Make You Burn by Megan Crane Read Free Book Online Page B

each one of them gleaming and in pristine condition as the car’s headlights bounced over the long row of them, in marked contrast to the dilapidated-looking warehouse that rose up behind them. There were no particular markings anywhere that she could see, nothing announcing what this place was to the untrained eye, but that didn’t matter.
    Sophie knew a biker clubhouse when she saw one.
    And had all those clues failed to register, she certainly would have recognized the men who sauntered up to the car as Ajax parked it. She didn’t know them personally, she didn’t think, but again, that wasn’t necessary. She knew that low, dangerous walk. She knew the hard gazes that tracked the car and the people inside it. She knew those leather vests they all wore over their T-shirts and sweatshirts, covered in the patches that laid out the stories of who they were. She knew the tattoos that covered their arms and necks and hands. She knew the rings they wore that looked a lot like Ajax’s, and probably for the same purpose: of kicking that much ass, that much harder. She recognized the loose pants riding low on their hips that could conceal the weapons they almost certainly had tucked away, even now.
    And she’d have known exactly what they were without all those signs, she thought. Wolves who masqueraded as men were still wolves in khaki shorts and polo shirts, with or without tattoos. This life was imprinted on their faces, their bodies, the way they moved through the world and surrounded the car. And it was imprinted in her brain, too.
    Ajax didn’t speak as he turned off the engine. Sophie didn’t question him. He slid that cool blue look her way, and she imagined she felt it like another touch of his big, battered hands, and then he climbed out of the car. She heard the low rumbles of male voices that she identified in an instant as friendly, and then she watched the complicated rituals of masculinity performed before her in a series of intricate handshakes and shoulder bumps, man to man.
    Sophie followed him more slowly, feeling the sultry bayou air slide over her skin like a caress as she got out and shut her door. She waited there, content to lean a hip against the car and watch the men from a safe distance. Because this wasn’t the Priory, where being Priest’s daughter had given her a certain amount of insulation in any given situation. And she didn’t see any other women around, which could mean any number of things either way. Better to hang back and wait and potentially be thought shy than rush in, cause some insult or misunderstanding, and then have to worry about unpleasant consequences.
    The last hint of light was disappearing into the inky black bayou sky and she thought that meant something, as she watched it go. One whole day had passed without her father in the world. The first in all her life. She felt the loss of him hard, deep in that empty hollow she thought she was going to have to find a way to get used to, vibrating there in her gut. Raw and electric.
    Grief,
she thought. It felt like the weight of the whole southern sky, pressing her down into the rich and fertile earth below. She wanted to lie down under it. She wanted to let it win.
    She heard her father’s name, like a kind of whisper on the night’s scant breeze, but she didn’t look around until she heard Ajax say hers.
    “This is his daughter,” he told the men standing around him, jerking his chin toward her. “Sophie.”
    Sophie nodded a greeting, still on her side of the car. The men started toward the building, but she waited until Ajax, in conversation with the one she’d picked out at a glance as a club officer—young to be president, she thought, though it was probably only a matter of time if he wasn’t already—beckoned her over to him with a seemingly casual curl of his fingers.
    Ajax didn’t look at her as she obeyed. He held his arm out and headed toward the building as if he planned to shepherd her through the door.