Mark

 

A couple days after Mark fucked Stella, he realized that she’d stopped coming with him on his smoke breaks. Maybe that’s why they suddenly felt less tempting. As much as he hated to admit it, the cold night air was lonely without her jibber-jabber. He wondered if it was just because they fucked or if it was because he’d felt awkward around her afterward.

 

It wasn’t like he was trying to be a dick, exactly, but he didn’t know what to say. He wished there was some clean, simple, easy way to tell her that they weren’t going to be a couple without cutting her out of his life entirely. She was a nice break from the tedium of the bar, entertaining him in ways that she probably didn’t even know about. It kind of pained Mark to think that he’d fucked that up just because he hadn’t really acknowledged her after they’d fucked.

 

But one night, after most of the patrons left, she came up to him holding a beer, brandishing it in his face until he finally accepted it from her. “What’s up?” he asked as he cracked it open and took a long drag of the thick, bitter alcohol within.

 

“Um,” Stella said, sighing deeply before sitting down on the floor next to Mark. “I had a weird night last night, and I’m not sure who else I can talk to about it. Is it cool if I, like, ramble a bit?”

 

Mark shrugged in response, but inwardly he felt a little bit warmer, and not just from the beer. He was relieved to hear that Stella’s rambling days weren’t behind her. There was just something so charming and relaxing about it, hearing words leave her mouth like water pouring into the ocean.

 

“Well, so I’ve got this ex,” Stella said, reaching over to take Mark’s beer from his hand so she could take a long sip, too. “Um, and he’s kind of a big deal.”

 

Mark sputtered out a laugh, his stomach almost hurting with the unfamiliar effort involved. He hadn’t laughed in a very long time.

 

“Yeah, I know, it sounds douchey,” Stella said before handing him his beer back. “But believe me, the reality of it is so much worse than you could even imagine. This guy is the head of the MC that runs this town. I mentioned him before…”

 

“Cameron?” Mark suggested, remembering the name from the rant that Stella gave a few seconds before they first kissed and fucked.

 

“Right,” Stella said, clearly surprised that he’d remembered the name. “Anyway, he kind of conned me into having dinner with him last night and things got…weird.”

 

“Did he try to pull something on you or something?” Mark said, straightening up so that his spine was stiff, his body suddenly totally alert, prepared for action. He was ready to stomp some skulls if Stella told him that she had some creep bothering her outside of work, even if he didn’t get paid for it.

 

“No, no, it’s not like that,” Stella said, keeping her voice low as the last patron of the night finally walked by them on his way out of the bar. She sighed and held her head in her hands. “I mean, that’s kind of the problem. If he was just being creepy and weird, like every other random fucker I see in here every night of the week, I’d be able to handle it, you know? But he’s being…strange.”

 

“How so?” Mark asked, his curiosity officially piqued.

 

“He started asking me all of these questions about this place, the Haven. He wanted to know who the owner was, if he was affiliated with any of the other MCs in the area, you know, shit like that.”

 

“Huh,” Mark said, considering her words carefully. “It sounds like he wants to take this place for his own.”

 

“That’s what I’m afraid of, too,” Stella admitted softly. “And you know, I shouldn’t care, right? It’s like you said before. This is just a stupid job. It’s just a stupid bar. But…I don’t know, it felt nice, you know? Having just one place that Cameron didn’t get his stupid, filthy hands on. But I feel like soon that’s all going to change.”

 

Mark watched as Stella pulled the beer out of his hands again, tipping the can up to the ceiling as she drained the last drops, gasping for air after she swallowed. Her face crinkled up in pain. She was obviously crushed by the idea of losing this place, as weird as that might have seemed.

 

But it didn’t seem weird to Mark, actually. He felt like he understood. As much as Wesley got on his nerves, Mark didn’t mind working here, and that was more than he could say for any other job he’d had over the past several years, including all the shit he did while he was in the Army. Even just thinking about some megalomaniacal prick coming in and taking it over, turning it into his own personal playground like the rest of this crappy town, was enough to get Mark’s blood pumping harder through his veins, feeling anger simmer up from the bottom of his belly.

 

“He sounds like a bully,” Mark commented, getting to his feet to walk over to the bar to grab them another beer. He’d pay for it later to make sure that the books were accounted for, just so Wesley wouldn’t hassle him again. Mark was getting better that way, trying to avoid conflict whenever possible. He might have talked a big game, but he really didn’t want to lose this job any more than Stella did.

 

“Yeah, I guess that’s the best word for him, really,” Stella said, accepting the beer from Mark as soon as he walked back over to the wall she was sitting against. “He always used to boss me around, you know. And I guess in a way he’s still doing it, only now he does it while pretending to be nice so that I can’t even yell at him. Do you know how frustrating that is?”

 

Mark thought back on his days in Iraq, when his superior officer would give the men abhorrent orders, telling them to do absolutely inhuman things, and then he nodded slowly at Stella. “Yeah, I think I get it.”

 

“So, that’s the news of the day,” Stella said in a forced cheery tone before handing the beer to Mark unopened and cradling her head in her hands. “Fuck my fucking life.”

 

Mark popped open the beer and began to sip at it thoughtfully, staring at Stella through the corner of his eye. She seemed to shrink in on herself, wrapping her arms around her body in some futile attempt to protect herself. It made something inside Mark snap, seeing her look so weak. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much, but it almost physically hurt, seeing her like this. “It’s not over yet,” he said before taking another gulp of beer.

 

Stella scoffed a little and shook her head. “Cameron gets what Cameron wants. That’s like, the rule of the Marauders. Nobody steps to him. Nobody stops him. It was over before it started, as soon as he decided he wanted this place. We’ll both be working for him in less than a month.”

 

Mark felt something begin to stew at the bottom of his stomach, getting hotter and hotter as he continued to look at Stella, watching as all hope appeared to slip out of her body. Fuck this, he thought. I’m not giving up that easily.

 

“I’m not working for him,” he said before chugging furiously.

 

Stella nodded, looking over him with wide, sad eyes that seemed to be expressing something that couldn’t be put into words. “You can always quit before the Marauders take over. They’d probably fire you anyway. You’re too disobedient. Cameron would never allow you to hang around to fuck things up.”

 

“No, I mean, I’m not letting him take this place over,” Mark said with as much confidence as he could muster. “I just got here. I’m not leaving so fucking quickly.”

 

Stella stared at him for a long moment, appearing to hold words back before they eventually spilled out of her on their own accord. “What can we do?”

 

We? For some reason that word sent shivers down Mark’s spine, but he internally shook it off, meeting Stella’s eye contact unflinchingly. Unlike all the other girls he’d bedded over the past couple years, Stella hadn’t become clingy. She hadn’t tried to get him to be exclusive or call him her boyfriend or anything like that. Maybe he could spend more time around her without complicating things, even if she did throw words like “we” around so casually, apparently oblivious to the fact that it felt like a bomb being tossed in Mark’s face.

 

He cleared his throat and addressed her question. “I’ll help you. We fight him off, every way we can. You’re right, the Marauders own this town. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We just have to be smart about it.”

 

Stella nodded slowly and blew out her breath. “That…actually makes me feel better. I feel like I haven’t relaxed in like twenty years,” she said with a laugh.

 

There was something about the way she looked sitting there on the floor, the way she had her legs bent under her body, her spine at an angle as it leaned against the wall behind her. The worry was coming off of her in practically tangible waves that almost overwhelmed Mark with their intensity. She wasn’t just anxious; her entire body was consumed by fear. It was such a shame, seeing something so beautiful be so torn up, all because of a gutless little bully that liked to control things.

 

Well, he wasn’t going to control her tonight, Mark decided. He downed the rest of his beer and shuffled a little closer to Stella on the floor before reaching his hand out to touch her knee. Stella flinched a little under his touch, her leg going stiff as she turned her head to ask, “What are you doing?”

 

“What I want,” Mark said with a shrug, squeezing lightly at her knee and petting at her thigh with his fingers, feeling the tension begin to dissipate under his touch. “What about you? What do you want?”

 

Stella sighed heavily before shifting to turn at an angle, facing Mark head on. “I don’t know. I just want to stop feeling this way.”

 

“What would you rather feel?” Mark asked, leaning in closer to brush some of the hair away from Stella’s forehead.

 

Stella inhaled unsteadily, shutting her eyes before she placed her hand on top of Mark’s, encouraging him to grab onto the side of her head. “I want to feel good, for once. Please. I know you can help me.”

 

The raw emotion in her voice, the desperation to feel anything other than the crushing weight of the worry she held on her shoulders made Mark feel helpless and powerful, all at once. In this moment, he wanted nothing more than to take her burdens away, one by one until she was naked and safe and whole. He didn’t want her to be his girlfriend, but somehow she felt like his responsibility anyway, and the truly terrifying thing was that that didn’t scare him nearly as much as it should have.

 

He leaned forward to lick the outer shell of her ear, relishing the sound of her soft gasp. He dropped a few gentle, teasing kisses along the side of her neck, dragging the barest edge of his teeth along the vein in her neck. Then, he licked his lips and leaned in against her ear again, letting his warm breath make all of her nerve endings spring to life as he whispered, “Take off your clothes.”