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.
Chapter Seven
“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.”