Free Make You Burn by Megan Crane

say that, the way he already would have at any other time with any other woman, and he could tell himself anything he wanted to explain that away. He tried. But he knew it was the way she was looking at him.
    Like he was a work of art, not a man. And certainly not the kind of man that he knew, without reservation, he was and always had been.
    Ajax had lost most of his illusions a very long time ago, right about the time he’d taken that rebar pipe to the man who would have killed him, and happily, if he hadn’t. His own father. And then whatever was left of them when he’d had to either leave his home and his club, or disobey the direct command of the only man whose orders he’d ever willingly chosen to follow. After ten years in the mercenary game, playing a far worse monster than the monsters he’d been hired to handle and protect and kick ass for, he didn’t have any space left for fantasies. He didn’t want any part of those lies. He knew what he was.
    But he found that when Sophie slipped those hands of hers onto his face, running her palms over his beard to rub him all over his cheeks, he had the desperate urge to be whatever the fuck he had to be, to keep her looking at him like that.
    “What are you doing?” His voice was quiet. He almost didn’t recognize it.
    Her eyes flew to his like she was guilty of something, but she didn’t drop her hands. “I don’t know.”
    Did he want her to know? Ajax couldn’t answer that. But he felt a wild snarl start deep inside him, vicious and dark, and the only way he’d ever relieved that kind of thing was by pounding. Either on someone with his fists or into someone else with his dick and he didn’t much care which.
    He only knew he couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t stand here, in front of all these people, and let her do this to him.
    Not that he knew what the fuck she was doing, either.
    He tugged her hands from his face and didn’t put them on his dick, because her father had just died and he was a goddamned gentleman when he felt like it. Like he’d told her once already.
    “You want me to fuck you tenderly, little girl?” he asked her, his voice like a dull roar in his ears though he knew he wasn’t shouting. That he was being very, very quiet. Too quiet. “Is that what this is? You think we’re gonna hold hands for a while, work up to getting my mouth on your tits sometime, maybe see if I can lick your pussy on your birthday if I’m real lucky?”
    She blinked, and Ajax didn’t want to see whatever was about to flash across her face. Disappointment, maybe. Hurt. He didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want to acknowledge it. He pushed away from the bar, out of the danger zone he hadn’t realized he’d walked right into, like a dumbass.
    Sophie studied him for a long moment, and Ajax was aware of everything around them. Hyperaware, like he was prepping for an attack and it could come from any quarter. He could hear the Devil’s Keepers brothers having their good time, in all the usual ways. He heard the particular pitch of giggling that only ever came from strippers and porn stars, because only women who were paid to make that sound would make it at all, much less that often. He heard some action movie playing, with shit blowing up and every now and then, beneath it, the slick, rhythmic sounds and low moans of sex. Lots and lots of sex, and he wasn’t having any of it.
    And the fact he wasn’t, that he’d been content to have this woman rub him like a fucking house cat when there were whores all around him, was like throwing himself headfirst into an ice bath.
    “I’ve been hard as fuck all day and this dick isn’t going to suck itself,” he told her. Just this side of vicious, and he adjusted his aching cock in his jeans as emphasis. “Do I look like one of your pussy boyfriends, who’s gonna roll with that for six months in the hope you eventually put out?”
    And still he couldn’t make himself look away from Sophie Lombard’s