Make You Burn (14 page)

And then he began to fuck his woman,
his woman,
at last.

Sophie had a second to wonder how he could do that—get so hard again so fast—but then she didn’t care. About anything.

Because Ajax was deep inside her, working her up and down on him with that iron control and mad intensity that made her shiver from the inside out. And she didn’t know if she was still coming from before or coming again, or if this was all something else, something new. Like that look in his too-blue eyes when she’d woken up to find him standing there in her doorway, something like haunted.

But warmer. So very much warmer.

“Come again,” he growled at her, his face in the crook of her neck so his beard teased her skin. “Then we can get this shit started.”

And Sophie laughed, because she loved him, this impossible man who was nothing she’d ever told herself she’d wanted and everything she’d always craved.
She loved him.
She didn’t care if it was grief. If it was fleeting. They fit. His cock deep inside her, his fingers wrapped around hers at the tomb, her legs on either side of his and her chin on his shoulder on the back of his bike.

Like two fucked-up puzzle pieces that made one perfect whole, together.

Love
was the only word that fit.

“Not kidding, babe,” Ajax muttered, darkly impatient. “Get your hands on that clit.”

Sophie obeyed him. She reached down between them as he moved her up and down on him, and she rubbed herself. It made lightning flash through her, jolting to her breasts and then doubling back in the clench of her pussy around his relentless, demanding cock. She was so wet and her clit ached and she almost couldn’t tell if she felt good or if she hurt and she wasn’t sure she cared either way.

Ajax did something different with his hips, one deep thrust and another, even harder, and she broke again. The orgasm swamped her, making her shudder so hard that she collapsed against him, her face in his neck and her arms looped around his wide shoulders, but barely holding on.

And Ajax laughed that filthy laugh that never failed to light a new fire in her, and this was no different. He laughed and then he rolled, still buried inside of her, pinning her down on the bed.

He levered himself up on his hands and he gazed down at her with that same haunting intensity stamped deep on his gorgeous face. That mouth of his was grim and beautiful and slightly damp in the triangle of his dark blond beard. His eyes were so blue they became the world.

Sophie held him deep inside of her, that massive cock of his hard and big despite how many times she’d already come and how wet she was. She clenched at him and his mouth shifted into that hard, delicious curve that she could feel like his teeth against her nipples.

He didn’t speak. He hauled her knees up, opening her wider, holding her where he wanted her. And he fucked her.

Long and slow and deep and hot.

He didn’t say all those things she was afraid to hear, no matter what she felt. He didn’t talk about property or patches. He didn’t call her his old lady or even
his.

He didn’t have to say a word.

It was the way their gazes clung, tangled. The way he fucked her, raw and intense. And Sophie knew that for a man like Ajax, there was no
making love
. There was only this, and this was everything. It was the way he rocked into her, as if he owned her. It was the way she took him deep, the way they fit. It was the sound of their flesh in the heat they’d made around them, and that arrested, commanding gaze he never shifted from hers.

There was breath and sex and the two of them becoming one thing, forged in the fire that only danced here, and danced high.

And his name.

She chanted it like a spell. Like a song the voodoo priestesses sang for luck in the city’s dark corners, spinning the notes out into the night. She chanted it like magic, again and again, as he fucked into her and made them both real, made
this
real, made sex into promises and lust into vows.

Sophie didn’t know what he’d call it, but she knew it was love. Every inch. Every touch. Everything she was.

She chanted his name, and then she moaned it. And Ajax laughed in that way of his, as if he’d always known each and every contour of her soul the way he knew every fold of her pussy.

And this time, when she started shaking, when the wild, giddy, rough, and dirty pleasure burst wide open and swallowed her whole, she took him with her.

In the morning, Sophie felt like a stranger to herself. Made new, somehow. Fresh and fragile, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

Ajax checked his messages on his phone while she made them coffee, as if this was any random day in a life they shared, and she couldn’t let herself think about that. Not in the bright morning light that poured in the windows, illuminating everything that had seemed so simple in the dark. She thunked his mug down in front of him and he laughed at her attitude, hanging an arm around her hips and hauling her close to him while he lounged in his chair.

“You’ll suck my cock happily but serving me coffee is a problem for you?” he taunted her, some message droning in his ear. She could hear a tinny male voice in the distance. “Not gonna argue with your priorities, babe, but you know that doesn’t make any sense, right?”

“You want service, Ajax?” she asked sweetly, baring her teeth at him. “Get a maid.”

“How about you, dressed like a maid?” he countered, that lazy heat in his eyes. “I could make that work.”

She rolled her eyes, and opened her mouth to slap that back at him, but he went rigid. His expression shut down. His gaze shuttered and his mouth flattened into that hard line she remembered too well.

“What is it?” she asked when he put the phone down, and she knew it was a loaded question. Or a dangerous one.

Because last night was sex and love and that had been a gleaming truth. It still burned inside of her. But this was a brighter, harsher morning, and she’d stumbled up against another hard truth whether she liked it or not.

Life with a man like Ajax meant there would always be questions he wouldn’t answer. And she would simply have to live with it if she wanted to live with him, because it would never change. She’d spent twenty-eight years dealing with the repercussions of that already, but a father wasn’t the same thing as a lover. Could she handle that kind of wall in a man who was otherwise without boundaries?

Could she accept that the only place he would ever be utterly honest with her all of the time was in bed?

Sophie didn’t know. And she didn’t have to know, because he hadn’t asked her to make anything work with him in any long-term way anyway, no matter how she might feel.

And he didn’t tell her his phone call was none of her business now—which was delaying the facing of that question, she knew. Only delaying it.

“Had an old friend take a look at your dad’s accident report.” He shifted in his chair, pulling her down across his lap and holding her there, and she refused to make the fact he was
holding her
into some fantasy story. She refused.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m a nosy fucker,” Ajax said, his voice hard. “And because something about this didn’t sit right.”

“You mean, that he’s dead?” Sophie asked flatly. She cleared her throat. “It’s not supposed to sit right. It’s death. It sucks and there’s no escaping it and if there’s a point to any of it, it’s lost on me.”

A faint smile moved over his dangerous face, that hard-stamped curve to his mouth, and it was like a hard knock, deep inside her chest.

“I wasn’t looking for philosophy, babe,” he said quietly. “I was looking for answers.”

Sophie understood, looking down into those fiercely blue eyes of his, that she didn’t want to know what he’d found out. That she wanted the ignorance. The darkness. That there was a reason men like Ajax, and her father, and all the brothers just like them, built these walls between the different aspects of their lives and guarded them so carefully.

Because of this, right here. That look in his eyes, that terrible knowledge.

But Sophie still wasn’t a little bitch, much as she wanted to be one at the moment, if it would keep her safe. And she would never let her father down like that, not even about this.

“Did you get your answers?” she asked.

“The investigators say that Priest went straight when the road curved. No hesitation. The only way that happened was if he accelerated and aimed for a fucking tree. They can’t prove he killed himself, but that’s what they think, ’cause he sure as shit wasn’t drunk. First thing they checked.”

Ajax watched her. He waited.

“No,” Sophie whispered.

“That’s not who he was,” Ajax agreed with a quiet ferocity. “The man I knew was never meant to die alone.”

“He didn’t kill himself,” Sophie said, feeling nothing but dull inside. Or maybe that was numbness. “That wasn’t in him. He would have hated the idea that anyone could think he was that much of a whiny bitch.”

Ajax nodded. “That’s my take.”

Her head spun. And again, Ajax was her anchor. Solid and unyielding beneath her and around her, holding her tight.

She let out a long, hard breath.

“You think somebody ran him off the road,” she said, and she knew what she was saying even as it came out of her mouth.

She knew it meant war, one way or another. Blood and darkness. Retribution. She could see it as if it was scrolling across Ajax’s hard face, and unlike yesterday at the cemetery, there was nothing she could do to stop this.

He hadn’t even had to tell her. Her father wouldn’t have, she knew. But Ajax had.

She clung to that.

“You think,” she said, very distinctly, “that someone killed my father.”

Ajax nodded. Hard. And his eyes were a holy terror. Then he grinned in that way of his, and that was worse.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

The lawyer was still a fucking douche, just like Ajax remembered.

Ten minutes late turned into fifteen, and Ajax wanted to start kicking asses to relieve his own irritation at being kept waiting by a man he could crush with one hand. It was that or throw Sophie on the bar and let off some steam in a far more interesting manner, but he figured he could keep his dick in his pants through a single morning while waiting for a will to be read.

Maybe.

He eyed Sophie, looking entirely too hot to his way of thinking in a long, black skirt that made him think about getting beneath it and a little cropped thing that showed off her belly ring. It made his pulse hammer in his cock. She also looked pissed, leaning against the Priory bar with her arms crossed, which he had to admit was pretty much his favorite thing. He wanted to lick that cranky expression right off her—

Not helpful, asshole.

With effort, Ajax stretched out his legs in front of him, leaned back in his chair so the front legs lifted from the floor, and surveyed the motley fucking crew that was all that remained of his full-patch, full-bodied brothers.

He’d give himself and Blue pretty good odds against whoever might have taken Priest out, Ajax thought. Blue sat across the table from him, his expression closed off and dark, his back to the same wall like he and Ajax were holding off a fucking siege.

Solid and dependable, the way a brother was supposed to be.

Unlike those other two pricks.

Prince had rolled in wearing another one of those suits, looking a lot like the kind of asswipe he used to enjoy beating up ten years ago. Now he stood all the way on the other side of the bar’s floor space from Ajax and Blue, like maybe he thought getting too close might contaminate him. Ajax felt he could definitely pollute that motherfucker should the time come, and happily.
Bring it on
. Prince had hardly said a word since he’d arrived this morning, right on time. Just muttered something about a plane he had to catch, which Ajax might have told him he was going to have to cancel, except fuck that guy. He’d find out soon enough.

Ajax shifted his attention to Cash. Back in the day the guy had been magic with money, and last night Ajax was pretty sure he’d heard the bitch tell someone he was a fucking “security analyst” in Florida. Ajax would have offered to cut his balls off, but that seemed a little redundant. Today he was scowling as he paced back and forth in front of the bar, like his agitation could make a scumbag lawyer appear faster.

And Ajax knew that if he offered any commentary on any of this, it would end in a fistfight. Which he would win, because please, but would likely cause more trouble than it was worth.

He was eyeing Prince’s fancy fucking tie with pure malice when the door slammed open, the clatter of Bourbon Street filled the air, and then the lawyer shut the door behind him and walked in. Not, Ajax noted darkly, in any kind of hurry, which might indicate he was aware he’d kept them all waiting.

It reminded him of way back when this same lawyer had showed up to bail Ajax out of jail on some or other charge. He’d been as unimpressed, and as late, back then. Ajax couldn’t really blame him. His entire career was based on the seedier side of New Orleans and all the shit they stirred. He was unimpressible.

On the other hand, he’d kept Ajax’s record pretty clean for a man with his interests and associations. Which didn’t make Ajax any less interested in making him bleed.

“Oh, good, we’re all here,” the man said as he walked toward them, in a Cajun accent that sounded dusted through with powdered sugar. “If any of you don’t know, I’m Jared Dauvers, attorney of record for the recreational organization called the Deacons of Bourbon Street Motorcycle Club”—Dauvers only eyed Prince when he let out a little laugh at that—“and personal attorney to one Theodore Lombard, better known to you all as Priest, I believe.”

“We know who you are,” Blue said. The menace was implied in the way he looked at the much, much smaller man.

But Dauvers only smiled faintly as he set his briefcase down on the table.

“I’m delighted to hear it. Let’s make this quick.” He snapped open the briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers, then proceeded to hand copies out to each of them as he spoke. “This isn’t a movie, so let’s get to the relevant parts that I’m sure most interest you, gentlemen.” He nodded at Sophie as he handed her a will. “And you, of course, ma’am. Approximately ten years ago, in an effort to shift the business enterprises of the Deacons of Bourbon Street Motorcycle Club in a more productive direction—”

“Legitimate,” Cash interrupted, like he was personally offended by the use of a different word. “You mean legitimate.”

“Because I’m pretty sure the previous direction the club was going in was plenty productive,” Prince drawled from his place against the bar’s far wall, his eyes on the lawyer. “If of greater interest to the NOPD, sadly.”

“Oh, cool,” Sophie said, her tone far more amused than that look in her green eyes, and Ajax wondered if he’d made the right call, telling her his suspicions about how Priest had died. Then he wondered why the fuck he was second-guessing himself, like a bitch. “I’ve always wanted to be a Deacon and hear club business. Does this make me, like, a prospect? My daddy would be so proud.”

Ajax had to admire the way she did that, and sure, he had a fucking hard-on all the time where this woman was concerned. But still, she’d managed to cut off a conversation about shit that shouldn’t have been mentioned in front of her
and
remind everybody that they were there for a reason and it wasn’t a dick-measuring contest.

She was the perfect woman. In his bed and in his life. There wasn’t even the slightest shred of doubt in him.

The lawyer cleared his throat. “The Deacons of Bourbon Street is a recreational club, and as such, participates only in club activities dedicated to enhancing the lives and enjoyment of its members. Theodore Lombard, on the other hand, a local businessman, privately owned a number of properties in the French Quarter, both residential and commercial.”

He started rattling off names and addresses. Some falling-down, abandoned rich person’s house somewhere in the Quarter that Ajax had no idea why Priest would ever have owned in the first place. All the buildings around the courtyard, from the Priory to the clubhouse—it still pissed him off it was an art gallery, of all things—and the handful of apartments that brothers or other friends of the club had rented over the years and that the woman who ran the gallery and Sophie lived in now. And, of course, the strip joint across the street. All once used for various other reasons by the club, but all now fully tax-paying and law-abiding, which the lawyer managed to say using about seventy more words than necessary.

“All of these properties are to be jointly owned and administered by”—and the lawyer paused, peering around the dim interior of the bar—“the four members of the Deacons of Bourbon Street Mr. Lombard, in his capacity as president of the club, ordered to leave this city ten years ago.” He read off all four of their names, Ajax, Blue, Prince, and Cash, using the full legal name Ajax definitely didn’t need to hear again and thought maybe Dauvers said only because he could. Then the lawyer turned to Sophie. “And to you, his daughter, he leaves his personal effects and the contents of his bank account minus any costs stemming from his funeral, which, by my estimation and allowing for certain vagaries, amounts to about three thousand dollars. Does everybody understand the terms I’ve just outlined?”

For a long moment, no one moved. The bar seemed both tense and abandoned at once. On the street outside, some fool with a trumpet went blaring by, and when he’d moved on the Priory seemed even quieter.

“I don’t want any part of this bullshit,” Cash said, his tone almost venomous.

“You and me both, brother,” Prince said from his corner. “I have a plane to catch. You can fill me in on the details later. I don’t care either way.”

“How quickly can we sell it all off?” Cash demanded, glaring at the lawyer. “This is a prime French Quarter location. We should be able to find a buyer in about thirty seconds.”

Ajax looked at Blue. His brother gazed back at him and the same fury Ajax knew was pounding in him made Blue’s gaze terrible.
Same page.

“We’re not fucking selling,” Ajax growled. He shifted his scowl to Prince. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

Prince eyed him, then shifted his gaze to the lawyer.

“Can you read back the part where Ajax is named the boss of me? Because I missed it.”

“Church meets tomorrow,” Ajax bit out, getting to his feet and letting the chair clatter behind him like a gunshot. “You want to vote me out as VP and nominate someone else for president, like maybe your own candy ass? Go nuts and see if you get that unanimous vote. But until then, I’m acting president of the Deacons—”

“What Deacons?”

He didn’t expect that, coming low and dark from the side he wasn’t watching. From Sophie—and he didn’t like how much it felt like a knife in the back. Like a fucking betrayal. He turned to face her. She was pale, her eyes too big and much too dark, clearly too emotional to watch her damned mouth and this wasn’t the place.

“This is none of your business.”

She laughed at that. It was a hollow, awful little sound.

“Because the only Deacons I’ve seen around here the past few days are three old men who can barely wipe their own asses and you-all.” Her tone was withering and her gaze worse as she ran it over the group of men before her. “Two whiny little babies who don’t even want to be here and two giant assholes who act like they never left in the first place.”

“Sophie.”

But she ignored that lash of temper and command that was also her name, like she couldn’t even hear him, though Ajax knew she could. He could see it in that hectic glittering thing that took over her gaze when she glared at him.

He felt that knife go deeper, then twist.

“And yet,” she continued, her voice a mess and that look in her eyes even worse, and he didn’t get how he could want to help her and shut her the fuck up at the same time, “my father took everything that mattered to me and gave it to you. I don’t care about his stupid fucking club. But my job. My home.
My life—
”

“You need to stop talking,” Ajax growled at her, exactly the same way he’d have said it to anyone who stepped up to him. No quarter. No softness, no matter how much he wanted her. “Now.”

And Sophie stopped then, with a sharp, indrawn breath. She swayed slightly on her feet, and he felt raw and fucked up and twisted all around in a thousand ways inside, and he didn’t know if he wanted to blame her or fuck her or punch a hole through the fucking wall beside his own head.

But
this
needed to stop. Immediately.

“I’m going to give you a gift because grief makes people do crazy shit,” he hurled at her, making no attempt to contain his temper or modify his tone. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just disrespect this club, all my brothers, your dead father, and me to my face. This is club business, Sophie. You can either pretend you didn’t just say that shit and start over with a civil fucking tongue in your head, or you can shut the door behind you on your way out. You have three seconds to choose.”

He saw her lips part. He remembered them wrapped around his dick last night, in vivid detail. He saw her gorgeous green eyes cloud over, and he thought if he actually made her cry it would finish him off. He’d done terrible things with his own hands and he slept fine at night but he suspected her tears would be the end of him. Hurting her would destroy him.

And in case he’d been in any remaining doubt about what she meant to him after yesterday, that alien notion cleared it right up.

But he couldn’t let this go. Not here. Not in public, in Deacons territory, in the presence of his brothers, no matter how messed up the club was these days. Not when she’d just shot her mouth off in a way that could get her seriously hurt under different circumstances—like if she’d said anything even remotely that crazy in front of the Devil’s Keepers.

And he knew perfectly well she knew it.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” she breathed. She wrapped her arms around her belly. “I keep thinking it’s going to be different, but it never is. You’re just like him.” She sent a searing glare around the room. “He made you, didn’t he, and you’re all
just like him
. You care about one thing and it’s never, ever what matters.” Her haunted green gaze slid back to Ajax. “It’s certainly not me.”

His chest was so tight it felt like he’d cracked a rib. Two or three. “That was your only warning. Next step is me removing you myself.”

“I heard you.”

She was standing in an unnaturally stiff way, still holding herself like she thought she might throw up and looking at him like he could fix it if he wanted, and in all his life Ajax had never felt anything like this.
Torn.
He wanted to be the thing she held on to. He wanted that more than he knew how to say out loud. But his club was who he was. It was the skin he wore. It was his life.

Sophie knew him. She knew the life. She knew exactly what she was asking him—and she didn’t back down.

And he couldn’t.

She swallowed. Hard. She held his gaze for a long, hard moment, and he didn’t recognize the person who stared back at him.

“Fuck your club, Ajax,” Sophie said quietly and distinctly. “And fuck you.”

And then she walked past him, down that hall that led past her father’s old office where he knew for a fact she’d learned better than this, and out into the midday light. The door shut behind her, quietly enough.

Ajax felt it like a fucking axe to the side of his head.

He wanted to run after her. He
needed
to run after her. But he made his hands into fists instead and he made himself stand still.

“It’s regrettable that Ms. Lombard isn’t particularly enthusiastic about the distribution of her father’s assets,” the lawyer said into the echoing silence that hung there after she’d gone, like smoke. “But I want to make certain you all—and she—are aware that Mr. Lombard was very, very clear about this. He set up his will this way ten years ago and he never deviated.”