Page 51 of Fastlander Fealty

The pizza arrived and Owen started telling a story about an argument he’d had on his jobsite last week with one of the humans on his team, while Silver pulled two huge slices of pizza off the pan and put them onto a plate. Owen had showed her in several ways that he had a gentleman’s manners, so she wasn’t surprised that he waited for her to get her food before he even reached for a slice. “Where did you learn manners?” she asked, as she set the plate with the two slices in front of him and licked pepperoni grease off her thumb as she scanned the pizza to see which piece she wanted for herself. “I know it wasn’t from the boars.”

He belted a laugh and said, “I read a book about it.”

“Owen the blue collar boy boar shifter reads books?” she teased as she picked the pizza slice with a bubble on the crust.”

“Blue collar boy boar shifter. Say that ten times fast.”

She tried and failed by time number three.

“You’re a bubble crust type of girl, huh?” he observed, watching her peel the portion of the crust with it off, and eat it. “I’ll remember that.”

And she absolutely believed he would. She arched her eyebrow and plucked off an olive. And then another. She liked some olives, but not a lot.

Owen was watching her, and he looked so handsome in the flickering candle light. He grabbed a fork and began flicking the olives off another piece that had a slightly smaller bubble on the crust, and her heart was touched. She knew he was doing that for her.

“I have a library card and everything,” he said, setting the new slice on her plate.

“I would’ve never called that,” she murmured, taking a big bite.

Only now did Owen take the first bite of his food.

“What kind of books do you like to read. Other than books on manners, of course.”

“I only got to chapter two of that book, it was boring,” he admitted. “I like reading autobiographies of interesting people.”

Surprised, she asked, “Seriously?”

“Yep. Do you read?”

“I used to when I was a teenager. I was into the bodice-ripper romances I found on my mom’s bookshelf.”

“Mmm, I bet that was educational.”

“Very.”

“Why did you stop reading them?”

She mulled over that question as she chewed. “I stopped reading them around the time I met Rook. My mom had brought me to the Holland Pride on their request. My lioness was good at fighting and I have a lineage that was interesting to them, and I met Rook and was promised to him, and then I don’t know. I just didn’t believe in romance anymore, and the books felt too fake. Half of the fun was imagining that could happen to me, and then suddenly the magic was sucked from them. I didn’t like men very much for a while, and so I didn’t like reading nice things about them, I guess.”

“Rook is the worst.”

“The total worst,” she said with a giggle. She liked how he could make light of heavy memories. That was a talent. “Today was wild,” she said.

“Yeah, you have a tan line.” He pointed to the general vicinity of her breasts.

Silver looked down and sure enough, between the flaps of his flannel, right above her sports bra-line were the tops of her triangle bikini, and the thin strap lines.

“Parts of the river float were fun.”

“Name your top three moments from today,” he said, reaching for his third slice. Gads, he could eat fast.

“Number one,” she began. “When you actually showed up at the river after I thought you were standing me up.”

“Mmm, I really did think about standing you up.”

“Gasp! What?”

“You were spying on my Crew, and I thought you were dangerously pretty, and too interesting for your own good.”

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