Make You Burn

  Sophie was a tiny little thing in the photo, no more than six, and Priest had her propped up on the handlebars of his chopper as they sat at a rally in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She couldn’t tell any longer if she remembered that day or had simply looked at that picture so much that she thought she did. Either way, it was burned into her. The sun, the bike. Her father there, so big and strong and alive, laughing in that gruff way of his toward the camera and making her feel like a princess, letting her sit up in front of him like that. Her adoration of her daddy was right there on her face, right there in the picture.

  Right there inside of her, still. Always.

  A man is what he does, angel, Priest had told her more than once. Everything else is just bullshit.

  She wasn’t ready to accept that she’d never figure him out. That she’d never know why he’d done the things he’d done. Why he’d refused to tell her about his family. Why he’d let the club he’d loved more than anything fade so much over the past years. Why he’d always made it clear there were places inside of him that were locked up tight and hidden away, and that was just how it was. She wasn’t ready to accept that he was simply gone, all his secrets with him.

  Forever.

  How could she have known him better than anyone and not at all?

  Sophie had finally managed to dress herself. She’d wrapped her piece of Priest’s favorite T-shirt around her upper arm, circling her biceps twice, then tucked in the end. Now she stood in her kitchen with an untouched cup of coffee in her hands and motorcycles down in the courtyard again, and she still didn’t know the answer to that question.

  Maybe she never would. Maybe no one ever really knew someone else. Her father had been his club. But the club was not her father. She’d been sure of that, in the quiet moments they’d shared that were only theirs. Only family. But maybe those great secret places he’d carried in him weren’t anything to do with the Deacons, the way she’d always believed.

  Maybe they were life. Maybe they were the natural consequences of the way her father had lived it.

  She had always known this day would come, hadn’t she? That she’d have to put her father in the ground too soon. That his motorcycle and all the crap that came along with it would be the death of him. Her mother loved the junk. Her father had loved the life. It all led to the same place, and Sophie knew she was no better. Maybe they were all addicts, in their way.

  Sophie had no illusions about the kind of man her father had been. She’d expected to be furious today. That had been part of why she’d marched around the French Quarter in her pasties the morning after she’d heard the news. She’d wanted to express her fury and her defiance and that howling emptiness inside of her in the way she’d known would have infuriated Priest the most.

  But now the day was here and all she felt was sad. So deeply, impossibly, absurdly sad, as if it was a tide that would never stop battering against her, claiming new ground, inching its way higher and higher into her soul.

  As if it was deforming her.

  That was the only explanation she could come up with for how she’d ended up in bed with Ajax, of all people. Calling it her grief process didn’t quite cut it. She wanted him too much. She thought of the way he’d held her earlier, simply held her, and was terrified that she needed him.

  She was definitely no better than either one of her parents.

  Ajax made her feel too many great and unwieldy things. Raw. Insatiable. Hollowed out with longing. No one had ever made her come apart the way he did. No one had ever come close.

  And no one had ever made her feel so safe or so cherished, and she knew how crazy that sounded, even in her own head.

  But it was true. She’d walked into that bayou clubhouse with Ajax at her side, and hadn’t been the slightest bit nervous. She’d gone out on a mission last night, wearing almost nothing, which was begging for trouble in this town—but she hadn’t been worried and that had a lot to do with the little pit stop she’d made in the Priory on her way out. Had she known he would follow her? Or had she only hoped he would?

  And even now, dressed in a long, black, sleeveless dress that billowed around her and her hair woven into the complicated French braid Priest had thought was sophisticated, she could still feel Ajax’s arm wrapped tight around her and his head near hers, like he was still there behind her. All his heat and strength. All his obvious, fascinating power. All of his fierce loyalty and determination, right there at her back.

  Oh yeah, she was in some deep shit. Sophie recognized it.

  But today was her father’s funeral. She didn’t have to deal with anything but that.

  She heard that badass black Dyna rev its engine below her and she knew it was time.

  It was too soon. It would always be too soon. She felt tears prick at her eyes and a sob roll over her chest, but she breathed in deep. She set her jaw. She put her untouched coffee down on the counter and then there was no more putting it off.

  This was happening.

  She stepped out onto the metal landing and saw the three other Deacons’ bikes take off down the alley.

  Only Ajax waited for her as she made her way down each metal flight of stairs, holding on to the railing because this was the first time in her whole life she was worried she might slip, her legs felt so unlike her own beneath her.

  And Sophie was glad that he rode that bike so damned loud, that killer rumble filling up the courtyard and reverberating against her eardrums, because it blocked everything else out. The morning all around them. The city beyond these walls. The funeral procession that she knew perfectly well waited for them out on Bourbon Street.

  There was nothing but Ajax dressed entirely in black, no helmet in honor of the dead, astride that powerful bike of his like he was a god.

  There was nothing but that steady, hard, certain look in his blue eyes, and it gave her the strength to walk to him. Head high, eyes clear.

  She would make her daddy proud. And Ajax, too. One way or another.

  “You can do this,” he told her as she drew close, his voice as dark and deep as the engine beneath him.

  “I can,” Sophie said, and in that moment, with his gaze on her like that, she believed it.

  She swung into place behind him, letting her hand rest on the strip of Priest’s T-shirt Ajax wore wrapped once around his biceps, then settled herself into position. The long black dress she wore had a slit up one side that let her straddle his bike, and she made sure it fell the way it was supposed to—like long pants. This wasn’t about exposing herself. This was about honoring her father.

  Sophie didn’t wear a helmet, either. She just looped her arms around Ajax and held on as he revved his engine and then took off, one great and mighty roar through the shadows of the alley and then out into the blinding light of Bourbon Street.

  She had only a quick impression of the crowded street. Tourists pressed to either side and bikes stretching back down the block. So many bikes. Then down the next block. One man to each motorcycle, except for Ajax, who carried Priest’s only known family member.

  They all revved their engines, and it fused with the machine between her legs and the hard back of the man in front of her, a great and glorious howl of unendurable loss. It roared down Bourbon Street and echoed off the delicately wrought French-style balconies. It bounced back from the tall buildings lining Canal Street in the distance. It became the very air.

  It lodged deep inside of Sophie, like some kind of primal recognition.

  Then Ajax made a curt signal with his hand in the air, and they began to move.

  It was a fifteen-minute ride out to the funeral home, and as much as she hated the reason for it, Sophie couldn’t deny the deep thrill she got from being at the head of so many powerful machines and so many dangerous men. The sense of rightness that started at the top of her head and wound its way down to her feet.

  The procession was slow. Police waved them through intersections and civilians in their cars stopped and gawked. Children pointed, as i
f the wave of bikes was a roll of thunder, storming through the Louisiana morning.

  Sophie sat tall. This was all for her father, this show of respect. This was what he’d earned in his life, year after year of commitment to his ideals and his beliefs and his brothers. She couldn’t help but take pride in that. In him.

  At the funeral home, the hearse pulled into the convoy and they headed for the cemetery, slower. Making sure that Priest’s last ride was smooth and righteous.

  Sophie held on to Ajax as if he was her anchor, and he never wavered. He sat there, imposing and stoic at once, as they rolled through the gates and into the typical New Orleans cemetery with its aboveground tombs and the ghostly little alleyways between them that made them into cities of the dead.

  They pulled up as near as they could get to Priest’s chosen tomb, and Sophie climbed off the bike. She waited until Ajax stood beside her, and for the rest of the Deacons to fall into place behind them. She heard the rippling effect of all that quiet as the rows upon rows of bikes went silent.

  Sophie didn’t care if it made her look weak, because she didn’t feel weak—but she wanted that connection. She needed it. She held on to Ajax’s strong, tough arm as they walked the last little way, like any bereaved member of the family would with such a ruthless guide at her—

  But they were stopped before they could reach the tomb. By the same officer who had been at the funeral home yesterday, and what appeared to be a few of his friends.

  “That’s far enough,” he barked at them, all puffed-up chest and hands on his hips. He directed his scowl at Ajax. “I think we’re going to have anyone in one of those vests stay on this side of the tomb during the interment. We don’t want a situation.”

  Beneath her hand, Sophie felt Ajax go rock hard and lethal.

  Behind her, she heard the kind of muttering from the assembled men that sounded like Harley engines revving and could end only in blood.

  “There is no situation,” Sophie said, loud and calm and clear. “This is my father’s funeral and these are my father’s friends. They’re invited guests.”

  “They’re criminals,” one of the other cops muttered derisively, and Sophie gripped Ajax’s arm harder when he focused all his fierce blue attention on the sound.

  And worse, grinned.

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said crisply, before Ajax could say something far more inflammatory. “And even if you’re not mistaken, attending a funeral is not a criminal act. You need to step aside.”

  “I told you yesterday, Ms. Lombard, that we need to keep a handle on things,” the first officer told her in that same sanctimonious voice, with that same inflection on Ms. he’d used the day before. “Why don’t you tell your guard dog to back down.”

  And he made the great mistake of waving a dismissive hand at Ajax, who actually growled. And tensed even further, as if he was about to launch himself directly at the officer’s smug face, and Sophie couldn’t have that. She couldn’t allow it.

  Not if she could stop it.

  “His name is Ajax,” Sophie snapped. Ajax went very still beside her and beneath the hand she was digging into his arm, but she couldn’t look at him. She was too busy staring down the line of cops before her. “I suggest you call the man you’re insulting by name.”

  “Ma’am,” the cop began.

  But Sophie kept going, even though she could feel Ajax boring holes into the side of her head with that gaze of his, intense and wild. She was sure it would leave scars, but she’d handle that later.

  “I would also suggest that you treat him with the respect he deserves,” she bit out, still cool and sharp. “That you respect the fact he’s the acting president of the same club my father ran and that all these men here take very seriously. That you find a way to respect the fact that regardless of your opinions, they are all here to honor my father. But if you can’t bring yourself to do any of that, respect this.” She drew herself up to her full height and glared at Officer Douchebag as if she expected him to burst into flame with the force of it. And the truth was, she did. “This is a family service and you are trespassing. And unless you plan to arrest every single one of us, I’d suggest you step aside.” She paused the barest instant. “Now.”

  There was a taut, brilliant sort of silence. It stretched out from the six cops to Sophie and Ajax, then rolled out behind them into that great sea of bikers who, Sophie knew without a single word being spoken, had her back in every conceivable way.

  The policemen blinked, one after the other. They exchanged shifty sorts of looks. And then they stepped back.

  It was a measure of the respect due the occasion that no one cheered, Sophie thought, but it was a close thing. For her, anyway.

  Ajax led Sophie past the clump of antsy officers, acting as if they weren’t there. Only when they stopped at the entrance to the raised tomb and nodded a greeting toward the waiting minister did he turn to look down at her.

  His expression was so fierce, so deeply intense, it made her skin feel singed.

  “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, in a voice thick with power and need and a hundred other things that made her heart skip in her chest, then begin to bloom a little bit. Pain or pleasure, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. It was all Ajax. It was all this. Then his voice got even lower. “You are. I don’t think I’m gonna let you go, Sophie. I don’t see that happening.”

  “Ajax,” she whispered.

  His eyes were so blue they hurt her, but she couldn’t look away.

  Ajax. She’d finally called him Ajax, and that changed everything.

  She might as well have made a vow, loud and clear and in front of hundreds. Inked his name into her skin. Worn his colors on her back. Stamped his mark on her in blood.

  Some part of her wanted all of those things, with a savage sort of fullness that made her something like dizzy. But not now.

  Men filed in and stood around the tomb. Families and friends filled in the spaces between the bikers in their different cuts. There were so many people that she couldn’t see them all. They backed up the aisles between the tombs and not one of them complained.

  This was about her father. This was his last ride.

  And now he was free.

  Next to her, Ajax stood like a stern, immovable rock. And as the minister began to speak, he reached down and took her hand in his, lacing his fingers tightly with hers and tugging her close.

  Making her feel less alone, instantly. Less abandoned. Less adrift in the grief of this, of losing her only family so suddenly and so cruelly.

  Making her his.

  Chapter 12

  When the last liquored-up biker staggered out into the late night swamp that was Bourbon Street on a Friday and became the Big Easy’s problem instead of his, Ajax finally went to look for Sophie.

  It had been hours since he’d last seen her. She’d stood there like a fucking queen in the middle of the Priory, surrounded by all those leather-faced, foulmouthed biker assholes—his brothers, one way or another, even if they weren’t Deacons—with their dirty bandannas and their gnarly beards and their greedy eyes that crawled all over her. Her bare arms, that glimpse of leg, the line of her neck, and the hint of her tits. Her hair twisted back like that and those delicate wings stretching out across her shoulders from beneath the straps of her black dress, tempting more than one motherfucker with a death wish to reach out and touch.

  No one had, which was more to do with leftover respect for Priest than with Ajax, he was all too aware—and that was something he needed to change.

  Because one thing was perfectly clear to him, if nothing else, and he’d accepted that when she’d used his road name—his real name—at the grave site. Sophie was his.

  His.

  That truth had beat at him like a drum, pounding in his head and his veins and his cock, making it hard to do what he needed to do as the long, shitty day wore on and he had to live up to the responsibilities his president had left in his
hands.

  Got to talk to the lawyer about the legal bullshit tomorrow, he’d told the various Deacons and anyone else who’d poked at him about the future of the bar and the strip joint and the club itself. No point talking about what happens next until then.

  And now, finally, he was climbing those back stairs at last, nothing on his mind but the sweet embrace of the Mississippi delta fall night and getting his hands on his woman again.

  He’d never wanted a woman like this. He’d never wanted to own one. Claim one. But he’d never met a woman like Sophie before.

  He was something like desperate and Ajax had no place to put that. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t who he was. But it was who he was with her.

  And he didn’t have it in him to fight that. Not when he could have her instead.

  He was in her bedroom then, with no memory of getting from the stairs outside to her doorway. Sophie jolted up from where she’d already been sound asleep, clapping a hand over her chest like she was holding her heart inside. But when her sleepy eyes met his, she blinked, as if whatever she saw on his face calmed her.

  Or maybe it was just that she saw him, he thought, and he liked the idea of that a little too much.

  “What happened?” she asked. She dropped her hand from her heart but fuck if his didn’t start kicking at him. “What’s wrong?”

  Ajax didn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t know what the hell was happening to him. Only that she was too far away and he couldn’t take it. Not one second more.

  She knelt up as he moved closer to the bed. She was wearing nothing but one of those little tanks of hers and a lacy, stretchy pair of panties that made her hips look like candy. And he was hard and he needed her and he wanted things he’d never, ever imagined he’d want.

  Ajax wanted everything.

  He wanted to hear her voice all the time, smoky and haughty and smartass and his. He wanted her to grip him the way she had on his bike today and at the funeral, like he was the only thing between her and the edge of a steep cliff. He wanted to smell her, her shampoo and her soap and that rougher, sweeter scent of woman and sex between her legs. He couldn’t get enough of her taste, her mouth and her skin and her cunt. He wanted to lose himself inside her. He wanted to sleep with her and fuck her and wake up with her and do it all over again, and he’d never wanted anything like that, ever. Maybe a second fuck, sure, because talented pussy was worth hitting a few times. But nothing else. Nothing that veered a little too close to domestication for his peace of mind.