“Two things, babe.” His voice was a growl. He reached over her to grab her still-smarting ass cheek and haul her against him, and her fatal flaw was that she felt the same white-hot fire gallop through her as if she hadn’t just come. Repeatedly.

She was insatiable where this man was concerned. A junkie after all, and the awful truth was that she didn’t care if that made her like her mother. She wanted more. She’d only just had him and she still wanted more.

You want everything, a very dangerous voice deep inside of her whispered.

“One,” Ajax said, “I’ll decide what to do with this ass. It’s mine. Sooner you get your head around that, the better.”

And she could have pressed him then. She could have demanded he tell her what he meant by that, because it sounded awfully possessive and she hadn’t agreed to wear anybody’s property patch, thank you, and especially not his—but she didn’t. Something in that stark, feral way he looked at her kept her from it. Like they were dangerously close to a sharp edge here.

You mean well over it, that same voice suggested, mocking her. And halfway toward the ground.

Sophie might not have had the slightest idea what she was doing with this man or what it all meant, but she did know this: if you were already falling, there was no point debating the how or the why. There was only controlling the landing.

So she gazed up at Ajax calmly. Then she raised her middle finger right up into his face.

And she knew it was the right move when that frozen, dark thing that held him in its grip passed. He laughed, dirty and unbothered and entirely Ajax. Then he sucked that finger into his clever, filthy mouth, and didn’t stop until she let out a hissing sort of breath at the sensation he could provoke that easily.

That deliberately.

He pulled his mouth off her finger and took his time curling it back into her fist, his fingers a dangerous kind of need on hers. And he didn’t let go.

“And two, we’re going home,” he told her, in that low, stirring voice that moved through her and kept her from pointing out it wasn’t his home. It was hers. That light in his blue eyes kept her from it. And his mouth curved, sexy and dark, like she’d surrendered something far more important than this little moment in a French Quarter alleyway. “I’m just warming up.”

Chapter 11

The sound of motorcycles in the courtyard the following morning shouldn’t have soothed her, but they did. It was her own, fucked-up lullaby, Sophie thought, and it always had been. It was the music of her childhood, an earsplitting rumble that should have shattered windows instead of warming her heart, and it was perfect for today.

Today. Her father’s funeral, whether she liked it or not.

She was dressed and ready. She’d been awake since much earlier this morning, when Ajax had brought her out of a deep, dreamless sleep with a driving intensity that had worked its own kind of shattering—but she couldn’t think about that. About him and how he fit against her and inside of her, and how tempted she was to tell herself stories about what that meant. His dirty laugh right there against her ear, its own kind of engine as he’d thrust himself deep into her, again and again. His harsh whisper at her ear, his knowing commands—

But she couldn’t let herself think about anything but what she had to do to get through this day, or she was terribly afraid she wouldn’t get through it at all.

While Ajax had showered she’d gone into Priest’s room and found one of his favorite old shirts with a vintage Harley on the front. She hadn’t let herself breathe in his familiar scent or even linger too long in the bedroom she hadn’t touched all week and couldn’t bring herself to think about yet. She’d taken the T-shirt out into the kitchen and she’d carefully cut strips of it for the remaining full-patch Deacons to wear during the funeral procession, as was biker tradition around here.

Ajax. Blue. Prince. Cash.

And the old men who couldn’t ride anymore but were still brothers. Rigger. Old Jez, who’d moved out into the bayou once his arthritis took over but would be back today. TC, who had survived a fire three years ago, barely, and rarely came out of his assisted living facility in Metairie any longer. There had been other full-patch brothers back in the day, but Sophie knew they’d lost them. She even knew why, because some club business had no chance of staying quiet. Three had sworn their allegiance to the Graveyard Ministry because, her father had once said in her hearing, they wanted to stay outlaws rather than go legitimate the way the Deacons had after the storm. One brother had died in the middle of a post-Katrina rebuild of his neighborhood. Three more had left New Orleans at different times in the years since the storm to go nomad, and who knew where they were now?

That made seven strips of Priest’s old T-shirt, and then one more for her.

She’d laid them all out side by side on the kitchen table, spending too much time making sure they were evenly spaced and the same exact width. She hadn’t turned around when Ajax had come up behind her. She’d sensed his approach, or maybe she’d heard the whisper of his footsteps. Then his clean, male scent, that had made her insides seem to wobble. He’d wrapped that heavy arm of his around her belly and hauled her back into the shelter of his big wall of a chest and for the first time since they’d stood outside the morgue together, Sophie couldn’t pretend that it was all sex and hunger and need.

It was comfort, too. He comforted her, simply by holding her like that. It was Ajax’s version of being kind—and that too nearly shattered her. She wanted—so badly it made her throat tight—to simply lean back into him and disappear. Let him take care of everything, including her. She wished she could rewind and ask him the questions she hadn’t dared ask him last night out there in that alley—

Do you want to know his intentions toward you because you’re ready to hear his answers? that asshole voice inside had asked sharply. Or because you think that if he claims you, he’ll have to take responsibility for all the hard things you don’t want to face today?

She’d known better even as she’d thought it. And she’d hated herself a little bit for the weakness, because the truth was, Ajax was too hard, too demanding. He’d roll right over any sweet little thing who expected him to take care of her like that. He’d crush her beneath his feet, right before he chewed her up and spit out the pieces. He was the kind of man who helped those who helped themselves, or stomped them into oblivion, no in-between.

Sophie had to be her own warrior, as the last Lombard. She had to stand tall and take care of herself. It was what her father would have wanted.

Toughen up, angel, he’d told her this past summer when she’d been upset over some foolishness in the bar. The world feeds on weakness. You want to make sure you stick in its throat.

She’d wanted to ask him what he’d been doing then, propping up the bar with his bad temper and his scowl for the past decade. But she hadn’t dared. She’d convinced herself her father loved her. The fact he hadn’t abandoned her to her junkie mother’s clutches spoke to that, surely. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get nasty when he was in one of his moods.

And anyway, she’d thought he was right.

Still.

“I can’t,” she’d whispered to Ajax then, her eyes blurry, making those strips on the table seem to dance before her.

Ajax’s hard arm, packed into a long-sleeved shirt that strained to contain him, his tattoos only just peeking out at the cuff, had tightened around her waist.