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“Whoa! Where are you going? Pack house is this way.”

“I can’t leave her there. I’m going to make her come with us. You heard her. My father is crazy.”

He can’t argue with that, and even though he’s got a bad feeling about this whole thing, he couldn’t live with himself if Jay had guilt for the rest of his life.

“Okay.”

A bright smile flashes across Jay’s face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You lead, I follow. Has never done me wrong yet.”

“I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go. I am not looking forward to facing your Dad on an empty stomach. Although, to be fair, a full one seems like even less of a good idea. Know what I mean?”

“Sadly, I do.”

He leans into the arm Jay has thrown over his shoulder.

The guard is distracted again when they sneak past, and they start up the return route the way they’d come.

Leo pulls Jay in behind the same bush when he sees the same large black car leaving.

Must have been a quick round.

It’s moving quicker than before, and the guard only barely gets the arm up in time.

“What an asshole,” Jay mutters—right before there’s a cacophony of noise.

It’s so loud that Jay drags him to the ground, shielding Leo’s body with his own.

The ground trembles and shakes beneath them, and the subsequent absence of noise rings in Leo’s ears.

Leo looks up into Jay’s shocked face, and he can’t shake the feeling that whatever that was?

It was meant forthem.

Instincts Paired (Luca)

“Okay. They’re gone. Let’s do it.” He closes the door after standing and waving as Gideon drives away. Gideon had been torn between staying with Luca or protecting Nix and the others out in the big-wide-world. They were coming up on two years of their soul bond, and it was getting easier to go longer distances and time before Luca felt the symptoms of Broken Bond Syndrome.

Gideon wouldn’t be gone for more than four or five hours and with Rowan to distract him, it would fly by. He hoped. And while Luca knew Gideon worried about him, he also knew how important it was to have someone willing and able to kick some ass to protect their mates.

It wasn’t like Nix went looking for trouble; it was that trouble was most definitely looking for him.

Such was the life of a pregnant superhero who seemed to draw everyone into his orbit. Luca wished it applied to only nice people, not weird, creeper megalomaniacs with God-complexes.

Just thinking about Carnell had Gideon in a foul mood; despite receiving a most excellent blowjob (if Luca says so himself) and subsequent orgasm, his soulmate drove away frowning and irritable.

Perhaps it is better if Luca is here, and Gideon is there.

Jay and Leo had left an hour ago to walk down the two blocks toward Jay and Nix’s old high school to catch their hired car to the Golf Club.

Neither he nor Rowan had wanted to go to the golf club with them, because golf was boring in the extreme.

It was convenient that he and Rowan really did have “unfinished business.”There’d been sly side-eyes and loud laments about wishing they could stay home and join in despite the previous night’scome-tasticorgy.