Moon Glamour by Aimee Easterling (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

step toward what I suspected was the lakeside trail when Tank stopped all of us. “No.” His denial was electric, raising hairs up and down my arms.

Ryder snorted, muttering something I couldn’t quite make out but which I could guess wasn’t complimentary. Lupe stilled him with a glance. Hands on her hips, she raised one eyebrow. “No?”

“Athena’s ankle isn’t cleared for running,” Tank rumbled, not meeting my gaze.

“I can run,” I countered. Weakness, I’d gathered from last night’s tussle, wasn’t the way to survive the next five days of temporary packishness.

To my surprise, Lupe was the one who shook her head. “Tank’s right. Paying attention to others’ needs”—she speared us all with a piercing gaze that made my inner wolf’s ears pin—“is the best way to support the team.”

“Unbelievable,” Ryder muttered. Although there may have been an expletive or two thrown in between the “un” and the “believable” parts.

“Did you have something you wanted to share?” Lupe demanded.

A moment of silence. Then a grunted “No, ma’am.”

“Then strip. To your underwear only, Ryder. There are kids around.” Lupe’s flash of smile was all sharp teeth and a complete lack of humor. “Same plan, different method of locomotion. First one to swim around the lake will be in charge of tomorrow’s exercise choice.”

BUTCH DOVE OFF THE dock and sliced through the water like a dolphin released from captivity. “Holy shit,” Ryder muttered, thigh deep in the same water. “This is as cold as a witch’s tits.”

“Can you swim?” I asked, taking in the way he patted at the surface as if it was a dog about to bite his crotch.

“Of course I can swim,” Ryder grumbled. But his face was gradually fading to white.

Tank hesitated on the dock, peering back and forth between me and Ryder. His anger at Ryder, I could tell, was diffused by the latter’s insecurity. Plus, I got the impression he didn’t want to leave the two of us alone.

But I could take care of myself...and could handle one tattooed non-swimmer. “Go,” I told Tank. “If you don’t catch up to Butch, we’ll probably have to spend tomorrow morning learning to meditate.”

Tank’s lips twitched up ever so slightly. The air, cold one moment ago, warmed slightly. Despite his black eye and swollen nose, I had a hard time taking my gaze off his face.

Then he was gone, hitting the lake like a killer whale on a mission. “So you’re a butt girl,” Ryder observed, following my sight line. “I’ve got a butt.”

He started to swivel around and show me. “Get all the way in the water,” I demanded.

To my surprise, Ryder took a step forward. “Yes, ma’am,” he grumbled. Still, it took us ten minutes to fully submerge.

At which point I learned that, although I wasn’t a pro at swimming, Ryder was awful. He appeared to know only one stroke—the doggy paddle.

“That’s how wolves swim,” he grumbled. “Doggy paddle. Get it?”

“As long as you’re moving,” I agreed easily. He was doing pretty well for someone who appeared inclined to sink rather than float.

We tried that for a while, moving about twenty yards in twenty minutes. “You might try bigger arm movements,” I suggested eventually.

His resulting efforts nearly capsized us both.

So, we’d doggy paddle around the lake. It wasn’t so bad, really, not after I got over the loss of feeling in my extremities. Although, strangely, my body warmed the more I focused on Ryder. As if his gasped jokes impacted the temperature of the frigid water.

The sun had risen above the trees by the time Ryder panted out an observation. “Professional thief, huh?”

“Alpha backstabber,” I countered. “If you’re tired, you could roll onto your back.”

Ryder tried it, swallowing about a gallon of lake water in the process. He swore as he spat, and I angled myself closer in case he needed assistance.

But he bobbed back to the surface before I’d fully decided he was drowning. “Hey, it works!” He sounded childishly proud of learning to float.

And...I was proud to have taught him. The sun was warmer now and my tongue only hurt a little after endless biting to prevent myself from ribbing the sensitive masculine ego. I smiled and swiveled to take in the landscape—beautiful from this level—then jolted as I caught sight of the populated shore.

Not that this area shouldn’t be populated. We were halfway around the lake now, level with a public dock. In addition to boat-mooring stations, there was a cafe present with small round tables out front.

So, yeah, multiple people milled about, eating and visiting. Only one of them, however, caught my eye.

“What is it?” Ryder was more alert than I’d thought he was. His gaze followed mine. “Huh. That was fast.”

What was fast about Marina showing up only a mile away from our campground was beyond me. Ominous was the adjective I would have chosen instead.

Because she wasn’t there by chance. Of course she wasn’t. Marina shaded her eyes with one hand, her gaze latching onto mine despite the distance. Then she beckoned me with one crooked finger.

“I’ve got to...” I waved my arm vaguely in Marina’s direction. “Can you swim the rest of the way by yourself?”

I hated leaving him. Wasn’t so sure he’d make it. But finding a way to sever my connection to Marina gracefully was important for the sake of Harper’s safety. The memory of the horse and the honeysuckle niggled like fleas.

“Hey, I’m good.” Ryder’s heavy hand hit my shoulder, nearly submerging me. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

He treaded water and leered, more like himself than he’d been since setting foot in the water. A relief to my overprotective instincts, even though his admonition was nonsensical.

“If you get in trouble, yell,” I added, not quite willing to let him go. “I’ll hear you.”

But Ryder was already swimming away from me, continuing his journey back to our campground. His splashing was louder than it should have been, but it was also rhythmic and unflustered.

Marina’s foot, I noted, was tapping ten times faster than Ryder’s arm strokes.

She