Chapter 10
The Drunk on the Porch
Olivia
Storms always left the ridge too quiet afterward.
The kind of quiet that didn’t belong to peace—more like the world hadn’t quite decided whether it was done shaking.
Rain still clung to the eaves in slow, stubborn drops.
The fire I’d banked earlier gave the room a tired glow, soft enough that the shadows didn’t try to misbehave.
Boone stretched near the hearth, chin on his paws, and June Bug snored under Vek’s chair.
Vek stayed close without pressing in, his heat drifting toward me. His presence settled into the corners in a way nothing else ever had.
The knock broke everything.
Soft at first—too soft for the hour.
Boone shot to his feet with a bark that cracked straight through the quiet. June Bug startled, her growl wobbling out like she’d borrowed it from a much larger dog.
The second knock hit harder. A dull thud that rattled the frame.
I stood, mug forgotten, one hand hovering near the door without touching it. The house stilled around me. Even the rain seemed to hold its breath. I heard Vek rise behind me.
“Who’s there?” My voice tried for firm and only halfway succeeded.
A slurred drawl seeped through the wood. “Evenin’, Liv. Didn’t mean to wake ya.”
T-Bone.
“You sure as hell didn’t aim to let me sleep, bangin’ on my door this late,” I said, my stomach dropping into something cold and hollow. “You’re drunk. Go home.”
He laughed. It was mean, ugly, the kind you only heard when he’d had one too many. “Heard you weren’t alone out here. Thought I’d come say hello.”
Hackles up, Boone wedged himself between me and the door, teeth bared at a man he’d never trusted. His small body shook behind the closed door with the effort of looking bigger than he was.
Although he remained silent, Vek stepped into the lamplight near the window. His shadow stretched long across the floorboards, bending the small room around him.
“You need to leave, T-Bone,” I repeated. “It’s late.”
“That him in there?” His voice lifted, ugly with suspicion. “You got some fella hidin’ in these hills? Or…” A thick snort. “Maybe it ain’t a man at all.”
The air in the room thinned.
Vek moved closer. That simple shift changed the whole house—the dogs went silent, the fire dimmed, even my pulse paused to listen.
Then the door jerked. It wasn’t a knock. The damned fool was trying to force his way inside.
“Open up, Liv,” T-Bone slurred. “Don’t act like you’ve got somethin’ to hide.”
The push snapped something inside me—fear, anger, instinct all crashing at once. My breath hitched; my feet moved back without asking me.
Without saying a word, Vek stepped past me.
He didn’t growl. Didn’t show teeth. He simply wrapped his hand around the lock and turned. Metal complained under his grip.
Lightning cracked across the yard, lighting him up in a hard, white flash.
T-Bone leaned in too close, rain dripping from his chin, irritation twisting his mouth like he meant to shove the door again.
Then he saw Vek.
Not all at once—his drunk brain tried to make sense of the size first, then the shape, then the wrongness of the silhouette filling the doorway. His hand—raised a second ago to pound on the frame again—hovered in midair, wavering.
“What—” he started, the word slurred with confusion.
Vek growled.
Not loud.
A low, rumbling vibration that lifted from deep in his chest—so deep it moved through the floorboards and curled straight up my spine. Boone froze mid-bark. June Bug went silent. Even the storm seemed to stall mid-breath.
T-Bone blinked, then instinct dragged him a half-step back, like he suddenly wasn’t sure where the safe distance was.
Vek stepped forward.
One slow, heavy shift that brought him out of the doorway and onto the porch.
Rain hit him instantly, sliding through his hair, catching on the broad lines of his shoulders.
Standing fully in the storm, he looked larger…
older… closer to whatever the ridge had whispered about before I ever knew his name.
Eyes widening, T'Bone's throat bobbed in a hard swallow.
Then Vek growled again—deeper this time, a sound meant for warning, not violence, but vicious enough to hit bone.
As though God had a sense of humor, thunder cracked overhead, shaking the windows.
T-Bone screamed.
A raw, panicked scream that tore out of him as he jerked backward, boots slipping on the wet steps. He hit the mud, scrambled up on hands and knees, breath stuttering in terrified bursts as he clawed his way toward the truck.
He didn’t look back. Not once.
Just bolted—slipping, scrambling—until he dove into the driver’s seat and fishtailed down the gravel drive, engine shrieking like he believed something was chasing him.
For the first time in his whole sorry life, T-Bone finally understood he wasn’t the biggest monster on this mountain.
My fingers ached from clinging to the frame. Creeping forward, Boone sniffed Vek’s ankle, then pressed himself protectively beside him.
Vek didn’t move from the doorway. His chest lifted slowly, drawing in the last of the storm-scent. Rain clung to his hair in tiny beads of lamplight.
“You didn’t… hurt him,” I managed.
He shook his head. “Only scare.”
“That’s one way to put it.” The words scraped out thin. My knees were still locked in place, and I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped breathing.
I peeled my hand off the doorframe slowly, fingers stiff, knuckles aching from how hard I’d braced myself. Boone crept forward on cautious paws, sniffing the spot where T-Bone had stood, but even he kept glancing back at Vek like he wasn’t sure what he’d just witnessed.
My heartbeat hammered too close to my throat.
“I’ve never heard that man scream.” The sentence shook more than I wanted it to. The room still felt unsettled, like the storm had pushed it sideways and hadn’t bothered to set it right again.
“That was…” I swallowed hard, trying to steady my breath. “That was a lot.”
The air carried the scent of rain and fear and something older—whatever had rolled off Vek when he stepped into the storm. My hands still trembled from the sight of it, from how quickly the moment turned, from how close the whole damn thing came to breaking wide open.
“I thought he was going to push his way in,” I whispered. “I thought—God, Vek, I didn’t know what he’d do.”
My chest tightened again, dread taking up space there.
“And I didn’t know what you were going to do either.”
Vek finally turned. The light caught his eyes, softening the gold. “He came when you said no.”
“That doesn’t always mean danger.” My throat thickened. “Sometimes he’s just—stubborn. Loud.”
“He pushed door.”
The truth of it cracked straight through every excuse I had left.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “He did.”
Boone pressed against my leg. I steadied a hand on his neck.
When Vek moved closer, it was in mindful inches, each shift weighed against my fear. His gaze dropped to my trembling hands.
“You shake,” he said quietly.
“It’s adrenaline. It’ll go.”
“Fear?”
“Not of you.” The honesty came too fast to take back, but it was God’s honest truth.
A small change moved through him—jaw easing, shoulders loosening as though something inside him softened in response.
“He has been close before?” he asked.
I shrugged. “T-Bone? Close enough to make me uncomfortable. Close enough Boone stepped between us. But he’s never touched me.”
A tightness pulled at Vek’s jaw.
“He would have.”
Although I was scared to admit it, I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t.
A quiet shift passed between us then—an understanding.
Vek stepped toward me. He certainly could be imposing, but he didn’t tower. He didn’t loom. Instead, he moved with the care of someone approaching something precious. Warmth radiated from him, brushing my arms, my throat, the narrow space between our breaths.
“Olivia.”
My name carried intention, carefully shaped, offered with tenderness beneath it.
“Yeah.” The word was just a whisper, my chest too tight to do more.
His hand lifted hesitantly, asking without words. His fingertips brushed my cheek, gentle enough that my breath almost broke. The touch was warm. Careful. Restrained.
“I protect you always.”
“I know.”
Not daring to say more, I bit my lip, and Vek’s gaze drifted to my mouth, something warm and dawning moving behind his eyes.
I didn’t step back. I didn’t breathe.
“Vek,” I whispered.
The realization that hit me at that moment must have struck him as well, because as though he read my mind, he leaned in—just enough that his breath touched my lips. “I want to… do right.”
Lifting my hand, I touched his chest, hard muscle beneath soft fur. “You are.”
His forehead brushed mine, and then he kissed me.
The first press of his mouth was careful. Testing. Like every part of him was braced to pull away the second I flinched. His lips were warm against mine, soft in a way that didn’t match the rest of him at all, and a low sound rolled up from his chest—half breath, half need.
Fire rushed through me so quickly it felt like my body had been waiting for him without admitting it. My hands curled into his shoulders, fingers sinking into damp fur and solid muscle. He held himself so gently, every line of him braced as though one wrong move might send me slipping away.
He drew back a fraction, eyes searching my face like he already knew the answer but had to hear it anyway. “Right?” he murmured.
I swallowed, breath shaky and full in my throat. “Right,” I whispered. “Very right.”
His posture softened. A tiny shift in the set of his shoulders, a softening at the corner of his mouth. His hand slid into my hair, fingers threading through with slow, careful strokes, and he kissed me again.
The second kiss carried more intent.
When his thumb grazed the hinge of my jaw, coaxing my lips open, heat pooled low in my belly, spreading outward in a warm, unsteady sweep. My knees wobbled; if he hadn’t been holding me, the floor would’ve had me.
Beside us, Boone gave a long, unimpressed huff and flopped down in front of the hearth. June Bug buried her face under a pillow like she’d made a decision to opt out of whatever this was.
The room tightened around us, smaller and warmer, like the only place that mattered was the breath between our mouths.
“Olivia,” he murmured, my name rolling slowly over his tongue, still new to him but spoken with such care that it scattered something inside me.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice catching. “I’m here.”
His forehead rested against mine for a heartbeat, his breath brushing my lips. “I want…” He paused, searching for the words. “I want you safe. I want…” His brow furrowed. “Right.”
“You are,” I said. My hand came up to his cheek, thumb smoothing over the bone there. “You are doing right. If I want you to stop, I’ll tell you.”
“I know you will.”
The truth of it settled deep in my chest. Although so much of him was wild, I knew he would never force me to do anything I wasn’t ready for.
I tugged gently at the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
The kiss that followed wasn’t careful anymore.
It was still gentle, still patient, but there was a heat in it now that matched the pulse beating hard in my throat.
His mouth moved against mine with barely contained primal need, learning the rhythm of my breathing, finding the places where I shivered, the edges of sounds I couldn’t hold back.
The rest of the room faded out. The house. The Redneck Casanova. The world beyond the walls. There was only him, and his hand sliding down my waist. His palm covered most of my hip, fingers wrapping almost all the way around. The size of him hit me all over again, and I was admittedly intimidated.
“Jesus,” I muttered against his mouth. “You are a lot of man.”
He stilled. “Too much?”
Although I realized he may have been, I laughed, breathless. “Not in a bad way.”
Relief moved through him, a slow exhale that ghosted across my lips. His thumb stroked my side in a hesitant little arc. He seemed to like the way my breath shuddered at that, because he did it again, a little surer this time.
Heat climbed my neck, setting me ablaze. The space between us felt charged—too soft, too close, too full of everything that had been building since the moment he stepped into my path in the forest and touched my cheek.
“Vek,” I whispered, breath catching on the edge of his name. My lips were still warm from the kiss he’d given me moments before, and the space between us pulsed with the heat we weren’t hiding anymore.
He didn’t ask what I wanted. His mouth met mine again, slow at first, then deeper when I leaned into him. His hand tightened at my waist, his chest brushing mine in a way that carried both his strength and the effort it took not to take more.
I gripped his shirt, pulling him closer. “Come with me to the bedroom.”