by Megan Crane
“Never a dull fucking moment in the city by the swamp,” Prince drawled, his tone as lazy as his gaze was hard. “Funerals and dramatic wills and Ajax taking an old lady. I’d cry a little bit if I cared, I really would.”
“You going to come over here and suck my dick?” Ajax asked softly.
“Tempting, as ever, but I’ll pass.”
“Because if not, shut the fuck up.” He shifted and crossed his arms, glaring indiscriminately around the room. “I have shit to tell all of you and it can’t wait for church tomorrow.”
Cash shook his head. “I don’t see why—”
“I don’t think Priest’s death was an accident,” Ajax said abruptly. He didn’t have time to cajole these fuckers into line. There was the matter of figuring out what had happened to Priest, but he also needed to get his hands on his goddamned woman before that cracked rib sensation inside of him put him in the fucking hospital. His old lady might not know she’d been claimed, but she would. And maybe then they could discuss knives in the back and the way to behave in public. “I think he was murdered.”
He looked each of his brothers in the eye. He let that sink in.
“Now,” he said, when he finally had their undivided attention. “I want to know one thing and one thing only from each one of you. Are you a Deacon, committed by the vows you took and the ink on your back to avenge our fallen brother no matter who it is that took him out?”
He looked at each of them in turn. Blue. Prince. Cash. His brothers or his enemies. Their choice.
Then he lowered his voice. “Or are you a fucking traitor I’ll have the distinct pleasure of putting down like a dog?”
—
Sophie had no idea what she was doing.
She only knew she had to get the hell away.
That had been the problem for years, in a nutshell. She’d stayed. She should have gone to college out of state. She should have taken a job—any job—somewhere else. She’d chosen her blood, her family, her home when she should have severed her ties to this fucked-up place and these terrible people who had never, ever loved her, no matter what lies she’d told herself over the years to convince herself otherwise.
Maybe that was what she was addicted to, she thought then, just like her junkie mother. Not junk. Not a man, even if that man was Ajax. But this shitty life of loving limited, violent, careless men who could never love anything but their stupid fucking club.
You have to get out of here.
She blinked and realized she’d stopped dead out in the middle of the courtyard. The beating heart of her childhood home that was no longer hers. That had never been hers, if she was honest with herself at last. She looked around wildly, her eyes alarmingly full and that heaviness in her chest that she knew meant wracking, horrible sobs might very well take her to her knees at any second. She balled her hands into fists and jabbed them at her eyes, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped.
She knew every inch of this courtyard. She’d learned how to walk on these cracked stones. She’d spied on the men coming and going, first to make them grin and play with her when they saw her hiding there in her pigtails. Later to try to parse out the secret lives they led right there in plain sight. Old Jez had taught her how to dance right here on a sultry bayou night. Her father had smoked his cigarettes on the stairs to their apartment while the brothers had catcalled and then applauded from the rolled-back doors of the clubhouse, and she’d learned what to do at her first high school dance. Right here. She knew the vines that crawled up the trellis and when they would burst into bloom in the spring. She could tell the time of day by the way the shadows moved over the far building. She knew what the stones felt like beneath her bare feet, and how they sang when she strode over them in heels.
She’d never lived anywhere but here. This was her father’s club, but it was her home. And the club won.
The club always won.
Or, more to the point, she always lost.
And it was there, in the center of that courtyard, that Sophie wrapped her arms around herself and, finally, cried.
The sobs rolled up from that raw hollow scraped out inside of her. She made a raw, awful sound and she found herself squatting down on the ground like she needed to hold on to the hard earth with her own fingers or she’d fall off. Like a good grip could save her when she knew, she just knew, there was nothing and no one that could. Not even herself.
She sobbed until her eyes were on fire and felt like sandpaper when she wiped at them with her palms. She sobbed until her hands were wet and her nose was stuffed and her face felt misshapen. She sobbed until she couldn’t any longer, and then she squatted there for a moment, bent over and broken in two, until she could breathe.
Sophie jolted herself back into the present then. She wiped her swollen eyes and then she stood, and found she wobbled on her feet. She needed to leave. She glared up the metal stairs and tried to catalogue what she’d take if she decided to go—and then she shook her head. What did it matter? Nothing up there was real. It was all the leftover junk of the sad life of one more woman who’d thought she mattered, but didn’t.
She didn’t go up those stairs. She lurched forward and walked out of the alley and into the noisy embrace of Bourbon Street instead. It was midday on a Saturday, and the street was far from its shining best. And Sophie saw none of the magic she usually did, here in her favorite place on earth. Just a tired old party street in the full glare of a hot fall day, with a little too much of last night’s hangover clinging to her face and a long, long way to go before the blurry night came down and made it all feel all right again.
Maybe it was finally time to find herself another home. A real home.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Sophie didn’t have to turn around to identify that flat growl from behind her. She knew it. She would always know it. It lit her up from the inside out, a harsh and encompassing fire, making every nerve she had prickle with anticipation and her pussy melt. Instantly.
Damn him.
“I can’t imagine why you’d care,” she said, not concerned that her voice was shredded and he’d likely hear it. Or that he’d see that she’d been crying when she turned to face him. “Of course, I can’t imagine why you do anything you do, so this is not a big surprise.”
Ajax stood in the mouth of the alley that led back into the courtyard, one hand gripping the stones so hard she thought he might tear the building down. Or maybe he was keeping himself from wrapping that hand around her throat.
Her curse was, she found the former intriguing and the latter just plain hot.
Low in her belly, something pulsed hard. Then ached.
“Not what I asked, babe.”
Sophie didn’t understand how she could want him like this when at the same time, she felt scraped raw inside. Hollowed out, and he’d done it with his own blunt fingers and all those big, tough rings. Worse, she’d let him.
She’d stood by and let assholes like him do things like this to her all her life. Well, that was done. She was done.
“I’m going somewhere I’m not collateral damage in one more asshole outlaw’s sad and brutal life that has nothing to do with me anyway,” she threw at him. “That’s where the fuck I’m going, Ajax. Let me guess. You have a problem with that, too.”
Chapter 14
“Please tell me this is not how you deal with shit,” Ajax growled. He pushed himself off the wall and he started toward her, rubbing his hand against that place where his chest felt like it gaped wide open, like he’d been fucking shot, and how could she not get that? She’d held the fucking gun herself. “You shoot your fucking mouth off like that when we both know you know better and then you run away like a goddamn child?”
That broken look on her face that he didn’t like at all shifted to a flash of temper, and prick that he was, he liked it a whole lot better.
“You got something to say to me, Sophie? Say it. I’m all ears.”
“Did I stutter back in
the Priory?” she threw at him. “My bad. Let me try again. Fuck. You.”
Ajax laughed, and he could see from her face that it sounded about as harsh as it felt.
“I ever strike you as a reasonable man, babe?” She folded her arms as he came at her, not giving an inch, and he hated that he could find that so damned hot when he was legitimately pissed at her. “You laboring under some impression that I’m not three seconds away from kicking your ass halfway to Texas?”
Sophie glared back at him, her mouth set in a flat line. “Don’t threaten me, asshole.”
“You should know better, baby. I don’t make threats.”
She rolled her eyes. She didn’t look the least bit afraid of him or even remotely intimidated, not even when he was coming at her down the middle of Bourbon Street like a goddamned freight train. Tourists leapt aside and dove for cover, but Sophie only glared at him.
And as pissed as he was, it still made his cock twitch, that traitorous little shit.
He shook his head, still feeling the slap of her betrayal back in the bar. He hadn’t expected that kind of bullshit from her. Cash, Prince—they’d put a lot of work into pretending they were shiny new people with bright new lives, and who knew what people like that would do to keep that shine going? But Sophie was different. Sophie belonged right here. With him. He thought she knew that.
How the fuck could she not know that?
“First of all,” he gritted out, “you know better than to take that tone with me in front of the club. You know it won’t fly. It’s disrespectful and it’s bullshit. And second of all, you should know that no matter what the fuck your father did or didn’t do with his goddamned will, the club is not going to leave you hanging. I’m not going to leave you hanging. Which I’m sure he knew. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Forgive me.” Her tone was like acid and there was no give on that pretty face of hers, no matter how close he got to her. He couldn’t help but admire her balls, even as he kind of wanted to wipe that tough-girl expression off and make her sob. The way she did when she called out Oh my God and then came all over him. “The next time my father dies and leaves my entire life and everything that matters to me to four people he hasn’t laid eyes on in ten years, I’ll be sure to think more about your feelings.”
Ajax thought his head might fucking explode, and maybe it did, because Sophie’s eyes widened and she backed up when he got within touching distance. And he wasn’t going to lie to himself. The part of him that was never going to be anything but a bayou trash piece of shit liked it. A little healthy concern for her own well-being might go a long way.
“If I were you”—and he was stalking her now, watching her through narrowed eyes as she moved too fast and a little too unsteadily away from him, backing herself up on the nearest uneven curb and nearly slamming into a lamppost—“I’d spend a little more time worrying about my feelings and a little less time feeling sorry for yourself because your daddy didn’t love you the way you think he should have. Newsflash, little girl. Fathers suck. Grow the fuck up and deal with it.”
Her mouth fell open and she slowed her backward scramble, which wasn’t smart at all, because he was on her then. He jumped that same curb and got directly in her face.
“My god,” she whispered, her voice shaking, but he could see it was from temper, not any kind of pain, “you’re a fucking monster.”
“I’ve never been anything else,” Ajax told her with stark, harsh honesty. Then he ducked, plowed his shoulder into her belly so the air left her in a little oof, and hauled her up and over his shoulder as he straightened. “And guess what, babe? It’s not about to change. This is the whole fucking package.”
He smacked his hand down hard on her ass and she jolted against him and then, predictably, started punching him in the back where she hung over him. She even packed a pretty decent punch, for a girl.
And of course that made his cock want to do its own kind of punching.
Ajax wheeled around and started back toward home, staring down anyone who dared look at him twice in that particularly grim and unsmiling way he’d learned a long time ago. Fuck with me, I’m begging you, he thought when a fat fucker with a face redder than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers T-shirt straining over his beer belly frowned at him. But the bitch looked away, because that was what bitches always did. Always.
Sophie squirmed and fought, and he dealt with her kicking by clamping her legs down with one arm. He let the punches rain down where they would. Like a fucking massage.
“Keep it up,” he growled at her as he ducked back in the alley that led to the courtyard behind the Priory. “You’re just pissing me off more.”
“So what?” Thump. Thump thump. He could feel her getting hot and agitated against him as she tried to roll off him and kept failing to move much at all. “When are you ever not pissed off? How would I tell the difference?”
Ajax stopped halfway down the alley, well into the shadows, and tipped her over and onto the ground. She looked dizzy when her feet hit, and he didn’t care. Dizzy was fine with him. He backed her hard into the wall and caged her there, his face in hers.
“I don’t think this is how you want to play this, Sophie, but it makes no difference to me. Cry. Fight. Call me names. Punch me with your little hands and see which one of us that hurts more. Run away and see how long it takes me to catch up with you. Who cares? It’s all going to end the same.”
“One of us dead?” she threw at him, sounding tough and furious and unintimidated, even though he could see that wild pulse right there in her throat and knew she was faking it. “I nominate you.”
“Yeah?” Ajax held her in place with his chest against hers and a hand in her thick hair. He reached down, grabbing a fistful of her skirt and then another, getting all that fucking fabric out of his way. “How wet are you right now?”
She flinched, made a hissing sort of sound, and then bucked against him. “Get off me.”
“That’s what I thought.” He didn’t stop. He pulled the skirt up and then he slid his hand down to cup that cunt of hers, so white hot and juicy he could hear it when he shoved his fingers beneath her panties and then stroked his way over her clit with a rough urgency. She moaned, long and low. “You hate me. I can tell.”
She shuddered, hard, and he stroked down, thrusting two fingers deep inside and rubbing the heel of his hand nice and hard against that needy clit of hers.
“You don’t know me at all,” she threw at him, but her voice was breathy and her hands clutched at his cut and her hips rose to meet him, as greedy as the clutch of her hot pussy around his fingers. “I hate biker clubs. I hate the drama. I hate the bullshit. I hate the rules and the endless battles about who disrespected who by wearing the wrong color on the wrong bike in the wrong town without asking permission from this club or that—”
“You’re so full of shit.” Ajax leaned in, rubbing his chest against those plump, hot tits until her nipples poked at him. “You love this life and even if you didn’t, too bad. You’re neck deep in it and you always have been. Better figure out how to swim, babe.”
He pumped into her harder, ground that clit of hers against his palm, watched the sweat bead on her upper lip and her neck arch back.
“I want a normal life,” she whispered, as much to the stones all around them and the noisy street nearby, the shadows and the thick Louisiana air, as to him. Maybe to herself.
Ajax laughed and upped the pace, fucking her on his hand and watching her while he did it. His woman. His property. His.
“You want the rush, babe,” he told her. “Look at you. You crave it.”
He ground down against her and then stopped. Abruptly. Her eyes shot open, lust and need and mutiny at once in those green depths.
“I want the suburbs and a Camry,” she said, like her chest wasn’t heaving. Like there wasn’t a red flush high on her cheeks and she wasn’t about to come on his hand, because he fucking owned that ass of hers. “I want a meek, biddable husband who
works at an insurance company and I want to join the fucking PTA.”
“Yeah?” He thrust into her hard, then eased out slow. “You gonna wear something like this while you’re dying of boredom with the douchebag husband you keep on a leash? Or maybe that stripper dress? No, I know, the gold pasties.” He pulled out completely and stroked all around those plump folds of hers, so sweet and hot and dripping with need, kept stroking until she was stiff and tense and trembling against him. “Sure thing, babe. You’re standing in an alley with a biker’s hand deep in your pussy at noon, but really, you’re destined for the PTA.”
Her green eyes lit up with fury and something else. Something that tore at him and kicked at him and pissed him off all over again. “I want a normal life, Ajax.”
“No.” He was pitiless. “You don’t.”
And then he pinched her plump little clit with absolutely no mercy and Sophie screamed. High-pitched and long and he didn’t cover it because he didn’t give a fuck if she alerted the entire French Quarter. She shook apart right there. She dropped her head against him and came against his palm in rolling jerks, and he fucking loved every second of it.
He kept her there as her breathing slowed again and her body stopped rocking convulsively into his palm. He held her with his hand wrapped up tight in all the molten perfection of her cunt and his other hand a fist in her hair, and he waited for her to look at him again.
She took her time doing it.
“You need to have my back,” he told her, harsh and low and serious. “Don’t fucking ambush me like that again.”
That look in her eyes intensified and he still hated it. It was much too raw. It was too much like grief. Like tears.
“This was my childhood, Ajax. It was my whole life. It was the only thing that was mine.” Her green eyes were miserable. “I couldn’t be in the club. I couldn’t make up for the sons he’d lost. But I could run that bar. I could take care of that, at least.” She shrugged, but her hands were softer against his chest and he realized, from a distance, that it was inside him, the thing that still ached. That still felt broken. “And now it’s yours, like none of that mattered.”