“I think you’d know how to make sure that sun shines better than anyone, Ms. Lombard,” the cop had oozed at her, emphasizing the word Ms. like they both knew he meant biker whore instead. “Your father being who he was and all.”

Sophie had merely shrugged. “Bikers are bikers. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and even if they could be corralled? I’m not the one who could do it. Do I look like a sheepdog, Officer?”

But her own words had stuck with her as she’d noted the increase of biker cuts on men in the French Quarter as she’d walked back home, and not just from the local clubs. Just like she’d noticed the little leap her heart made at the sight. The truth was, she liked bikers back on Bourbon Street. In force.

Bikers were bikers. She knew that. She’d always told herself she hated it—and yet here she was, still tending bar deep in Deacons territory. She’d never fought her father’s wishes too hard. And so she was still living this life where she was known as Priest Lombard’s daughter first, last, and always. Whereas she could navigate a pissed-off Ajax in another MC’s clubhouse the way a southern debutante could handle a garden party, and with as little sweat or tears. Whereas, after a long string of mediocre boyfriends and boring attempts to feel something with any of them, the first biker who’d ever gotten in her face she’d let straight into her pants—and she couldn’t regret that. Hell, she wanted more.

Who was she kidding? Her father had raised her up to be a biker bitch no matter what lies he might have told himself or her, and that’s exactly what she was.

And exactly what she intended to erase tonight. Biker philosophy was pretty clear when it came to fucking. It was all the same in the dark—and Sophie intended to explore that theory. The French Quarter was bursting with men. Men who thought motorcycles were noise pollution and those who rode them were dangerous criminals. Men who considered themselves motorcycle enthusiasts because they dreamed of keeping a bike or two in their suburban garages. Men who would have no idea who her father had been. Men who wouldn’t pull that biker bullshit Ajax had on her in the morning—they’d just leave. Hell, they might even call the next day. Or send a noncommittal text, like a normal person. The world was filled with far more palatable men and Sophie was going to find them or die trying.

Or maybe you can just flash your tits in true New Orleans style, drama queen, she told herself drily as she made her way down the stairs in her very precarious shoes. It will have about the same effect.

But she was a little too human and maybe a little too vain besides, and that was why she took a short victory lap through the Priory on her way out. Just to make sure everyone she knew was well aware that she was going out on the prowl.

Everyone.

She didn’t look over into that sacred corner to see if Ajax was watching her—because she didn’t have to look. She knew. She could feel the slam of his instant attention like a body blow as she breezed in from the back hall. She prickled all over as she leaned against the bar and told her manager not to text her tonight unless it was a dire emergency. She was afraid her knees were about to give out when she stepped back and shook out her hair, because the searing blue of Ajax’s gaze was like a strobe light all around her. She was shocked no one else was reacting to it.

But she certainly wasn’t planning to react to it, either, at least not where he could see it. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He and his collarless, bell-less dick could go fuck themselves.

And with a last wicked smile at her friends behind the bar, without so much as a glance into the corner where Ajax and his dark temper sat and brooded loud enough to drown out the hard rock from the speakers, Sophie set off to debauch herself in all the sin her hometown had to offer.

—

A few hours later, Sophie was packed in tight on what passed for a dance floor in a very sweaty, very smoky French Quarter establishment that hadn’t quite made up its mind between dive bar and dance club. The result was very drunk, very bad dancing, and very handsy.

She swiveled her hips away from yet another grope toward her breasts and reminded herself that this was why she was here, dancing to some atrocious Top 40 anthem laid down on a dire dance beat. The entire point was to suffer as much groping as possible, and wash the imprint of Ajax right off her.

Clearly, she thought darkly as she detached herself from yet another drunken fool who wanted to rub his dick against the cutout that snuck down toward her ass, she wasn’t nearly drunk enough to enjoy this the way she should.

She made her way out of the heaving dance floor crush to find the jostling pack around the bar no better. But at least here, there was a little more attention to her face on the way down to all those cutouts and a little less straight-out grabbing.

“Can I buy you a drink, sugar?” one man with a mouthful of Mississippi drawled at her as she approached.

He was cute enough, she supposed, in that clean-cut southern boy way that suggested a secret stash of revolting porn and five generations of terrible family secrets, but hell. That was tame by her standards.

You want tame, she reminded herself sharply. You want collars and bells and all that shit. That’s the point.

So even though she’d already rejected ten men just like him tonight for no good reason, she smiled at this one, long and bright and more than a little dirty besides.

“You surely can,” she said, as sultry as possible. “But you should know that I’m cheap and I’m easy. It’s only going to take the one drink. Are you up for that?”

Mississippi’s dark eyes lit up as he leaned toward her, and Sophie could smell the faintest hint of aftershave and a whole lot more beer. But then he froze, an inch away from her. His reasonably handsome face went pale. He muttered something wholly unintelligible, threw up his hands as if someone had pointed a gun at him, and moved away from her. In a hurry.

Sophie gritted her teeth. She pulled in a breath.

And then she turned, very slowly, to see what could possibly have scared off a six-foot-three southern man who’d been that drunk and that close to so much of her bare skin.

But, of course, she knew.

Ajax lounged there against the bar, his mouth set in that evil grin of his—the triangle of his beard made that much worse—his blue eyes a blaze of heat and fury that cut through the crowd and deep into her, too. He’d raked that dark blond hair of his back from his face and he wore his cut with an ease that made the fact of it—of what it so obviously stood for here in the post–Sons of Anarchy world—that much more pointed as it emphasized the impossible width of his hard, heavy shoulders. There was a small ring around him, Sophie noticed, even here in the busiest part of this overcrowded place, as if he’d peed around himself in a circle.

Or more likely, had simply shouldered his way there and glared.

She glared back at him.

That grin of his only deepened, and it was a dangerous, edgy thing. She could feel the scrape of it deep inside of her, making her feel something like drunk in a single, searing instant. Drunk and hot and needy.

So needy it edged over into greed.

Tame will never do, something inside of her whispered. Not for you.

Up above, another pop star wailed about her pain while the blood in Sophie’s body slowed, then ran hot. Ajax’s blue eyes were hooded and intense, and he merely looked at her for a moment that dragged out much too long before he crooked a finger at her.

But she had no intention of running when he called, thank you. She might be a biker bitch down deep in her bones, but that didn’t make her his biker bitch.