Make You Burn (12 page)

It was everything. It shook through him, hard, like a different kind of coming.

“You feel that?” he gritted out at her as the shaking died down. “Your own fingers and a little clit action. That’s what you get without me, Sophie. That’s all you get.”

She tried to pull away from him but he held her fast, and backed her up so she was against the bricks behind her. He shifted, holding her jaw right where he wanted it with one hand and not giving a shit that her eyes were bright with fury. Fury and that wild, dark need.

That shaking thing in him rolled over. Grew bigger.

He ripped at his fly and he pulled out his cock. He dealt with the condom and then he shoved her hands out of the way as he brought himself in close, rubbing his hard, swollen cockhead against her soaking wet folds, covering himself in her cream.

“Get off me, you asshole,” she hissed at him, but she arched into him while she said it, pressing her clit against the head of his cock, and he laughed.

“Is that what you want?” he taunted her. “You want to come on your own fingers here and then again in the bathroom of some hotel room on Canal Street after some drunk douchebag fucks you into a bored coma? That your idea of a good time?”

“It’s none of your business if it is.”

“It’s all my business, baby.”

He rolled his hips against her and moved again, taking her hands in one of his and stretching them up over her head, then pinning them to the bricks. She tested his hold and he laughed again, then moved his cock to her entrance. He pushed in, only the head, just that little grip of her tight, wet cunt around him and no more—then stopped.

She groaned, a sharp, frustrated sound. It was like music to Ajax.

“You think I don’t know you’ve never had it so good?” he taunted her. “You think I don’t know how hungry this little pussy is for me?”

She struggled against him then, but he doubted she knew if it was to get away from him or to get him deeper inside of her, and either way, Ajax didn’t give a fuck. She was hot. She was his.

There was nothing else but that.

Nothing.

Her head tipped back and her gaze met his.

“Please,” she said, like it cost her.
“Please.”

“You’re mine, Sophie,” he told her, like a vow. It rang in him. It shook. And he didn’t give a shit about that, either. He meant it. “Don’t fucking forget it again.”

And then he hitched her up, grabbing her ass and lifting her so she could throw those silky legs around him, and fucked his way straight home.

He filled her up with that huge, hard cock, a single deep thrust that slammed her back against the wall and made her breath desert her in a
whoosh.

And Sophie loved it. She almost came again, as easily as that, and he was right, damn him. It was better.
He
was better.

But he only laughed, then shifted her, so both of his hands were on her ass and she wasn’t scraping against the wall. He didn’t tell her to hold on, because he didn’t have to. This was Ajax. He stood there like it was nothing, fucking her by moving her up and down on his cock, his hands gripping her ass like it was a set of handles as he lifted her up and slammed her back down.

It was hard. It was nearly brutal.

It was the most glorious thing Sophie had ever felt.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on anyway, wondering how long he could do this. How long he could use her body like this—the way she’d used her own hands on herself—like she was nothing more than a fuck toy to him.

That thought made her shudder deep inside with a dark and greedy delight, and Ajax shifted again. He carried her a step or two to the side.

“Reach up,” he muttered at her, like speaking was almost too much for him, and she didn’t understand. “Above you. The pipe.”

It stuck out from the wall and it was cold to the touch, but Sophie obeyed him anyway, and wrapped her hands around it.

And this time, when Ajax started thrusting into her again in that rough, wild, perfect rhythm that made her think she could feel that massive cock of his in every part of her, he slipped one of those lethal, cunning fingers down into the crevice between her ass cheeks and began to rub at her puckered opening.

He didn’t ask. He just did it.

Sophie froze, but he didn’t stop fucking her, and he didn’t move that finger away.

And the power of the way he fucked into her was too much, too seductive and too damned good, and she found herself falling into it again, the delirious roll of her hips meeting him and that wicked finger at her back entrance.

He didn’t wait. He stroked at that opening and then, with absolutely no fanfare, slid inside.

And something dark and needy, pure greed and a bright, hot fire, simply took Sophie over as that hard, unforgiving finger slid deep into her ass.

Then he began to fuck her with that, too.

And she was lost. She simply…disappeared. She was nothing but this. Hot and slick. Dark and wild.
This.

Him.

He didn’t stop. He held her and he fucked her, his cock deep in her pussy and his finger deep in her ass, and she heard nothing but that dirty laugh of his as she shook and she met his thrusts and she writhed and she made those wild keening sounds into the night that some part of her couldn’t believe came from her own throat.

But she knew they did. This was what he gave her. This dirty glory.

And then she was coming again, a delirious rush, her whole body seizing and bucking. Her hands slipped off the pipe and Ajax caught her against him, his hips still pumping. She came and she came, and he pulled his finger from deep inside her and she was still shuddering. Then he tilted her back into the wall, took the back of her head in his palm to hold her away from the bricks, and kept right on fucking her.

Until she broke apart all over again, and he followed, slamming out his pleasure deep inside of her with a low, hot groan.

And for a long time, they both did nothing but cling together and breathe.

Shaky. So shaky. Like the next breath wasn’t guaranteed.

Eventually, Ajax set her on her feet again, and reached over to tug her dress down. He tossed the condom in one of the trash cans and tucked his cock away, and Sophie found she was afraid to look at him. Afraid of what she’d see. Or wouldn’t.

It was as bad as the other night. Worse, because he wasn’t walking away, and whatever moved on her face then, he was likely to see it. But if he did, he didn’t say anything.

Instead, Ajax reached around and slapped her ass, not gently, and she jumped.

“Let’s go.” His voice was low. She couldn’t read anything in it.

“Where are we going?” she snapped at him, because snapping felt good. Productive. Or
protective,
anyway, and she figured with the way he could strip everything away from her, the way he could make her do absolutely anything he wanted, she needed all the protection she could get. “And if you slap my ass again, you might lose that hand. Just FYI.”

“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.”

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.

“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.

There was nothing but that steady, hard,
certain
look in his blue eyes, and it gave her the strength to walk to him. Head high, eyes clear.

She would make her daddy proud. And Ajax, too. One way or another.

“You can do this,” he told her as she drew close, his voice as dark and deep as the engine beneath him.

“I can,” Sophie said, and in that moment, with his gaze on her like that, she believed it.

She swung into place behind him, letting her hand rest on the strip of Priest’s T-shirt Ajax wore wrapped once around his biceps, then settled herself into position. The long black dress she wore had a slit up one side that let her straddle his bike, and she made sure it fell the way it was supposed to—like long pants. This wasn’t about exposing herself. This was about honoring her father.

Sophie didn’t wear a helmet, either. She just looped her arms around Ajax and held on as he revved his engine and then took off, one great and mighty roar through the shadows of the alley and then out into the blinding light of Bourbon Street.

She had only a quick impression of the crowded street. Tourists pressed to either side and bikes stretching back down the block. So many bikes. Then down the next block. One man to each motorcycle, except for Ajax, who carried Priest’s only known family member.