Saxon's Savior (Protect and Serve #3) - Pandora Pine

PROLOGUE

Dallas

Spring 2001…

Seventh-period history was my favorite part of the day. Not because I was a fan of Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt, but because I sat next to Brian Hastings, quarterback of our Danvers Falcons youth football team. I was a lowly sixth grader, while he was a mighty eighth grader who ruled the school with an iron fist and a perma-boner.

Brian and I had a little arrangement. I let him cheat off my test papers and he didn’t try to stuff me into my locker. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement since I actually was small enough to fit into the narrow metal compartment.

As I snuck surreptitious glances at Brian, the teacher, Mrs. Wegmier, spent the last forty-five minutes reviewing possible questions for tomorrow’s test. Everyone, with the exception of Brian, had figured out the possible questions were the actual questions she’d ask on the test.

“You better have the right answers, Dallas.” Brian shot me a menacing grin when the bell rang.

I loved it when he said my name, I’d be spending the rest of the night spanking my monkey to the sound of my name on Brian’s lips. “I always have the right answers.”

His cool blue eyes bore into my own. Brian seemed to be trying to figure out if I was flirting with him, or if I was really that cocky. “Yeah, we’ll just see about that.” He shoved past me, his broad shoulder crashing into my skinnier one.

My heart caught in my throat over the electric contact between us. I was rooted to the floor, breathless, as I watched Brian float out of the classroom like he was walking on water.

“Get out of the way, Haynes!” Someone said from behind me, shoving me so hard, my hip slammed into my desk.

Limping for a step or two, I managed to get out of Gunther Michaels' way. He was freakishly tall, topping out well over six feet. He’d broken some kind of height record for the school, and there was talk of him being scouted by private high schools in the area to play for their varsity basketball teams. I’d seen Gunther play basketball. He sucked, but for the fact, he was a foot taller than everyone else on the court. I was sure he’d get his scholarship. Sports, rather than intellect, was king.

I might be smart as fuck, but even I knew a kid like me, from the poor side of town, had no chance to get the kind of education I would need to take me out of the shitty motel room my mother rented and into an Ivy League education.

Thinking of my mother ended the surge of hormones flooding through my body. Brian and his buff shoulders were the last things on my mind as I turned my thoughts to home. What kind of a shit show would be waiting for me today? Would my mother be entertaining another uncle in her endless dick parade? Would she be strung out and looking for someone to beat on? Or, last, but by no means least, so high she didn’t even know I was there?

Option three was always my favorite since my mother being wasted allowed me to fly under the radar. If I were really lucky, there would be some cash lying around and I’d be able to go out and grab a hot supper. I had a box of granola bars hidden under my bed, just in case. I’d swiped it from a convenience store last week and I only had one bar left.

Our lives hadn’t always been like this. I could remember back to a time when we were a happy family. My mother was a receptionist at some collection agency across town and my father was a mechanic. We weren’t rich, but I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. My father played catch with me in our tiny backyard while he grilled steaks and drank Budweiser on Saturdays. Until the day that changed my life forever.

Mom was walking through the parking lot at the grocery store when she was hit by an asshole in a Ford truck who’d been arguing with his girlfriend. Thankfully, the truck wasn’t moving at full speed, but the collision had been enough to knock her to the ground, breaking her left leg in two places.

After the accident came the pills. At first, she was taking the recommended dosage, but it wasn’t long before the bottle was empty, earlier than it should have been,