bar. He saw nothing but obstacles, but Ajax had never met an obstacle he couldn’t get around. Tonight was no different—and he wanted Sophie a hell of a lot more than he’d wanted some of the other things he’d managed to get in his day. He grabbed her hand and pulled her next to him, then in front of him. He gripped her by the nape of her neck and he propelled her forward through the annoying, heaving crowd that parted before them once they got a look at his face.
He must have looked evil, he thought, when a couple licking each other’s faces in front of him did a double take and then jumped aside.
Whatever worked.
“Stop fighting me,” he growled at Sophie as she tried to lead the way. “You want my cock inside you or you want to have a fight about who’s in charge?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, her mouth a little crook of defiance, and God help him, she was going to bring him to his knees. How could he know that and not give a shit? What was happening to him?
“I don’t think I really have to make that decision, Sean. I think I can do both, and I think I still win.”
“It’s a question of how soon, babe.” His hand tightened around the back of her neck, and because this was Sophie, she laughed at him and leaned into it. And he fucking loved it. “You want to talk about your feelings? You want to lecture me on how I should treat you? I’m still gonna fuck you, you’re right about that. But I might not let you come, just for pissing me off.”
She laughed again, harder, and it made her green eyes sparkle and what the fuck was the matter with him that he felt that like a blow job from some other bitch?
“Liar,” she said, like she knew something he didn’t, and Ajax had zero desire to explore that pounding thing in him that agreed. That definitely agreed. “You live to make me come.”
She wasn’t wrong about that, which was another thing he had no plans to analyze. But he noticed she shut the fuck up and turned back around, and then she let him steer her where he wanted her to go. Sure enough, he was flipping a few twenties at a bouncer and pushing her out into an alley in about two minutes flat.
He let go of her as the steel door clanged shut behind them and she staggered forward a foot or two on those fucking hooker shoes of hers before she caught herself. She straightened, a lot like she had that night in her living room, but this time, she turned back to face him.
He almost didn’t recognize her then, her eyes were so dark. So serious.
“Did you follow me tonight?”
Ajax laughed. “Half of Bourbon Street followed you with their tongues hanging out, slamming into each other like a fucking boner festival. Figured that was your goal.”
“You must have followed me.” She eyed him. The alley was at least fifteen degrees cooler than that mess of a bar, but he didn’t think that was why she had goosebumps everywhere. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” He shook his head. “You wear that joke of a dress for someone else?”
“Anyone else.” Sophie waved her hands in the air in a little arc that could have contained the whole of the French Quarter. “Everyone else.”
“You have shitty luck then, babe. Because one more man touched you in there? I was gonna take him apart. You’re lucky you stopped dancing when you did.”
“And again.” Her voice was quiet, but not cool. Not with that look in her eyes, burning him up from across the few feet of darkness that separated them, burrowing deep beneath his skin like a bruise. “Why?”
Ajax didn’t want to answer her. He didn’t want to acknowledge that roaring thing inside him that was rattling in its cage, fighting to get out. He didn’t want to admit that he’d almost flipped the table when she’d walked out of the Priory in that fucking stripper outfit. That he’d come this close to punching his brother Cash in his face because he happened to be standing there, not even wearing his cut, as further insult. That he’d shouldered his way out into the chaos of Bourbon Street and had followed her.
Oh yeah. He’d actually followed her.
Again.
Like her ass was a homing beacon and he was fucking powerless to resist it, and there wasn’t one goddamned thing he liked about that. Not one.
He’d followed her across the Quarter once already, when she’d been nothing to him but a sweet butt in gold hot pants. Tonight he’d followed her as she’d dodged drunks and ducked out of unwanted embraces, never looking back to see the trail of devastation she left in her wake. That being Ajax, who’d come along behind her and dispensed a little biker justice to every motherfucker who’d dared touch her or even look at her too long, by his estimation. A drunk pushed face-first into a wall here, a tourist tripped and shoved to the street there.
Sophie was his. No matter how naked she seemed to want to be on the streets of New Orleans—and he couldn’t argue with that, given that body of hers was a work of fucking art. But she was his all the same.
And no matter if she was the only one standing in this alley right now who didn’t get that.
Ajax wasn’t going to say it. He didn’t know how to say something so contrary to everything he was and anyway, he’d been pretty fucking eloquent with his fists and his temper for the past few hours. He was done talking.
His cock was a far better negotiator. Time to let him out.
“Shut up,” he told her, his voice so low it was almost a part of the city itself, late-night sin and the far-off kick of jazz in the air. “And show me that pussy you’ve been teasing the whole fucking French Quarter with all night.”
Her throat worked and he expected more smartass remarks—but maybe she’d learned something here. Or maybe the look on his face was as fucking ferocious as it felt.
Either way, Sophie licked her lips, and he felt that in his cock like a slap. He forced himself to stand still. To watch as she spread her legs wider apart and stood there a moment, the stretchy fabric of her ridiculous fucking dress tight over her thighs. And then she reached down and pulled the dress up, rolling it back to expose those smooth, sweet thighs. Then higher, so it was hard to breathe. Then higher still, until the dress was bunched around her waist and her pussy was fully exposed to the night air.
And to him.
The animal inside him almost broke the chain and lunged at her, but Ajax held it back. Somehow. He held himself very, very still, though he could see the way her gaze dropped to move over his hard cock pressing against his jeans. And God knew he wanted to fuck that smart mouth of hers, but he knew that if he did, that would be the end of this.
He wanted more than to bust a nut. And Ajax didn’t feel like psychoanalyzing himself on that one, either.
“Make yourself come, Sophie.”
It came out hard. Guttural. An order.
She jerked. “What? Why?”
Ajax wasn’t playing.
“Fuck yourself. Here. Now.”
She licked her lips again, and she really was going to kill him. She was halfway there, and that was before she tilted up her chin and ran her hands down her thighs, then moved her fingers around to her own sweet cunt. He could hear her breath pick up. He saw her chest move like it was an effort.
And then her hands began to move in that deep V between her thighs, rocking one palm over her clit like a gentle wave and holding the other there. Just holding it.
“You only need one hand to play with your clit, babe,” he gritted out. “Those other fingers belong in your pussy.”
She made a soft, broken little sound that almost made him come in his fucking jeans, like a goddamned kid, and her eyes were dark with a specific sort of distress when they met his. He loved it.