Instead, Sophie smiled at the man beside Ajax, who gaped at her, then at Ajax, before turning his back to her. The idiot on her left, who’d spent at least ten minutes drooling over her dress earlier, gulped so loudly she could hear it above the music, and threw himself back into the crowd.

She looked back at Ajax, her eyes narrowed, and he only shrugged, that shit-eating grin all over his face and pure murder in his eyes.

And the truth about all of this, Sophie understood then, was that she’d never wanted anyone more. She couldn’t imagine how she ever would.

She took her time walking to him. Because surrendering to the inevitable wasn’t the same thing as full capitulation. It didn’t make her a junkie if she was choosing this—choosing him—instead of merely succumbing. Or so she told herself.

That look in Ajax’s eyes, darker the closer she got, filled with sex and mayhem and the promise of retribution, told her otherwise.

She slowed down. His gaze heated up. She made sure her hips swung and he really got the full effect of all her cutouts and her bare skin beneath. The one on her side that spanned her hip. The one just below one breast. She felt his hard gaze lick over her and his grin had turned deadly by the time she stopped in front of him, as close to standing between his outstretched legs as she could get without actually touching him.

Then it was as if someone turned off the music, the sound of the crowd, the French Quarter in full wail outside. There was only the jarring thud of her heart and Ajax. Ajax everywhere, so tall and strong and lethal that no one dared get too close to him. Ajax brighter than the moon and the stars and the lights on Bourbon Street, and all Sophie could seem to do was bask in the glare of it. Of him.

He reached over and slid his hand over the fall of her hair, and then held on. Tight, though she refused to react to the yank of it. He never dropped that blistering gaze from hers. He merely began to wrap her hair around his big, battered hand and scraped knuckles, twisting it over his palm, tugging as he went until he had her on a short leash made of her own long hair. All he’d have to do was pull a little bit to bring her sprawling up against him.

She waited, tensed and ready, but he didn’t do it.

And she ached, everywhere. She needed. She was wet and close to desperate, her nipples so hard they made her breasts feel swollen, and she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath.

“Hey, baby,” Ajax said, danger and delirium and something dark like fate in his rough voice, though it spread over Sophie like sweet, hot syrup. “You making new friends?”

Chapter 10

Sophie didn’t respond.

She hung there before him, that tight body of hers on display, defiance in her green eyes, and those lush lips of hers pressed together in a firm line, and Ajax thought that keeping her mouth shut for once was maybe the smartest move she’d made all night.

He made the hand he’d wrapped up in the rope of her hair into a fist and he felt the tiny wince she tried to repress. He could see her pulse going nuts in her throat, like the pinch of it made her hotter. He was sure he could smell her, warm and Sophie and all that hunger that was his, damn her.

It was his. She was his.

He kept his back against the bar and hauled her closer, then tracked those fucking circles of no dress at all that made her as good as naked. He slid his hand over the indentation of her waist that was exposed to the entire goddamned bar, and felt her quiver against him. So he kept going, keeping his hand beneath what little stretchy purple fabric there was, smoothing his way over one cheek of that sweet ass and growling at her as he gripped it, right up against that mouth of hers he was holding so close to his own.

“What the fuck is the point of wearing a dress that isn’t a goddamned dress at all?”

Sophie smiled, damn her. Her mouth curved and her green eyes saw everything, all that shit inside of him he refused to name, and her lips were so close to his that he could almost feel that smile of hers like it was his own.

“This.” He could feel that, too. He could taste her when she spoke. “This is the point.”

He didn’t take her mouth. He gripped that ass like it might be the saving of him and he shifted his gaze, slightly, to fix it on a dumbass businessman bitch gaping at them from behind her.

“You like to watch, douchebag?”

The businessman jolted, took a good look at Ajax, and ran off, the way all bitches did.

“I thought you liked public sex,” Sophie taunted him, like he didn’t have her ass in one hand and her immobilized by the hair with the other. “What did you call it? A public service? What’s the matter—the big, bad biker not feeling like a good citizen tonight?”

This woman was going to kill him.

Ajax couldn’t fucking wait.

He yanked her smart mouth to his and he ate at it, thrusting his tongue deep, taking her over like he was fucking her already, deep and long and hard. So hard. And this was Sophie, his Sophie, so she didn’t just stand there and take it. She melted against him. She slid her hands up to dig into his chest, one thumb against one of his nipples for that little bite, and she gave as good as she got.

The kiss was dirty. Raunchy. Wet and carnal and fucked up in the middle of all these people, but she was right. Ajax didn’t give a fuck. Let them watch. Maybe those pansy little bitches who had tried to get their hands on his woman on the dance floor would learn something.

Like how to make a woman this hot moan into his mouth. How to make her writhe against him, sticking her ass back to fill his hand, making him think about the fastest way to get his cock as deep inside her as possible—

But instead he moved his hand lower, curving around her ass to that hot, wet cunt below. No panties. Nothing but wet, greedy pussy and his woman’s tongue deep in his mouth, her hard little nipples rubbing against his chest.

He needed to fuck her.

Now.

Ajax tore his mouth from hers and they both panted there, hot and dark. He didn’t give a shit about the crowd. He didn’t care if more fuckers were watching him, if they could see he’d found her slippery folds. He didn’t care about anything but the way she arched into him and moaned low when he thrust two fingers deep into her, all of that soft, creamy fire so fucking perfect his chest hurt.

He made a noise he’d never heard come out of him before and then he pulled his fingers out, then put them back through that ridiculous hole in her dress.

“If this is a game of chicken,” Sophie said, dark and breathy, right there against his mouth, because she never broke. Not this woman. “You lose.”

“You think?”

He dragged his hand away from the warmth of her body, out of that slinky little fuck me dress, and then he plunged the two fingers that had been deep in her cunt into that smart fucking mouth of hers. She didn’t hesitate. Sophie held his gaze with hers, challenge and that crazy need and a darkness that sang to him besides, and she sucked. She licked. She took her own cream from his fingers and he felt his cock try to claw its way out of his jeans, and she was the hottest fucking thing he’d ever seen.

He took her mouth again. Savage. Desperate.

He tasted her sweet pussy, hot against her tongue. He tasted the drinks she’d had, the spike of rum and that kick that was all her. All of that and Sophie, his fucking match in every goddamned way.

His.

He unwrapped his hand from her hair and then he pushed her back again, shoving away from the bar. He saw nothing but obstacles, but Ajax had never met an obstacle he couldn’t get around. Tonight was no different—and he wanted Sophie a hell of a lot more than he’d wanted some of the other things he’d managed to get in his day. He grabbed her hand and pulled her next to him, then in front of him. He gripped her by the nape of her neck and he propelled her forward through the annoying, heaving crowd that parted before them once they got a look at his face.