Why had Priest allowed it?

Ajax needed to peel himself away from Sophie Lombard’s too-tempting ass and start living up to his goddamned responsibilities.

The fact that it was hard for him to move, that he actually considered waking her up for another round before he got going—that shit was unacceptable. He’d punch another man in the face for that kind of thing, to get his fucking priorities in order. He cracked his knuckles and considered it.

Ajax was disgusted with himself.

Bad enough that he was disrespecting his longtime president by spending all this time chasing pussy around his hometown when he should have been taking care of his shit. Worse, that of all the pussy in the world, so much of it free and easy and clamoring for a taste of him, it was Sophie. The one female that should have been off-limits to Ajax, out of sheer respect alone.

He couldn’t beat himself up too much for that one. Priest might have kicked his ass for it, but at the end of the day, Sophie was a grown woman and Ajax wasn’t exactly the model of respectful behavior when it came to taking the things he wanted. Priest hadn’t been, either. There was a reason they weren’t fucking bankers.

But to ignore all the actual shit that was going on in favor of busting a nut?

Unacceptable.

His club came first. Everything else came a distant second, and pussy—which ran hot and cold like water out of the faucet, always had and always would—didn’t even make the list.

Ajax grabbed his T-shirt and stalked toward the kitchen, pulling it on as he went, and then shrugging into his cut.

It was time he got to work.

—

A few hours later, the sun was beating down hot for an October day, and Ajax had thoroughly cased his hometown. He’d always been good at recon, wherever he happened to find himself, and this was no different. He’d taken advantage of the general lazy approach to mornings down here in the Big Easy, where the nights went on forever, knowing he had hours before anyone would start paying attention to shit like some random guy in the street. He traced the old club boundaries on foot, getting the lay of the land after so many years away, Katrina, and whatever the fuck Priest had been doing here all this time.

He’d dropped into Daddy’s first, the strip joint a few doors down on Bourbon Street that the club had taken over some fifteen years back, pleased to find one of the older Deacons manning the office. One thing the way it should be, anyway. Rigger was old school, a contemporary of Priest’s who’d ended up in a wheelchair after one of the Deacons’ last turf wars with those Ministry assholes. The older man had been full of theories about what had been happening these last ten years and, even better, a whole lot of the information Ajax wanted about what their enemies were up to these days.

Ajax had felt another piece fall into place after that. New Orleans was his hometown. The Priory and the club were his home. All that was left were his brothers. His real family. And he didn’t count the traitors who’d switched sides in that number, no matter how much he was looking forward to expressing his feelings on their choices.

Or a piece of ass, no matter how fucking hot, that he couldn’t seem to banish from his head, not even when he was doing crazy shit like walking into a well-known and clearly marked Ministry hangout at 11:00 a.m. on a Wednesday, just for fun.

“You can’t be serious,” the prospect at the door had said at the sight of Ajax in his cut, coming straight at him.

He’d reached for his piece. Ajax had only grinned, dropped the fucker with a very satisfying left hook, and sauntered inside.

Hell yeah, this was fun. Home sweet fucking home.

He hadn’t expected anyone interesting to be around in this shitty little hole-in-the-wall bar that called itself a jazz club, trying to lure in the drunk dumbasses too stupid to realize they’d wandered off Frenchmen Street and into a world of hurt. And sure enough, there had only been a collection of Ministry hangarounds and a few exhausted whores strewn about the grim interior like the garbage they were. There was one bitch delivering the world’s saddest blow job to some douche in the corner, so boring that Ajax’s dick didn’t even twitch.

But he only needed to send a message. A little welcome-home gift from him to Blade, because that’s the kind of thoughtful guy he was. These losers would have to do.

“Tell Blade I said hello,” he told them, grinning even wider when they all stared from his cut to his face in shock.

“Who the fuck are you?” the least pansy of the hangarounds demanded.

“An old friend,” Ajax had replied. “Real close. We used to braid each other’s hair and talk about boyfriends.”

The other man had looked ill, which suggested any ambitions he had toward the Ministry brotherhood were doomed. “Blade doesn’t have any friends in a Deacons cut, man.”

Ajax had laughed. “No? Are you sure? I thought he and I must be tight, he’s been so busy picking up traitors and territory that ride with a skull instead of a tombstone. My mistake. Well then. Laissez les bon temps rouler, motherfuckers.”

Then he’d gone on his merry way, his mood significantly improved.

Back on Bourbon Street, he headed for the Priory from the other direction. Not to find Sophie, he assured himself, no matter how hard he was instantly at the thought of her. Fuck that. He needed to take a look around Priest’s office, do a little digging, chase up some of the things Rigger had told him and see if he could verify any of it. He’d wasted enough time already, and he needed to—

Ajax stopped dead in front of what had once been the Deacons’ clubhouse. Right there on the sidewalk, making a cluster of sorority girls giggle as they squeaked in surprise and then moved around him. He ignored them.

He blinked, but the hideous apparition didn’t go away. From this part of the street, the clubhouse was accessible through an iron gate and an alley cut beneath the building above it. They’d kept bikes there sometimes, or prospects. They’d used it like a gauntlet on occasion.

What they had not done was pollute the space with…whatever the hell all this crap was. Shitty paintings. Portraits of rabbit heads where they didn’t belong and that fucking blue dog that was all over the French Quarter like an infection. Cluttering up the long entry like it was some kind of suburban garage sale.

He sensed someone stop behind him and pivoted, instantly on alert—

But Ajax knew that face. Stark and tough, on one of the few men he knew who was as big as he was. Dark, closed-off eyes, blank expression, and all that shaggy fucking hair like the man had never heard of a pair of scissors. He stood a few feet away from Ajax, because he wasn’t an idiot, sneaking up on a man when his back was turned, with his arms crossed over his cut the way they always had been back when he’d been the Deacons’ enforcer.

Leonidas St. John Delacroix III, the Deacons’ sergeant at arms who was sometimes known as Leon, but who Ajax had never called anything but Blue. And who he hadn’t laid eyes on in ten long years.

Blue lifted his chin. Ajax did the same.

It was practically fucking poetic.

Then they both turned back to what was left of their clubhouse. They hadn’t just hung out here, like a lot of the brothers who’d then gone back to their homes in other parts of the city—Ajax and Blue had lived here, in the clubhouse rooms or the handful of apartments in different sections of the buildings. They’d both had different degrees of shitty families and nowhere else to go, and then, nowhere else they’d wanted to go. Ajax would take a bullet for any one of his brothers, no question. But he’d do a hell of lot more than that for Blue. Over the course of their years together as Priest’s numbers one and two, he had.

And all he’d had to do was leave a message on Blue’s voicemail that Priest was dead and he was needed, and here Blue was. No bullshit about his busy, important life, like Prince yesterday. None of that crap about how he had a different life now, like that asshole Cash, who was in Florida and had acted like Ajax had ordered him to swim in from Cuba. Ajax shook that off. He’d deal with those two when they showed up. Reintroduce the concept of brotherhood and loyalty, maybe with his fists, if he didn’t feel the tide shift a little. The four of them had been exiled together. That should have cemented a few things. It had as far as Ajax was concerned.