by T. S. Joyce
Her fingers shook as she rushed to pay, and she told Alana to keep the change just to escape faster.
“What’s your name?” Ryder asked from across the room.
“Uuuh, Alexis. People call me Lexi.”
“Sexy Lexi, I like it.”
Alana rolled her eyes and handed Lexi the bag. “Ryder, don’t be a twat.”
“That doesn’t offend me. I love twats.”
Lexi snorted, but swallowed it down and bit her bottom lip to hide her smile. This man was too amusing for his own good, or hers. “Bye, Alana.” She gave her friend a polite smile and high-kneed it for the door.
“See ya later, Sexy Lexi,” Ryder said. But where she expected to see humor on his face, his eyebrows were drawn down and furrowed.
He was so cute! Those freckles and fair skin, perfect nose, great smile, dimples, and now his eye color had morphed to a vibrant blue. He was definitely one of those shifters, but she had no clue what kind. For all Lexi knew, he could be a bear shifter like Alana was now.
She forced herself to break her gaze from Ryder’s, and just as she did, she smashed face first into the glass door. Mortified, she apologized—to the door—then escaped out into the sunlight. She inhaled deeply as she jogged to her mud-splattered black jeep parked right in front of the café.
As she pulled out of the parking spot, she looked through the window of Alana’s shop one last time to see Ryder standing there, head cocked, eyes narrowed as he watched her leave. He was biting the corner of his lip like she was as confusing to him as he was to her.
He was taller and wider in the shoulders than she’d been able to tell before, and now her hormones were surging. It was probably just the animal in him that was affecting her like this. That was a thing, right? She’d seen it on websites. Animal magnetism or something.
Yeah. That was all it was.
Lexi hit the gas and blasted down Main Street and away from the sexy, red-headed giant. The sooner she got back to work up in the Smoky Mountains, the better. That man was hung up on his ex, and Lexi had been there, done that.
She would not set herself up to be any man’s rebound.
Chapter Two
Weston muttered a curse as he poked and prodded at the undercarriage of the four-wheeler he’d flipped on its side. “Doesn’t make any sense, man. It should start.”
“It’s electrical,” Ryder said from where he sat on the back porch stairs of their connected cabins.
“It’s not. I already checked.”
“It’s the switch.”
“Goddammit, Ryder, it’s not the switch.”
Ryder shrugged and went back to rubbing his thumb across the inside of his palm and thinking about her. Sexy Lexi. She’d taken up his entire headspace since yesterday, but he couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was how frazzled she’d seemed when he’d talked to her, or maybe it was the sexy way her full lips formed the word vagina. Hell, maybe he was just curious about why she’d bolted from the café. Nah, it wasn’t curiosity. It was those big ol’ titties popping out from her camo-printed tank top. Camo on top, a push-up bra, obviously, little jean shorts hugging that juicy ass of hers, and hiking boots that made her legs look like they needed to be wrapped around him as soon as possible. It wasn’t just her curves that had him drawn up when she’d told him not to call Serena back though. It was her face too, or more specifically, her eyes. They were a strange color between green and amber. Mood eyes maybe. They probably changed colors when she was pissed. So fuckin’ sexy on a human. And her hair? Jet black and long, soft curls stretching down over those perfect jugs of hers. Dark tresses paired with all that mascara shit on her long lashes made the green-brown of her eyes pop even more.
She’d stunned him. Even more surprising? She’d stunned his owl.
That probably meant it was about time to get laid again. Serena drove him crazy every fuckin’ Tuesday and made him desperate to snuff his ex out of his mind. And this week, Ryder’s inner bird had just happened to land his horny sights on Sexy Lexi.
His best friend, Weston, pulled the four-wheeler back upright and shoved a couple of probes on the wires coming off the starter switch. He turned it on, but his machine didn’t make a single solitary beep.
“Told you,” Ryder gloated.
“Dang,” Weston said, standing back to glare at it. “We ain’t got the part for that.”
“I’ll order it tomorrow.”
Wes wiped his greasy hands on a rag that used to be white but was now the color of soot, then frowned over his shoulder at Ryder. “Are you gonna tell me about the call yesterday or not?”
“You already know how it went, psychic.”
“Don’t call me that. I haven’t had a single vision about you or Serena. You told me so about the switch, but I told you so for three fuckin’ years about her.” Weston squatted and started poking around near the throttle before he murmured to himself, “That woman is a little monster in human skin.”
“Yeah, well, she was my little monster.”
“Bullshit, she was never yours. She cheated on you, then took your dog and all your money, man. She made you into a damn country song. You open yourself up too much in relationships.”
Ryder gritted his teeth against verbally reaming Wes and shook his head, staring off into the early spring woods behind the double cabin. Wes didn’t get it. He’d never needed anyone else. Not really. He was strong on his own, but Ryder had been wanting a bond with a mate since he was a kid. He really thought he’d found it with Serena.
Wes would only give him a hard time, though, so he kept that little gem to himself.
To avoid the hell out of this conversation, Ryder said, “I applied for the permits to use the land behind Harper’s Mountains to make trails. We also got the LLC paperwork back. Big Flight ATV Tours is officially ours.”
“Alana said you’ve been asking her about some townie named Alexis Porter.”
“Alana has a big mouth and is being a terrible second best friend,” Ryder muttered grumpily. He was definitely going to burn a dick shape into her and Aaron’s front yard tonight.
“You gonna ask her out?” Wes asked innocently.
“You gonna give me shit about it?”
“No. I think it’s a good idea. Alana thinks Alexis is single. Plus, you have Serena up on this pedestal, and you need to put yourself out there and literally take any other person in the world out on a date to see she wasn’t that awesome.”
Ryder frowned suspiciously at the back of Wes’s head as he worked. “I thought you said bonds were stupid.”
“Yeah, they are. Sex isn’t stupid, though, and you need your dick stroked. Your ego, too. You talk a big game, have a sarcastic comment for everything, but I’ve seen you at Drat’s. You won’t even get a girl’s number anymore. Serena shook you up.”
“No, she shook up Stewart the accountant. P.S. we need Wi-Fi out here ASAP. It super-sucks having to make my weekly call to Serena in Alana’s café. I’m pretty sure I’m drawing the crowd on Tuesdays so the town can watch my chronic emasculation. I came this close to seeing Dottie today.” He squished his finger and thumb together. “This close.”
“You need to let that dog go, man.”
“Yeah, that’s what Sexy Lexi said, too.”
Wes snorted. “I like her already. Logical, thinks with her head, not her heart. I approve.”
Ryder picked up a stick off the porch and chucked it at him. “You know, bein’ heartless ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Wes stood and leveled him with a green-eyed glance. “And how did that break up feel, Ryder? How does it still feel?”
Ryder ducked his gaze and refused to answer, but Wes wouldn’t be ignored.
“Huh? How does it feel?”
“Feels like she ripped my insides out,” Ryder admitted low. “Feels like I’m walking around empty.”
“Because you let her walk all over you, man. You completely ignored all the bad shit she was doing to you. Next girl, take your time, g
o in easy, just have some fun instead of thinking she’s the one. Guys like us aren’t meant to pair up like that.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re flight shifters! We don’t bond like bears, boars, or gorilla shifters. We can’t Turn a human. We don’t give claiming marks. We’re basically humans with the ability to shift into animals. Nothing more.”
“You can’t really believe that.”
“I do. And the sooner you realize it, the sooner you’ll see you’re searching for something that doesn’t exist. How can you ever be happy if you don’t learn to be content with what you have?”
Weston turned around and went back to fiddling with the switch on the four-wheeler. Ryder scrubbed his hand down his short facial scruff. Maybe Weston was right. Maybe Ryder needed to stop searching for a mate and just accept it wasn’t his destiny. It wasn’t his fate to have this epic love story like Harper and Wyatt, like Alana and Aaron. Maybe Beaston had given the prophesy that he and Weston would be friends—blood brothers—for always because he knew there would be no mate bond for either of them.
Fucking Stewart with his tiny penis and fucking Serena for wasting three years of his life with her lies. She’d sworn up and down she felt a bond with him, but she didn’t even know what love was. Hell, he obviously didn’t know what a bond was supposed to feel like either.
Maybe Wes was right, and Ryder just needed a casual sex-capade to get him out of this funk.
Chasing Sexy Lexi’s fine ass would be the perfect distraction.
Chapter Three
Lexi snapped the lid closed on the last plastic container of leftovers and set it with the others in the fridge. She liked this cabin’s kitchen most. Out of all of the high-end rustic properties Smoky Mountain Paradise Cabins owned, this was the biggest and most expensive for clients to rent. The kitchen was sprawling. Shining granite countertops gleamed in gray with dark speckles and veins of black shimmer, and the cabinets had been stained a rich walnut color. The appliances were new and stainless steel, and the stove had six burners instead of the four the other cabins had.
Her clients, Mr. and Mrs. Randal, had been awesome to serve. They’d emailed her the exact menu a month in advance and reserved her personal chef services for four meals of their seven-day stay. They’d chatted cordially in the hot tub on the back deck as she’d prepared the hors d’oeuvres, and they’d giggled like newlyweds during the four-course meal she served them.
They were here celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and Lexi had admired them all through dinner as their laughter echoed around the house. She wanted that. Someday.
Perhaps not right now when she was reeling from what Blake had done, but someday she wanted to fall head over heels in love with someone who only had eyes for her.
She cleaned the kitchen, packed her extra supplies in her tote bags, and then she brought the half-empty bottle of chilled white wine out to the back deck where the lovebirds were enjoying a game of checkers in the shade.
The view out here always astonished her. The cabin was on stilts and sat high up in the air overlooking a gently rolling river with thick greenery all around. The forest was coming to life after a long winter. This was her favorite part of the year, when the Smokies bloomed.
“Lexi, everything was wonderful,” Mrs. Randal gushed.
She grinned and topped off their wine glasses. “Well, I appreciate it. You have been a pleasure to serve. Is there anything you need from town?”
“The concierge said you do grocery runs,” Mr. Randal said with a slight frown at the checker board. His wife was smoking him.
“I do, and I would be happy to pick the groceries up and deliver them in the morning if you would like. The service will be charged to the card you reserved the cabin with.”
“Perfect,” Mrs. Randal said with a beaming smile. “That way we can hole up here and not have to go all the way to Bryson City tonight. There is a grocery list and your tip on the dining table.”
With a slight bow of her head, Lexi murmured, “Thanks so much. I’ll leave my number on the counter. Feel free to call at any time if you need to make a change to your grocery list, or your menu.”
She said her farewells, collected the list and her tip, then made her way outside where her Jeep was parked near the Randal’s rental car.
Lexi was dressed in her professional best, wearing her official chef outfit assigned to her by the owner of Smoky Mountain Paradise Cabins. Her Jeep, however, was a study in opposites. It sat on giant mud tires with black rims and had a rooster tail of dirt down both sides. She’d actually had to wipe grit off her lights last night just so they would illuminate better, but getting around to all these backroad cabins was muddy business in the spring.
Movement caught her eye in the woods, but when she jerked her attention to the trees, there was nothing there. Just gently swaying branches. As she stood there frozen, the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. She rubbed the gooseflesh there and hurriedly shoved all of her things into the back of her ride.
But when she turned around, the movement was back. She gasped. A massive white owl sat on a thick branch of a towering oak tree. The owl seemed abnormally large, and when it stretched out one of its wings, the long, perfect feathers were speckled with a chocolate brown. The sound of its long, curved talons against the bark sent shivers up her spine. The owl was beautiful, but didn’t seem natural out here in these woods.
In a rush, Lexi bolted around to the driver’s side and yanked open the door. When she was inside, she locked the doors, as if the bird could lift door handles or something. She knew her fear was irrational, but that didn’t change the adrenaline dump happening inside of her body right now.
Her hands shook as she jammed the key at the ignition, missed, and tried again with success. Blowing out a breath, she pulled around to the dirt road that led out of here and blasted past the tree with the mutant owl. When she looked up into the branches, its head was turning slowly, its eyes tracking her escape. So creepy.
Maybe she should call animal control. That thing was big enough to eat her dog, Sprinkles, in one gulp. The Randals hadn’t brought pets, but some of the other clients at the cabins had.
Okay, but there were black bears in the area, and a slew of other predators, and that was the risk clients took bringing their animals out into the woods. They even signed waivers that the cabin rental company wasn’t liable for any pet accidents. Would being eaten by an abnormally giant owl count as an accident?
After she put a few miles of distance between her and the bird, Lexi relaxed enough to turn up the radio to one of the only stations that came through out here. An upbeat country song came on, and she hummed along off-key. It helped to settle her.
The forest blurred by as she hit the main road that would take her home. Feeling a hundred times better, she sang louder, making up words where she didn’t remember them.
Up ahead, off to the side of the road, a man stood with his leg propped up on a log. He was shirtless, clad in only low slung jean shorts that were a dozen inches too short. As she slowed down, the man poured a plastic gallon jug of water over his bright red hair and rubbed the water all over his rippling abs in slow motion.
Her Wrangler rocked to a stop. Slowly, she rolled down the window. “Ryder?”
“Take a picture.”
“What?”
“Take a picture for your spank bank.”
He picked up another gallon of water and dumped it seductively over his chest.
“How many jugs of water do you have?”
“Just take the picture!”
“Okay.” She pulled her phone from the cup holder and lifted it slowly. Click. Well, if she ignored the fact that she could almost see the head of his pecker hanging from the short shorts, he did look good with all those muscles.
Ryder shook out his hair like a dog, then sauntered over to her jeep like he was on a fashion runway and threw open her passenger side door.
“No, wait!” she
said, holding up her hands.
Ryder sat down with a squish and grinned at her, his eyebrow cocked. “How was that for you?”
“Where is your car?” she asked, looking around. The road was empty.
“I flew here.”
“You…flew?” Realization hit her in an instant, and she freaked out, kicked open her door, and bolted outside. “You’re that giant owl?”
Ryder held his hands out as though he was confused by her abrupt exit. He got out and leaned on the hood of her ride. With a naughty grin, he pointed to his dick and said, “Yeah. Giant owl. I thought about doing a naked scene for you, but then I thought maybe nah, my giant dong can be intimidating at first glance, and I think we should be friends before we get to the benefit part. I mean, I don’t really think that because I’m a dude and would be fine if you wanted to do benefits now, but I read a book about how you have to seduce women slowly, so…” He frowned. “What are you wearing? No matter.” He gestured to his lap. “You still gave me a boner.”
Lexi shook her head hard to rattle her churning thoughts into a coherent sentence. “So you planned this…photo shoot? For me? Like, you put jugs of water out here, and those shorts are on purpose?”
Ryder scrunched up his face in a cocky-male expression and said, “Yeah.”
Lexi scratched her head and murmured, “Okay, I’m going to go home now.”
“Cool. Do you want me to ride with you or follow behind? I can fly, but I’ll be losing the shorts, and when I Change back, I’ll be bare-ass naked. The choice is yours.”
“No, you aren’t coming home with me.”
He offered her an utterly offended frown. “Wait no. I have questions.”
“What questions?”
He pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and slung water off of it before he held up the first scribbled page for her to see. “Interview questions. I’m shopping for a third best friend.”