“What I want and what I’ll actually do when it would be stupid to call attention to myself are two different things.”

“And one of them is an excuse.”

He put his face against her neck, feeling that shiver that was the truth of this thing between them skate through her when he put his mouth against her neck. Not a kiss. A touch. A tasting.

She shivered harder.

“You keep digging your nails into your thighs like that, you’re gonna leave marks,” he murmured into the crook of her neck, and then he watched the swell of gooseflesh move over her skin and down her chest, like a confession. He growled his approval. “And let’s be really clear about this. If someone’s leaving marks on you, Sophie, it’s gonna be me.”

Chapter 5

Sophie jerked her head back to glare up at him and Ajax laughed.

He liked that, too. That, like she’d said back in the Priory earlier today, she wasn’t afraid of him.

He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d been with a woman who wasn’t. But then, Sophie had been raised by the only man Ajax had ever known who’d been scarier than him.

She searched his face, her expression showing nothing.

But her eyes blazed.

And they both knew she wasn’t going to do a thing about it. Not here. Not with all these eyes on them. Not in a place where she was Priest’s daughter and Ajax’s problem right up until there was a reason to think she was nothing more than a dumb bitch, and there was no protecting her if she crossed that line.

It was no small thing that these were lessons he didn’t need to teach her. He hadn’t had to warn her not to talk to any of the women here, no matter how unfriendly that might seem, because she wasn’t one of them and wouldn’t want to be passed around the way they were. He hadn’t had to tell her to watch her smart mouth or keep her tone civil if anyone spoke to her, or even if only he did. He hadn’t had to worry that she might start some shit while he was occupied with the men, because she knew better.

She knew all of the complicated layers to this place, this life, these people. All of the rules. She knew that the Devil’s Keepers were Ajax’s friends, but that didn’t make them hers, especially without a property patch on her back.

Christ, she was fucking perfect.

Ajax had never wanted a woman as his. As property. But if there was ever a woman worth rethinking his position on that for, it was this one.

Priest had never wanted this life for his little girl, but somehow, despite that or, hell, maybe because of it, he’d raised her so that she was absolutely perfect for it anyway. Fit to ride behind a king.

And Ajax was so hungry for her he thought it might actually kill him.

Sophie shifted then. She lifted her hands from her lap and she slid them onto his chest and it wasn’t lost on Ajax that this was the first time she’d touched him of her own volition. Everything inside of him went quiet. Tight. He thought if she stopped, he might lose his cool.

She held his gaze for a minute and then she dropped it again, concentrating on her task with a studiousness that made him want to do her right there, right then. Just strip off those tight jeans and toss her long legs over his shoulders and sink into her until neither one of them gave a shit about anything else.

He figured it would take one good thrust.

He was trying to think of any particular reason not to do just that when Sophie shifted again, tracing the ridges of his abdomen like she’d found something wonderful. Ajax sucked in a breath, dropping his head back down to the crook of her neck where she was heating up, need starting to make her sweet skin glisten.

One cut line and then another, she climbed the hard ladder of his six-pack through his T-shirt with those delicate fingers of hers. Then she leaned in and ran her palms up, running over his pectoral muscles and dragging slightly on his nipples, then down. Then she went up again, this time running her hands over the leather of his cut and the patches that proclaimed his identity, one after the next.

She didn’t have to ask him what they meant, because she knew.

And there was a different kind of reverence in the way her fingers traced over the patch that proclaimed him the outlaw he was, and the one above it that called him her father’s VP. There was something almost solemn in the way she traced the name of the club that lay over his heart. Once. Twice.

Ajax had no idea why he was standing so still, letting her explore him so gently and carefully in a warehouse far off in the bayou, when there were a thousand other things he could be doing—like getting his dick wet before he exploded like a fucking kid. But he didn’t say that, the way he already would have at any other time with any other woman, and he could tell himself anything he wanted to explain that away. He tried. But he knew it was the way she was looking at him.

Like he was a work of art, not a man. And certainly not the kind of man that he knew, without reservation, he was and always had been.

Ajax had lost most of his illusions a very long time ago, right about the time he’d taken that rebar pipe to the man who would have killed him, and happily, if he hadn’t. His own father. And then whatever was left of them when he’d had to either leave his home and his club, or disobey the direct command of the only man whose orders he’d ever willingly chosen to follow. After ten years in the mercenary game, playing a far worse monster than the monsters he’d been hired to handle and protect and kick ass for, he didn’t have any space left for fantasies. He didn’t want any part of those lies. He knew what he was.

But he found that when Sophie slipped those hands of hers onto his face, running her palms over his beard to rub him all over his cheeks, he had the desperate urge to be whatever the fuck he had to be, to keep her looking at him like that.

“What are you doing?” His voice was quiet. He almost didn’t recognize it.

Her eyes flew to his like she was guilty of something, but she didn’t drop her hands. “I don’t know.”

Did he want her to know? Ajax couldn’t answer that. But he felt a wild snarl start deep inside him, vicious and dark, and the only way he’d ever relieved that kind of thing was by pounding. Either on someone with his fists or into someone else with his dick and he didn’t much care which.

He only knew he couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t stand here, in front of all these people, and let her do this to him.

Not that he knew what the fuck she was doing, either.

He tugged her hands from his face and didn’t put them on his dick, because her father had just died and he was a goddamned gentleman when he felt like it. Like he’d told her once already.

“You want me to fuck you tenderly, little girl?” he asked her, his voice like a dull roar in his ears though he knew he wasn’t shouting. That he was being very, very quiet. Too quiet. “Is that what this is? You think we’re gonna hold hands for a while, work up to getting my mouth on your tits sometime, maybe see if I can lick your pussy on your birthday if I’m real lucky?”

She blinked, and Ajax didn’t want to see whatever was about to flash across her face. Disappointment, maybe. Hurt. He didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want to acknowledge it. He pushed away from the bar, out of the danger zone he hadn’t realized he’d walked right into, like a dumbass.

Sophie studied him for a long moment, and Ajax was aware of everything around them. Hyperaware, like he was prepping for an attack and it could come from any quarter. He could hear the Devil’s Keepers brothers having their good time, in all the usual ways. He heard the particular pitch of giggling that only ever came from strippers and porn stars, because only women who were paid to make that sound would make it at all, much less that often. He heard some action movie playing, with shit blowing up and every now and then, beneath it, the slick, rhythmic sounds and low moans of sex. Lots and lots of sex, and he wasn’t having any of it.