Chapter 13
Delaney photographed the aftermath because that's what she knew how to do.
The compound was a disaster—bullet holes in the lodge siding, blood staining the gravel lot, brothers hauling bodies toward trucks that would take them somewhere they'd never be found.
She moved through it with the borrowed camera pressed to her eye, documenting everything the way she'd documented a hundred engagements before.
The difference was, this time she'd been part of it.
Her hands were steady on the camera. They hadn't been steady when she'd pulled the trigger on the men flanking the lodge. Hadn't been steady when she'd watched them fall, watched the life leave their eyes, watched herself become a killer again after years of only capturing death through a lens.
She photographed the gate where Cottonmouth's crew had held the line. The dock where Spillway's team had turned an assault into a slaughter. The gravel lot where Float had kissed her in front of everyone like the world was ending.
The adrenaline was still there, humming under her skin. She should be crashing by now. Should be shaking, crying, falling apart the way civilians did after violence.
Instead, she was wired. Electric. Every nerve ending screaming for something she couldn't photograph.
She found herself walking toward Float's cabin before she'd consciously decided to go.
He was pacing when she opened the door.
Not the productive hustle she'd gotten used to—this was caged-animal energy, muscles coiled tight, hands flexing and releasing like he wanted to hit something.
He'd stripped off his cut and his shirt, wearing only jeans and the evidence of the day's violence: a bruise darkening his ribs, scrapes across his knuckles, someone else's blood dried on his forearms.
He looked dangerous. Wild. Like the man who'd thrown Rick Ellers off a cliff and hadn't flinched.
Delaney's pulse kicked hard.
Float stopped pacing when he saw her. His eyes swept over her—camera around her neck, rifle still strapped to her back, her own share of blood and dirt from a battle they'd survived together.
"You should be resting." His voice was rough, strained.
"So should you." Delaney closed the door behind her and set the camera on the table. The rifle followed. "We both know that's not happening."
Float's jaw tightened. "I can't—" He started pacing again, movements sharp and jerky.
"Church ran for two hours. Planning the next move, figuring out how Garvey knew to hit us, who else might be watching—" He raked a hand through his hair.
"I've got enough adrenaline in my system to fight another war, and nowhere to put it. "
Delaney stepped into his path.
He stopped short, nearly colliding with her. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, see the pulse hammering in his throat.
"I know exactly where you can put it," she said.
Float's eyes went dark. "Delaney—"
"Don't." She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and pulled him closer. "Don't tell me you need time to come down. Don't tell me we should wait until we're both thinking clearly. I've been thinking clearly all day, and what I'm thinking is that I want you to stop pacing and start touching me."
Something snapped in his expression.
He moved.
His hands caught her hips and lifted, slamming her back against the cabin wall hard enough to rattle the frame. Delaney wrapped her legs around his waist and dragged his mouth down to hers.
This kiss was nothing like the first time.
No tenderness. No exploration. Just teeth and tongue and the desperate need to consume each other. Float kissed her like he was trying to crawl inside her skin, like getting close enough might burn away everything that had happened today.
Delaney kissed him back just as hard.
"Killed two men today." The words came out between kisses, rough and raw. "Watched them fall and felt nothing. Took pictures of the aftermath like it was just another engagement—"
"You survived." Float's mouth trailed down her neck, biting, sucking, marking. "You held your position and you survived."
"So did you." She yanked at his jeans, needing skin, needing contact. "Watched you kiss me in front of everyone. Watched you walk into church with blood on your hands. Wanted to follow you, wanted to—"
He silenced her with another crushing kiss.
They didn't make it to the bed.
Float took her against the wall, hard and fast and desperate, both of them still half-dressed because stopping to remove clothing felt impossible. Delaney dug her nails into his shoulders and matched his intensity, demanding as much as she gave, refusing to let him treat her like something fragile.
She wasn't fragile. She was forged in the same fire he was, tempered by the same violence, alive because they'd both chosen to fight instead of run.
"Mine." The word tore out of him like a battle cry, rough and fierce and possessive. "Say it."
"Yours." She bit down on his shoulder hard enough to leave a mark. "But you're mine too. Say it."
"Yours." His hands tightened on her hips, bruising. "Always. Everything. Yours."
The adrenaline that had been screaming through her veins found its outlet.
Every shot she'd fired, every body she'd photographed, every moment of the day when she'd faced death and kept moving—it all poured into this.
Into him. Into the claiming and the being claimed and the savage proof that they were both still alive.
When she finally shattered, Float followed her over the edge with a groan that sounded like surrender.
They made it to the bed eventually.
Delaney lay sprawled across Float's chest, both of them breathing hard, sweat cooling on skin that still hummed with aftershocks. The wall they'd started against had a new dent in it. Neither of them cared.
"That was..." Float trailed off, apparently lacking words.
"Different." Delaney lifted her head to look at him. "From last time."
"Yeah." His hand traced lazy patterns on her back, the frantic energy finally—finally—easing into something calmer. "Last time you taught me to be slow. This time..."
"This time we both needed to burn."
He nodded, not arguing. His eyes were softer now, the wildness banked into something warmer. Something that looked at her like she was the only real thing in the world.
Delaney settled back against his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow.
"I've been documenting violence since I was nineteen," she said quietly. "Four years in places that don't exist, photographing things that never officially happened. Battles, interrogations, the aftermath of operations that were too classified to acknowledge."
Float's hand stilled on her back. Listening.
"I was always behind the lens. Always watching, never participating.
Even when bullets were flying, I was there to capture it, not to fight.
" She traced a scar on his ribs—new or old, she didn't know yet.
"I told myself that was my job. That documentation was its own kind of combat.
That the pictures I took mattered as much as the guns the soldiers carried. "
"They did," Float said. "Do."
"Maybe." Delaney was quiet for a moment, organizing thoughts she'd never spoken aloud. "But today was the first time someone fought for me. Not in front of me while I took pictures. For me. Because I mattered. Because losing me would have cost something."
Float's arms tightened around her.
"The men who flanked the lodge—I took them down myself.
But you..." She lifted her head again, meeting his eyes.
"You positioned the entire defense so I'd be protected.
You killed Dunaway with my name in your head.
You kissed me in front of the whole compound like you were staking a claim everyone needed to see. "
"I was." His voice was rough. "I am."
"I know." She kissed his chest, right over his heart.
"That's what I'm trying to say. I've spent years watching people fight while I stood on the sidelines with a camera.
Today you made me part of the battle. Made me worth defending.
Made me yours, in front of everyone, in a way I've never been anyone's before. "
Float pulled her up until they were face to face, her body stretched along his.
"You were worth defending from the moment you opened your studio door and told me to get out." His hands framed her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. "You were mine from the second I saw you standing in broken glass, refusing to run."
"Jesse." The name came out soft, intimate. Reserved for moments like this.
His eyes blazed at the sound of it.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "Whatever comes next—Garvey, the surveillance network, whatever war the club has to fight—I'm in it. With you. Not behind a lens. With."
Float kissed her. Slow this time, now that the adrenaline had finally burned out. A promise sealed with his mouth instead of words.
When he pulled back, his expression had shifted into something she hadn't seen before. Determination and peace tangled together, the restless energy that usually drove him replaced by something steadier.
"Then we face it together," he said. "Whatever comes."
Delaney settled back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, feeling his arms around her like armor.
The camera sat on the table where she'd left it. For once, she didn't want to pick it up.
Some moments didn't need to be documented. They just needed to be lived.
And this one—this one she wanted to live for as long as it lasted.