Page 52 of To Challenge a Wolf

They made better time than Rhett expected with human company, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. He let Vivian set the pace (he’d buy her a milkshake regardless), but she pushed herself so hard, she was soon too winded to talk. Well, if that was her preference, fine by him.

At last she stopped in the middle of the trail, crossed her arms, and glared at him.

“Are you having fun yet?” he said with a smirk.

“Jerk.” Then she bent at the waist, gripped her knees, and caught her breath…while still muttering at him. “Not even breathing hard. Effortless athleticism.”

“You’re hiking with a wolf, Viv.”

“Muscles…just doing their thing…effortless and sexy and it’sannoying.”

He struck a classic macho pose, biceps flexing, pecs swelling beneath his shirt, which was tight enough for her to notice. Her essence spiked with sheer attraction, and slowly he let out the growl of triumph that filled the back of his throat.

She tried glaring, but her scent betrayed her. “We won’t get far if we make frequent stops to—”

He ended her complaint by seizing her mouth with his. Instantly Vivian responded, ran her palms over his chest and down to his abs. She tipped her head back from the kiss, and the playfulness in her eyes belied her tone.

“These muscles. So annoying.”

“Uh-huh.” He kissed her again. “You’re no slouch, you know.”

He traced his fingers over her shoulder and down the curve of her back, where muscle was well defined. Then, though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he stepped back. “We should keep moving.”

Slowly she nodded. “We should.”

A few hundred feet up the trail, he already wanted to fuse his lips to hers again, as though he had last kissed her two weeks rather than two minutes ago.

“Do you remember our last hike?” she said.

A chuckle shook his chest. “When we got rained out? Talk about a landslide. Mudslide, more like.”

“I was scared. But then I remembered you were a wolf, and I was okay.”

He held a low-hanging maple branch aside for her. “Because a wolf is of course capable of holding back a mudslide.”

She rolled her eyes, but then her scent and expression softened into something introspective and almost sweet. “When I got scared as a kid, I sort of imagined you as a hero in one of my comics. I pictured you darting in with your wolf speed and carrying me off to safety before the metaphorical building could collapse. Or seeing it about to fall on me and catching it, lifting it with your wolf strength. Or hearing and smelling me from somewhere no one else could find me, knowing I wasn’t safe and coming to get me.”

He could tremble at the trust she’d placed in him. “How old were we? When you thought of me like that?”

“Like…maybe thirteen and fifteen when I first imagined it. I know it’s kind of weird, but it felt comforting back then.”

“It just doesn’t sound like you. You’re the heroine of your own story, Viv. Always have been.”

She latched onto his arm with both of hers and leaned into him, slowing the hike to a stroll. “I got scared a lot. Of sort of abstract things. At the time I had no clue about the gunrunning, or about buying off customs and whoever else Stone owns—”

“Let’s see. That would include every zoning and permit department in the county as well as at least two vampire fences—I was never clear on what they were fencing, but he didn’t want me in on that. He’s probably got his fingers in other pies too, but most of what I know is on the violence side, not the money side.”

“The violence side… You mean Walter.”

“That wolf has killed a lot of people for him, Viv.”

Slowly she shook her head. “Well, I never knew anything specific as a kid. Just that it wasn’t all legal, and it wasn’t all safe.”

He growled quietly. “Maybe your dad was protecting you.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But regardless, nobody tells Vincent Rossi they’re scared. Not even Daddy’s little girl. So this was what I liked to do. Imagine me and you, making it out alive.” Her voice caught. “And it was okay to imagine that, because you were the one person who’d be willing to come for me and still let me be my own heroine.”

“I would,” he said, tucking her arm close to his side. “I will.”

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