“My name, Sophie,” he growled at her. “Say my fucking name.”

She could hear the slap of their flesh. She could hear how wet she was. She could hear—and she could feel so much it was almost like pain, only better.

So much better.

“Oh God,” she whispered, as that searing heat wound tighter and tighter inside of her, her whole body going taut and her pussy clenching down on him. “Oh God.”

“That’s close enough,” he growled in her ear.

He pinched her nipple and he pounded her straight into that dark wall, another climax, this one even bigger and more intense than before. He kept pounding into her, his arms tightening around her while his teeth were at her shoulder, and she kept coming.

And he came with her, jerking hard into her, shouting out his release into the quiet room, so loud she thought they could hear him all the way down on Canal Street.

But then she didn’t think again. About anything. For what could have been years.

He held her there, limp against him. She could feel his heart pounding in his mighty chest. She could still feel his cock inside of her and she clenched against it, earning herself a grunt. He rested his head on her shoulder and she liked the fact that he was breathing heavily, too. That it wasn’t only her.

Eventually, he shifted. He lifted her off his body and she instantly missed the intense heat he gave off. He set her gently on the rug and then surged to his feet with an unconscious, raw grace that made her mouth go dry.

He raked his hands through his hair as he turned toward the guest bathroom off the living room, and Sophie blinked, because somehow, she’d forgotten who he was.

It was right there, inked in three separate pieces in bold and unmistakable black all over his gorgeously sculpted back, stretching from just below his broad shoulders to right above his perfect, round ass. The great, grinning skull with the crack in its brow and its fathomless black eyes, staring back at her as he walked away. The top rocker curled above it, reading DEACONS OF BOURBON STREET in go fuck yourself capital letters. The bottom one said NEW ORLEANS, flanked by two fleurs-de-lis that should have seemed incongruously feminine in all that biker black etched into Ajax’s skin, but instead, looked like weapons.

Ajax disappeared into the bathroom. Sophie struggled to sit up.

He was right. She was a mess. She was more than a mess—she was naked on the living room floor. She’d spent an entire day in thrall to a man she’d never expected to see again, and she’d had more sex with him in the course of a single day than she’d had in the past year. Or the past five.

Or maybe it just felt like that, because sex with Ajax needed a different word to describe it. One that encompassed all that raw power and sheer, dizzying intensity and, God help her, that mouth of his.

And none of that mattered. None of any of this mattered.

Sophie had grown up around bikers. She knew that they fucked the way other people ate fast food, indiscriminately and with great initial enthusiasm, and then were empty again in five minutes and ready to move on to the next.

She knew that. She’d always known that. She’d known exactly who Ajax was the minute he’d walked into her bar, so there was no point crying about it now.

If Lombards cried, which they didn’t.

Suck it up, sweetheart, she snapped at herself. You knew what you were doing.

Well. That wasn’t entirely true. Sophie didn’t think anyone could prepare for Ajax. There was only surviving him.

She knew enough to do it outside his line of sight. The thought of him coming back out of that bathroom and looking at her like just another piece of ass made her feel physically ill. She could handle that tomorrow, she assured herself. When she’d slept off this intense and bewildering day and could summon her usual attitude again. She could keep her poker face intact and suffer through this entire situation until after the funeral when life would go back to something like normal. Ajax would go back to Texas in the same great fury as he’d arrived here, and she would live out the rest of her life merrily biker free. She could handle all of that. She would.

But not now. Not while she was soft and tender between her legs and thought he’d left a bite mark on her shoulder, which only a crazy person would smile about.

Not while the very thought of him made her whole body feel loose and shuddery.

She crawled up onto her feet. She grabbed the tangle of her jeans and her tank top and bra, which were twisted into a knot, and then she walked as quietly and as quickly as possible across the floor of the living room. She let herself into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Gently. Very gently.

Inside her room she stood a moment, feeling unsteady on her feet, looking around as if someone had come in and rearranged the entire space while she’d been out and nothing fit quite right. Not the wide bed on its wrought iron frame. Not the antique cheval mirror in one corner she had no desire to look into just then. Not her desk or the wide armchair tucked beneath the windows. Nothing looked the way it should.

But she knew it was exactly as she’d left it. The gold hot pants she’d worn this morning were still in a crumpled, shiny heap on the floor beside her laundry basket where she’d tossed them, and she was the one who’d changed. She was the one who was shaken up inside, in complete disarray with no hope of restoring order. Her father was dead. Ajax had happened, and all over her. There was no going back to the Sophie she’d been two days ago. There was only going forward, whatever the hell that looked like.

It was too late tonight to wonder about that, and she was too raw to care.

She walked into her bathroom, avoiding yet another mirror, and turned her shower on. She waited a minute for the old pipes to catch up, running her hand back and forth beneath the spray until the heat kicked in. Then, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, she climbed into the embrace of the hot water and tried to wash the same man’s touch away.

And for the second time in twenty-four hours, it didn’t really work.

But at least this time, she didn’t cry.

Because if you start again, that voice inside of her whispered, you won’t stop.

She dunked her head beneath the water and let it hit her full in the face, and just to make sure, stood there until her lungs burned. And when she ducked out and slicked her hair back, Ajax was there.

She hadn’t pulled the shower curtain shut all the way and he filled that wedge of space with that body of his, like some modern-day gladiator, and there was no getting away from the fact that she really, truly was a junkie where this man was concerned. She clearly was, because there was no way she could possibly want him again, and yet her body didn’t care. She felt that jonesing itch for him, everywhere, as that same slick heat rolled over deep inside her and shuddered back to life.

His expression was hard. His blue eyes were grim. His tattoos climbed his arms, banners and vines, tributes to fallen brothers, skulls and flowers and artistic flourishes on an otherwise stark, steel man. His dark blond hair was haphazard, raked through, and his beard was still in that perfect triangle that she’d felt on almost every inch of her skin.

She felt his gaze move over her like another caress, moving from each place where she felt a little burn to the next, and Sophie knew she wasn’t the only one to remember what he’d said out in the bayou. That he’d be the one to leave marks. His gaze lingered on her shoulder and she reached up and touched herself there, where he’d bitten her. His hard mouth tightened.

He didn’t ask if she was okay.

Which meant it was a whole lot easier to pretend she was.