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  She gulped, her body temperature rocketing again at the memory. Inside the house, she poured herself an ice-cold glass of water and downed it in a few gulps. As much as she wanted the problem of Travis to disappear, another crazy part of her wanted him to come back and undress her properly. To touch her with his hands and his mouth and talk dirty to her in the way she knew he could.

  How she’d ever manage to sleep feeling like this she didn’t know.

  —

  Billie the Aussie had made him hard, and as Travis stalked down Bourbon Street, he decided he needed to get himself laid before he went back to her quaint little gallery. Fully charged and on the prowl, he passed a number of tourist shops selling plastic junk—the usual Mardi Gras beads and signs proclaiming BEWARE—LOOSE WOMEN AND PICKPOCKETS.

  Wasn’t that the truth. The French Quarter was alive with debauchery and women more than willing to spread their legs for cash, a few drinks or a bit of biker ink. It wouldn’t take much to get himself some hot pussy for a few hours, but he was a little more picky than he had been back in the day. And tonight, none of the women lingering in front of seedy bars or on street corners with their skimpy outfits, high-heeled boots and cheap red lipstick made him want to stick his dick in them.

  Because all he could think about was sticking it in Billie.

  Fuck, she was hot. All blond and tanned and sunny natured, classy even. The epitome of everything he was not. Everything he didn’t usually go for in a woman. But suddenly his usual tastes seemed cheap and bland. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but from the moment she hit him with her fresh smile, he’d wanted to bend her over the piano and to hell with introductions.

  Maybe it had simply been his mood, meeting her so close after his altercation with Ajax and Leon, which had made him feel as if his life hadn’t actually moved on at all. He hated feeling like Ajax’s bitch, but knew all too well what Ajax or Leon did to traitors. What they would do to him if he didn’t at least try to help them dig around the details of Priest’s death.

  But damn, did he look like a fucking homicide detective?

  Shaking his head at the thought he continued down Bourbon Street, scowling as hundreds of losers on bicycles streamed past him shouting “Happy Thursday” as they tried to fill the French Quarter with love, peace and laughter. If he were still wearing his Deacons cut, those cyclists would have hurried past him, not daring to try and meet his gaze. Although he didn’t often ponder his past life, he couldn’t help remembering what it felt like to ride through this town feeling like fucking royalty. For a boy who’d never had much of anything in life except a mother who cared more about voodoo and getting laid than her own son, the Deacons had given him a perverted kind of self-worth. In Tallahassee he was just another businessman, in New Orleans he’d been a part of something—people looked at him and his brothers with awe and a kind of fearful respect.

  He’d liked it, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Priest had been responsible for that. He’d been the one who’d seen Travis’s potential and welcomed him into the fold. Made him feel part of a family for the first time in his life. A sick and twisted family, but a family nonetheless. From the moment he’d patched into the Deacons, Travis had known his brothers would always have his back.

  But Priest was dead—accident, murder, even suicide, who the fuck could tell? And revenge and all the things he used to stand for wouldn’t bring him back. And it would risk the comfortable and close-to-normal existence that Travis had finally achieved this last decade. Depending on what they uncovered, it could get him thrown in jail or even killed.

  Once the horde of bicycles finally passed, Travis continued on until he saw a group of women, obviously enjoying a bachelorette party, walk into a bar. He looked up at the sign—it was a tacky tourist joint with cheap cocktails on tap, the kind of place he wouldn’t have been seen dead in when he was a fully fledged Deacon, but it seemed as good a place as any right now to find what he needed. He walked inside and up to the bar and assessed the group of bachelorettes. Yep, he’d find something suitable here.

  “Hey,” said a woman with Dolly Parton breasts trying to pop out of her tiny pink top. The word “Bride” was scrawled in silver writing across her breasts. Excellent. Some babe about to get hitched wouldn’t be looking for more than he could offer, but hell, she deserved a good time before she was shackled for life in eternal matrimony and he was just the guy to give it to her.

  He got out his wallet, slapped a note on the bar and ordered cocktails for the bride and her entourage. Once upon a time he didn’t buy drinks for women, but he’d moved up in the world and he liked to uphold a charade of good manners, even if he abandoned them the moment he got anyone naked. It was more fun this way. When he flashed his cash around, women got a certain idea of him; when he fucked them up against a wall, they forgot all about his money.

  “Ooh, generous—I like that in a man.” The bride leaned into him so he could see right down her cleavage.

  He whispered, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” And reached around to cup her ass.

  The blushing bride squeaked and her eyes widened. He saw a mixture of shock and curiosity.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, making an attempt at conversation.

  “California.” She giggled as if this were the funniest thing in the world.

  “What brought you to New Orleans?”

  “I’ve always wanted to visit. Heard it was a lot of fun and I wanted a little fun.” She batted her eyelids up at him. “Do you know where I might find some fun, big guy?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.” He caught her hand in his and started walking toward the back of the bar, which he guessed like most places around here opened up into some kind of courtyard. Sure enough, off to one side were a couple of shabby doors leading to the bathrooms. He kicked one open and pulled the bride inside.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she whispered as the door banged shut behind them.

  He pushed her up against the wall, put his hands on either side of her head and glared into her eyes. “You don’t need to. Not for what I have in mind. Consider this your last hurrah.”

  She licked her lips. “Do you have a condom?”

  “Is the pope a motherfucking Catholic?” He pulled one out of his back pocket and dropped it between her tits.

  She giggled as she grabbed it and then whipped her T-shirt off over her head. As he put his hands on her tits, she ripped the plastic packet open with her teeth and tugged at his belt buckle. She yanked him free and then dropped to her knees, rolled the condom over him and then sucked him into her mouth. The phrase “gagging for it” came into his head and he didn’t mean himself. Maybe it was the latex, but it was the worst fucking BJ he’d ever had in his life. You shouldn’t be able to think while being sucked off, and you definitely shouldn’t be thinking of another woman.

  But hell, all he could think about was Billie on her knees at his feet. Her head at his groin and her mouth covering his cock. He grabbed the woman’s hair and yanked her off of him—

  “What’s wrong?” the bride asked, looking up at him as he shoved himself back in his jeans and buckled up his belt.

  He offered her no answer and gave no apology. “Enjoy your party.” Then, he opened the door and stalked out before she had a chance to dress herself. He left the trashy bar, aware of the eyes of the bachelorette girls boring into his back but not even glancing their way, instead heading straight for a joint where he knew he could find hard liquor, the best burger in town and a dingy corner where no one would bother him. He didn’t want to go back to Billie in his current mood or he was liable to do something the old Travis would do.

  Finally, sometime after midnight, he made his way back to the gallery, still tense, still fucking frustrated and feeling as if he’d punch the next person he saw in the face. Unfortunately, he found Ajax and Leon on the sidewalk just outside The Priory, and they weren’t the type you punched in the face if you valued your life. They both wore their
Deacons cuts with pride, and he got the feeling they were waiting for him.

  “Evening, boys,” he said, digging the key out of his pocket and continuing on to the gallery.

  “ ‘Boys?’ ” Ajax grunted. “This isn’t prep school.”

  Travis felt his brothers right behind him as he pushed open the steel gate; it whined as if in protest, and he wondered if Billie heard it. Or if she was already asleep in bed.

  “Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Leon asked.

  Travis turned his head to look at them. “I didn’t think you needed an invitation. You own this shit hole too.”

  Ajax nodded. “Glad you’ve seen sense.”

  Leon and Ajax swaggered into the gallery, which was dimly lit with a few security lights.

  “This is cute,” Leon said, jabbing his finger into one of the rabbit-human-balloon paintings. Cute wasn’t a word Travis had ever heard Leon use before and his tone said he thought it anything but.

  “This is a fucking travesty.” Ajax glared around disdainfully, looking as if he’d swallowed a lemon whole.

  Although Travis agreed with them on the one hand, he felt strangely protective of the place that was clearly Billie’s love and life. What was that about?

  He shrugged. “Priest let it happen.” And maybe that showed that he wasn’t the person they wanted to believe he was. Ajax and Leon remembered him as this great guy who lived for the club and his brothers, but if that were the case he wouldn’t have tossed them all away like trash. Travis didn’t have any love left for the man who’d pretended to give a damn, who’d given him a family and then snatched it all away.

  Without another word the three of them trekked inside. Ajax and Leon snooped around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, cursing under their breath at Billie’s pretty things before pulling back chairs and parking themselves at the table.

  “It’s not what it used to be,” Travis said, deciding to get straight to the nitty-gritty. None of them were the type to sit and make small talk over cups of tea.

  Ajax leaned back in his seat, pulled out his cigarettes and lit up. “It could be.”

  Travis sat opposite him. “You buy Micah and me out, it’s all yours. You don’t want to do that, we sell and split the profits.”

  “You don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Ajax growled, his blue eyes narrowed. Leon didn’t say a word, but the expression on his face echoed Ajax’s.

  Travis glared right back, refusing to be intimidated. Ajax might have been Priest’s VP, but with Priest dead and the Deacons disbanded, Travis didn’t have to take his orders or his shit anymore. “Priest named us as joint heirs. If we can’t agree on what to do with the properties, the estate will—”

  “Don’t hit me with your legal shit, pretty boy,” Ajax snapped. “I don’t give a fuck about that. These buildings are Deacons buildings and that’s the way they’ll always be. I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Priest’s murder.”

  “It was a fucking accident,” Travis said, unsure whether he believed this to be the case or not.

  “No such thing as accidents,” Leon growled, his fists clenched on the tabletop. “You think Priest would crash his bike?”

  “So what the fuck if it wasn’t?” Travis eyed Ajax’s cigarette, wishing he hadn’t kicked the habit years ago. He could really use one right now. “What the fuck has it got to do with us?”

  “Where’s your loyalty?” Ajax hollered. “You’re a fucking disgrace.”

  “Don’t talk to me about fucking loyalty. What loyalty did Priest show us when the shit hit the fan all those years ago?”

  “He sent us away to protect us, to protect the club!”

  Travis scoffed at Ajax. “What a fucking joke. The club doesn’t even exist. He sent us away to save his skin, I’m telling you.”

  None of them knew exactly what had gone down ten years ago. One minute they were going straight, becoming the respectable biker club that does charity rides for sick kids and all that. Next minute they were doing one last job. Well, someone had fucked up—they’d killed the wrong person or something—and a side of Priest they’d never seen before had come out to play, proving to Travis you could never trust anyone.

  For the first time Travis could remember, Ajax looked a little worn down. “He left us his property, didn’t he? That’s gotta mean something.”

  “Yeah, but why? Have you thought about that? Could just be because he felt guilty, and this was his way of making things right. As if giving us shit will fix the past. Or it could be something more. Whatever it is, I don’t want to be involved. The best thing for all of us is to sell this shit and go the fuck our separate ways again.”

  “Not gonna happen.” Leon again, this time with the look in his eyes he used to get when he was in enforcer mode.

  The skin on Travis’s back—the one branded with the Deacons mark—crawled as he remembered watching Leon cut the tattoo off a traitor once. There was no point trying to reason with these two, no point trying to make a deal. That would be like making a deal with the devil—if he didn’t do what they wanted, they’d simply kill him or remove his ink. Painfully. They likely wouldn’t let him off the hook even if he agreed to give them his share of Priest’s shit. So…

  “Fine, have it your way. I’m in.” At least if they thought he was on their side, they’d stop hassling him, and that would give him time to work out his own game plan. “Tell me what you know.”

  Chapter 4

  Billie sat up in bed, clutching Baxter to her chest, her heart still as she strained to hear the gruff, heated voices in her kitchen. It sounded like Travis was back, and this time he had company. The part of her that never knew when to keep her mouth shut wanted to throw back the sheets, march out there and tell them to keep the noise down—normal people were trying to sleep—but she didn’t have a death wish. And, if her ears weren’t playing tricks on her, these men were discussing whether or not Sophie’s father had been killed and what they should do to the murderers if that were the case. They’d likely think nothing of shutting her up if she got in the way of their evil plotting.

  “Fudge, Baxter,” she whispered, running her fingers over his velvet-soft fur. “What have we gotten ourselves mixed up in?”

  He barked in response and she clapped her hand over his little muzzle. “Shh,” she hissed.

  “All the fuck I know is that something’s not right,” roared one of the men.

  Billie startled. It wasn’t Travis—she already had the sound of his voice imprinted on her brain—but it might have been Ajax, Sophie’s guy. How many bikers were out there? And was that cigarette smoke she could smell? She screwed up her nose in disgust. She’d never be able to get the stench out of her things.

  A third voice sounded. “If Priest had had a heart attack on the road it’d be one thing, but if he lost control of his bike, then some motherfucker is responsible.”

  “And they’re going to pay.” Definitely Ajax. Did he ever not sound like he was about to shove his hand down someone’s throat and rip out their tonsils?

  Billie shivered, despite the balmy temperature.

  “Question is who the fuck would want him dead?” came Travis’s voice, and Billie felt a flicker of something she didn’t want to feel down in her nether regions. Her libido had been missing in action for over a year. Why, out of all the men in the world, did her treacherous body have to come alive again for him? She supposed it could be worse; she could be having hot flushes over Ajax.

  “Do you really want me to list the enemies he made over the years?” Speaking of Ajax.

  The voices lowered and although she could hear they were still in deep discussion, she couldn’t make out any of their words. If she weren’t frozen with fear, she’d have crept across the room and pulled back her door a fraction to listen, to try and ascertain exactly what these men were planning, but maybe it was better if she didn’t know anyway.

  Could she be charged as an accessory to a crime if she’d he
ard them planning it?

  But they weren’t planning anything yet. It sounded like they thought someone had murdered Mr. Lombard but hadn’t any idea who that someone was.

  Should she call the police? Tell them what she thought the Deacons were up to? She dismissed the idea almost immediately because yeah, she could just imagine what Ajax would do if he knew she was even contemplating such an act. Deciding it was better to be ignorant, Billie leaned across her bed and grabbed her earphones off the bedside table. She tucked Baxter under the sheets with her, popped her music in her ears and tried to forget about the fact that at least three big, bad bikers were currently plotting revenge in her kitchen. Maybe it was just a nightmare. Maybe if she fell asleep she’d wake up in a few hours and find everything back to blissful normalcy.

  Sleep didn’t come easily. The soft lyrics of her favorite band did nothing to ease her nerves, and it was only at six o’clock in the morning, when she finally heard Ajax and the other man leave, that she let out the breath she felt like she’d been holding for hours. Baxter jumped down off her bed, trotted across to the door and whined to be let out. She sighed and climbed out of bed, knowing if she didn’t oblige there’d be a puddle on her bedroom floor within minutes.

  She crossed the room and opened her door a fraction. Baxter shot out and down the corridor, but Billie waited a moment and listened. Was Travis still here? If so, hopefully he’d finally retreated to bed. Bed? Her mouth went dry and heat curled low in her belly at the thought of Travis and bed in the same sentence. Disgusted with herself, she pushed the thought aside and stepped into the corridor only to come face-to-face with the devil himself, his permanent three-day growth far more appealing than it ought to be.

  He caught her in his arms as she crashed into him. “Is there a fire somewhere?” he drawled, his illegally sexy voice washing over her as he smoothed his thumbs over her hips.

  For one second her body rejoiced at the touch of his fingers through the thin cotton of her pajamas and the thrill of being this close to Travis Sinclair shot through her body. Then, thank the Lord, logic and common sense showed their heads again. She lifted her hands, palmed them against his solid chest and shoved him. “Get your hands off of me.”