Page 13 of The Strongest Wolf

“What nightmare? Next time I need to pee in the night, I can poke at your bladder, if you like?” I blink up at him innocently. “Then we can go pee together. We can gossip while we take turns.”

Another growl as he grips my hips before stepping into me.

I grin up at him when the hard length of him nudges me. “What’s this? You’re punishing me by poking me first?”

He doesn’t respond to my quip. At least, not in words.

His kiss is soft. Sweet. But far too short. When he lifts his head, his eyes are serious. “Do you remember when I told you that you were mine?”

Back at the Stone pack, after he’d killed Bowen in the kitchen and before he gave me a kiss I will remember forever, he told me I was his everything. I nod.

“That makes me yours,” he says, eyes probing. “Which means you’re not alone. Not anymore.”

I wish I could tell him it’s not as easy as me suddenly deciding to share everything with him when the only reason I survived the Stone pack is because I kept my mouth shut. “It’s not like turning a faucet on.”

He nods. “I know.”

I believe he does know. And despite that belief, it still feels like he’s demanding something impossible from me.

As we study each other, I lose the battle to keep my hands to myself. I curve my hand around his jaw, absorbing the warmth of his skin and the rough bristle of his stubble. In a couple of days, he’ll shave, because he never seems to like to go beyond short stubble. But I like it.

Since the first time I saw Galen was sitting naked in a dining chair, wearing the blood of the shifters he’d killed hours before, I think I’ll always view him that way.

Rough and primal.

His eyes half-close as he lowers his head further. He never attempts to hide his pleasure at my touch, and I love that he doesn’t.

There’s power in knowing I only have to put my hand on this big, heavily muscled alpha who could rip someone in half if he wanted to, and he just… sinks into me.

My touch makes him feel that way.Imake him feel that way.

I never expected to feel powerful standing beside an alpha as dominant as Galen Hunt. Yet I do.

Is that the only reason I touch him? No. I touch him because I have to. Because it soothes a part of me that craves the feel of his skin.

It also reminds me of the past and the future. A long time ago, Mom chose to walk away from her pack, and her family, to forge a new one with Dad. She fell in love with an alpha and gave up everything she knew for him.

He died trying to protect her, and then she died trying to protect me.

Is history about to repeat itself?

Could I be the reason Galen loses everything he’s worked so hard to build for himself? Could I be the reason he dies because he was trying to protect me?

Conscious it’s only a matter of time before Galen clocks my thoughts are going into overdrive, I force myself to set the future aside for the present.

“It might take a long time,” I warn him.

Again, he nods. “I know.”

“So you don’t—”

He dips his head and kisses me lightly. “There’s no time limit. It takes as long as it takes.”

“When you say things like that, I almost forget you’re an alpha,” I murmur.

His hands circle my hips, and when he straightens before turning me, my mouth goes dry at the look in his eyes. “Is that so?”

“Uh-huh.”

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