Page 10 of Riding with the Shifter

I’m out of breath, my heart still beating a mile a minute. And I can’t find it in me to feel self-conscious about my confession. It feels like I’ve never been more honest in my life. More free to open up.

Ryder is silent for a long moment, his gaze heavy on my face. Then, slowly, he reaches out to tuck a stray curl behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my cheek.

“I want you to feel like that all the time,” he says softly, his voice rough with emotion. “Free. Wild. Alive. It’s how you’re meant to be, Zara. It’s who you are, even if you don’t always let yourself be that woman.”

I lean into his touch, my eyes fluttering closed as my heart clenches in my chest. How does he do that? See right through me, to the parts of me I keep locked away from the rest of the world?

“Ryder,” I whisper, his name both a prayer and a plea on my lips. “I… I don’t know what this is, between us. But I feel it. This connection, this pull. Like something bigger than the both of us, something I can’t really understand or explain.”

I feel him go still, his hand tightening on my face. “You do?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. “Thank fuck.”

I open my eyes, meeting his gaze with a shaky smile. “Maybe I’m crazy to be here, to feel this way, to want…”

I trail off, my cheeks heating as I realize what I was about to say. But Ryder doesn’t let me hide, tipping my chin up until I’m drowning in the blue of his eyes.

“Crazy to want what, baby? What do you want, Zara? Tell me, and it’s yours.”

Oh God. The way he’s looking at me, the raw heat and desperate longing in his gaze… it steals the breath from my lungs and the sense from my head.

“You,” I hear myself say, the word ripped from a deep, fierce place inside me. “I want you, Ryder. All of you, everything you are.”

Something flashes in his eyes, something raw, feral, and strangely vulnerable. “All of me,” he repeats slowly, his thumb stroking my bottom lip like he’s memorizing the shape of it. “Are you sure, Zara? Because the truth… is a bit scary. It’s crazy. It’s the kind of thing that will change your life, change everything you thought you knew about the world.”

A shiver rolls through me, part fear, part anticipation. “Tell me,” I whisper, my heart pounding against my ribs. “Please, Ryder. I need to know.”

He takes a deep breath, his gaze never leaving mine. And then, in a voice that shakes with the gravity of his words… he tells me.

“I’m a werewolf.”

I blink. Stare. Blink again. Then burst out laughing, the tension draining from my body in a rush.

“Right, okay. I get it. You’re fucking with me again. Haha, very funny.”

But Ryder doesn’t laugh. He just watches me with those burning eyes, his jaw tight, his shoulders tense.

And slowly, slowly… reality sinks in.

He’s not joking. He’s not playing some twisted prank, or making a clumsy attempt at escapism. He truly believes what he’s saying.

Fuck, for once I meet a man I really like and of course he has to be nuts!

“You’re serious,” I whisper, my legs going weak beneath me. “You actually believe that…”

“I believe that?” Ryder finishes, a wry twist to his mouth. He steps back, his hands clenching at his sides. “I know it sounds insane. But I swear to you, on everything I am, everything I hope to be… it’s the truth.”

I shake my head, my mind reeling as I try to process the impossible. Ryder, my Ryder, the man I’ve been falling for against all reason and logic is…. crazy.

And he’s standing right in front of me, flesh and blood, and deadly stare. And everything I started to wish for, to believe could happen for myself, for us, starts crumbling down.

“Show me,” I hear myself say, my voice steady in the whirling chaos of my thoughts. “If you’re really a werewolf… show me. Prove it.”

Ryder’s eyes flare, something primal flashing through the blue. But he nods, slow and solemn, like he was expecting this. Like he knew I would challenge his confession.

“Okay,” he says quietly, his gaze holding mine and not letting go. “Okay, baby. But I need you to understand… once you see, you can’t go back to believing in the world you knew this morning. Everything will change.”

I swallow hard, my heart lodged somewhere in my throat, my hands clenching into fists at my sides.

He looks at me for a long, weighted moment, his expression unreadable. Then, with a sigh that seems to come from the depths of his soul… he starts to strip.

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