He straightened, and when his eyes met hers across the few feet of thick, inky dark, she had to breathe through that, too.

“Come here,” he said gruffly.

Sophie told herself she had no choice. But that wasn’t the reason she walked toward him. And it wasn’t the reason she stood there, eyes fixed to his, when she reached him.

She had no idea what he saw.

It took her a moment to realize he was handing her something, and it took her longer than that to realize it was a rolled-up Henley shirt. His, maybe. She blinked at it, then at him, but she didn’t argue. She shook it out and then shoved her hands up inside of it, pulling the arms on first. Then she tugged the rest over her head, and she took a scant second on the way to confirm that yes, this was his shirt. She could smell it. She could smell him. Just the faintest hint of the soap he used, plus something else that was all him and a little bit of leather besides, but it was enough. By the time she pulled her head through, her body had shuddered into full awareness, a thrumming kind of tension that was centered between her legs. And as she freed her hair from the shirt’s collar and confronted the canopy that was Ajax’s shirt on her much smaller body, that bright hot heat began to pulse.

He reached over and tugged the shirt into place. He shot a look at her, dark and something like grim, and then he reached over and pulled her a step closer to him. He rolled up the cuffs of the shirt. Baring one wrist then the other, the leather of his gloves glancing off her skin here and there as he worked.

Sophie barely breathed.

Wordlessly, Ajax handed her a soft leather helmet and buckled on one of his own as she handled hers.

Then he lifted his chin and she stepped back. He started up his bike, the roar of it splitting the night apart and welcome, somehow. Sophie could feel it in her bones, like a jazz band on a French Quarter street corner, the rhythm of life beneath everything. Ajax moved the bike off its kickstand and rolled it forward a few feet, then waited for her, one boot in the dirt.

She’d ridden on motorcycles a million times. There was nothing special about this one. Or so she told herself when her heart pounded hard inside her chest, then kept at it, like a drum. Boom. That sleek, black, infinitely sexy machine, gleaming dark and dangerous in the night. Boom. Ajax and that steel-crafted body of his that wouldn’t be safely across the width of a car tonight. Boom. The long, long stretch of road between here and New Orleans, with this man and this machine brooding and hot between her thighs. Boom.

Sophie stepped forward. She fought to look easy and loose and effortlessly casual, like this was no big deal, no matter that hot, hard glitter in his gaze. She swung up behind him, settling into place, and gingerly reached around to slide her hands onto his hips.

He revved the engine and then he turned his head so she could hear him.

“Don’t be an asshole, Sophie.”

And she reminded herself that he couldn’t see her. So it was almost as if it didn’t count when she relented and slid forward, pressing herself to his back and wrapping her arms securely around his hard, narrow waist. The bike was alive between her legs, a low, wild rumble, and he was more dangerous by far, and she was snug up against him.

What the hell, she thought, and tucked her chin on his shoulder too, because why not burn to a crisp if she was going to dance this close to the fire?

She felt him tighten beneath her, all that sleek, powerful muscle, the man and the machine fused together somehow and so painfully gorgeous she had to shut her eyes against it.

And when he took off into the night and down that long, dark bayou road toward home, it felt like flying.

Chapter 6

Ajax had spent a lot of time fine-tuning this particular dream over the past ten years.

Hauling ass down Bourbon Street again, scattering the tourists before him like minnows in fanny packs. His cut on his back and his bike beneath him. That sweet Louisiana wind in his face and his city cobbled together around him. The grit and sugar and straight-on sparkle of the French Quarter, tarted up pretty for another long night of sin.

Except tonight, it was real.

He wasn’t off in some hellish corner of this fucked-up world where nobody would go by choice, dreaming up what-ifs to pass the time and keep his head together. He wasn’t counting off the stream of pointless days between mercenary gigs in his soulless apartment in Houston, not giving much of a shit if he made it through his next assignment with so little to come back for.

He was right here, at last. He was home.

And this time, he had a woman pressed tight to his back, wrapped around him, soft and yielding.

Sophie was no virgin to the bike, so he liked it even more when she kept holding on to him like that long after they left the highway. She could have sat up, sat back. She could have put some space between them.

But she didn’t do it.

Not until they made it to the Priory and the alleyway that ran down the length of the bar and disappeared into the courtyard. He made the tight turn from memory, easing his way past the usual crowd of gawkers and hypocrites, then rolled back into the welcoming shadows, out of sight. He stopped and let Sophie climb off. He noted the careful way she did it, like she thought her legs might give out, and then he backed up the bike and parked it where he always had ten years ago, in what had been the VP spot near the stairs that led up to Priest’s apartment.

His club wasn’t what it had been and for reasons he didn’t get, according to Greeley and the other Devil’s Keepers and even that fucking lawyer who had called him late last night, hadn’t been for a long time. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. There were no lights on in the building across the courtyard in what had been the Deacons’ clubhouse and Ajax had the distinct feeling he didn’t want to know why not. There were no brothers out in the yard or inside those doors that rolled back, no music pouring out from within, no sounds of the usual petty squabbles or the bullshit stories of badassery gone by hanging there in the air the way there should have been. There were no prospects cleaning up their shit and making themselves available for the usual hazing. There were no women wandering in with very few clothes on, looking for a good time served up rough-edged and a little bit mean.

And it was still his favorite dream come true. All of it.

He cut the bike’s powerful engine and the night closed in around them, the boisterous Quarter sounding almost quiet and calm in comparison to the Harley’s guttural roar. Sophie stood there in the deep shadows with him, not near enough for his liking, and he could read the uncertainty dripping off her. He could see it in every line of that supple body he’d felt wrapped tight around him for some hundred miles.

He watched her as she shifted from one foot to the other. She tugged at her helmet and it took her a minute, like maybe her fingers weren’t working the way they should. He bit back his smile and swung off the bike.

“I have to check on the bar.” She sounded nervous and, prick that he was, he liked it.

“Didn’t look like there was a fire when we went by.”

Her eyes were too dark against all that night, but he had no trouble reading her anyway.

“Of course there’s no fire.”

Sophie thrust her helmet at him and he took it, amused at how careful she was not to touch him. Like that would help.

“Then you don’t need to check on the bar. It’s fine. Katrina didn’t take it, nothing will.”