Page 73 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

Luca quickly pulls off his socks and clothes, and Ariela gets him changed while he stands on one leg complaining about the stones. Then she straightens up, pushes her hair back off her face with her wrist, and strips.

The shirt comes off over her head, then she steps out of her leggings, and I stop hearing my son entirely. Her swimsuit is a navy two-piece, and her slim body is covered with marks, marks that I’ve left with my hands and mouth. I’ve walked past hundreds of naked women during pack runs, and I’ve never once felt compelled to look and stare or admire. I’ve never once been tempted by any of those women, but with Ariela, I want my hands on her. Self-control is hard enough lately, but with her wearing those two scraps of clothing, it’s next to impossible.

“Are you coming?” she asks over her shoulder, and I just stand there stiffly, knowing how dangerous it will be if I join them. My wolf is quivering with desire to enter the water, but unlike other shifters, it doesn’t understand the concept of play. What if I hurt them?

“No.” My voice is surprisingly steady. “I will watch over you two.”

Ariela grins. “Suit yourself.” And then she proceeds to wade into the water and dives. When she comes up, she’s laughing, hair flattened black to her scalp, both hands wiping her face. My eyes track the droplets of water going down her neck, and my fangs sharpen in my mouth.

If she was a wolf, she would be even more breathtaking. As a human, she is still stunning. Luca charges in after her, and she catches him under the arms before he’s got his balance.

I look at the two of them.

My family.

The thought comes unbidden, and a foreign warmth envelops my chest. These two, they’re mine to protect from a world that would tear them apart. I’ve never had something like this to protect. All my life it’s been power and status; now it’s a fragile human woman and a child that will one day sit on my seat.

“Kick with long legs, Luca. Don’t bicycle them.” Luca’s in water to his waist, and I watch Ariela check the depth with her own foot twice before she lets him move any farther out.

Seeing that she’s going to keep being cautious, I enter the water. Before Ariela can react, I take my son under the arms and throw him out into the deep part. Ariela’s face goes white, and she screams in panic before diving after Luca. I just watch calmly.

She doesn’t even reach him before he pushes his head out of the water, howling, “Do it again!”

I smirk as Ariela slows down, her face bloodless. “W-What?”

She swims toward him, and he covers the remaining distance. “I can swim!”

“So I see,” she mumbles and then looks at me, her eyes shaking.

“Shifters are born with the ability to swim.” I fasten my cuff back down. “It’s a survival thing.”

“You could have led with that.” Her voice rises.

She turns her back on me and swims out to the middle and back with a stroke that gets cleaner the farther she goes. On land, that knee gives her a limp. In the water it’s gone. Then she stops in front of me with her chin on the surface, treading water, looking up the bank.

“Come here.”

I take a step back, and she advances, grinning. “Come on, Callum.”

“I’m not dressed for a swim.”

But she’s rising out of the water in one movement, and my eyes follow the way her body glistens under the sun, the sheen of water highlighting dips and curves that have my wolf sitting to attention. For the first time, a woman gets the drop on me. One hand is sliding up my chest, and the other is fisting in my tie. Before I can get my bearings, her scent clouding me, she drops backward with all her weight on it. I go under with her laughing above me, and by the time I’ve got my feet onto the shingle shelf, she’s already out of reach, swimming hard.

I close one hand around her ankle and pull her back through the water to me. She arrives against my chest with her hair across her face and her breath still short from the swim.

“What were you trying to do here?”

“I’m not trying anything.” She clears the hair out of her eyes. “You needed to loosen up.”

“I’m wet.”

“So are we.” She beams, and that smile undoes me.

I pull her in until our bodies are pressed together. Under the surface, she stops kicking, so she’s hanging off my shoulders with the whole length of her against me, and I can feel her hipbones through two soaked layers of shirt. Her pulse is going in her throat where I can see it. Her scent, thick, cloying, and delicious rises through the lake water, which ought to be impossible, and the wolf comes up so fast I have to hold my jaw shut. I put my mouth beside her ear.

“Do you know what I will do to yo—”

Luca has surfaced beside us with his hair plastered sideways. “What are you doing?”