And the Deacons.

He’d grabbed his shit from behind the bar where he’d left it earlier this morning and the first thing he’d done, after telling Sophie where to sit and enjoying her obedience maybe a bit too much, along with the little sting where her nails had dug into him, was take out his cut and put it back on. Where it fucking belonged. He’d hated walking through his city streets without it. He had no intention of doing that again.

And he’d caught Sophie staring, like his cut was a ghost. Or he was.

Sick fuck that he was, it had made him hard.

Then again, everything she did made him hard.

He listened to the men around him, the officers of the Devil’s Keepers who’d earned his respect a long way back—and again this morning when he’d showed up out of the blue.

Heard you bailed on the life, his old friend and former army buddy Greeley had said, because if Ajax had, maybe rolling up here in a cloud of dust, still wearing his cut, wasn’t the brightest idea.

No one “bailed” on the life. You went out the way you came in. With blood.

Priest had to hand out a few prison sentences back in the day to clean up a mess, Ajax had said. He’d crossed his arms over his chest and he hadn’t looked away. But Priest is dead. I’m on parole.

Now he tried to concentrate on what they were saying, rather than on the way Sophie’s long hair slipped this way and that over her sweetly rounded, temptingly bare shoulders—an issue he’d never, ever had before in his entire life. For Christ’s sake.

Ajax didn’t get distracted by pussy. He’d never understood it when other men did. Ajax had never been anything even close to drunk on cunt in his life, and why would he be? Women were in endless supply. Why get tangled up with one in particular?

But Sophie sat there across the big room like a bright light. Like there was no one else here, and he was fucked.

The Devil’s Keepers had moved on from condolences and had started talking shit about mutual enemies, including the Deacons’ old rivals, the Graveyard Ministry. They’d been based out in LaPlace when Ajax had been a prospect with the Deacons but had been making inroads into the city of New Orleans ever since.

“They’ve been in the French Quarter since after the storm,” Greeley, who was the Devil’s Keepers’ enforcer, told Ajax now. “Priest stepped away from the outlaw shit.”

“He was headed that way before I left,” Ajax said. Across the room, Sophie shifted on her stool, and he needed to pay attention to this conversation, not her ass. “Wanted to keep the club focused on the bar and the strip club, where the money was consistent. Didn’t want the hassle of that deeper bullshit any longer. Too many bullets, not enough bitches.” He laughed. “That’s a quote.”

The other men laughed too, and they all drank to Priest, which was as it should be. And Ajax wondered if the old man had been thinking about other things when he’d given the exile order, like a daughter who’d been coming of age back then and the kind of things that happened sometimes to the families of outlaws. But after the president and VP left the table to Ajax and Greeley, the talk came back around to business again. It always did.

“That motherfucker Blade is running the Ministry,” Greeley said.

Ajax shook his head. “Not that sneaky little bitch.”

“For years now.” Greeley rolled his beer bottle between his hands, then jutted his chin at Ajax’s cut. Where his VP patch rode. “What about you? You got aspirations?”

Ajax couldn’t pretend he hadn’t thought about it already. Priest had never replaced his officers after Katrina, and he should have. Instead, he’d let the Deacons…drift. Almost like digging out from under the storm and eighty-sixing his four best men at the same time was more than he could handle. Or something he hadn’t wanted to do at all—but Ajax had decided a long time ago to let the paranoid shit go. There was no other way he’d have survived his ten-year stint in exile, surrounded by lethal motherfuckers who’d have put a bullet in him without blinking.

“I’ve been back for less than a day,” he said after a moment. “Have to put my president in the ground. I figure after that is the time to look around and think about making plans. After respects are paid.”

“Just saying, the top spot is empty, that creates a vacuum. Priest was a legend. He earned a little space and he got that, these last ten years. But with him out of the Quarter and no one stepping up…”

Ajax raked his hair back. “I hear you.”

They sat awhile and had another beer while the clubhouse started to get rowdy. Caught up on all the shit that had happened over the past decade and before, stretching all the way back to when they’d met in basic training. And only when Ajax stood up to take his leave did Greeley shoot a glance toward the bar.

“Priest’s daughter’s not a little girl anymore.”

“Looking for a date?” Ajax asked. And maybe his voice was a little too hard. Maybe that gave him away, he thought when Greeley smirked. He knew he should care about that more than he did. “Maybe you don’t want the woman who has to bury her father this week, dickhead.”

His friend grinned, wholly unrepentant. “You’ve been away too long, man. I like them broken.”

Ajax had the sudden urge to break his old friend in half, so he related to that.

But he only laughed. “Then you don’t want to mess with the little girl Priest Lombard raised,” he said. “All by himself, if you get me. She’s a lot of things, but broken isn’t one of them.”

And then he walked away before he was forced to make a claim on Sophie he didn’t want to make—but would, he acknowledged with some surprise, rather than sit back and allow a situation where someone else might try. The thought of any one of these assholes touching that sweet ass of hers made him want to beat them all down. His old friend Greeley first.

He was feeling a little edgy when he made it through the crowd of perverts and fucking deviants—his people, and fuck, he’d missed this life—to Sophie’s side. She was sitting right where he’d left her, though she’d swiveled around so she could lean back against the bar and keep an eye on the crowd. She wasn’t staring around in horror or even particular interest. She wasn’t lolling back in invitation and she wasn’t sitting up straight like a tight-assed missionary who’d knocked on the wrong door. She looked like exactly who she was: not quite an old lady, and definitely not a sweet-butt whore.

Mine, he thought, a scalding hot burst of possessiveness slamming into him. He gritted his teeth and ignored it.

The crossed arms and set expression of the prospect next to Sophie at the bar suggested not everybody had read the don’t fuck with me signals she was sending out, and Ajax released the poor fool from duty with a nod.

He liked it when Sophie’s gaze shifted and landed on him.

She was so cool, so controlled. But now he knew how hot she ran, how sweet and wet she was when she shivered against him, and he loved it. He knew the truth about her. All these animals sniffing around, and all they got was that haughty air of hers and nothing but her polite disinterest.

He’d take a little more than that.

When he reached her, he walked right up to her, bumping into her crossed legs.

“Open,” he muttered.

He saw temper in her green eyes, that mutinous glare that turned him on. But Priest had raised his daughter right. Ajax knew she wouldn’t fight him here. And sure enough, she didn’t.

She opened her legs and he stepped between them, but he didn’t rub himself all over her the way he’d done earlier. The way he wanted to again. He leaned closer, caging her with his hands on the surface of the bar behind her, and got his face nice and close so he could breathe her in.

“See?” She smelled like her shampoo, and something sugary on her skin. Heat and longing. Sophie. “You don’t really want to fight me, baby.”