His eyes were so blue they hurt her, but she couldn’t look away.

Ajax. She’d finally called him Ajax, and that changed everything.

She might as well have made a vow, loud and clear and in front of hundreds. Inked his name into her skin. Worn his colors on her back. Stamped his mark on her in blood.

Some part of her wanted all of those things, with a savage sort of fullness that made her something like dizzy. But not now.

Men filed in and stood around the tomb. Families and friends filled in the spaces between the bikers in their different cuts. There were so many people that she couldn’t see them all. They backed up the aisles between the tombs and not one of them complained.

This was about her father. This was his last ride.

And now he was free.

Next to her, Ajax stood like a stern, immovable rock. And as the minister began to speak, he reached down and took her hand in his, lacing his fingers tightly with hers and tugging her close.

Making her feel less alone, instantly. Less abandoned. Less adrift in the grief of this, of losing her only family so suddenly and so cruelly.

Making her his.

Chapter 12

When the last liquored-up biker staggered out into the late night swamp that was Bourbon Street on a Friday and became the Big Easy’s problem instead of his, Ajax finally went to look for Sophie.

It had been hours since he’d last seen her. She’d stood there like a fucking queen in the middle of the Priory, surrounded by all those leather-faced, foulmouthed biker assholes—his brothers, one way or another, even if they weren’t Deacons—with their dirty bandannas and their gnarly beards and their greedy eyes that crawled all over her. Her bare arms, that glimpse of leg, the line of her neck, and the hint of her tits. Her hair twisted back like that and those delicate wings stretching out across her shoulders from beneath the straps of her black dress, tempting more than one motherfucker with a death wish to reach out and touch.

No one had, which was more to do with leftover respect for Priest than with Ajax, he was all too aware—and that was something he needed to change.

Because one thing was perfectly clear to him, if nothing else, and he’d accepted that when she’d used his road name—his real name—at the grave site. Sophie was his.

His.

That truth had beat at him like a drum, pounding in his head and his veins and his cock, making it hard to do what he needed to do as the long, shitty day wore on and he had to live up to the responsibilities his president had left in his hands.

Got to talk to the lawyer about the legal bullshit tomorrow, he’d told the various Deacons and anyone else who’d poked at him about the future of the bar and the strip joint and the club itself. No point talking about what happens next until then.

And now, finally, he was climbing those back stairs at last, nothing on his mind but the sweet embrace of the Mississippi delta fall night and getting his hands on his woman again.

He’d never wanted a woman like this. He’d never wanted to own one. Claim one. But he’d never met a woman like Sophie before.

He was something like desperate and Ajax had no place to put that. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t who he was. But it was who he was with her.

And he didn’t have it in him to fight that. Not when he could have her instead.

He was in her bedroom then, with no memory of getting from the stairs outside to her doorway. Sophie jolted up from where she’d already been sound asleep, clapping a hand over her chest like she was holding her heart inside. But when her sleepy eyes met his, she blinked, as if whatever she saw on his face calmed her.

Or maybe it was just that she saw him, he thought, and he liked the idea of that a little too much.

“What happened?” she asked. She dropped her hand from her heart but fuck if his didn’t start kicking at him. “What’s wrong?”

Ajax didn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t know what the hell was happening to him. Only that she was too far away and he couldn’t take it. Not one second more.

She knelt up as he moved closer to the bed. She was wearing nothing but one of those little tanks of hers and a lacy, stretchy pair of panties that made her hips look like candy. And he was hard and he needed her and he wanted things he’d never, ever imagined he’d want.

Ajax wanted everything.

He wanted to hear her voice all the time, smoky and haughty and smartass and his. He wanted her to grip him the way she had on his bike today and at the funeral, like he was the only thing between her and the edge of a steep cliff. He wanted to smell her, her shampoo and her soap and that rougher, sweeter scent of woman and sex between her legs. He couldn’t get enough of her taste, her mouth and her skin and her cunt. He wanted to lose himself inside her. He wanted to sleep with her and fuck her and wake up with her and do it all over again, and he’d never wanted anything like that, ever. Maybe a second fuck, sure, because talented pussy was worth hitting a few times. But nothing else. Nothing that veered a little too close to domestication for his peace of mind.

None of this shit made any sense.

But no one in his life had ever stood up for him unless they were bound to him by oaths and blood and brotherhood. His club. The army. The dangerous band of fucking assholes he’d done his mercenary work with, because surviving shit was its own kind of bond. He trusted each and every one of those men to honor the vows they’d made. To survive. To their country. To their brotherhood.

No one else had ever pretended to care about him or support him. Not his own waste of a family, that he’d left behind in the bayou so long ago now he didn’t think he’d recognize any of those fuckers if he saw them on the street. Not the social workers who’d claimed they wanted to help him, the teachers who’d told him what a waste of space he was, the hundreds of women he’d fucked, any of the people who’d been supposed to give a shit.

Only Sophie.

And she’d said his name.

She’d finally called him by his name.

He slid his hands over her cheeks and held her face, so pretty, so perfect, between them. She was wedged deep into his skin like she was another tattoo, dark ink and block letters, punched deep. Like she would take months of lasers and a lot of pain to remove. Ajax didn’t know how to feel about that.

Only that it had happened. It was real. She was a part of him whether he liked it or not.

Whether she did.

She was his. He meant what he’d told her. He wasn’t giving her up.

“Sophie,” he began, frowning down at her as he said it, “I don’t know what the fuck—”

“Shut up, Ajax,” she said, and she smiled up at him, as if she knew how it felt to hear the name he’d earned in her mouth like that.

Not the name his drunk loser of a father and his doormat of a mother had slapped on him at birth. Not the name the police and the army had used to control him and order him around.

Ajax was the name that marked him a man. The name his brothers had given him. The name that had set him free.

Sophie shifted forward, pulling her face from his grasp and settling her hands on his waistband with that easy grace of hers that made his cock ache as much as his chest did. Her gaze was dark and filled with all those things he wanted to say, but couldn’t. Everything that burned between them. Everything that had happened. Everything that was still happening, right now, that was caught in his throat like some bastard was trying to choke him out.

Sophie sat back, her rounded ass on her heels, and worked his zipper down. Slowly. Carefully. His cock was hard and more than ready, and tried to pound its way out with every new swath of space she opened up. Jesus. She hadn’t even touched the fucker yet and he was already tight in the balls and trying to hold himself back from coming all over her right now.