Chapter 15
The compound bar didn't close until three in the morning.
Marley poured drinks for every brother who needed one—and they all needed one.
Whiskey for Cottonmouth, who'd taken a graze across his shoulder that he refused to let anyone stitch until he'd finished his glass.
Beer for Limestone, who drank it in silence while staring at the bloodstains on his hands.
Shots for the younger brothers, the ones who'd never been in a real fight before tonight.
She poured and listened and didn't ask questions. That wasn't what they needed. They needed someone behind the bar who would keep the drinks coming and keep her mouth shut, and Marley had been doing that since she was sixteen years old.
The adrenaline was still humming in her veins. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Razorback coming through the window—the shock on his face when she pulled the trigger, the way he'd crumpled like a puppet with cut strings. Four men. She'd killed four men tonight.
She should feel something. Horror. Guilt. The sick twist of knowing she'd ended lives.
Instead, she felt alive. Terrifyingly, furiously alive.
When the last brother finally stumbled off to bed, Marley locked up the bar and stood in the darkness, listening to her own heartbeat.
Her hands were shaking. Not from fear—from the energy that had nowhere to go.
The fight was over but her body didn't know it yet, still primed for violence, still ready to run or swing or scream.
She knew where she needed to be.
Wake wasn't in his cabin. She found him on the dock, sitting at the edge with his legs dangling over the water. A weapon lay across his knees—disassembled, the pieces spread out on a rag beside him—but he wasn't cleaning it. He was just staring at the lake, his face unreadable in the moonlight.
Marley walked down the dock without speaking. The planks creaked under her boots, announcing her presence, but Wake didn't turn around.
She sat beside him.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything. The lake lapped against the pilings. Somewhere across the water, a fish jumped and splashed back down. The compound was quiet behind them—the kind of quiet that came after chaos, heavy and ringing.
"How many?" Wake asked finally.
"Four."
He nodded. Didn't ask if she was okay. Didn't try to comfort her or tell her it would get easier.
"You?"
"Lost count." His voice was flat, distant. "Enough."
Marley looked at his profile—the hard line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands kept moving over the weapon parts even though he wasn't really seeing them. He was somewhere else. Somewhere she recognized.
She'd seen that look on men after bar fights. The post-violence crash, when the adrenaline started to fade and reality crept back in. Some of them got quiet. Some of them got mean. Some of them drank themselves unconscious trying to outrun whatever they were feeling.
Wake was just... still. Like he'd shut everything down and was waiting for it to be safe to feel again.
"Hey." She put her hand on his arm. "Come back."
His eyes found hers. Dark and turbulent, full of something that made her breath catch.
"I almost lost you," he said. "The window—I heard the shotgun—"
"I handled it."
"I know." His hand came up to cup her face, rough and desperate. "I know you did. But for one second, I thought—"
She kissed him before he could finish.
This wasn't like the first time. There was no slow build, no careful exploration, no steady patience while he learned the shape of her. This was need crashing into need, two people who'd almost died reaching for proof that they hadn't.
Wake's hands fisted in her hair and he kissed her back like he was drowning and she was air. His mouth was brutal, demanding, nothing like the controlled man she'd come to know. This was the fighter underneath—the one who'd pinned Haskell to the gravel and opened his throat without hesitation.
Marley matched him. Grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him closer, teeth catching his lower lip, nails raking down his back. She didn't want gentle. Gentle was for people who hadn't spent the night killing to survive.
"Here?" he asked against her mouth, half-question, half-warning.
"Here. Now. I need—"
She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't have to. He understood.
He laid her back on the dock planks and followed her down, his weight pinning her, his hands already working at her clothes.
The wood was rough against her shoulders and she didn't care.
The night air was cold on her skin and she didn't care.
Nothing mattered except his hands on her, his mouth on her, the desperate proof that they were both still breathing.
"Mine," he said against her throat, and it wasn't a whisper this time. It was a claim. A war cry. A promise snarled into her skin while his hands stripped away every barrier between them.
"Prove it," she shot back.
Something snapped behind his eyes. Control breaking, restraint shattering, the careful man she knew disappearing beneath something rawer and more dangerous.
He proved it.
There was nothing slow about it. Nothing tender.
He took her on the dock with the lake lapping beneath them and the stars wheeling overhead, and Marley met every thrust with demands of her own.
Harder. Faster. More. She wasn't fragile and she wasn't going to let him treat her like she was—not tonight, not after what they'd survived.
She dragged her nails down his back and felt him shudder. Bit his shoulder when the pleasure crested too high and heard him groan her name like a curse. Wrapped her legs around him and pulled him deeper, claiming him the same way he was claiming her.
"Say it," she gasped. "Say I'm yours."
"You're mine." His voice was wrecked, ragged, nothing like the quiet man who sat at the end of her bar and watched her work. "You've been mine since the first night. Since you looked at me across that room full of Razorbacks and tried to warn me away from your own fight."
"And you're mine."
"Yeah." He drove into her hard enough to make her see stars. "I am."
She came apart with his name on her lips—his real name, the one he'd given her in the dark of his cabin when he'd been steady and careful and nothing like this.
Austin. It tore out of her like a prayer, and she felt him follow a moment later, his whole body shaking as he buried himself in her one last time.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Wake collapsed beside her, breathing hard, one arm thrown across her stomach.
The dock planks dug into Marley's spine and she didn't care.
The cold air raised goosebumps on her skin and she didn't care.
Nothing existed except the man beside her and the wild, fierce satisfaction pulsing through her veins.
"That was..." he started.
"Yeah." She turned her head to look at him. "It was."
He laughed—a short, surprised sound, like joy had caught him off guard. Then he pulled her against his chest, right there on the rough wood of the dock, and held her while their heartbeats slowed.
The lake was quiet. The compound was quiet. The whole world felt hushed, suspended, waiting for something Marley couldn't name.
"I've poured drinks for men after bar fights for years," she said eventually, her voice muffled against his chest. "Watched them come in bloody and buzzing, looking for something to do with whatever they were feeling."
"And?"
"And I've never—" She stopped, trying to find the words. "I've never been with someone who fought for me. For my bar. For everything I care about."
Wake's arms tightened around her. "I didn't do it for the bar."
"I know."
"I did it for you. Because if anything happened to you—" His voice cracked, just slightly, before he controlled it. "The bar can burn. The whole damn compound can burn. But you—"
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise me."
She lifted her head to look at him. In the moonlight, his face was open in a way she'd never seen—all the careful walls down, all the controlled patience stripped away. Just a man who'd found something worth keeping and was terrified of losing it.
"I promise," she said.
He kissed her forehead. Soft this time. Tender in a way that made her chest ache.
"We should go inside," he said. "It's cold."
"I don't want to move."
"Me neither." He pulled her closer anyway, wrapping his body around hers like he could shield her from the night. "Five more minutes."
"Five more minutes," she agreed.
They stayed there on the dock, tangled together on the rough wood, while the lake whispered against the pilings and the stars turned slowly overhead. The adrenaline had finally faded, leaving something quieter in its place. Something that felt like peace.
Marley closed her eyes and listened to Wake's heartbeat, slow and steady beneath her ear.
She'd spent her whole life pouring drinks for men after violence. Watching them chase the high or drown the crash, never letting herself get close enough to be dragged into their chaos.
But this was different. This man, this chaos, this war she'd somehow landed in the middle of—it was hers now. All of it. The danger and the blood and the desperate midnight moments on a dock in the dark.
She wouldn't trade it for anything.
"I've poured drinks for men after bar fights for years," she said again, quieter this time. "But I've never been with someone who fought for my bar."
Wake pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"Get used to it," he said. "I'm not done fighting yet."