Текст книги "Make You Burn"

Автор книги: Megan Crane

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

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.

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.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “I fucking love real tits.”

He wanted them in his mouth. He wanted to shove them together and slide his hungry cock between them. He wanted to see what color her nipples were, hard and hidden behind the gold tassels she wore, and he wanted to spend a whole lot of time sucking on them like candy. He had to make do with his hands instead.

Sophie stiffened, a crazy heat on her cheeks and her breath coming fast. Too fast. He felt her shake against him, the kind of fine, high tremble that came from deep inside, and he took her mouth again in a wet, deep, searing possession that was dangerous in public. He didn’t give a shit. He ate at her lush mouth, he rode her sweet little pussy through his jeans and what passed for her clothes, and then he pinched her nipples through the pasties. Hard.

And she went so tight and rigid he thought she might break in two.

He cupped the back of her head and tipped her face into the crook of his neck, following an urge he didn’t entirely understand, to keep what was happening to her all to himself, and he ran the hard thrust of his aching cock up high against her, banging that clit of hers again. And then again.

“Come, baby,” he ordered her, his mouth at her ear. “Come all over me.”

He heard a soft, high noise, cut off fast and then muffled, and he could feel her mouth open against his neck as she shook and shook, coming for him just as he’d commanded, in wave after shuddering wave, right there against the back wall of a Bourbon Street bar in broad daylight.

He’d never been so hard in his life.

For a long while, he stood there, Sophie limp and panting against him, wrapped up in his arms. He eased back from between her legs because it was that or just slide his way inside and go a little nuts, and he was losing perspective on the pros and cons of that one, fast. But once the red haze eased its claws out of him, Ajax gave in to another impulse he didn’t really get and smoothed his hand down her back. Up, then down, like he was soothing her. Like he was patting her.

Like he was the kind of man who gave a shit.

Before he could investigate all the ways he didn’t like that line of thought at all, Sophie stiffened against him. His smartass girl was back. He could feel her cute little fists press against his abdomen again. He felt as well as heard her pull in a deep breath. And then she pushed back from him, hard, and this time, he let her.

Her butt hit the wall and she threw out a hand to catch herself before she tumbled to the floor.

“A little unsteady?” Ajax drawled.

“Fuck you,” she gritted out, low and furious, like she wasn’t standing there with black shit all over her face from the sweat and maybe a tear or two, she’d come so hard.

Her lips were puffy from his mouth, she was still shaking and probably still so wet he’d bet she was worried someone could see it from across the bar. He wondered if he could, and he was a lot more inclined to run with that impulse, having felt all that sweet, juicy evidence when he’d been rocking her fucking world.

Fully fucking clothed, no less.

“Is that an invitation?” He eyed her, feeling a little less solid than he usually did, and he didn’t want to look at that too closely. “Because I don’t care who sees me fuck, little girl. I consider it a public service. Thought you might disagree.”

He watched, fascinated, as she swallowed, as if it hurt. She looked past him, back to the bar and Tulane and whoever else was watching the show, and he knew what she didn’t, that no one had really seen anything. That he’d blocked her. That the most the little perverts could do was jack off later to their imaginary versions of a fairly intense kiss.

But he didn’t feel the need to tell Sophie that.

Sophie looked back at him after a minute, and she didn’t look tough any longer, or cool and snooty the way she’d been at first. She looked lost, and he felt like a dick, but she didn’t speak. Not one word. She turned on her heel and she walked away from him, slapping her way through the back door that he knew led down the hall past where Priest’s office had been and then out into a private courtyard.

Ajax stood where he was for a moment, making sure to put a grim eye on every one of the assholes who’d no doubt get their little preppy dicks out later, imagining Sophie in her tassels and hooker shoes. Little shits. They all looked away, as expected, and not one of them was brave enough to look back. Which meant it was unlikely that they’d be dumb enough to come after Sophie again, either.

He, meanwhile, had the sinking feeling he was exactly that dumb, no matter the ghost he was sure he could see glowering at him from across the bar, reminding him whose daughter he’d just been that close to doing. Right here.

You’re a piece of shit, he told himself, but it was tough to take that to heart when his dick was still hard and he had the taste of her in his mouth.

He shifted that same hard look to Tulane, who actually squeaked when their eyes met and staggered back a few steps like he might vault over the bar and come for her perky ass next.

“Relax,” he growled at her. “I don’t do mice.”

She made another squeaky noise, and did not look at all comforted by that information. Ajax wanted to smile, but didn’t. Of course he didn’t. That would be too easy. And despite the reason for his return and the fact Priest would likely rise from his grave to rip his balls off if the old man knew the direction of Ajax’s thoughts, he was having too much fun.

He practically whistled a happy tune as he stalked through the door and followed Sophie outside, taking the metal stairs attached to the back of the bar up toward the rambling old apartment that took over the top two floors of the building.

It had been ten long, lonely, jacked-up years. But Ajax was finally home.

Chapter 3

Sophie cried in the shower.

And hated herself for it with every great, wracking, gasping sob that made her clutch at the slick walls to keep from crumpling into a ball of pure misery near the drain.

But hating herself for being a weak little girl didn’t seem to help anything. It only made her feel worse, like that much more of a weak little girl.

So she turned up the water temperature until it was nearly painful and she cried a little more and she told herself that it was the grief and the shock working themselves out, that was all. And that Ajax was, too. It even made a kind of psychological sense, if she remembered her college classes right.

Her father was dead. That still didn’t make any sense. Maybe it never would. He’d left on one of his rides as usual yesterday with his normal, gruff see you when I see you as he’d powered up that window-shattering engine in the courtyard. He’d roared out onto Bourbon Street the way he always did. And then there were cops at the door and Sophie was expected to believe he was simply…gone.

How could she possibly have processed it overnight? She hadn’t. She couldn’t have. She kept expecting him to walk back in the door. For all this to be a mistake.

But then Ajax had appeared, like a ghost in this city that was messy with them, and brighter somehow than all the rest.

And she’d known that he wouldn’t show up unless Priest really was dead.

Ajax had been her father’s favorite surrogate son before he’d disappeared ten years ago, and now he was so much hotter and wilder and more dangerous than he’d been when she was eighteen. And this time, he’d looked at her the way he’d look at any woman. No longer like she was the Catholic schoolgirl, Priest’s untouchable daughter, but like she was exactly the sort of woman an outlaw biker like Ajax threw up against walls.

She’d always wanted to be that kind of woman—or she had when she was eighteen.

This was what people did with grief, she told herself fiercely. They acted out. They did stupid things. She braced her hands against the warm wall of the shower stall and let the water run all over her and told herself it was only to be expected.

She’d almost convinced herself of it when she walked out of her bedroom a little while later and stopped dead.

Because Ajax was sitting in the kitchen like he belonged there, drenched in afternoon sunlight and even better looking than he’d been in the more dimly lit bar downstairs. Sophie caught her breath. His legs were stretched out before him as he sprawled in one of the chairs at the table, his cellphone clamped to his ear, looking for all the world as if he was there waiting on her father, as he had a thousand times before, ten years back.

And though he didn’t acknowledge her in any way, Sophie knew he saw her. That assessing blue gaze had been on her before she’d looked up and met it, and she felt more naked now, dressed in jeans and a tank top and her face scrubbed clean, than she had when she’d been essentially naked and he’d been all over her.

“Didn’t call to hear your autobiography, asshole,” he said into the phone, all rough-edged menace and silken threat. “I don’t give a shit. Priest is dead. Get your punk ass on a plane.”

He listened, his face hard and that mouth of his set, and Sophie felt as if she was breaking out in hives—but she wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t. She was remembering the huge, hot length of him trapped in his jeans and so hard against her. She was remembering that impossible mouth of his all over hers, so dirty and thorough at once, the scratch of his dark gold beard and the slick intoxication of his tongue. She’d brushed her teeth twice and she could still taste him. She could still feel his hands on her breasts, and her nipples, still raw from the removal of the adhesive-backed pasties and oversensitive to even the slightest touch of her soft tank top, simply ached.

But she was wet between her legs again, wet and needy and infinitely restless, as if she hadn’t embarrassed herself in front of the bar staff and her regulars only a little while ago, in a way she didn’t really want to think about now that she was the owner by default, she assumed, as well as the boss.

Grief, she told herself sternly. It was nothing but grief and poor impulse control.

And him. He’d made her come because he’d felt like it. Because she’d taunted him, maybe, and he didn’t put up with that shit. Because that was the world Ajax lived in. That was who he was. If he wanted something, he took it.

And Sophie might have been exhausted and emotional, but she knew one thing: that wasn’t her world. Her father had kept her as removed from it as he could and now he was dead, whether she could get her head around it or not, and Ajax was nothing more than a fossil. Archaeological remains of a life she’d always hated and didn’t want any part of now that she could choose for herself.

The old king of the Deacons was dead. Sophie wanted to bury his kingdom along with him, because she didn’t want it infecting her life any longer, and she’d spent many hours wide awake last night with her head full of all these details. Because details were a whole lot better than imagining what her father had gone through. If it had hurt. If he’d known. If he’d been scared, alone—

No. Better to plot out the small things she could control. What to do with the wrecked motorcycle, when she could formally identify him and have him taken to a funeral home. What bills she’d need to pay now that this was all her responsibility. What, if anything, would change without her father around—since he’d surrendered the running of the Priory to Sophie right about the time she’d made noises about moving out after college. Better to immerse herself in the overwhelming little details of the complicated life he’d left behind him and hide from the reality of his death.

But it hadn’t occurred to her that the four club brothers Priest had loved above all others, despite the fact they’d wandered off after the storm ten years ago, might come back. Sophie hadn’t planned to rally the remains of the Deacons of Bourbon Street. She’d figured the brothers who were still in the city would do whatever it was they did when a club with declining membership and no real club officers lost one of their own, and it wouldn’t affect her at all. Because that was all over now. Surely that was over. She hadn’t heard her father mention “club business” in years.

Except Ajax appeared to have other ideas.

“Pucker up, princess,” he was saying into the phone. “You either have a skull on your back or you don’t. Which is it?” He listened with obvious impatience. “Then I better see your ass tomorrow. The end.”

He finished the call and set the phone down on the tabletop, never shifting his gaze from Sophie, who swallowed hard. She needed her bravado back, clearly. She’d washed it down the drain, or maybe he’d dry-fucked it out of her against that damned wall, and—

“You okay?”

Ajax’s voice was a rough caress, as edgy as it was oddly soothing. Sophie felt wide open again. Vulnerable. She frowned at him, then down at her bare feet. She didn’t understand why her toes were curling into the polished wood floor of this comfortable apartment she’d grown up in and should have felt at ease in, no matter who else was here.

It had always been perfectly comfortable before. Her father’s matter-of-fact, masculine approach to furnishing was in evidence everywhere, from the big, solid furniture to the vintage motorcycle posters on the wall. When it had become clear that her dad wasn’t down with his little girl getting her own place, Sophie had tried to pretty this one up a little bit. She’d contributed the frames around the posters, the plants in the window boxes, the brightly patterned area rug on the floor that Priest had always laughed at and called fucking girly as shit. She knew the history of every single item in the big living room that fed into the long, open kitchen. She knew the squeak in the door that led outside and the sound different feet made on the external metal stairs leading down to the Priory in the courtyard or up to the converted attic space that made up the apartment’s sprawling second level. She could wander this place in the dark, blindfolded, and never so much as trip.

But it wasn’t comfortable now.

“What are you doing up here?” she asked Ajax.

He tapped the back of his phone with one long finger and confirmed her fears.

“Calling the brothers back for the funeral. The ones I can find, anyway. Not that most of them answer their goddamn phones.”

Her father would have considered any follow-up questions crossing that line over into his sacred “club business,” which meant it was none of hers. Yet one more rule of a world she hated and wanted nowhere near hers. But Ajax wasn’t her father.

“That’s how you talk to the brothers? I thought you were the VP. I’d have thought that required more politics than profanity.”

His mouth curved slightly at that, like he thought she was funny. “Anyone step up and take my position?”

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to take notes on club hierarchy.” He only stared at her. Sophie sighed. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Then I’m still VP.” He nodded at his phone. “And that’s not how I talk to everyone. I left a couple of friendly fucking messages. That’s how I talk to a whiny little bitch who has convenient memory loss about where his loyalties lie.” A pause. “You probably know him as Prince.”

She did know Prince—or she had. He and Ajax were two of the four Deacons who had disappeared around the time of Katrina, and her father’s beloved club had never been the same since. She shouldn’t care either way. The club was her life and not her life at the same time. The club was all around her and she’d been raised to respect it if not accept it, and yet none of it was hers.

Except the bar. The Priory, where she’d been working since before she turned eighteen. She’d been running it since she was twenty-three. And the buildings arranged around this courtyard, which were, taken altogether, her childhood home. Priest had always told her she belonged right here, with him. Right where she started and right where he’d raised her himself.

Gotta be Lombards in the Quarter, Sophie, he’d said. Always have been, always will be.

She’d believed him. It was why she was still here, despite the wispy little dreams she’d entertained while she’d been in college. She hadn’t gone off to a distant city and lived one of those glossy sitcom lives she’d imagined from time to time. She hadn’t pretended she was someone else for a few years like a lot of her high school friends had, before tucking their tails in and coming right back to New Orleans. She’d always stayed true to her blood and her family and her home.