Lombards kept their tears to themselves. No matter what it cost them. And it didn’t matter that Sophie was tired of paying that particular tax. She was still a Lombard. Her father had depended on her. The more he’d retreated into his backroom office these last few years, the more he’d left the bar and everything else in her hands, the more she’d showed him she could live up to his notion of what it meant to be a Lombard, even if she hadn’t been a member of his club of assholes and degenerates.
She’d been more than that. She’d been his blood.
I’ll always take care of you, he’d told her a million times, especially when he’d been drunk. You’re my blood, angel.
Sophie thought that meant more than a gang tattoo and a few Harleys. It had, to her. She kept telling herself it had meant more to him, too.
But then Ajax stopped laughing, and that was worse.
“You should mind your fucking manners, Sophie,” he said quietly. Much too quietly.
To someone who didn’t know him, he probably sounded about as friendly as a huge, built, flint-eyed guy with that many tattoos and that particular way of carrying himself—like a threat on a very short leash—could sound.
Sophie knew better, and not only because she could see the impossible blue of his eyes.
“Or what?” she asked, making herself sound as bored as possible.
Behind the bar, poor Danielle was staring at her as if Sophie had lost her mind. Maybe she had. Maybe that was what this thing inside her was.
It had started when the police had turned up yesterday to tell her the news. That finally, impossibly, Theodore “Priest” Lombard, legendary president of the Deacons of Bourbon Street Motorcycle Club and Sophie’s only family in the world, had taken one fast turn too many on his beloved Harley. It had fused into the crazy urge she’d had to wander the Quarter dressed like this, hiding her grief and her loss and her urge to lie down in the fetal position somewhere and never get up again in plain, gold-pastied sight.
And then Ajax had rolled into the Priory like he’d never been away. The gritty old bar was the only thing she had left of her father and the only thing that was really hers anyway after all these years of running it by herself. And here came Ajax with all of that old biker shit clinging to that ruthless body of his—and so much like her father it hurt Sophie to look at him—and that thing inside her had simply…imploded.
If she stopped running her mouth, she didn’t know what would become of her.
Maybe she’d die, too.
She could feel Ajax’s gaze on her like a touch, a little bit dirty and very, very thorough, and she was fiercely glad she was practically naked. Men were simple and bikers were even more elemental than that. He’d be a lot more likely to look at her exposed skin than the pulse she could feel doing backflips and assorted acrobatics in her neck and her wrists and deep between her legs. It would give her away in an instant if he could jerk his attention from her tits, but why would a guy like Ajax do a thing like that?
But even as she thought that, his gaze met hers again. It was hard and shrewd, and she felt a little chill of something too much like foreboding creep down her exposed spine.
“Or I might lose my patience with you, little girl. You want to see what happens then, say the word.”
She’d lost her father and she’d loved that man, for all that he’d been infuriating, hypocritical, secretive, and wholly incapable of grasping that she was a grown woman who didn’t need his permission to do as she pleased. It was beside the point that she’d wanted his approval anyway. That she’d tried to take the place of all his lost brothers over the years, as if running this bar better than he ever had could bridge that gap. Still, she’d thought she’d done it. He’d even thanked her, in his typically gruff way. This place would sink without you, he’d told her one whiskey-infused evening when he’d been feeling uncharacteristically emotional. Maybe I would, too.
And it had been one thing to put up with biker caveman bullshit from the man who’d raised her all on his own. She wasn’t taking it from anyone else. Not even if the anyone else in question looked like her hottest fantasies made flesh and sent straight to the French Quarter to test her resolve.
But that was between her and her vibrator.
“And that means what, exactly?” she asked Ajax, not bothering to hide her disdain. Or maybe that was her temper. It was hard to tell the difference today, or separate that out from the grief for her father, burning hot in her belly like a live wire. “You going to shout a lot and act real scary and then run away from home for ten years? Oh, wait. You already did that.”
Chapter 2
This time when Ajax laughed, it made every single part of Sophie’s body clench down hard in instant, molten reaction and a chill down her back ice over in warning—but it was too late.
He was already up and moving like a smooth shot of pure whiskey or a bullet aimed straight for her. And she had the dazed thought that no man who looked that solid, packed sleek with hard muscle and holy hell in his deep blue gaze, should be capable of moving that way, so swift and so sure.
Like the predator he was.
Sophie didn’t even realize she was up on her own feet and backing away fast, but not fast enough, until her back hit the wall and Ajax kept right on coming.
He crowded into her. The stripper heels she wore put them eye to eye, and that wasn’t helpful. It made her feel scraped out inside, hot and hollow. There was nowhere to hide and he was in her face and still coming. He was still smiling at her, that crook of his mouth that promised sheer mayhem, and then he was all over her.
She could feel the heat of the thick Louisiana day coming off him, or maybe that was just him, big and male and ferocious in a white T-shirt and beat-up jeans that he wore entirely too well, shitkicker boots on his feet, and the gleam of the chain connecting his wallet to his pants. The wall was hard against her naked back and he was much harder in front of her, using his vast, tough chest to pin her in place, crushing himself against her tasseled breasts, enough to get her attention if not quite hard enough to hurt.
And that which didn’t hurt her made her…needy.
It made her imagine what it would be like to be beneath this man, crushed down hard against a bed and his magnificent body stretched out on top of her without the irritation of those pasties or his T-shirt in her way, the way she’d dreamed more than once when she’d been a teenager.
When she’d been a very young, very foolish girl who couldn’t tell the difference between a wolf and a warning.
Ajax pushed up farther into her, into her space and against her body. He smelled like soap and sun and something far darker, far earthier, that teased over her skin like a whisper. Like sex. His heavy shoulders blocked out the whole of Bourbon Street in the distance behind him, and he slapped one of those granite hands of his, with tattoos over his knuckles and chunky-ass rings that could take out teeth with a single punch, against the wall entirely too close to her head.
He put his other hand on her throat.
Not quite her throat, she amended a blistering moment later. Not that it made much difference. He put his thumb on her right collarbone and his index finger burned like a brand along the left, and he didn’t squeeze, he didn’t press down, though he could have. They both knew he could have.
And there was no hiding the mad percussion of her pulse from him then, that close. That bared to him.
There was no hiding anything at all.
Like that desperate, delirious heat that swept over her, erupting from a dark melting knot of something like fire low in her belly. It almost took her from her feet as it roared through her, making her knees feel weak and her breasts so heavy she felt a tug as the adhesive on the back of her pasties fought her reaction. Worse, a betraying flush swept over her, lighting her up and making her catch her breath against it, red and obvious.
She shoved at him and he grunted, but he didn’t move by so much as the tiniest little inch, and she hated that there was a part of her that
thrilled to that. To the evidence that this man moved where and when he wanted to, or not at all.
This close, she could see too much. Entirely too much. The years hadn’t been particularly kind to Ajax, but then, he’d started off far too pretty for his own good. She remembered him in his feral early twenties, bright and blond and so stunning that tourists had followed him around the French Quarter like they thought he was a harmless wolf cub set loose from his pack, as if that hard smile of his was merely teeth and there was something more than violence in his sweet blue eyes.
I’m so glad you came back from Afghanistan in one piece, she’d heard one of the besotted tourists giggle at him once upon a very late night, over at one of the Priory tables with her too-short denim skirt already shoved out of his way.
And Ajax had responded, that angelic face of his never quite as hard as those eyes, No one comes back in one piece, bitch. With his hands high on her thighs and murder in his tone. They just come home.
His face was leaner now. Tougher. Less angel, more warrior. This Ajax wore his danger and his power right there on his face, in the lines that made his eyes look bluer, in the beard that made him look like the walking calamity he was, and no one would mistake this man for anything but that, blue eyes or not. He was lethal. And Sophie couldn’t help but think that he was far more beautiful for it, God help her. A battered, dark gold, finely honed machine of a man, and he was grinning at her like he already had her pants at her knees and her ass over the nearest table.
No small part of her wished he did.
And she was fucked, because once that image was in her head, she couldn’t think of anything else—and she was positive he could read it right there on her face.
“You better tell your girl to put down that phone,” he said softly, so softly and so close that Sophie had to blink to make sense of it, so entranced was she by that mouth of his. “If the police show up in the middle of my homecoming party I might lose my sense of humor.”
“I’m fine, Danielle,” she called, and the bartender behind them froze, her cellphone clenched tight in her hand. “Sean here is just an old friend of my father’s.”
“You don’t have any idea when to quit, do you?”
“Because you, of course, are the model of restraint.”
That dangerous curve of his mouth tightened, and so did everything inside of her. “I’m not the mouthy piece of ass pinned up against the back of a bar with a golden opportunity to rethink my attitude. If I were you, I’d take it.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Ajax studied her. “Then you’re as dumb as you act. Bad combination, babe. Especially in this neighborhood.”
“Should I interpret that as concern for my well-being?” she asked, her voice as acidic as it was sweet. “It’s hard to tell while you’re choking me.”
A different sort of grin lit his face then, changing that look in his eyes and then dancing all over her. He shifted, sliding that big, hard hand of his up over her chin and then dragging his thumb over her lower lip, slowly. The grin drained from his face as he watched and he looked…hungry. Needy. Then he tested her teeth on the way back with the pad of that big thumb of his, and the urge to close her lips around him was so intense, so overwhelming, she lost her train of thought.
There was only Ajax, big and threatening and so beautiful it was making her shake.
He did it again. And it was the way he did it. It was pure sex in a simple little scrape of his thumb on her lip, then against her teeth, and it was dirty as all fuck.
Ajax lifted his gaze to hers then, and his blue eyes had gone hot. It shuddered through her, intense and heavy. A threat, she told herself. Dark and hard and life altering. A distinct and deliberate threat.
But she was far more worried it was a promise.
“Let me go,” she said, shocked to hear her own voice had gone so quiet. So wispy and girly, not like her at all.
“What’s that? No insane attitude this time from the half-naked chick in the dive bar? No throwing a name I hate in my face for good measure? You’re slipping, babe.”
And a wise woman would have said whatever needed to be said. A wise woman would have ceded the battle to win the war. Anything to get his hands off her before she begged him to really, truly use them instead.
But Sophie was her father’s daughter, through and through.
“Did you not understand me?” she asked, fake sweet and entirely too belligerent for a man like this one, who likely viewed physical attacks as quiet conversations and whole wars as backyard barbecues with friends. His hand was on her chin, he was pushed up against her, and still she pushed back. With her hands and her chest and her chin, though it did absolutely nothing to dislodge him. She’d known it wouldn’t. “Don’t worry, I speak biker. I just pretend I’ve been hit in the head by a truck and use very. Small. Words.”
His smile went feral. His eyes went dark. “You should try using none.”
And then he tightened that hard hand at her chin and dragged her mouth to his.
—
Ajax hadn’t meant to kiss her.
But that mouth of hers was a fucking problem and there were a couple of time-honored solutions to that, and he’d figured mousy little Tulane behind the bar might wet her pants if he took his cock out.
Besides, the more Sophie shot off that mouth of hers at him, the more he wanted a taste of it. Of her. No matter whose daughter she was.
Sorry, old man, he thought.
He liked pussy with claws. Always had.
He kept her pinned to the wall, his chest hard against those gold tassels that made her nipples feel like they had their own claws, and then he took her mouth like he owned it. Like she was his property and he’d had her a thousand times already and yet never enough. Like he’d already worked his cock deep inside her. He thrust his way into her mouth and used his hand on her jaw to hold her still, and only when he had her where he wanted her did he slow down and take his time.
Wet, deep. Openmouthed and carnal. Tasting her and teasing her. Like he would devour her whole if he could.
And she met him, stroke for stroke, hot and wild.
Lust slammed into him like a fist. Like a sucker punch.
Like this was something darker and more intense than just another greedy little bitch on a hot southern day, climbing him like a jungle gym, the way they did.
Ajax didn’t question it. He could do that later.
Here, now, he took his free hand off the wall and tested that slippery rope of her thick, dark hair, like he could feel it shine against his palm. He kept going, smoothing his way over the bare skin of her shoulder, tracing those cute little angel wings that had taunted him down the length of Bourbon Street. He made her shiver, caught there between his hands and his mouth. Sophie made a helpless little noise in the back of her throat and he kissed her harder, deeper, angling his lips over hers, fucking that smart mouth of hers with his.
She tasted too damned good. Sex and longing, a hint of sugar, and all searing, scalding female. All that attitude, all that fight—there was none of that in her kiss, or in the hot, welcoming slide of her tongue tangling with his.
But he could feel her fists on his shirt, hard against his chest like she thought she might try to take him any minute, reminding him who she was.
Sophie Lombard, all grown up.
Later, that might get to him. Right now it only spurred him on.
He slid his palm down the sweet curve of her naked back, tracing that indentation that had led him through the streets of the Quarter like he’d had a hoop through his fucking nose, and then he’d had enough playtime. If he grabbed that hot little ass with the crescent of sweet cheek hanging out, plump and lush beneath the hem of her gold shorts, he’d fuck her where they stood, no question. He was barely holding back as it was. It would be so easy to tug those tiny little pants to the side and then he could sink into her like butter—but that was a quick way to reintroduce himself to the NOPD, no doubt.
&nb
sp; Maybe not on his first day home.
So instead, Ajax wrapped his hand over her hip and tugged her closer, plastering her against him, finally getting his aching dick, hot and hard, in the soft, hot place between her legs.
She made a small choked noise and he worked that little cleft, rubbing her until she jolted against him, and then he leaned in right there, grinding hard against her clit. It wasn’t the hard fuck his whole body was shouting for, but it wasn’t bad.
Ajax could smell the heat on her, arousal and woman, and she shuddered hard—too hard, right there where he was pressed up against her, like she couldn’t control her own body—and he knew. How close she was already. How easy it would be to make her scream and buck and go wild. How much he’d enjoy watching her come all around him, because he told her to, no matter what fucking name she screamed when she did.
And Ajax didn’t see any particular reason to deny himself that.
She was wearing so little. She’d been driving him wild since he’d laid eyes on her across the damned Quarter, since before he’d known who she was. He wanted to fuck them both blind. He wanted to lose himself in that sweet ass of hers that had mesmerized him so completely. He wanted to spend some time with that belly ring. He had plans for that smart mouth. He wanted her in a thousand different ways—but he was getting ahead of himself.
Ajax lost his grip on her jaw and her head tipped back, her eyes shut tight behind the hooker lashes and her sweet mouth wide open, like she couldn’t handle the press of him against her, so tight and hot and good, right there where it counted. Her killer shoes held her just where he wanted her and Ajax was a man who always played to his strengths. He flexed against her and she moaned, and he fucking loved that sound, so he did it again. And again. Riding that clit. Making her writhe against him.
He turned his attention to those magnificent tits, gold tassels and all, and tested their weight and shape against his palms, their slight slope and the plump perfection of them almost too good be true. Almost. His mouth watered.