“I thought it was the biker way to fall off one fuck and onto another,” she said, and she almost succeeded. She almost sounded completely unbothered. Untouched. Almost.

“I know what you thought.”

His gaze was so hard she could feel it everywhere, like his teeth again, like that laugh, infecting her blood and making her his—whether she wanted it or not.

She told herself she didn’t want it. That she’d been fascinated by this man because she’d imprinted on him as a girl, that was all. Now she knew. She knew how to shoot a gun too, because her father had insisted she learn in the same way he’d insisted she know how to handle money and rowdy customers at the bar, but that didn’t mean she felt comfortable toting around something so sleek and dangerous and infinitely cruel all the time. Some things were better left alone.

“Sophie.”

She jerked her attention back to Ajax, the hot water running all over her and doing nothing to change that shattering way he looked at her. But maybe that was her, making everything hurt when really, this was nothing more than a Tuesday night to him. Nothing but a—

Ajax jerked his chin at her.

“Move over,” he said gruffly, and then he climbed inside her tiny shower, like it was just one more of the things that were his.

Chapter 8

Ajax shifted from dead asleep to fully alert in an instant, that tickle on the back of his neck telling him something was wrong.

He didn’t question it.

He rolled out of bed and onto his feet without waking the woman sprawled there beside him. Then he checked out the apartment, moving from room to room as silently as if he was back in the jungle on some job, taking only moments to make certain everything was secure.

Morning light streamed in the windows of all three bedrooms and the sprawling living room and kitchen, lighting up every corner, making it easy. The ceiling fans moved the soft air with a faint humming noise, and there were the distant sounds of late-waking Bourbon Street far below, but no telltale footsteps in the attic space above. No one lurking on the stairs or, he saw when he looked outside from the kitchen window, down in the courtyard. Priest had lived up here on purpose. There was a full and unobstructed view of the alley that led into the courtyard, the clubhouse’s entrance, and access to the Priory. There was nowhere to hide and a noisy-ass set of metal stairs to get up to this apartment, which was the entire fucking point.

No one was here. No intruders, no cause for alarm. Absolutely no reason he was standing there wide awake and bare assed instead of rolled up in bed with a sweet woman draped all over him like an invitation, hot and wet and willing.

But here he was. And that fucking tickle didn’t go away. Ajax had spent long years learning to respect it. That time he’d been some kingpin’s bodyguard and had felt that tickle one evening, which was the only reason that particular asshole had lived through an unpleasant family dinner. That time he and some of the men in his outfit had been told to wait for a signal in a certain deserted part of a foreign city that had rubbed him the wrong way from the moment he’d seen it—which was why all five of them had survived that ambush. That fucked-up bullshit in Mexico a few months back, when that tickle had kept Ajax from becoming one more cartel casualty. Ajax hadn’t survived ten years of pure hell in some of the most desperate places on this shithole of a planet—not to mention his entire previous life as a juvenile delinquent turned outlaw biker—ignoring that little tickle. It had saved his life more times than he could count, especially when he was out there living his grim, isolated life with no brothers at his back.

The last time he’d ignored it was ten years ago, when he and three of his brothers had run what was supposed to be the Deacons’ last job on the wrong side of the law. And sure enough, everything had gone straight to shit. A man had died and he; the club’s enforcer, Blue; that whiny little bitch Prince, who was more concerned with his money than his memories; and their other brother Cash had all been exiled on the back of it.

But this wasn’t a fucking job.

This was his first morning back home in New Orleans and he’d spent the better part of the night balls deep in one of the sweetest, tightest pussies he’d ever had. The only thing he should have been feeling was morning wood.

Ajax pulled on the jeans he’d left on the living room floor and rubbed his palm over the back of his neck, scowling. He could see Sophie on the bed through her open doorway, the light blanket kicked off. She’d slept restlessly, with a frown on her face and occasional muttering unless he’d hauled her up against him and held her there, and he didn’t know why the fuck he thought that was anything but annoying. At the moment she was stretched out on her belly with that fine ass of hers in the air, a hint of her pussy below, and those girly fucking angel wings on display that made his mouth water for no good reason. All her dark, wavy hair was spread around her and her arms were stretched up beneath the pillows, in total abandon, and there it was. Morning wood and the perfect solution to that issue, right there in front of him.

His cock was a problem solver, the predictable fucker.

And it was more than a little worrying that Ajax wanted to climb back into that bed with her and completely ignore everything else, that prickling sensation in his neck, the sorry state of his club, the things that fell to him as VP that had nothing to do with a hot piece of ass—

It hit him then. What was bothering him.

The lawyer, that same old crusty bastard who had handled the club’s business even way back when Ajax was new and unable to stay out of trouble, hadn’t given a lot of details when he’d called. Only that Priest was dead. That he’d laid his bike down on his favorite road. And that Ajax needed to come home.

Steadiest rider I ever knew, the president of the Devil’s Keepers had said yesterday while they’d had a drink in Priest’s memory, one hand stroking down his beard. Never saw him flinch.

That was it, Ajax realized. That was what was poking at him.

It would have been one thing if it had been a wet night, if there had been other vehicles involved, if it had been some kind of collision. Shit happened. But it had been about as dry as it could be down below sea level on a Monday evening in the bayou and it had been a single-vehicle crash. Priest had gone off the road on a curve Ajax knew damn well the old man could have made in his sleep, because he had. Ajax had seen Priest navigate that same stretch of road drunk, high, enraged. Murderous. He’d never blinked.

Priest wasn’t the kind of man who’d ever blinked.

Why the fuck had he gone down?

Ajax scowled at Sophie in her pretty little bed, pissed at himself. He’d spent all day yesterday dealing with her shit and acting like a pussy hound when he should have been trying to figure out what the fuck had happened here. It didn’t take much to reignite his natural paranoia. Do enough bad shit in a single lifetime and paranoia was pretty much the secret to survival.

But it seemed that once Ajax asked that one question, a hundred more followed. Fast.

Why had Priest sent four of his most loyal and trusted brothers away ten years ago? Sure, shit had gone down wrong and blood called for blood, but why four exiled lives for one death? That math had never worked. And why had Priest let the club slide so far in the years since? It was one thing to step back from the outlaw bullshit, particularly when he’d had far fewer men he could trust to watch his back. That was just smart business. But the Devil’s Keepers had mentioned some sheer insanity yesterday, like brothers switching allegiance from the Deacons to the Graveyard Ministry, which Ajax knew deep in his bones—deep in his fucking soul, as tattered as it was—could not be true. Because Ajax knew that if any brother of his was walking around with Deacons colors tattooed on his back and a Ministry patch on his cut, that brother was a dead man.