Above and Beyond (Twist of Fate 4)

I was reaching for the door handle before I could think better of it, but Lucky chose that moment to twist away from the guy. He began hurrying back to his friends, but I kept my gaze on the man who'd been hassling him. I knew that look… whatever conversation had been happening between the two, the asshole clearly wasn't finished having his say.

My eyes shifted back to Lucky as he said his goodbyes to his friends. The smile on his face was as wide as ever, but now it looked forced. None of his friends seemed to notice the newfound tension in his frame.

Lucky gave his friends a wave and then began heading in the opposite direction of the quad where the encounter with the other guy had taken place. Since I couldn't really follow in my truck without drawing attention to myself, I waited a moment before getting out. I figured Lucky was on his way back to his dorm or apartment. The chances of anything happening to him in broad daylight were slim to none, but I didn't give a shit. The guy who'd been hassling Lucky had disappeared, so I wasn't about to let Lucky out of my sight. Once he was safe in his place, then I'd go. I'd send a text to my brother telling him the kid was just fine and then I'd seek out the privacy of my hotel. And if I happened upon a bar on the way, then so be it.

I might not have initially been particularly interested in finding some guy or girl to spend an hour or two with, but things had changed.

I wasn't proud of the fact that after seeing little Lucky Reed, who wasn’t so little anymore but still looked just as sweet and innocent and even more untouchable than ever, I needed a drink and a fuck, preferably in that order. It was what it was. I wasn't in the habit of lying to myself and there was no point in starting now. The gorgeous Lucky was still miles out of my reach, but that didn't mean I couldn't find a stand-in to lose myself in for a bit.

A beautiful brown-haired, brown-eyed, not-so-innocent stand-in who knew how the game was played…

I was so caught up in the idea of finding a Lucky look-alike to slake my needs that I lost track of Lucky for several minutes and ended up having to double back a few times in my search for him. I actually blew out a sigh of relief when I finally found him in a small, isolated parking lot. But that relief was short-lived when I saw who Lucky was with. The guy who'd been harassing Lucky only a few minutes earlier was once again in his face but this time he had Lucky pressed up against a small gray sedan. And there was no doubt about his claim of ownership now as he pinned Lucky to the side of the vehicle with his body. If there was a conversation happening, I didn't hear it because all I saw was red and the only sound in my ears was the white noise that usually accompanied me when my body and mind made the shift to predator mode.

In the moments it took me to close the distance between myself and the two young men, I changed my priorities for the rest of the day.

Imparting a meaningful lesson with my fists on the pushy asshole first, then a hard fuck with that stand-in, and finally enough drinks to make me forget all of it.

Especially the young man who was about to see I most definitely wasn't any kind of hero.

Chapter 2

Lucky

One minute I was contemplating throwing a punch at Davis Teasley and the next, someone was doing it for me. It all happened before I could tell the persistent asshole to fuck off, much less draw my arm back the way I itched to.

Suddenly there was a scramble of bodies shoving me even harder against the car. The sounds of fists and grunts drowned out the sound of my gasp as I struggled to catch my breath in the press of larger bodies.

“Stop!” I tried shouting, but I couldn’t draw in enough air to yell the word like I wanted to. So instead, I grabbed for the back of the stranger’s shirt to pull him off Davis. I might not have liked the asshole, but he didn’t necessarily deserve to get jumped in broad daylight by a complete stranger.

When the man took a long enough break from whaling on Davis to glance at me, I gasped again like a melodramatic idiot. Familiar hazel eyes peered at me with an even more familiar sparking temper in them.

Zach.

“What the fuck?” I blurted. “Zach?” My brain scrambled to fit the information into some kind of logical order. What was Jake’s brother doing in Montana? And why was he beating up on my…