And she’d said things to him that Priest would have backhanded her for thinking, but Ajax hadn’t done that. He’d come after her. He’d told her he wanted her.

She could see how much he wanted her. She could feel it.

Better figure out how to swim, babe, he’d said.

Sophie jumped in.

“No one else has ever claimed me,” she said, and his hard mouth shifted then, into that lazy grin that made everything inside her clench tight and then shudder loose. He lifted her toward him, wrapping his arms around her and dragging her against him, from his flat stomach to his hard cock.

“No one else ever will,” he promised her, and then his mouth was on hers.

Demanding and desperate. Fierce and almost punishing.

Another promise.

Sophie held on to his face and battled it out, their tongues sliding and tangling, their fists in each other’s hair, and his big hand up beneath her shirt to palm her nipple.

Ajax groaned. He hitched her up higher and held her there. His eyes were glittering and something like feverish, and she felt it everywhere. The most beautiful blue she’d ever seen.

He took her mouth again, and he propped her up against the alley wall. And he kissed her like he was dying. Deep and wild, and she felt his big, battered hands moving between them, yanking up her long skirt and shoving her panties to one side.

She felt him shift, and heard the sound of his zipper, and then he was shoving into her with no ceremony at all. The plump head of his cock sunk into her and they both groaned.

“So fucking wet,” Ajax grated out. “You’re always so fucking wet.”

He thrust the rest of the way inside of her, deep and hard and wrong, out here almost in the street in the daylight with the city walking by a few feet away, and Sophie didn’t care at all. Not at all. Not when he was huge and hard and fucking into her like he couldn’t help himself. Not when it felt this good.

Not when she’d never wanted anyone like this, and she understood then that she never would. That this was another promise. And they would both keep it.

Ajax pulled her thighs apart farther and settled them higher and more open against him, her knees tucked up into his cut and her back to the wall. And she could see beyond him to the street, where nobody was paying them the slightest bit of attention. No one was looking down a dark alley. No one even noticed.

Sophie got it then. This was being free. This was the closest thing there was to flying without wings.

“What if I fall in love with you?” she asked him breathlessly.

He laughed that dirty laugh of his that made her heart flip over and spin, and he didn’t stop that filthy, perfect rhythm, stretching her with each deep, long thrust and slamming against her clit each time.

She was already there. She was right there.

“Pay attention, Sophie,” Ajax said, his mouth at her ear. “What the fuck do you think we’ve been talking about? What the fuck do you think this is?”

Then he showed her. Twice.

Chapter 15

A year later, on a sultry October day in New Orleans that was much too hot already and it wasn’t even noon, Sophie dug her bright gold hot pants from her dresser and pulled them on, smoothing them into place over her hips.

She remembered the last time she’d worn them. Vividly. The way that insane heat between Ajax and her had kicked aside the great hollow of grief and loss that had swamped her that day. The way it had felt, his wickedly clever mouth on hers for the first time. Then his hands. His whole tough body. Right there against the back wall of the Priory.

She took her time applying the adhesive pasties to her breasts again, and tried not to think about how raw her nipples would feel when she took them off later. She remembered that, too. Just as she remembered how much Ajax had enjoyed her increased sensitivity, like the dirty bastard he was. She spent some time on her eye makeup, getting it as stripper chic as she could, and then she put a glittery mask over her eyes so it was all sparkle and fake lashes. She coiled her hair up out of the way, then pulled the dramatic headdress out of her closet and fastened it to her head. She’d forgotten the weight of it. The way it forced her to stand a little straighter and arch her back, pushing the tasseled ends of her pasties out that little bit farther. She eyed the whole package in the mirror in the corner of the bedroom that was no longer quite so feminine, and no longer entirely hers.

It made her smile.

Even if she hadn’t been able to feel the way Ajax had woken her up that morning in the tender shuddering low in her belly and the slickness lingering between her legs even after her shower, she’d have been able to see the stamp of him everywhere. His clothes on his side of the closet. A pair of his big, battered boots next to the mirror. His laundry mixed with hers in the hamper and his shit all over the dresser they’d moved in here for him. That faint scent of his, soap and pure Ajax, that Sophie was sure clung as much to her these days as the bed itself.

She strapped herself into her best pair of stripper shoes, high and delicious, and then made her way through the apartment to the metal landing outside. The last of the morning was swelling into a hot afternoon, the thick swelter of the bayou air like a caress against her skin as she made her way down the stairs.

And then Ajax was there at the bottom, his blue eyes hot on her like a different, harder sort of touch as she finally hit the stones of the courtyard.

He was working on her dad’s pride and joy, the big red Harley the city had delivered in a twisted, mangled mess a few weeks after the funeral. For a long time, Sophie hadn’t wanted to look at it. She’d have thrown the hunk of scrap metal straight into the Mississippi River if it had been up to her. And she’d been furious that Ajax had insisted on keeping the bike right here, where she had no choice but to get an eyeful of it every time she walked past.

It’s not a fucking shrine, babe, he’d told her once when she’d expressed her feelings on the topic—for maybe the hundredth time. It’s a promise. Don’t know how many times I got to tell you I keep the ones I make.

Sophie certainly hoped so.

Ajax straightened slowly, his hot gaze all over her, and that mouth of his in a hard line. He was wearing a white T-shirt under his cut that was plastered to him in this heat, licking over all those ridges that marked his sculpted abdomen and made her fingers itch to touch him again, and then maybe sneak below the jeans he wore low on his hips. He was all tattooed danger and that glittering, greedy thing in the way he looked at her. It still punched straight through her. It still made her ache.

One year later and she was even more addicted than she’d been back then, at the start. She kept waiting for that crazy rush to go away. For this longing, this wild hunger, to ease a little bit. For life with this man to feel normal. Run of the mill. Boring, even.

Something other than spectacular, but that hadn’t happened yet.

I’m addicted to you, she’d shouted at him in the middle of an intense battle between them a few months into this thing. She couldn’t remember why she’d been so furious with him. Or maybe she’d been scared of how much deeper it felt with him, every damned day. No rest from it. No time out. Ajax had no boundaries. That meant loving him was equally limitless. There’s nothing healthy about this bullshit! I’m the daughter of a junkie and I’m no better than she is and this drama might as well be me crouched on a street corner with a needle in my arm!