Air Ryder (Harper's Mountains Book 3) (7 page)

“And?” she asked.

“Fucking perfect.” He pushed his hands off the Jeep and left her weak-kneed and wanting, the tease. Chuckling like he found himself very amusing, Ryder pulled the cooler and rolled-up, red blanket out of the back seat. “What did you bring me?”

“I cooked the last meal of a couple’s vacation at lunch, and they had no need for the leftovers since they’re headed to the airport tonight. I don’t know where you live, so I called Alana and asked where you were so I could surprise you.”

“Best surprise ever. Unless you showed up bare-ass naked. Then that would be the best surprise ever.” Ryder winked and made a
tick
sound behind his teeth. “Tip for next time. Oh, my God, is this blackened catfish and alexander sauce?” he asked as he stared down into a plastic container.

“Yep! It’s got some kick, too.”

“Woman, you’re gonna get an owl baby put in you today.”

Lexi laughed, but really, that didn’t scare her as much as it probably should. Ryder was going to make a very good daddy for some lucky kid someday. She could tell with how tender he was with Sprinkles and how he’d genuinely loved engaging with children the other day at the Taste of Bryson City.

Ryder led her down a squishy trail toward the ATV garage, and when they came to a bog, he let her climb on his back, then carried her, the cooler, and rolled-up blanket through the muck like he didn’t mind mud on his jeans. And all the while, he talked about his and Weston’s plans for this place. She loved the sound of Ryder’s deep, rich voice when he was excited like this.

He backed out a couple of quads and showed her how to use the smaller of the two. Then he strapped the cooler on the back of his with bungie cords and pulled a wide circle, his face in an animated smile as he talked, his eyes following her. Everything slowed, and the moment dragged blissfully on. Ryder had put on a baseball cap backward, and his thin, white V-neck T-shirt was splattered with mud and dirt from the work he’d been doing before she’d shown up. His jeans were old and threadbare at the knees, and his giant work boots were muddy as he shifted gears on his ATV. His lips moved in slow motion with the words he spoke to her, and his blue eyes sparked with happiness.

She loved him.

That’s what this joyous buzzing feeling in her middle was. She’d fallen that deep already.

Time resumed its natural rhythm, and Lexi pressed the throttle, easing her quad into the tracks Ryder had made. After a few minutes of getting used to it, her confidence grew and she felt comfortable enough to speed up. Ryder grinned over his shoulder in a challenge and hit the gas.

His laughter echoed through the woods and flooded her heart as she raced after him, her lungs burning with how hard she was laughing. He led her through mud puddles and around tree stumps. He led her past brambles and brush, up hills and through gently rolling creeks.

This place was beautiful. Ryder was building a business in an enchanted wood, and she had no doubt that tourists would fall in love with the adventure he and Wes would lead them on. Up and up, they climbed sloping hills until Ryder pulled to a stop in a clearing. He cut the engine, hopped off his quad, showed her how to turn hers off, and then helped her down. Her shoes and calves were splattered with dark mud, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Ryder didn’t seem like a man who needed his woman perfect.

After Ryder unstrapped the cooler, he pulled Lexi by the hand toward an old, uprooted tree lying on its side. “You ready?” he asked, but the humor had faded from his face.

Her opinion of this place mattered to him.

“Is it special?” she asked.

“It’s where I come when everything gets too heavy.”

His hand went gentle under hers as he helped her over the log. And when she was settled on the ground, she looked up and gasped in awe. The Smoky Mountains stretched on and on in front of them, green waves jutting up gracefully from the earth. The sky above was a rich color of blue, just like Ryder’s eyes. Wisps of white clouds painted the blue canvas in hurried brush strokes.

“Oh Ryder, it’s amazing.” She shouldn’t ask, because it might ruin the moment, but she had to know exactly where she stood with him. “Have you showed this to anyone else?”

When he shook his head, his eyes were raw and honest. “Haven’t wanted to share it with anyone but you.”

Her eyes prickled with emotion, and she jerked her gaze back to the incredible scenery and blinked rapidly. “I think you’re my favorite person,” she whispered, too chicken to look at him.

There was a smile in his voice when he said, “Good.”

Ryder sat on the ground in front of the log and began pulling out their lunch. Lexi sat on the log behind Ryder and leaned on him, hugging his shoulders. He laughed and pulled off his baseball cap, then put it on her head. It was too big and drooped down, which made her laugh. Pulling the rim backward, she rested her chin on his shoulder and opened her mouth for the bite of catfish he offered her on a plastic fork.

And as he chatted on easily, he relaxed back against her and fed them both a bite at a time as if they’d known each other forever. And it felt like they had. As she listened to stories about when he was a kid and the trouble he’d found with his friends, she fell even harder for him.

Because of Ryder, she’d lived more in the past week than she had in years. She’d laughed and smiled more than she could remember, and the way she felt about him now was like first love. The kind that stuck with a heart forever. The kind that was the starting point to deep happiness.

She wasn’t saying the words to him, but she felt the butterflies and the heart flutters that said she was in deep.

And if the genuine smile on his lips, the booming laughter, and the constant affectionate pets were anything to go by, Ryder was diving in deep with her, too.

Nothing in her entire life had been as exciting as thinking about the endless possibilities of a future with the quick-witted, dirty-talking, endearingly sweet Air Ryder.

“Favorite color?” Ryder asked, stroking her hair.

Lexi had her head resting on his stomach as they stared up into the tall forest canopy. Ryder had spread out the blanket on thick grass, so her back was nice and comfy right now. Crossing her legs at the ankles, she lifted her hand into the air. She spread out her fingers under the speckles of sunlight that filtered through the trees. Now she looked as freckled as Ryder. “Gold.” She wouldn’t tell him it used to be purple, or that her new favorite was because of Ryder’s eye color when he got riled up, but from his soft chuckle, she thought maybe he knew.

“Yours?” she asked.

Ryder rested his arm under his head and ran his other fingers through her hair again. “Orange, but for a silly reason.”

“Tell me.”

“In the Boarlanders, I have a crew member who is kind of like an uncle to me.”

“What’s his name?” She wanted to know every single thing about Ryder.

“Bash. He’s real simple in how he talks and thinks, but he’s a beast at handling crew finances. He just has a head for numbers, you know? They make sense to him. Anyway, he’s a good man, completely devoted to his mate, has three daughters who think he hung the moon because he was just so damn good and natural at taking care of his girls. I looked up to him a lot when I was growing up, and his favorite color was orange. Not bright orange, but like sunset orange. I like orange because Bash was so excited about the color when I was growing up.”

She rolled her head on his stomach and couldn’t help her mushy smile. Sweet, loyal man.

“My turn,” he said in that deep, rich voice of his. “You ever been arrested?”

“No! Wait, maybe once.”

“Maybe? Criminal.”

“My friends and I got caught spray-painting maroon devils down the middle of Main Street after a big playoff game. We got busted at three in the morning and had to sit in a cop car while the officer called our parents. I didn’t go to jail, though, so does it count?”

“Counts. Did you wear handcuffs?” Ryder asked, arching his eyebrows suggestively.

“No, perv, now you go. Have you ever been arrested?”

“Uuuh, yes.”

“Oh God, why am I not surprised?” she said with a laugh.

“After the shifter rights vote, the police cracked down on us hard. I got taken in a few times for public indecency.”

“You were streaking?”

“No, my Changes aren’t magic. They’re scientific, so my clothes don’t just magically appear when I Change back to my human form.”

“Oooh, now I get it. You would be seen after a Change?”

“Yup. And then there was that whole painting a giant penis on the water tower incident that definitely got me taken in. I saw the police lights and made like an owl and got the fuck out of there, but I’d left my clothes behind and my wallet was in the back pocket of my jeans. They came and picked me up in the middle of the night and, oh, my dad was pissed. He laughs hard about it now, tells that story every damn holiday, but when the police told him what I’d done, his face turned red like a tomato and his veins popped out of his forehead. I almost wanted them to keep me in jail so I didn’t have to go back and face his wrath. I had to hand paint the entire tower to cover up the dick, and I was grounded all senior year.”

Lexi’s stomach shook with her laughter, and she rolled over on her side to better see him. “I bet you were a little monster to raise.”

“I was for sure. My mom always said she hoped I had a kid who is just like me so I can see how much her and Mason went through raising me. The woman’s tryin’ to curse me, I swear. She loves it, though. She can’t stop laughing when her and Mason get to swapping stories about me. My sisters were super easy for them to raise. Straight A students, good girls, and they were both born piglets so no flight feathers for them. They like to give me hell for how bad I was, but really, I just made it to where they could get away with anything. My parents were always saying, ‘Well, at least it’s not as bad as when Ryder did
this
.”’

Lexi climbed over him, laid down on his stomach, and rested her forearms under her chin. His heartbeat picked up as she smiled at him. “Your social media accounts scare me.”

“Why?” he asked, a slight frown marring his red eyebrows.

“Because you have hundreds of thousands of followers on each of your accounts. So many women who would just throw themselves at you. And your posts are all funny and engaging. And you post all the half-naked pictures and you look so good, but also really out of my league.”

Ryder drew his arm farther under his head, propping up his neck. He stroked his other fingertips down her spine. “The accounts are just for attention.” Well, at least he was honest. “I started them between girlfriends when I was just feeling like shit and wanted an outlet. People responded online, and at first it was fulfilling, you know? All this positive attention from strangers. It got me out of my funk. But after a while, it just felt like…I dunno. Like the fans were pretend, and the things they said didn’t really touch me anymore. They weren’t real. None of it was. When I was a kid, Weston’s dad said that someday everyone would know my name as Air Ryder.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t think I would get famous for nudie pics and dirty jokes though.”

That sounded like a heavy burden—knowing from childhood that his fate was to be well-known. Lexi would’ve rebelled against a destiny like that and gone into hiding, but Ryder had embraced it and shouldered the pressure. He was even stronger than she’d realized.

“I like you,” she blurted out.

Ryder brushed her hair over to the side and began stroking down her spine again, his eyes averted. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I like the real you. The social media accounts? I read through your posts for two hours and didn’t feel like I knew you any better. I already thought you were funny and that your body was incredible, but I adore you when you’re like this even more. I like the serious parts, the humble parts, and the way you don’t really take yourself seriously like you try to convince the world you do. I like all the extra stuff beyond the one-liners and the muscles.”

In the middle of her heartfelt admission, Ryder’s eyes had drifted to her cleavage and glazed over.

Lexi swatted his shoulder. “Are you listening? I’m bearing my soul here!”

“Yes, I’m listening! But your tits are all mashed against me, and they’re soft as fuck. I have a boner,
obviously
, and if you could just say that all again while you’re rubbing your pelvis against mine, that would be great.”

“Ridiculous man,” she complained, trying to hide her grin. “I just told you something hard, so now it’s your turn.”

“I’m an open book. Nothing is hard.”

The smile dipped from her lips as she remembered the way he’d looked mid-panic-attack when she’d pulled up. “What was wrong with you earlier? What were you thinking about?”

Ryder’s eyes dimmed, and slowly he shook his head, denying her an answer.

She shouldn’t feel so slapped by his rejection, but he’d just shut her out of something big. Desperate to be let in behind the walls he’d so obviously built up, she whispered, “Please.”

Ryder let off a low, humming sound in his throat that sounded animalistic and pissed off all at once. His eyes sparked like gold flames in the second before he ripped his gaze away from her and gave his attention to the woods. The air felt heavier now, harder to breathe somehow, and chills blasted up her skin. Her instincts screamed to move away from him, but she felt like she was close to something. Close to peeking into his soul, perhaps, so she froze on top of him instead, careful not to move a single muscle.

Ryder dragged in a quick breath, as though his chest was constricting his lungs. “My real dad was an asshole, and sometimes I still let him in my head. I’m thirty years old, haven’t seen or heard from him since I was five, and I was raised by the best step-dad my mom could’ve found for me. So it’s super fucked up that I still think about my real dad because it’s disrespectful to Mason.”

“Why did he leave?”

Ryder sat up suddenly and positioned her over his lap, hugged her against him so hard it was even more difficult to breathe. He hid his face from her, buried it against her neck. “Lexi, I don’t want to talk about this. Please just drop this.”

“Okay,” she whispered, because this conversation wasn’t helping Ryder. It was hurting him. She could tell from the way his arms shook around her ribcage. Nothing in her wanted to ruin this perfect day. If he wasn’t ready to share this part with her, it was okay.

So she admitted something she hated thinking about as a reward for him giving her that much. “You know when I told you about my ex?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded too low, too rough.

“And about how he cheated on me?”

“Yeah.”

“He told me the day before we were supposed to get married, right before our rehearsal dinner.”

Ryder’s limbs stopped shaking, and he hugged her hard. Lexi gasped at how strong he was, and he released her in a rush. Leaning back on locked arms, he cast his brightly-colored gaze off to the side and said carefully, “Tell me.”

“I had my wedding gown all steam cleaned and ready, hanging from the top of my closet door. The bridal luncheon was done, I had all the favors, flower arrangements, caterers, the venue, everything already paid for. My mom and I didn’t really get along, but she came around for the wedding planning and supported me one hundred percent. Everything was just as I had dreamed of as a little girl. It was perfect.” Her eyes burned with tears she refused to shed, so she blinked hard and continued. “Everything was perfect except the person I’d chosen to spend the rest of my life with. Blake had gotten his secret girlfriend pregnant, and he was starting a family with her instead of me. I. Was. Devastated. And instead of helping me deal with the mess he’d made, he took her on our honeymoon—the one I’d paid for—while I had to cancel everything, send the gifts back, and tell everyone the wedding was off. That’s the thing I hate talking about. Hate it. My family doesn’t even mention Blake or what happened anymore because I shut down for a year afterward. I hated everything and everyone, and I felt like I couldn’t trust people anymore. I’m coming out of it and finding myself again, but thinking about what happened makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and the wind has kicked up. It makes me feel like I could so easily fall back into the hole Blake created.” She cupped Ryder’s cheeks and dragged his glowing gold gaze back to hers. “So, you see, I’ve loved someone more than they loved me before, too, and I understand you don’t want to talk about ghosts. I still like you the same.”

Ryder winced in the instant before his lips crashed onto hers. His hands gripped her waist desperately, and she got it. Emotion was burning her up, too. This kiss banished thoughts of Blake, and she hoped with her whole heart it banished thoughts of Ryder’s asshole biological father, too. She didn’t know what his father had done to the man she loved, but she hated his real dad for putting darkness inside a creature of the light. Ryder was a man who could make a person feel incredible with a joke or a smile, but the man who was supposed to love him the most had hurt him as a kid. He’d hurt him so badly Ryder still wrestled with the demons conjured by that rejection.

She wanted to make him feel better, and to make herself feel better, too, so she eased out of their kiss just enough to pull her tank top over her head. Without a moment of hesitation, Ryder pulled his shirt off and unsnapped her bra with a competent snap of his fingers. He yanked the loose bra from her arms. She thought he would stare, drink her in, but he did something better. Ryder pulled her immediately against his chest and exhaled a shaky breath. He rocked them, as if the feeling of her bare skin against his was a feeling he’d waited for his whole life.

He was shattering her heart with his tenderness. She’d imagined intimacy with the dirty-mouthed, sexually-charged Air Ryder would be quick and hard, but he was lips melding onto hers, soft strokes against her skin, racing heartbeats, and a soft sound in his throat that was nothing shy of content.

This felt huge—like her first time.

She rolled her hips against his, and he cupped the back of her head, fingers intertwined in her long hair as he pressed his tongue past her lips and tasted her gently. His other arm was strong and steady on her back, drawing her close, keeping her sensitive breasts pressed against his rock hard chest.

God, she loved this. Loved being this close to him. His hard erection was pressed just right against the seam of her jeans, and as he rolled his hips for the first time, she gasped at how perfect the friction was between her legs. Heat pulsed into her chest, and she let off a tiny pained sound at the shock of it. Ryder flinched away, as though he’d felt it, too, and suddenly, the wind picked up, lifting her tresses from her shoulders. He stared at her as if he was really seeing her for the first time.

A baffled smile stretched his lips. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “You felt that…right?”

Lexi pressed her hand over her chest to see if her skin was hotter there. “Yeah,” she murmured.

And now Ryder’s mouth was on her neck as he squeezed her. He sucked hard, drawing a sharp gasp from her lips at the erotic combination of pain and pleasure. His teeth grazed her, and she rocked onto him helplessly. Fingers fumbling, she unsnapped his jeans and made a pathetic attempt to shove his pants down his hips. Ryder chuckled against her throat and helped her out by unsheathing himself. He pushed his jeans down his legs until they were in the grass beside the blanket. “Your turn,” he murmured, then sucked hard again.