Page 2 of The Strongest Wolf

As his fingers stroke down my belly and dip beneath the water, someone thumps hard on our cabin door. “Are you guys coming? We’re heading out now.”

Galen pulls away with a curse and leans his brow against mine, his breathing still unsteady. “Fuck the pack run,” he murmurs.

Smiling, I open my eyes. “I thought you were excited about going.”

He kisses me hard on the lips. “I was excited about running withyou.”

A little of my smile fades. “Well, we can do that whenever.”

“Or never?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

I don’t respond.

“Because I’m getting the sense that you’d rather it was never,” he says, a knowing look in his eyes.

I scrabble around for a more convincing lie than the ones I’ve been dishing out lately. “You’re just—”

“Hey! Lovebirds, time to go,” a new male voice interrupts. Nathan, the Blackshaw who never fails to get Galen growling.

I wait for the expected response. As usual, it doesn’t take long.

Galen’s eyes narrow. “He does that on purpose. He knew we were—”

“Kissing, yes. I did,” Nathan yells. “And we lost a good hour of fun because of what happened the last time no one stopped you. So let’s wrap it up, and let’s go.”

My lips twitch at the snarl on Galen’s lips.

“I’m going to kill him,” he growls, doing nothing to silence his voice.

I kiss him lightly on the lips. “Dayne might have a problem with you killing off members of his pack.”

“Ordinarily, yes,” a new voice speaks through the door. A commanding one. Dayne, the Blackshaw alpha. “But since it’s Nathan you’re talking about, maybe—” a soft thump followed by a growl cuts him off. “I was joking, Talis. Youknowthat.”

“Well, it didn’t sound that way to me. You can go. I’ll stay here with Sierra.”

My amusement fades at Talis’ words because I’ve successfully dodged the Luna of the Blackshaw pack for the last few days. Easy enough to do when she has her hands full with two screaming babies, one ear-splitting louder than the other. But it’s looking like she’s finally run me to ground.Shit.

A rare smile stretches across Galen’s lips as he rises from his crouch and reaches for the white towel I left on the closed toilet lid. “Sounds like an excellent idea. You and Talis can talk.”

I glare at his back. “You don’t need to sound so smug about it.”

“Don’t I?” he asks, sounding smug as hell. Only when he turns around with the towel in his hands, there’s only a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Whatever gave you that impression?”

With my hopes of avoiding another pack run by hiding in the bath dashed, I sigh gustily and rise from the tub.

Galen’s eyes darken with heat as he sweeps them over my naked body, his gaze lingering on my breasts. “Or maybe we could stay here.”

I drape my arms around his shoulders, holding my body a little away from him so I don’t get his gray t-shirt wet.

A second later, he wraps his arm around my waist and hauls me flush against him as he kisses me softly on the lips. Just like all the times he’s done it before, I feel my softer body melt against his harder one.

“I thought we had to leave Hardin soon?” I ask once I’ve pulled away.

He doesn’t immediately answer, and that’s when I realize we probably should have left long before now. With his pack clean across the country in Upstate New York, he’s been away from them far longer than he—or his beta Dom—had expected. “We have time,” he finally says.

“Time,” I remind him, “that you should be spending with your sister instead of getting up to funny business with me.”

“But only after the pack run,” Nathan yells through the door. “You know, the one we should be having right now.”

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