The Alpha’s Pen Pal (Crescent Lake Book 1)

WESLEY

Our beach day flew by. Once Haven adjusted to the temperature of the water, she was more than happy to splash around in the water without me holding her. Much to the chagrin of my lycan.

His whimpering and whining after she left the safety of our arms was so insistent it gave me a headache. He kept bugging me to grab her and keep her close. He was getting attached; she had him wrapped around her finger, and she didn’t even know it.

But the pure joy on her face as she experienced the ocean for the first time—well, it forced me to keep my distance and let her enjoy herself. Seeing her smile was worth not having her in my arms for a moment.

However, my lycan was thrilled when she said she’d had enough of the water and wanted to soak up some sunshine on our towels. She read a magazine she’d picked out at the store, and I worked on some sudoku puzzles, our comfortable silence interspersed with light conversation.

I realized how easy it was to just be with her. I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with pointless conversation. I could sit there, on my towel, with her at my side, content and at ease.

I glanced over at her again—she lay on her stomach, her arms crossed under her head, propping her up, and one of the extra towels over her like a blanket to protect her from the sun. And she was snoring. Just barely, and not with every breath; nevertheless, she was definitely snoring.

“Hey,” I said, closing my puzzle book and rubbing her shoulder.

She jerked herself awake, her big blue eyes blinking against the sunlight as she lifted her head to look at me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep again,” she muttered.

She pushed her torso up to move into a seated position, and I had to look back down at my puzzle book for a moment. Her breasts were smaller than most of the she-wolves I was used to, but with the way her upper arms squeezed them together and with the style of her swimsuit top and how her back arched as she moved on the towel, I knew I would have a hard time holding back myself and my lycan.

“It’s fine,” I grunted. “I know you’re exhausted from your shows and stuff,” I added, clearing my throat to smooth out my voice. “Did you want to eat and then go clean up, or rinse off first and then go eat?”

“Rinse off first. Definitely,” she said, brushing sand off of herself as she stood up.

Once Haven had put her cardigan on over her swimsuit, and I had packed up the rest of our things, we made our way back to the campground to clean up before heading to the pier for dinner. I—and my lycan—would have preferred if she’d covered up more, but since her shorts and T-shirt were the only other clothing she had with her, we had to make peace with it.

I had offered to buy her another outfit. Shit, I’d have bought her the entire store if she wanted it. But she was just as stubborn as me and insisted she was fine with the one outfit since we would head home the next morning.

Little did she know I bought her a new outfit, anyway.

When we got back to the campsite, I showed her how to use the coin-operated hot water showers. Once she had rinsed herself off, I let her dress in the privacy the tent provided her while I rinsed myself off and changed in the bathroom. I felt guilty that I couldn’t let her take a proper shower, that I hadn’t taken her to a hotel or a rental house, but I’d really wanted her to experience the beach exactly the way I had growing up.

“So, clam chowder or fish and chips?” I asked her as I walked up to the tent at the same time she walked out.

I reached my hand to take hers, but she bypassed it and walked straight up to me, wrapping her arms around my waist and resting her chin on my chest. Without a pause, I cupped her face and bent to kiss her, keeping the kiss light while still conveying how much she meant to me.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she whispered as I pulled back. “You didn’t have to do this.”

My thumbs stroked her cheeks, and I smiled at her while shaking my head. She didn’t understand yet, but she would soon. She would know what it meant to have everything, to always be taken care of, and to be treated like the gift she was.

“I wanted to, though,” I said.

“I know,” she replied. “That’s what makes you, you.”

“I’m glad you’re finally catching on.” I chuckled, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and kissing her nose just as her stomach rumbled. “Now, let’s get some food in that belly of yours. I swear it’s about to jump out of your body and attack me if I don’t feed it soon.”

I led her to the pier, pointing out various important landmarks. Well, important to me. To everyone else, they were likely just normal landmarks. Or not even landmarks at all.

“Over there is the skate park Reid and Seb lived at one summer until they crashed into each other. Reid broke his collarbone, and Sebastian got a concussion, and Dad didn’t let them go back again after that.”

“I don’t blame him! That sounds awful!”

“They were both healed and back on their feet pretty quickly, but—“ I stopped, realizing what I had just said. “I mean, as quickly as someone can heal after those types of injuries,” I added, hoping my lie was good enough.

I knew humans took longer to heal than we did, but I had no idea what was a normal amount of time for a broken collarbone or a concussion to heal. Thankfully, Haven didn’t seem to notice my awkward cover.

“That fire pit was our fire pit,” I said. “We’d set up an enormous bonfire there on our last night here, and my mom, Fiona, and Stephanie, when she was alive, would help us make s’mores while our dads surfed.”

“At night?”

“Yeah, they’re kind of crazy like that.” I laughed. “My dad says the surf is better under the moonlight.”

“Is he right?” Haven asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know? I’m not really into surfing. Not like Reid is. Hell, if he could, he’d move out here instead of staying in Crescent Lake.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“He doesn’t want to leave his dad alone.”

She nodded in understanding. “How old was he? When his mom died?”

“Nine,” I told her, rubbing her hand with my thumb. The same age she’d been when Jack fell ill and social services removed her from their home.

“Was she sick?”

“An accident,” I muttered, looking back at the old fire pit.

It was the only thing I could think of to tell her. I couldn’t tell her Stephanie had died while defending the pack from rogues during an attack. She’d been one of our best warriors, so she’d been one of the first to jump into the fray for every attack we had the year we had a major problem with rogues in the area.

She nodded again as I looked back at her. “So, why THAT specific fire pit?” she asked.

“Well, it was an equal distance from it to that playground, that volleyball net, and the water,” I said, pointing to each location as I mentioned it. “The playground for Maddie, obviously, since she is so much younger than the rest of us, the volleyball court for us, and the water for everyone.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of fond memories of this place,” she murmured as we walked onto the pier, the echoing of our footsteps on the boards almost drowning out her voice.

I nodded, enjoying the sound of the water under our feet as it echoed against the pier and savoring the smell of the sea air.

“I do,” I confirmed, pulling her into my side and wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “And now I have some new memories to add to them.”

Goddess, damn it, cheesy Wes had struck again. I groaned internally, but the smile on her face told me I’d said the right thing.

We reached the restaurant on the pier and ordered our food after a brief wait in line, then took it to the railing, where we ate and continued talking.

“So, how did you end up with Maya as your roommate?” I asked her.

“Peter made a social media group for the company members and other employees and added us to it as they hired us. I made a post asking if anyone was looking for a roommate because I couldn’t afford the rent on an apartment by myself, even a studio, and Maya was the only one who responded.”

“Of course she was.” I chuckled.

Haven laughed as well. “I know. She told me later she didn’t even need a roommate for financial reasons, but she’d never lived alone and was hating it, and it had only been a week or so when I made my post.”

My lips twitched, and I nodded. It wasn’t surprising Maya hated living alone. She was a werewolf. We lived in packs. It was part of our nature to want others around us almost all the time. Plus, she’d grown up with a twin, meaning she was even more used to having someone around all the time.

“Maybe fate had a hand in it, too?” I asked.

“It was just coincidence, Wes,” she said with a shake of her head as she finished her fish and chips.

“Was it, though?” I grabbed her trash and mine and tossed it in the trash can. “I mean, I still can’t believe you didn’t even realize you were that close to where I live.”

“Honestly? I was so glad to leave Salt Lake and be truly independent that I jumped at the first job offer I received that was far away. I didn’t even do any research other than plane ticket costs.” She shrugged as I came back to her side and tucked her body under my arm. “I think if I knew it was near you, I actually would have turned it down,” she confessed.

I breathed out a sigh and pulled her closer, pressing my nose into her hair. “I’m glad I didn’t, though,” she added, leaning her body into mine. “I’m glad I came to California.”

“I am too,” I murmured against her head.

I wrapped my other arm around her and kissed the top of her head as she stared out at the ocean and the sun setting on the horizon.

The breeze from the water swirled around us, whipping some loose strands of her braid into the air. Her natural scent of jasmine mixed with the lingering scent of sunscreen and the salt of the sea on her skin, creating a heady, intoxicating perfume my lycan kept making me inhale. He rolled around on his back in my mind, like a cat who had just sniffed catnip.

And I was just as affected by it as he was. It was addicting. I wanted to roll around in it too, wanted to embed it into my skin and my clothing so I could breathe it in all the time. I wanted to be selfish and hide her away so I didn’t have to share her scent with anyone else.

I didn’t bother trying to calm myself, my lycan, or my growing desire for her. There was no use denying it, no use fighting it, no use hiding it from her. She knew how I felt about her. Or at least I hoped she did.

My hand traveled up to her neck, leaving little goosebumps on her skin and making her breath hitch. I tilted her chin until her head was angled perfectly for my lips to kiss hers, our eyes locking for a moment before our mouths touched.

Like at her apartment the night of our date, there was so much unsaid in that one look we shared. That night, it was us admitting there was a connection, that there was something there—a spark or a tiny flame—that we wanted to explore and bring to life. But this look, the one we shared on the pier, was so much more.

It was the recognition of something deeper. It was the undeniable truth, an agreement, that what we felt wasn’t something small anymore.

Her blue eyes sparkled, and her red hair burned against the backdrop of the sunset, taking my breath away and setting my heart aflame.

I lowered my mouth to hers, and her answering kiss was the response to the question I didn’t even need to ask her. Our lips moved in perfect sync, twisting and pouting and teasing without pause. Her body melted against mine, and I held her there, reveling in the feel of her soft lines meeting the hard, muscular planes of my chest. Our hearts beat in unison, sending ripples of anticipation through me.

She broke away first, catching her breath, her eyelids fluttering. “Kissing on the beach at sunset? Kind of cliché, don’t you think?” she asked in a whisper.

I dipped my head and nipped at her earlobe. “Hush, Sugar Plum, you’re ruining the moment,” I chastised.

“Nothing could ruin this moment,” she replied, her voice almost undetectable under the wind, the waves, and the footsteps of tourists on the pier.

In fact, had I not been a lycan, I doubt I would have heard her at all.

And as I held onto her under the setting sun and my lips moved back to hers, I found myself agreeing with her. Because it was at that moment that I realized—I was in love with Haven Kenway.