Above and Beyond (Twist of Fate 4)

His warm breath washed over my temple as he dropped his mouth closer to my ear. Butterflies danced in my belly and heat crawled beneath my skin in anticipation. I forgot all about where we were or that even if this man hadn’t been straighter than an arrow, he wouldn’t have been interested in me.

“Maybe they should,” Zach murmured in my ear. Every nerve in my body lit up in response and it was all I could do to bite back a moan as my dick hardened uncomfortably in my pants. Zach’s mouth was right there… if I moved my head just a little—

“Um, hello?” I heard a familiar voice call out.

Right.

Davis.

Damn.

My body began shaking with thwarted desire as Zach stepped back and then moved around me. “Shut the fuck up, you little shit,” he practically snarled. Davis threw his hands up as Zach began moving toward him. I grabbed Zach’s arm to stop him because he looked pissed enough to tear Davis limb from limb. Davis worked out religiously in a gym to maintain his killer body, but he was no match for the career military man. I ignored the electricity that fired up my arm as I moved between Davis and Zach again.

“What are you doing here, Zach?” I asked. My anger had dissolved and all I felt was really tired.

“I’m here for a job,” Zach responded.

“The Rangers don’t have any bases here,” I retorted before I could think better of it. “The only military installation is Malmstrom Air Force Base and that’s in Great Falls. There’s an army corps recruitment center here, but unless you fucked a general’s wife or something, I doubt you’d be demoted to pinching students from the university.”

Zach’s eyebrows had lifted briefly at my comment about fucking a general’s wife and I felt my cheeks heat. I could only mentally pray that the man didn’t ask how I knew so much about the army’s presence in the great state of Montana in the first place. But by the time I was speaking, his expression had shifted and he looked almost… broken.

What the hell?

“Zach,” I began when he didn’t say anything. I made the mistake of reaching for his hand to get his attention. He jerked back at my touch and his eyes went wild for the briefest of moments. He scanned the area around us like he didn’t know where he was.

“Zach,” I repeated softly in the hopes of getting his attention back on me. I had no clue what was going on with him, but I’d never seen him so rattled and seemingly confused. When his gaze finally landed on mine, he pulled in a deep breath and I saw some of the tension in his frame leach from his body.

“Different kind of job,” was all he said.

My gut was telling me he wasn’t going to expound on his comment so I said, “But what are you doing here on campus? Did my fathers ask you to check on me?”

His non-answer was answer enough.

I let out a sigh. I loved my fathers more than anything on the planet, but I couldn’t help but be a little hurt that they’d sent someone to check on me. I knew part of it was my fault because I hadn’t been going home as often as I had during my first year of college, but I had a good reason for it.

It just wasn’t any kind of reason I could tell them about.

I’d hoped that when the twins had arrived, my fathers would be too busy to check up on me as often as they did, but apparently that wasn’t happening. Part of me was unreasonably glad about that because as much as Xander and Bennett Reed had treated me like their own son in the years since they’d adopted me, I still occasionally had this fear that they’d find me lacking and finally cut me loose. I’d confessed my feelings to my uncle Aiden once, but he’d reassured me that I was and always would be their kid. He’d said that it didn’t matter how far away life took me as I got older… Haven, Colorado would always be my home and my fathers would always be the family that fate had given me. I hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe him, but my first year away at school had proven to me that my parents weren’t going anywhere. I’d gotten calls and texts on a near daily basis, and I doubted any other student on campus received more care packages than I did.

But admittedly, my fathers had a habit of wanting to protect me just a little too much sometimes, and the arrival of my little brother and sister hadn’t diminished that in any kind of way. So it wasn’t really a revelation that they’d sent someone to check on me, especially after I’d gone a little more silent than usual. Between keeping my former relationship with Davis a secret, not going home for the past couple of summers and being tight-lipped about why I hadn’t gone home, I should have been more surprised that it had taken them so long to send a warm body to make sure I was okay. But sending Zach, of all people? As if I needed the older man to see me as a child any more than he already did.