She hoped they’d leave, but they didn’t. Ajax didn’t pay, either. They settled in, taking over that back corner where her father had always sat as if there were ten of them instead of two. She frowned past them at one point, down the hallway, realizing they must have been back in her father’s office. It pissed her off—but then, she knew that wasn’t exactly reasonable. She hadn’t wanted to go in there. She’d lived with her dad in the apartment up above the bar, but his office had always been off-limits. His office was about club business, always, and he was the president of the Deacons of Bourbon Street when he was at that desk, not her father. She’d learned that lesson the hard way over the years.

Over and over again.

Fuck all of this, she thought fiercely. The Deacons and Ajax and everything else. In two days they’ll be out of here and everything will be normal again.

Including her. She hoped.

No matter how that man might have made her feel last night. That part was irrelevant.

—

Later that night, the place was full of the usual carousing tourists. A bachelorette party was wreaking a little bit of havoc over near the doors, carrying on as if it was a Saturday night. And it took a minute for Sophie to register the sleek, dangerous-looking man who cut through the pack of shrieking women like a shark. He didn’t appear to notice them, though he did brush a nonexistent piece of lint from the cuff of his crisp suit as he went by. He was so polished that she had to look again to realize there was absolutely nothing soft about him. Anywhere.

He came to the bar and stopped there, directly in front of Sophie. She was aware of the enduring menace of Ajax and Blue to her left and the way the two of them stilled as they lounged at their table, and for a moment there was nothing but the music wailing into the bayou night and the bachelorettes making ribald bets about whether this man wore boxers or briefs under all of his excellent tailoring.

“Did I miss happy hour?” he asked, looking at Sophie and yet raising his voice loud enough that he could be heard over the music. “That’s a shame. Here I was looking forward to a sweaty Hurricane mixed with the vomiting masses and a tetanus shot.”

“Look at that.” Ajax’s voice was hard, and it came from much closer than that table. Sophie blinked and found him standing right there on the other side of the bar, his gaze a hard, icy thing and entirely focused on the man in front of her. “I tell him to get here today and this bitch walks in at exactly five minutes to midnight.”

“It’s been ten years, Ajax,” the man drawled, “but I live to serve you, of course. To the precise letter that keeps me in possession of all my teeth and nothing more.”

“Welcome home, Prince,” Ajax replied. “Did you mug a banker to get that suit?”

Blue said nothing, still sprawled there at the table, but his hard mouth crooked.

“I was going to dress like a douchebag but then I thought, no wait, then we’ll all look the same,” Prince shot back.

Ajax’s smile then was edgy. It made Sophie flush, and he wasn’t looking at her.

“Outside,” he ordered Prince, and maybe Blue too, it was hard to tell. “Time to get off your ass and do some real work.”

“Great,” Sophie interjected, because maybe she had a death wish. “Are you going to settle your tab, Sean?”

And Sophie didn’t get a chance to see how either Prince or Blue reacted to being ordered around, or to her use of Ajax’s real name. Because Ajax’s hard fingers were on her, grabbing her chin and pulling her face around to his, in a move that hauled her up on her toes like he was considering yanking her right over the bar.

Her heart went wild. His gaze, if possible, got harder. Colder.

“Don’t ever insult me by talking about money again,” he bit out. “This is Deacons territory. You know better. Your father would have beat your ass if he heard you disrespecting a brother like that.”

She knew she couldn’t jerk away from his grip, so she didn’t try. She refused to show him the faintest lick of fear, no matter how hard and cold his eyes were, as if he hated her. As if he’d never been inside her at all.

“My father would have emptied his entire gun collection into the back of your head if he knew what you did to me last night,” she threw back at him, her voice every bit as hard as his was, and she’d never been so proud of herself. She met that harsh, incredulous gaze of his and she didn’t flinch. “So maybe you want to take a step back into your glass house, put down your stones, and save your self-righteousness for someone who doesn’t know what a hypocrite you are.”

Ajax let out a little laugh that made everything inside her tense, and then hover somewhere between cold and hot. That same place he’d shown her last night, where pain and pleasure were almost indistinguishable from each other.

“Careful, Sophie,” he warned her, and then he dropped his hand, his gaze dark and harsh. That voice of his like a rough caress, stirring her up inside, making her ache all over again. “Be very, very careful.”

And when he swung away and headed off into the night, she told herself it was a victory. Not a loss.

Chapter 9

Ajax stood just inside the busted-open door of the dingy apartment in this crappy section of the city, leaning against the peeling wall like he was on a fucking vacation, though he figured the look he was giving the man cowering there in front of him and Blue was not exactly an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii.

“You’re beginning to hurt my feelings,” he said, and he wasn’t breathing heavy, the way the little shit half on and half off his grimy-looking couch was. It made his voice that much darker, he was aware. And he didn’t have to look over at Blue, who was making a show of shaking the splintered remains of the door off his booted foot. “I’m sensitive like that. Blue, didn’t I tell you how much I was looking forward to a tender reunion with my favorite lying, cheating piece of shit?”

“It was like fucking poetry.”

“And then this crap, like we’re not old friends.” Ajax shook his head sorrowfully, and goddamn it, he’d missed this. “Why’d you run, asshole?”

“Nothing but a misunderstanding, man,” the slimy little turd known as Bobby to his poor mama and Boner to everyone else unfortunate enough to encounter him stammered out. He raised his hands in the air, which only showed off how little he washed them. “I thought you were somebody else, that’s all. It’s late and this ain’t a great neighborhood.”

“Who did you think I was?” Ajax asked softly. Dangerously.

Boner made a pathetic roll to the left and attempted to throw himself past Blue and out the door. Blue merely reached out a hand, caught the bitch by his face, and hurled him back to his previous position on that flea-infested-looking couch.

Ajax smiled. “Because I’m forced to conclude that you coming out of a known Ministry hangout at this hour of the night, all liquored up and smelling like a cheap bang from a bored hooker, made you take one look at two Deacons’ cuts and fall down memory lane with a thud. Way back in time to when you were hanging around the Priory trying to suck up and be a man. Both extreme failures, to my recollection. Do you have a different memory of the situation, Blue? It’s been a long time.”

“Not so long I can’t smell a punk-ass bitch from halfway across the Quarter,” Blue replied, his cold gaze on Boner. “Once a punk, always a punk.”

“Amen, brother.”

“Come on, guys,” Boner protested, looking from one to the other, his beady little eyes about as wide as they got. “You don’t have to do this. You broke my fucking door.”