She shook her head. Yeah, she’d been looking forward to the trip, but not enough to marry him.
She explored the space on her way up to the impressive bedroom, stripped down to nothing, and went out onto the deck with her e-reader in a waterproof case.
Her TBR list for the weekend was all lined up — a just-released murder mystery from one of her favorite authors, a recently-released sexy vampire romance from a fantastic series, and then an old favorite, because she was going to start the sexy theme with all the kinky goodness ofSafeword: Arabesque. Wouldn’t that be the dream, living with three kinky men?
* * * *
Kenny heard the vehicle coming up the mountain, and he waited long enough for their new neighbor, or neighbors, to get inside before he stalked through the woods to see who’d arrived.
And was gifted with a view of a naked, gorgeous woman on the top deck, taking in the mountaintop view, stretching her body in the cool evening air, perfect tits on display, and then she turned toward the hot tub, an ass with curves to die for,beggingto be striped with a belt.
When she slid into the hot tub and the show ended, Kenny edged closer to the tree line, sniffed, and caught the scent of a hawk shifter. Nothing else recent. She was here alone.
Hawk vision is made for picking out breaks in patterns, and a human-shaped wolf skulking around would show up like a flame in the woods if she bothered to look.
But her face was buried in a screen now. Still, he was more careful about moving, in case she looked up. He moved deeper into the woods while he maneuvered so he could see the back of her SUV, and was a little surprised to see a Hamilton County tag.
He didn’t see a city sticker, so she probably lived in the county around Chattanooga. Not that it mattered, since the cabins were far enough apart it wasn’t likely their paths would cross.
Wolves need to know who is around them, and now that he knew, he should return to their cabin. She wasn’t likely to stand up and stretch again, so there was no reason to stay and watch.
And yet, he did, but just for another couple of minutes.
Silas had the fire going when he returned, while Boone was chilling in a recliner with a beer bottle.
This weekend had been Kenny’s idea, and so far it seemed to be heading in the right direction. He’d been interim Alpha of the Chattanooga Pack since shortly after the Big Battle Between Good and Evil, but he’d recently grabbed the title officially. Everyone missed Randall, the old Alpha, but life has to go on. Kenny had assumed he’d be a part of the Homewood Pack whenit’d formed, but when Cora had asked him to try Alpha on for size, he hadn’t been able to refuse her. She’d gone through so much, taken on so much, anything he could do to help solve a problem — he would.
She’d been forced into the role of Alpha Werewolf over eleven states. The least he could do was handle Chattanooga for her. Take on the job of the Alpha they’d loved and lost.
And so, with the beta and gamma positions finally settled after months of shuffling, more than a year and a half of upheaval, he’d decided the three top wolves needed a long weekend away from pack politics. They needed to function as a team, and nothing built unity like good food, whiskey, and shared stories around a game of poker.
“Sounded like a V8,” Boone noted. “Not carburetor, fuel injection, so modern-day.”
Right. Their neighbor.
“Yeah. Big GX 550. Completely naked woman on the top deck. Gorgeous. No recent scents besides hers. Hamilton County tags.”
Silas looked up from the fire. “Pervert.”
He said it with a grin that suggested he’d have stayed to watch too — and then went back to arranging the coals with the focus of a man who takes feeding people seriously.
Silas had been around the pack forever, content to run his barbecue joint and show up for full-moon runs, but something had shifted in him after the Big Battle. Now he was the man who made sure the pack had food when everyone came together, the one seeking out the wolves on the edge and handing them three barbecue sandwiches with a heaping side of potato salad while he got them to talk.
“Never claimed otherwise,” Kenny told him.
“We’ll have to be careful aboutchangingand running, with her close,” Boone noted.
“She’s a hawk. We’re good.”
“You sure she didn’t see you?” Silas asked.
“Had her face in a screen.”
Boone had moved to town last year for the construction work, all six foot four and two hundred fifty pounds of muscle. He could handle every piece of earthmoving equipment known to man and was worth his weight in gold, which was saying something. The kind of guy who always knew the weather forecast and exactly how much concrete it would take to pour a foundation by eyeballing it.
Kenny did the math anyway, but Boone’s ability was still fucking impressive.
When everything had shaken out, Silas was his beta and Boone his gamma.
