“Didn’t Pete tell you why we left? I asked him to fill you in.”
“Yeah, he filled me in. He told me you had to go out of town and that you wouldn’t be back. Ever. Right after he told me he was dying of terminal cancer. Nice timing. I’m sure he appreciated it too.”
Leon’s gaze was darker than the night outside. A muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. “I heard he passed. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry? You’re sorry?” Her voice had risen. Jesus, she needed to get a handle on herself. Her father had died eight years ago and the pain had faded. At least, she thought the pain had faded.
And he must have noticed because he said, “Hey, Ally,” and put out a hand to touch her shoulder.
She avoided the hand. “I’m not Ally, Leon. Not to you. Not anymore. And spare me your ‘I’m sorry.’ I don’t want to hear it now.”
His frown deepened. “Okay, okay. I get it. But let me at least buy you a beer and we can talk about—”
“We are not going to be talking about anything. Because I am getting out of here.” She drained the rest of her beer, then pushed herself away from the bar. Only to find six foot four of hard, muscular male between her and escape. “What the hell?”
There was darkness in his eyes. And intent. Same old Leon. He’d always hated being told no. “At least let me tell you why I had to go.”
“I don’t fucking think so. Maybe if you’d had the decency to tell me yourself ten years ago, it might have been a different story. But you didn’t. Now get out of my damn way—I have things to do.”
Leon didn’t move. He had his enforcer face on. The one that told you that you were in deep shit and there was no escape. He’d put the fear of God into many men, but never her. Because she’d known him since he was sixteen years old. And though he’d done violence to others, she knew he’d never hurt her.
Not until he took off out of your life without even a goodbye.
Yeah. Until that.
She crossed her arms, stared up at him. “What? You’re going to stop me from leaving, big man?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Alice stepped forward, getting right up into his space. And it wasn’t until she had that she realized what a damn stupid mistake it was. Because she remembered this, the hard warmth of his body and the scent of him, soap and leather and something else she could never identify. A warm, woody smell that was all Leon.
She used to daydream for hours about him. About his arms around her and his mouth on hers. First, chaste little kisses and then, as she’d gotten older and learned what it was that men and women did together in the privacy of their bedrooms, not so chaste.
It made her heart beat faster, desire turn over inside her. A desire she thought she’d crushed ten years earlier.
Jesus, what a joke. She owned a garage, spent her days fixing bikes and interacting with more muscle-bound guys than graced a Hollywood movie studio, and yet none of them had ever turned her on as instantly as Leon had.
His features were like granite as he stared down at her, immovable as a mountain.
“Get out of the way.”
“So that’s it? That’s all I get? You won’t even sit down and listen to what I have to say? What happened to loyalty?”
“Loyalty? To you?”
“To the Deacons.”
And for the first time she noticed he was wearing his cut over his T-shirt, the leather vest with the MC patch on the back. God, she remembered it. Her father had one just the same, with the skull on the back. That patch used to cast such a shadow over Bourbon Street…
But no, that shadow was gone. And so, too, was any feeling she had for the man standing in front of her. She had a new family now. And a new loyalty.
“The Deacons? Christ, the Deacons don’t own this quarter anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
His jaw was tight, anger glinting in the depths of his dark eyes. “I don’t think so. Why do you think I’m here? We’ve come to take back what’s ours.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t include me. So get the hell out of my way.”
Still he didn’t move. “You’re a Deacon, too, Alice. Or have you forgotten?”
“That’s the thing. I’m not a Deacon anymore.” She jerked up the left sleeve of her T-shirt and exposed the tattoo she’d gotten five years ago on the anniversary of her father’s death. Claiming a new family. “I’m a Ministry girl now.”
Chapter 2
There it was in it all its glory. A grinning skeleton on a Harley with the Ministry rocker underneath it, covering the milky pale skin of her upper arm. And she was all defiance, a fuck-you expression in her sky-blue eyes.
Rage roared through his veins, unexpected and hot.
He’d spent ten years in a motherfucking swamp. Ten years keeping the vows he’d made to Priest. To the Deacons. While she’d washed her hands of them.
While she’d betrayed them.
His hand shot out and before he could stop it his fingers were curled around her throat, pushing her back and up against the bar. She didn’t make a sound, but her eyes were full of fury.
The noise of the bar had begun to fade away as people turned to look at them.
He didn’t give a shit.
Keeping his fingers on her throat, he leaned in, his mouth near her ear. “You fucking traitor,” he said quietly. “You remember what we do to traitors, don’t you?”
She said nothing. Her spine was rigid, her chin lifted. As if she was proud of what she’d done. It was clear she felt no remorse whatsoever.
Beneath his palm her skin was warm and the scent of her suddenly caught him like a whip. An achingly familiar smell, a weird mixture of engine oil and flowers. Reminding him of the days he’d spent just hanging out with her in Pete’s garage, talking about nothing. Talking about everything. Or sometimes just sitting in companionable silence while she tinkered with engines and he passed her the tools she needed.
Good times. Happy times.
Times that are over and gone.
Unexpectedly, Alice shifted in his grip and something closed hard around his balls, promising a whole world of pain. “Let me go, asshole.” She smiled, her hand squeezing harder. “Unless you prefer singing soprano.”
A flash of something shot through him, something hot. An echo of the heat that had filled him while he’d been checking out her ass earlier. When he didn’t know who she was.
An echo that was fast evolving into something more…substantial.
Jesus fucking Christ. He could not be getting hard for her. He just couldn’t. Not only had she been his goddamn best friend for years—a friend he’d never felt any attraction to before—but she was also a traitor. And he had nothing but contempt for traitors.
Perhaps it was just having a female hand on him after ten years, being near an attractive female body. Yeah, that had to be it. He just needed to get laid.
Blue ignored the fingers around his balls. Okay, so she had guts, but still, that didn’t mean he was going to put up with shit from her. He didn’t put up with shit from anybody and this was his fucking club. In his fucking territory. And she was a goddamn fucking traitor.
He leaned in near her ear again. “You want to make a move on my dick? Then get down on your knees like a good girl.” He’d meant it to shock or disgust her, to get her to release him.
It failed.
She turned her head and he found himself suddenly looking down into blue-sky eyes electric with anger, her mouth inches from his. So close. All he’d have to do was lean forward a bit and that gap would disappear. His mouth would be on hers.
Why the fuck are you thinking that?
“How about this, Leon,” she said, emphasizing the first name he hated. “Let go of me and I’ll let you keep your dick.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” a feminine voice said with some disgust from behind the bar. Sophie, Ajax’s old lady. “Let her go and stop being an asshole, Blue. I already got enough trouble from Ministry bastards. I don’t need
Deacons making dicks of themselves in my bar too.”
But he was still furious. Both with Alice and the tattoo on her arm, and with the steadily growing, inappropriate lust that was starting to sink its claws in him. And if Sophie thought he was going to let this go, she was shit out of luck. Priest had never had any patience with traitors when he’d been the Deacons’ president and neither did Blue. Loyalty was loyalty, and you stayed loyal until you died. End of fucking story.
Nothing like years on the bayou to help a man figure out what was really important.
Fidelity. Honor. Respect for his brothers. That’s what he was about. That’s all he was about.
Blue ignored Sophie, his focus entirely on Alice. He flexed his fingers against her throat, trying not to notice how silky her skin felt. “You and me are gonna go have a little talk. As in right now. And I’m not taking no for an answer.” He wanted the whole story from her. What had driven her to the Ministry, what they’d done to make her change her allegiance. Why the hell she thought she could turn her back on the Deacons. Everything. The whole goddamn thing.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Alice didn’t look away and she didn’t remove her hand. “Now get your fucking hands off me or the Ministry might have a problem.”
“You bring the Ministry in here and it won’t be them that’ll have the problem. It’ll be you.” He found his thumb was moving on the side of her neck, almost like…a caress. “Ajax likes a traitor even less than I do, and I’m sure you remember Ajax. Don’t you?”
The look in her eyes flickered, and he didn’t know whether it was because of the mention of Ajax’s name or…something else. Something like his thumb moving on her neck, stroking her skin.
Alice swallowed; he felt the movement against his palm. Her gaze dropped to his mouth briefly, then she looked away. The hand around his balls loosened. Her cheeks had gone pink.
“Blue,” Sophie said acidly. “I have a handgun behind the bar. Don’t make me use it.”
“It’s not me you should be threatening.” He let his fingers relax against Alice’s throat, unable to quite stop touching her for reasons he didn’t especially want to dwell on. “She’s the one with the Ministry tat on her arm.”
Alice said nothing. Her hand was still at his groin and he could feel the heat of it through the denim of his jeans. And oh yeah, his dick was real keen on that. It wanted her hand to stay exactly where it was.
Maybe she was aware of it too, because abruptly she let him go. “Asshole.”
Smart girl. Pushing him was never a good idea.
She’s your friend, prick. At least she was. And now you’ve got your hand around her throat. Where the hell is your respect?
Blue shoved the thought away. Regardless of whether she was his friend or not, his first loyalty was to the club. A club she’d betrayed. That didn’t earn her respect, that earned her—
Death?
Fuck. It was true that was the usual penalty for betraying the club, a penalty he’d had to dish out a few times. But for Alice?
He took his hand off her throat, wrapping it around her upper arm instead. “You’re going to tell me everything,” he ordered quietly. “And you’d better fucking hope I like what I hear because sure as shit Ajax won’t. You’re going to need me on your side when he hears about that tat on your arm.”
She jerked her head up at that. “It’s got nothing to do with Ajax. The pair of you weren’t here. None of you were here. So I took the steps I needed to protect myself. I’m not going to apologize for that to you or to him. Got it?”
“No. I don’t get it.” He tugged her away from the bar. “Outside. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
She didn’t want to, that was painfully obvious. But that was too fucking bad. He wanted an explanation and she was going to give it to him. Especially the needing-to-protect-herself part. Oh yeah, especially that. Because if anyone from the Ministry had tried to hurt her…
Like you didn’t just have your hand around her throat.
Blue growled at the thought as he shouldered his way through the crowds around the bar. Several people heard it and quickly made way for him. He barely noticed, too pissed to notice anything much beyond Alice and the fact that his dick was still hard.
Christ. He should have broken his pussy drought the moment he’d gotten into New Orleans and not waited. Perhaps if he had, he wouldn’t be feeling so turned on by the feel of his ex–best friend’s hand on his cock.
But then waiting had gotten to be his natural state.
If you wait too long, it’ll fall off.
Blue cursed under his breath and slammed the door to the bar open, scattering the tourists on the sidewalk outside like a herd of frightened sheep. He ignored them as he pulled Alice through the door after him, turning her and pushing her up against the cracked brick wall of the building. Then he put his hands flat to the wall on either side of her head, his body shielding them from the crowds as well as making escape impossible for her.
“Talk,” he ordered.
—
Alice clenched her hands into fists to keep them from reaching for him again. Reaching and twisting that most sensitive part of his anatomy to make him back the hell off.
Then again, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Not when she could still feel the heat of him against her palm and the rapidly hardening length of—
No. Shit, no. She wasn’t thinking about that. Or about the feel of his fingers around her throat. He’d never touched her like that, not ever, and the curious thing was that it hadn’t felt threatening, even though he’d probably meant it to be. He hadn’t held her hard, only firmly enough to send her a warning, but it had felt…possessive somehow.
You like the idea.
Bullshit she did. She might be a Ministry girl these days, but she steered clear of any kind of sexual involvement with them. Mainly because she didn’t want to be any man’s possession, and bikers were nothing if not possessive. Also, she was their mechanic and she wanted them seeing her as such, not as one of the biker groupies that hung around the Ministry compound and got treated like dirt.
Yet all of that didn’t change the hot rush of awareness that flooded through her as Leon’s big body caged her against the wall. It made her even angrier with him than she already was. God, ten years and she should be over this, shouldn’t she? She shouldn’t still be feeling weak-kneed whenever he was in her general vicinity. Especially not after the arrogant son of a bitch left her without looking back.
“There’s nothing to say,” she said flatly, meeting his dark, angry gaze. “After Katrina, the Deacons left and the Ministry moved in. Dad’s business would have gone under if not for them.”
Leon scowled. Behind the muscular wall of his upper body, the crowds passed, giving them curious glances as they did so. Tourists drinking hurricanes out of cheap plastic cups, party girls in high heels and trashy dresses, stag parties catcalling as they headed toward the strip clubs, the usual stream of late-night Bourbon Street human traffic.
Neon and fluorescent streetlights lit up the night, casting Leon’s face into darkness as he stared down at her.
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“You didn’t have to get that tat,” he said finally.
“Yeah, I did. They took on the garage. They helped Dad get it back on its feet and helped it stay solvent. We owed them big time.” She shifted against the wall, trying not to be aware of the way his long, muscular forearms nearly brushed her shoulders. Dark ink covered them, the familiar shapes of arrows and stars on one arm, roses and crosses on the other. There would be the hungry face of a wolf on one of his upper arms, an eagle across his chest. And on his back, the grinning skull of the Deacons’ tattoo.
Except these men weren’t priests. And the look in Leon’s eyes was not that of forgiveness.
Too damn bad. She wasn’t going to apologize for looking after herself or the only thing she had left of her father. And she wasn’t going to apologize for clai
ming a new family. That’s pretty much all she’d ever wanted, and if Leon didn’t like it he could suck it.
He was still looking down at her as if he’d never seen her before in his whole life. “You should have—”
“What?” She glared back. “What should I have done, Leon? Tell me.”
For the first time he glanced away.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I thought. There was nothing else I could do. I did what I had to do for the sake of Dad’s garage.”
“You could have moved.” His gaze was back, pinning hers. “You didn’t have to stay.”
And just like that all the anger she’d been keeping inside boiled back up. She straightened, pushing back off the wall, getting in his face. “Pack up my whole damn business? My whole damn life? Just because the Deacons weren’t there anymore?”
He didn’t move, staring at her, only inches between them. “You shouldn’t trust those bastards.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “They made sure I didn’t lose my home, dammit. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk about trust after you disappeared for ten years without even one goddamn explanation. At least the Ministry were there. At least they gave me a chance.”
His jaw went hard as granite, his eyes black as the night beyond the neon.
She knew he wouldn’t like it—for Leon, loyalty to the Deacons was everything, always had been. But that was too fucking bad. Bottom line was he hadn’t been here when the shit hit the fan—when Katrina had nearly destroyed her father’s livelihood, and they’d both had to deal with the fallout.
“So that’s it?” he demanded. “You’re theirs now?”
“Well, I didn’t get the tattoo because I liked the pain. So yeah, I’m theirs.”
He cursed under his breath and shoved himself away from the wall, straightening to his full height. A solid mountain of pure muscle. “No,” he said flatly.
At first she didn’t quite understand. “ ‘No’? What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Hold Me Down (The Deacons of Bourbon Street #3) Page 2
