“Yes,” he’d said gruffly. “You can.”

As he’d said once before. That time, she’d believed him, because the man could make magic with that body of his.

This time, she’d wanted to believe him more than she’d wanted her next breath, and it had nothing to do with sex. And everything to do with that sheer certainty in his voice, matter-of-fact and unassailable. As if he knew what she was capable of in a way she couldn’t.

He’d left her there after a few moments more, with one strip of fabric to fashion into her own armband in the traditional biker style, before heading down to the Priory and Priest’s office to deal with the details she couldn’t. All the tricky politics of gathering a bunch of different motorcycle clubs together, no matter the reason. He hadn’t had to tell her that; she’d known. All the different cuts and swaggering, tough-looking bikers she’d seen yesterday had swum before her eyes, but Sophie hadn’t let herself cry.

Priest would have hated that. He would have taken any tears as a personal affront.

She’d gotten ready slowly, unable to think in any kind of linear way as she pulled on the clothes she’d picked out for this. She’d put on her shoes before her panties. Then she’d taken them off again and pulled on her dress without a bra. You are a mess. Sophie told herself that she accepted that. That it was normal to feel so heavy and so empty at once.

Her mind kept getting caught on the picture Priest had kept on his bedside table of the two of them and his signature red Harley, the bike he’d called the true love of his life more than once. She’d tried not to look at that damned picture when she’d gone into his room earlier. But she didn’t have to see it. It was burned into her brain, as it was maybe the only evidence she’d ever had that there was, possibly, one sentimental bone in her tough father’s body. Just the one.

Sophie was a tiny little thing in the photo, no more than six, and Priest had her propped up on the handlebars of his chopper as they sat at a rally in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She couldn’t tell any longer if she remembered that day or had simply looked at that picture so much that she thought she did. Either way, it was burned into her. The sun, the bike. Her father there, so big and strong and alive, laughing in that gruff way of his toward the camera and making her feel like a princess, letting her sit up in front of him like that. Her adoration of her daddy was right there on her face, right there in the picture.

Right there inside of her, still. Always.

A man is what he does, angel, Priest had told her more than once. Everything else is just bullshit.

She wasn’t ready to accept that she’d never figure him out. That she’d never know why he’d done the things he’d done. Why he’d refused to tell her about his family. Why he’d let the club he’d loved more than anything fade so much over the past years. Why he’d always made it clear there were places inside of him that were locked up tight and hidden away, and that was just how it was. She wasn’t ready to accept that he was simply gone, all his secrets with him.

Forever.

How could she have known him better than anyone and not at all?

Sophie had finally managed to dress herself. She’d wrapped her piece of Priest’s favorite T-shirt around her upper arm, circling her biceps twice, then tucked in the end. Now she stood in her kitchen with an untouched cup of coffee in her hands and motorcycles down in the courtyard again, and she still didn’t know the answer to that question.

Maybe she never would. Maybe no one ever really knew someone else. Her father had been his club. But the club was not her father. She’d been sure of that, in the quiet moments they’d shared that were only theirs. Only family. But maybe those great secret places he’d carried in him weren’t anything to do with the Deacons, the way she’d always believed.

Maybe they were life. Maybe they were the natural consequences of the way her father had lived it.

She had always known this day would come, hadn’t she? That she’d have to put her father in the ground too soon. That his motorcycle and all the crap that came along with it would be the death of him. Her mother loved the junk. Her father had loved the life. It all led to the same place, and Sophie knew she was no better. Maybe they were all addicts, in their way.

Sophie had no illusions about the kind of man her father had been. She’d expected to be furious today. That had been part of why she’d marched around the French Quarter in her pasties the morning after she’d heard the news. She’d wanted to express her fury and her defiance and that howling emptiness inside of her in the way she’d known would have infuriated Priest the most.

But now the day was here and all she felt was sad. So deeply, impossibly, absurdly sad, as if it was a tide that would never stop battering against her, claiming new ground, inching its way higher and higher into her soul.

As if it was deforming her.

That was the only explanation she could come up with for how she’d ended up in bed with Ajax, of all people. Calling it her grief process didn’t quite cut it. She wanted him too much. She thought of the way he’d held her earlier, simply held her, and was terrified that she needed him.

She was definitely no better than either one of her parents.

Ajax made her feel too many great and unwieldy things. Raw. Insatiable. Hollowed out with longing. No one had ever made her come apart the way he did. No one had ever come close.

And no one had ever made her feel so safe or so cherished, and she knew how crazy that sounded, even in her own head.

But it was true. She’d walked into that bayou clubhouse with Ajax at her side, and hadn’t been the slightest bit nervous. She’d gone out on a mission last night, wearing almost nothing, which was begging for trouble in this town—but she hadn’t been worried and that had a lot to do with the little pit stop she’d made in the Priory on her way out. Had she known he would follow her? Or had she only hoped he would?

And even now, dressed in a long, black, sleeveless dress that billowed around her and her hair woven into the complicated French braid Priest had thought was sophisticated, she could still feel Ajax’s arm wrapped tight around her and his head near hers, like he was still there behind her. All his heat and strength. All his obvious, fascinating power. All of his fierce loyalty and determination, right there at her back.

Oh yeah, she was in some deep shit. Sophie recognized it.

But today was her father’s funeral. She didn’t have to deal with anything but that.

She heard that badass black Dyna rev its engine below her and she knew it was time.

It was too soon. It would always be too soon. She felt tears prick at her eyes and a sob roll over her chest, but she breathed in deep. She set her jaw. She put her untouched coffee down on the counter and then there was no more putting it off.

This was happening.

She stepped out onto the metal landing and saw the three other Deacons’ bikes take off down the alley.

Only Ajax waited for her as she made her way down each metal flight of stairs, holding on to the railing because this was the first time in her whole life she was worried she might slip, her legs felt so unlike her own beneath her.

And Sophie was glad that he rode that bike so damned loud, that killer rumble filling up the courtyard and reverberating against her eardrums, because it blocked everything else out. The morning all around them. The city beyond these walls. The funeral procession that she knew perfectly well waited for them out on Bourbon Street.

There was nothing but Ajax dressed entirely in black, no helmet in honor of the dead, astride that powerful bike of his like he was a god.