Текст книги "Make You Burn"

Автор книги: Megan Crane

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 11

The sound of motorcycles in the courtyard the following morning shouldn’t have soothed her, but they did. It was her own, fucked-up lullaby, Sophie thought, and it always had been. It was the music of her childhood, an earsplitting rumble that should have shattered windows instead of warming her heart, and it was perfect for today.

Today. Her father’s funeral, whether she liked it or not.

She was dressed and ready. She’d been awake since much earlier this morning, when Ajax had brought her out of a deep, dreamless sleep with a driving intensity that had worked its own kind of shattering—but she couldn’t think about that. About him and how he fit against her and inside of her, and how tempted she was to tell herself stories about what that meant. His dirty laugh right there against her ear, its own kind of engine as he’d thrust himself deep into her, again and again. His harsh whisper at her ear, his knowing commands—

But she couldn’t let herself think about anything but what she had to do to get through this day, or she was terribly afraid she wouldn’t get through it at all.

While Ajax had showered she’d gone into Priest’s room and found one of his favorite old shirts with a vintage Harley on the front. She hadn’t let herself breathe in his familiar scent or even linger too long in the bedroom she hadn’t touched all week and couldn’t bring herself to think about yet. She’d taken the T-shirt out into the kitchen and she’d carefully cut strips of it for the remaining full-patch Deacons to wear during the funeral procession, as was biker tradition around here.

Ajax. Blue. Prince. Cash.

And the old men who couldn’t ride anymore but were still brothers. Rigger. Old Jez, who’d moved out into the bayou once his arthritis took over but would be back today. TC, who had survived a fire three years ago, barely, and rarely came out of his assisted living facility in Metairie any longer. There had been other full-patch brothers back in the day, but Sophie knew they’d lost them. She even knew why, because some club business had no chance of staying quiet. Three had sworn their allegiance to the Graveyard Ministry because, her father had once said in her hearing, they wanted to stay outlaws rather than go legitimate the way the Deacons had after the storm. One brother had died in the middle of a post-Katrina rebuild of his neighborhood. Three more had left New Orleans at different times in the years since the storm to go nomad, and who knew where they were now?

That made seven strips of Priest’s old T-shirt, and then one more for her.

She’d laid them all out side by side on the kitchen table, spending too much time making sure they were evenly spaced and the same exact width. She hadn’t turned around when Ajax had come up behind her. She’d sensed his approach, or maybe she’d heard the whisper of his footsteps. Then his clean, male scent, that had made her insides seem to wobble. He’d wrapped that heavy arm of his around her belly and hauled her back into the shelter of his big wall of a chest and for the first time since they’d stood outside the morgue together, Sophie couldn’t pretend that it was all sex and hunger and need.

It was comfort, too. He comforted her, simply by holding her like that. It was Ajax’s version of being kind—and that too nearly shattered her. She wanted—so badly it made her throat tight—to simply lean back into him and disappear. Let him take care of everything, including her. She wished she could rewind and ask him the questions she hadn’t dared ask him last night out there in that alley—

Do you want to know his intentions toward you because you’re ready to hear his answers? that asshole voice inside had asked sharply. Or because you think that if he claims you, he’ll have to take responsibility for all the hard things you don’t want to face today?

She’d known better even as she’d thought it. And she’d hated herself a little bit for the weakness, because the truth was, Ajax was too hard, too demanding. He’d roll right over any sweet little thing who expected him to take care of her like that. He’d crush her beneath his feet, right before he chewed her up and spit out the pieces. He was the kind of man who helped those who helped themselves, or stomped them into oblivion, no in-between.

Sophie had to be her own warrior, as the last Lombard. She had to stand tall and take care of herself. It was what her father would have wanted.

Toughen up, angel, he’d told her this past summer when she’d been upset over some foolishness in the bar. The world feeds on weakness. You want to make sure you stick in its throat.

She’d wanted to ask him what he’d been doing then, propping up the bar with his bad temper and his scowl for the past decade. But she hadn’t dared. She’d convinced herself her father loved her. The fact he hadn’t abandoned her to her junkie mother’s clutches spoke to that, surely. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get nasty when he was in one of his moods.

And anyway, she’d thought he was right.

Still.

“I can’t,” she’d whispered to Ajax then, her eyes blurry, making those strips on the table seem to dance before her.

Ajax’s hard arm, packed into a long-sleeved shirt that strained to contain him, his tattoos only just peeking out at the cuff, had tightened around her waist.

“Yes,” he’d said gruffly. “You can.”

As he’d said once before. That time, she’d believed him, because the man could make magic with that body of his.

This time, she’d wanted to believe him more than she’d wanted her next breath, and it had nothing to do with sex. And everything to do with that sheer certainty in his voice, matter-of-fact and unassailable. As if he knew what she was capable of in a way she couldn’t.

He’d left her there after a few moments more, with one strip of fabric to fashion into her own armband in the traditional biker style, before heading down to the Priory and Priest’s office to deal with the details she couldn’t. All the tricky politics of gathering a bunch of different motorcycle clubs together, no matter the reason. He hadn’t had to tell her that; she’d known. All the different cuts and swaggering, tough-looking bikers she’d seen yesterday had swum before her eyes, but Sophie hadn’t let herself cry.

Priest would have hated that. He would have taken any tears as a personal affront.

She’d gotten ready slowly, unable to think in any kind of linear way as she pulled on the clothes she’d picked out for this. She’d put on her shoes before her panties. Then she’d taken them off again and pulled on her dress without a bra. You are a mess. Sophie told herself that she accepted that. That it was normal to feel so heavy and so empty at once.

Her mind kept getting caught on the picture Priest had kept on his bedside table of the two of them and his signature red Harley, the bike he’d called the true love of his life more than once. She’d tried not to look at that damned picture when she’d gone into his room earlier. But she didn’t have to see it. It was burned into her brain, as it was maybe the only evidence she’d ever had that there was, possibly, one sentimental bone in her tough father’s body. Just the one.

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 if 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.