Page 1 of The Strongest Wolf

1

SIERRA

“You know, little wolf, it feels an awful lot like you’re hiding.”

I peel one eyelid open and peek at the heavily muscled, dark-haired man with an emerald green stare leaning against the wall beside the open bathroom door, arms folded. “I’m soaking in the bath.”

“Which you decided on the moment you learned we’d be going on a pack run.”

With my eyes shut, I shrug. “So, I’ll make the next one.”

I won’t.

But Galen doesn’t need to know that.

“You said that before,” Galen says, sounding like he’s moving closer.

“Did I?”

“And the time before that.” Now it sounds like he’s right beside me.

“I think you’re mistaken,” I tell him, hoping I’ll luck out and this will be the one time he can’t tell I’m lying.

His hand curves around my nape, and my eyes snap open to find him crouched beside the tub in our cozy cabin on the Blackshaw pack land in Hardin, Colorado, a place we’ve been calling home for the last two weeks.

He tugs me toward him until his lips are so close to mine that if either of us were to speak, they’d touch. “And the time before that,” he says, his bottom lip brushing against mine.

My breathing turns a little shallow, the way it always does when Galen is near. It isn’t just his presence. It’s everything about him, from his intoxicating wild forest scent that makes me want to burrow closer to the strong lines of his face, his sloping nose, and stubbled chin. Every day I seem to want him more, when I’d have thought the opposite would be true. He touches me, and I want him to never take his hands off me.

But we don’t kiss.

He studies me in silence. No, that isn’t right. Hesearchesfor the wolf in my eyes—the submissive part of me—that I’ve made it my mission to hide. Not just from him, but from the rest of the world.

“I know what you’re doing, little wolf. Let me in.”

“You alphas think you know everything,” I tell him, my tone light. “Go spend time with Eden.”

If I’d thought to distract him by bringing up the long-lost sister he’d believed was dead, I’d have been wrong.

He doesn’t move, and the laser-focused intensity of his emerald alpha stare doesn’t dim for a second. “Sierra…?”

I close the quarter-inch distance between us, touching my lips to his in a soft kiss. And then I count down.

Three.

Two.

With a muffled groan, his hand tightens around my nape, and he slants his head to deepen the kiss, the tips of his fingers tickling against the fine hairs at the base of my neck. I part my lips, and his tongue plunges into my mouth. He tastes of passion, hunger, and that something indescribable that makes him feel like mine.

I’d thought I was in control, but just like always, wrestling control from an alpha is a fool's game.

He strokes one large hand across my jaw, down my throat, brushing against the locket containing the photographs of my parents. Once, I’d believed it was the most important thing that mattered to me. That was before I nearly lost Galen, and I learned just how much it would have devastated me if I had.

His touch angles down over one breast, making me moan. It’s a sound he answers with a hungry groan.

I’ll never get enough of the taste of him, the feel of his hands on my body, and the way he drives all thoughts from my head.

I slide my arms around the back of his shoulders and lose myself in his kiss.

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