thought they could hear him all the way down on Canal Street.
But then she didn’t think again. About anything. For what could have been years.
He held her there, limp against him. She could feel his heart pounding in his mighty chest. She could still feel his cock inside of her and she clenched against it, earning herself a grunt. He rested his head on her shoulder and she liked the fact that he was breathing heavily, too. That it wasn’t only her.
Eventually, he shifted. He lifted her off his body and she instantly missed the intense heat he gave off. He set her gently on the rug and then surged to his feet with an unconscious, raw grace that made her mouth go dry.
He raked his hands through his hair as he turned toward the guest bathroom off the living room, and Sophie blinked, because somehow, she’d forgotten who he was.
It was right there, inked in three separate pieces in bold and unmistakable black all over his gorgeously sculpted back, stretching from just below his broad shoulders to right above his perfect, round ass. The great, grinning skull with the crack in its brow and its fathomless black eyes, staring back at her as he walked away. The top rocker curled above it, reading DEACONS OF BOURBON STREET in
go fuck yourself
capital letters. The bottom one said NEW ORLEANS , flanked by two fleurs-de-lis that should have seemed incongruously feminine in all that biker black etched into Ajax’s skin, but instead, looked like weapons.
Ajax disappeared into the bathroom. Sophie struggled to sit up.
He was right. She was a mess. She was more than a mess—she was naked on the living room floor. She’d spent an entire day in thrall to a man she’d never expected to see again, and she’d had more sex with him in the course of a single day than she’d had in the past year. Or the past five.
Or maybe it just felt like that, because sex with Ajax needed a different word to describe it. One that encompassed all that raw power and sheer, dizzying intensity and, God help her, that mouth of his.
And none of that mattered. None of any of this mattered.
Sophie had grown up around bikers. She knew that they fucked the way other people ate fast food, indiscriminately and with great initial enthusiasm, and then were empty again in five minutes and ready to move on to the next.
She knew that. She’d always known that. She’d known exactly who Ajax was the minute he’d walked into her bar, so there was no point crying about it now.
If Lombards cried, which they didn’t.
Suck it up, sweetheart,
she snapped at herself.
You knew what you were doing.
Well. That wasn’t entirely true. Sophie didn’t think anyone could
prepare
for Ajax. There was only surviving him.
She knew enough to do it outside his line of sight. The thought of him coming back out of that bathroom and looking at her like just another piece of ass made her feel physically ill. She could handle that tomorrow, she assured herself. When she’d slept off this intense and bewildering day and could summon her usual attitude again. She could keep her poker face intact and suffer through this entire situation until after the funeral when life would go back to something like normal. Ajax would go back to Texas in the same great fury as he’d arrived here, and she would live out the rest of her life merrily biker free. She could handle all of that. She would.
But not now. Not while she was soft and tender between her legs and thought he’d left a bite mark on her shoulder, which only a crazy person would smile about.
Not while the very thought of him made her whole body feel loose and shuddery.
She crawled up onto her feet. She grabbed the tangle of her jeans and her tank top and bra, which were twisted into a knot, and then she walked as quietly and as quickly as possible across the floor of the living room. She let herself into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Gently. Very gently.
Inside her room she stood a moment, feeling unsteady on
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