Page 113 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“Damien’s taking him to the lake for the day.” He sets the coffee on the nightstand. “Get dressed.”

“Where are we going?”

“Out.”

He walks me down the lawn from the terrace to the tree line, where he hands me the bag and pulls his shirt over his head. The change has him before it lands on the grass.

I’ve watched him do that more times than I can count. It still stops my breath.

The wolf turns and drops his shoulders for me. I swing a leg over him and settle in, taking fistfuls of ruff, putting my face down into the fur at the back of his neck.

Then he runs.

There’s no path, and he doesn’t need one. These woods run for miles behind the estate. He knows every yard of them, so we’re through the birches, over the stream, and up a slope I’d never manage on foot. Branches whip past close enough to touch. I’m laughing into his fur before we’re halfway up it, and he can feel that because his stride lengthens underneath me.

Then I hear water.

It isn’t a stream. He rounds a stand of birch and stops.

The fall drops off a lip of gray stone into a pool the color of bottle glass. Ferns cover every inch of the banks. Sun comes down through a gap in the canopy in one solid column, right onto the water.

I slide off his back and stand there with my mouth open. Behind me, the change takes him the other way, and by the time I’ve found any words, he’s pulling his shirt back on.

“How have I never heard about this place?”

“It isn’t on any map of the estate.” He takes the bag off me and sets it on a slab of rock at the edge. “My father kept it off the surveys. So have I.”

“Why?”

“Because then people would come.” He straightens to look at it, and there’s an expression on his face I’ve only seen a handful of times. “I found it when I was nine. I’ve never brought anybody here.”

He meets my gaze, and I understand the words he’s not saying. So I walk into him, putting my face against his chest, and his arms close over my back.

“Thank you,” I say into his shirt.

His hand moves once at the back of my head. “It’s yours now as well.”

We sit on the rock and eat the sandwiches Reid packed for us. The noise of the fall fills everything, which means neither of us has to talk, and we don’t. He lies back with one arm over his eyes. I work through half the bag out of pure spite, then lie down with my head on his stomach. He puts a hand in my hair without opening his eyes. An hour passes like this, and it might be the best one of my life. His hand stops moving.

“Want to go for a swim?”

I look up at him. “In what? I didn’t pack anything.”

He has the gall to pretend to look shocked. “Nothing? I guess you can just take off your clothes and swim.”

“Did you bring me here so we could skinny dip?” I narrow my eyes at him.

Callum gives me a dry look. “Now why would I want to see my mate naked?”

I roll my eyes at him, then stand up and peel out of my clothes right there on the rock in a column of sunlight while he watches me do it. By the time I’m down to nothing, he isn’t lounging anymore. He’s on his feet with his shirt over his head, and there’s nothing relaxed left anywhere in him.

I drop off the edge before he can reach me.

The water is so cold it takes the air straight out of me. I come up shrieking. He hits it after me with a great deal less shrieking, which I resent. Before I’ve finished, he’s on me, pulling me against his chest with his hands under my thighs.

“You’re freezing,” he observes.

“You think?”