Sophie would be damned if the new president of the Deacons had the same trouble or the same lonely trajectory. He’d know how much he was loved, always. How much he mattered. She told him every day—with her body as well as her words—because everyone else under his protection couldn’t or wouldn’t, big tough men that they were.

She wanted to keep telling him the same thing forever. She wanted his babies. She wanted all that shit neither one of them had ever had. Two parents, happy kids. A real family of their own to go along with the family they’d made.

She did a long, slow loop through the French Quarter, drinking in the shocked looks and scandalized gasps like the sweetest sort of liquor. It had been fun last year, like a roller coaster ride through her hometown. But this year, knowing that every move she made was for Ajax, that he was watching her, that he liked it when other men ogled her as long as they knew better than to touch—

This year, it felt like jumping out of a plane miles above the ground, one badass parachute firmly attached. Last year had been the equivalent of flipping her father the bird. This year was a dance. This year was theirs.

It was their anniversary.

One wild-eyed, already-wasted idiot lunged at her near the painted red brick wall of a pub and grill as she looped her way back down Bourbon Street, and Sophie didn’t even flinch. She smiled as she heard a thud and the idiot hitting the ground in her wake.

“Hands off, motherfucker,” Ajax growled. “That’s mine.”

The truth was, she fucking loved that.

And she’d learned some things herself this year. When and how to push him. How to make her point in private and suck it up in public. She’d been raised knowing these rules. There was no changing them now because they chafed sometimes—there was only learning how to work in them and around them. This was the life. This was her man. If she wanted him—and she did, God help her, she did—then this was the deal.

She sauntered back into the Priory, smiling brightly at Danielle behind the bar, whose mouth dropped open the way it had a year ago.

“Again?” the other girl asked, sounding somewhere between awe and you’re crazy.

“It’s a tradition,” Sophie replied, tugging off her headdress and tossing it on the bar, the way she had the last time, with a dramatic little spin.

But this time around she didn’t sit down, because Ajax was behind her and crowding her the way he liked to do, his big hand at the small of her back as he pushed her forward—not exactly gently—and then through the door that led into the back hall.

He didn’t speak, but she could feel the tension in him, that simmering wild thing that never dimmed, never eased, never changed. He kept his hand on her, guiding her down the hall and into the office. His office now.

He locked the door behind him and the click of it went through Sophie like a gunshot.

“Being my old lady isn’t enough for you?” he asked, in that hard voice of his that made her whole body seem to hum. “Is that what this is?”

He circled around her like the predator he was and never pretended he wasn’t, but Sophie stood her ground. She pulled her sparkling mask off and tossed it in a lazy sort of arc toward the sofa against one wall. Then she unwound her hair as Ajax leaned against the front of the big desk, his eyes on her.

“No,” she said. “It’s not enough.”

Ajax crossed his sculpted arms over his broad chest and scowled at her. “Wrong answer.”

“I want everything,” she said, meeting that scowl with one of her own. “Every. Single. Thing. I told you a long time ago I was addicted to you. You claimed that was no big deal. Have you changed your mind?”

Ajax only glared at her. “I don’t know what the fuck you want from me.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m never getting down on my knees, babe. Unless it’s to get my face in that pussy.”

“Noted.” She widened her stance. “Is that on the menu?”

“Jesus Christ, Sophie.” He raked his hands through his hair, and he looked so deliciously harsh, so thoroughly pissed, but she knew better. She could see his thick cock pressed hard against the front of his jeans. She could see the truth in his blue eyes when he shifted that glare back to her. “I’m not wearing a fucking ring, like a house cat bitch.”

She tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowed, and he laughed at her.

“Pick your battles, babe.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured, swaying as she moved toward him, stepping between his outstretched legs and bracing herself with one hand against his rock-hard chest while she ran the other through her hair, shaking it out. “Did we agree to something?”

Ajax wrapped his hands around her hips and pulled her against him, hard, his cock an iron bar flush against her clit. Sophie’s breath deserted her in a rush.

“You know I love you, you little shit,” he growled, like it was painful, and she had to bite back the giddy thing that cartwheeled through her at that. “Why the fucking parade? Why all the drama?”

She reached up and traced that hard mouth of his, that beautiful face. “I don’t know it,” she said quietly. Deliberately. “I hope it. You’ve never said it one way or the other.”

His scowl deepened and his grip on her hips tightened. “Because you should fucking know it already. You think I shack up with random bitches? You think I’d waste this much time on disposable pussy?”

“I want you to write our wedding vows, Ajax. Really. This is like poetry.”

He shifted, pulling her tighter against his chest and standing up from the desk so he could get his face in hers.

“I love you.” It was hard. Harsh. Furious.

Perfectly Ajax in every way, and it washed through her like sunlight. As bright and as beautiful.

Sophie smiled at him, her battered hero of a biker, grumpy and gorgeous and hers. All hers, always. And now there could be no mistaking it.

“I love you, too. Don’t you like it when I say it? I know you do.”

He growled at her. “Stop talking.”

Ajax took her mouth then, in a dark, hot, insane kiss that almost made her come right there, with her riding him as he held her against his cock. He tugged her even closer and she wrapped her arms around him, and he kept kissing her, like his mouth was a weapon and he was making her pay.

And pay. And pay.

It thrilled her. From her toes to her pussy. From her wildly beating heart to the top of her head. It was better than a vow. It was everything they were in a single, endless, glorious kiss.

Then he set her away from him.

“Lose the fucking shorts,” he ordered her. “But keep the shoes.”

He shrugged out of his cut and placed it carefully on the desk beside him. He threw his T-shirt on the floor. He kicked off his jeans while she was shimmying out of her shorts, and he jerked his chin at her when she was done. Ordering her to come to him.

And Sophie was happy to obey.

Ajax slid his hands down her back, tracing over her angel wings as if he could feel them with his fingers, then all the way down to cup her ass in his palms.

He leaned back against the desk and lifted her up, spreading her thighs wide and then settling her down hard on the length of his cock. They both groaned as he shoved into her, big and hard and smooth like satin. Skin to skin, the way they’d done it for a long time now. Perfect.

He worked her up, then slammed her back down, and Sophie let her head fall back, surrendering herself to his strength and his power and that hot glide of his cock inside her and the intense pace he set. She never got enough of him. She never satisfied that itch.

She never wanted to.

“I’ll marry you,” he told her, his voice as dark and demanding as the cock he pounded into her with such measured ferocity. “And I’m gonna tattoo my goddamned name all over you, so fuckers can see it from across the French Quarter the next time you get the urge to shake this ass—my ass—across Louisiana.” He moved his mouth, open and hot, along the side of her neck. “My little junkie. I’ll be your heroin.”