The day did not get less mystifying for Ruby.

This Mr. Burrows was not happy at all when he saw that she’d brought an unscheduled visitor. But the older, grizzled man hadn’t objected for long. First off, Ansel had greeted the scarred up, three-legged mutt that had eyed them warily from the side of the property.

“You got bacon in your pocket?” Mr. Burrows had asked suspiciously.

Both Ruby and Ansel had laughed in surprise at the question. “Ah. No.”

“Hmmm.” Mr. Burrows squinted in surprise when the dog had nudged her head under Ansel’s hand, her tail thumping on the ground. “I never seen Buttercup take to anybody so fast. She’s a rescue and doesn’t usually like men. Especially big ones.”

“Dogs like me,” Ansel had replied in what Ruby suspected was a wild understatement. Because at that minute, Buttercup flopped onto her back, humongous eyes flirting audaciously with Ansel. He chuckled and took a knee, giving the wiggling dog a proper belly scratch.

Mr. Burrows nodded in approval and started loping across his property. “Well, I guess you’ll want to see the birds.”

If Ruby had expected the aviary to be as rundown as the car up on blocks in his shabby front yard, she was quite pleasantly surprised. The aviary was gorgeous and obviously well cared for. It was a two-story, timber-frame structure with cedar shake shingles and immaculate screening on each side.

There were five birds at the aviary on that day and each one had its own screened-in area. Each bird had plenty of space and special little adjustments to their enclosures that were unique to their individual needs.

The birds, with their piercing stares and amber eyes, watched the newcomers warily.

“I guess birds like you just fine, too,” Mr. Burrows had said dryly as the first bird he took out to show them, a falcon, had fluttered immediately to Ansel’s arm. Luckily he’d already put on the heavy leather protector to shield him from the sharp claws.

Ruby watched in amazement as every bird took an instant liking and trust to Ansel Keto. Anything that Mr. Burrows could do with them – call them, toss them into flight, catch them – Ansel could instantly do as well. The birds just liked him.

Watching it happen stopped the breath in her chest. She knew she was seeing something special. She thanked God she had her camera there to capture it, but she also spent a good amount of time just watching with her naked eye.

Whenever they were together, every bit of that Ansel Keto focus was usually on her. And it made her nervous, untethered. But now his focus was on the birds and she got to observe him. What she saw blew her away.

He was both gentle and completely commanding. Big as hell but also unassuming. He both dominated everything around him and blended in perfectly well. The man was a jumble of paradoxes that intrigued her. She also realized that with her camera in hand, even when he turned that focus back to her, she wasn’t as nervous. It had never before occurred to her that she could actually take photos of the man, but now that she was, she found a strange power to it that calmed her.

For his part, Ansel had never seen anything more intriguing than Ruby at work. The sinuous way her body moved as she lined up the shot she wanted. The little noises he was sure she didn’t know she made. Little gasps and laughs, hums of disappointment or approval. She was completely unobtrusive as she took photos, unlike other photographers that he’d seen work. She didn’t take a hundred photos when she could just take one. She wielded that camera with the confidence and focus of a seasoned veteran, knowing with a preternatural intuition when to raise her camera to get the shot she wanted.

He was aware that she was taking pictures of him. And he kind of hated it. But he could also scent her calm, her focus, her happiness, and he would have bitten off one of his fingers before he made her stop.

They ended up staying much longer than they’d planned. Mr. Burrows even fed them a hearty lunch. He didn’t exactly invite them back. But he did mutter a gruff, “Just give me a call before you come next time and I’ll make sure to be here.”

They shook hands and Ansel and Ruby trekked back to the car she’d parked down the driveway. She thought of the way he’d somehow managed to surround her just sitting in the passenger seat and her stomach flipped. All of her newfound calm that had come from photographing him was starting to dissolve. She didn’t want it to. She wanted to be calm. A thought occurred to her.

“Would you mind driving?” she asked, holding out the keys.

He nodded, with a little smile on his face as he took the keys. He liked the idea of driving her around. And in her car no less. There was something intimate about it. It didn’t occur to him that she did it so that she could take pictures of him until they were back on the two lane highway and he heard the telltale click from beside him.

“What’s that for?” he asked, glancing over at her. There was a small smile on her face that Ansel had never seen before, but he liked it.

“You make a good subject,” she said, her eyes glancing down to his hand on the stick shift, then to his other hand draped over the steering wheel. Quick as two flashes she took a picture of one and then the other.

He shifted against the seat. Uncomfortable with his photo being taken. “The birds made good subjects.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But you with the birds? That was… really special. I’d never seen anything like that.”

“Like I said, animals like me.”

“Yeah,” she lifted an eyebrow. “I heard.” Ruby looked out the window and watched the mountains race past. It had been a good morning. A great morning. The best she’d had in a year at least. Her heart gave a painful twang. “Griff would have loved that.”

Ansel nodded. “I remember that he really loved animals. Kept trying to convince you to get a dog, right?”

Ruby swallowed hard. “Yup. Can’t remember why I always said no. It would have made him so happy.”

“I’m sure you had a good reason. You always do with Griff. You’re a good mother.”

She glanced at him in surprise. Things between her and Griff had always been up in the air in terms of labels. For a while, it had been important to her that he remember that she was his sister, not his mother. It had felt like the only way to hold on to her parents. But as the years passed, it became more and more clear that she was his parent more than anything. After a while, the label had seemed to be more important to other people than to the two of them. They were just Ruby and Griff: family.

It intrigued Ruby that Ansel had called her a mother so easily, without hesitation. Thoughtfully, she zoomed in on his face and snapped another picture. Immediately, she brought the image up on the screen of the camera and studied it. Because it wasn’t him, it was an image, she found that she could stare at it without coming out of her skin. And what she saw there was amazing. She saw a man, flesh and blood. She saw someone gentle and good. She saw thoughts, organized and deep. She saw all sorts of things that she’d never been able to identify when she looked at him in person. When his energy and presence got her all jumbled up. She looked at it for a long time; the silence in the car was comfortable and long.

They were all the way back on the road leading up to his house when she finally looked up from the picture. She was surprised to realize that looking at him in the photo had given her a lens of sorts to look at him in real life. Everything that she’d discovered by looking at him in the photo was overlaid over his real-life face. She still saw that pulsing, tight energy, that nerve-making something that set her system on fire, but she saw the other stuff, too.

She was thrilled with the discovery. For the first time since she met him, she thought that they might actually be able to be friends.

“Well, that’s a relief.” She spoke without thinking.

“What’s that?”

“Oh.” She blushed, glancing down at the photo and gathering strength. “You’re hard to read for me, in real life. But in a photo, I can read you much better.”

He pulled into his driveway and they both got out of the car. She crossed around front, meaning to get into the driver’s seat, but he caught her by the elbow and she found herself sitting on his front steps. “What do you mean?”

Ruby gathered her thoughts. She tried not to be nervous when he stretched out next to her, his legs all the way down the stairs and one hand on the step behind her. The afternoon sun was warm but not too hot. “Well, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what you were thinking in the car, but then I took your picture.” She brought up the picture on her camera and handed it over to him. He studied it for all of a second before he passed it back, looking mildly uncomfortable. She was delighted to discover he was a bit shy.

“And what does the picture tell you?”

She studied it rather than look at his face. “Well, that you’re comfortable driving, and that you were comfortable in the car with me. You’re patient.” She dragged her finger over the squint lines in the photo.

Ansel’s eyes were glued to the side of her face as she spoke. He could smell her sweet scent, and a breeze was tussling the hair that had come loose from her braid. She was touching the photo of his face and it was almost, almost as if she were touching him.

“You–” she cut herself off but took a deep breath, willing herself to continue. She scrolled back through the pictures she’d taken that day. Most of them featuring Ansel. “You always look like a man who is exactly where he wants to be.”

He went still beside her. He didn’t want to push her. But if he didn’t say something right now, it would be as close to lying to her as he’d ever gotten, and he just wouldn’t do that. He scrubbed a hand over his face, scratched at his beard for a second as he leaned forward, elbows on knees.

“That’s because where I am in those photos is next to you.” He turned back to look her in the eye and was very pleased when she held his gaze. Even if she did look like he’d just told her he was from a different planet. “And that is exactly where I want to be.”

She opened her mouth to speak and a look of deep confusion came over her face. Her eyes raced between his like she was trying to piece out the joke. “I don’t understand.”

Even though his heart was racing and his body was tight with the need to touch her, any part of her, he kept his voice casual. “Take a picture then. See if you can’t figure it out.”

She stared at him for another second before she lifted the camera up with hands that shook. He held still while she took the photo, altering nothing about his expression. He waited while she brought the image up, studied it.

“Oh,” she breathed, a small hitch in her voice. He was right. Everything was clear in the photo. This was a man who wanted her. Everything from the set of his shoulders to the furrow in his brow was looking at her like he wanted to swallow her right down. A hundred other moments shuffled into place like a deck of cards. That ropy tension kicking off of him every time they’d been in the same room as one another. Those eyes of his that were so hard for her to meet, like they were a bright light shining in her face. How he always stood a step farther away from her than other people did, but she realized now it was because he was keeping himself from reaching out for her.

She thought of the way his eyes often followed her. How when he’d been renovating her house, he always stuck around after work for a few minutes to have a word with her about something or other.

She knew she was nice-looking, and she’d been asked on dates before. She’d kissed a few boys in high school. But she was so inexperienced that she hadn’t even recognized desire for her when it had been remodeling her living room, or fixing her mailbox.

She was shocked by the burn in the photo. “Oh,” she whispered again; she was half hypnotized, half spinning.

“What do you see?” he asked, his jaw barely moving as his deep voice graveled right out.

“That– that you want to kiss me.”

He paused for a beat and Ruby had an excruciating sear of humiliation, that perhaps she’d gotten it all wrong. And he was about to tell her that she’d been presumptuous.

She stared down at the camera, her eyes blurring.

But then his humongous hand came into view and he tugged the camera out of her grip, set it carefully aside.

“Yes. I do,” he said. She held perfectly still, her face forward, nothing moving but her eyes as she followed the movement of his head. “And I’m about to.”

He leaned over, one hand still behind her, and ducked his face in front of hers. He moved slowly, but surely. His eyes were on hers for a beat before they dropped to her mouth.

Her eyes stayed open and frozen as he closed the distance between their mouths. His lips pressed against hers and a soft exhale fanned out of her and over his face. Bursts of electricity and noise clanged around within him but he fiercely leashed his reactions. His cock was rock-hard in his jeans just from being this close to her. She was teetering on the edge, one second away from shattering, and he needed to be as gentle and calm as he’d been with those birds.

He pulled back a touch and then leaned in again, this time just kissing at her red bottom lip. She exhaled again, sweet and unstoppable. Her eyes were still open and her hands lifted in the air, almost of their own accord. He quickly took her hands and placed them on his shoulders. His cock jerked in his pants. And then he dipped his head again.

He gave her three kisses this time, each one lasting longer than the last. And on the third, when he slid his lips over hers, he was obliged to see her eyes flutter closed. Ansel, still leaning around her, was hanging on by a thread. Her hands were warm on his shoulders and she was leaning into him just a touch. This time when he pulled back, she chased him forward and their lips didn’t disconnect.

He wanted to grin, but his mouth had infinitely more important things to do.

She was softening for him, like the earth in the spring sun, and when he pressed forward with his firm mouth, he parted her lips. This time when she exhaled, it rode on a breathless little sound. A sound of helplessness, impatience, unexpected desire.

The noise shot through Ansel like a missile, destroying everything in its wake. He was stunned by the intensity of his outrageous need for her. Every bit of softness she was giving him made him harder.

All at once, their precarious position on the stairs was completely inadequate for him. He broke their kiss, banded an arm under her knees and around her waist and lifted her like she was made of air.

She squeaked and stiffened and he knew she was expecting him to charge into his bedroom or something, but he made a left before he got to the front door and instead sat himself down in the big outdoor love seat that sat on his front porch. He brought her down over him, both her legs over his lap and an arm around her waist. She was so little he could almost completely loop around her with one arm.

She seemed shocked and nervous and she was undoubtedly stiff in his arms but Ansel knew he could calm her, soothe her. He tucked his head forward, pressed one warm kiss to the side of her neck. She shivered as he traced a firm hand up over her spine and back down. This time when he kissed her, he threaded a hand into her braid. He knew that she was skittish, and he knew that she wanted to kiss him. He held her in place and did just that.

He started over with kiss after kiss, making each one longer and giving her a chance to breathe in between. Finally, finally, when she’d melted her weight into him and he felt her hands opening and closing on his shoulders, he parted her lips with his. Felt the warm heaven of the inside of her mouth.

Her movements were innocent and unschooled. He knew she hadn’t messed around with anyone since she’d moved here; it was a small town and things like that were noticed and discussed. But he found himself wondering if she’d ever messed around with anyone.

He traced her bottom lip, that lush red lip, with his tongue and she shivered in his arms. She made that same breathless sound as before and he let out an answering grumble of satisfaction. It made her shiver again.

She was so sensitive, so responsive. He licked her lip again, slanting their open mouths against one another, using his grip in her hair to angle her. Her hand fisted in the collar of his button-down shirt and, God, she wiggled against him.

This time when he licked at her bottom lip, Ansel didn’t hesitate. He swept his tongue into her mouth, searching mindlessly for hers. That breathless sound came again, louder this time, and Ansel outright groaned in response. Her sweet little tongue pressed against his and time simply stopped for him. Shy and unsure, her tongue retreated.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured against her lips before, unable to stop himself, he dipped his chin and took another stroke of his tongue through her mouth. “You even taste red.”

Ruby sputtered a little, partly because she had no idea how to respond to his words, and partly because he’d just started kissing his way down her neck. She trembled in his arms as his tongue swept over her pulse point and she vaguely felt as if she were a new person. Nothing she was feeling was familiar. She’d gotten tingles from the boys she’d dated in high school. She’d seen a few men in her life who were hot enough she’d turned a head to watch them walk past. And she’d thought, here and there, that she’d like to have a partner someday, completely understanding all that came with it.

But this? This was foreign and terrifying and nothing she’d ever even imagined. Her pulse raced, her mouth tingled, every inch of her skin was pulled tight. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, and perhaps most alarming, heat was pooling between her legs. She felt achy and needy and, lord, her underwear was wet. So wet she could feel it between her thighs.

She was both mortified and exhilarated by that. Ruby tipped her head back and looked at the sky blue ceiling of his front porch. She simply could. Not. Believe. That Ansel Keto was sucking on her neck right now. That she was wiggling in his lap. That she wanted to crawl inside of him. Her brain was working a mile a minute but her body was giving itself over.

Ruby found herself sliding one hand onto his shoulder, just underneath the collar of his shirt. The heat of his skin startled her. The man was hotter than a sunburn; he burned. When her palm skimmed a little further, Ansel groaned and dragged her tighter, his mouth landing on hers again. His tongue swept through her mouth and this time Ruby searched for him with her own tongue. And, oh God, did that feel good. He was a strong, dominating presence inside her mouth but so responsive, every stroke of Ruby’s tongue against his had him forming to her, tangling. She had the strange feeling that she might be affecting him as much as he was affecting her.

But that couldn’t be true. He was Ansel Keto. The man who’d caught the eye of most of the women in Greenlake County. He had his pick of any of them. There was no way that shy, reclusive Ruby Sayers was taking him apart piece by piece with just a kiss.

Just a kiss.

The words echoed in her mind as she pressed further into him. Snuggling closer to him, her ass pressed against something hard and demanding. She froze. Holy God. This was not just a kiss. For a man like Ansel Keto this was an invitation. And she had no business issuing an invitation for a party she wasn’t sure she could throw.

She tore her mouth from his, trying to think of something, anything to say, but he simply dropped his lips back to her neck. She needed to tell him that she was a virgin. That she’d never really done this before. She didn’t know if she wanted to stop things or keep going, but she didn’t have enough experience to know what came next. She needed his help.             

“Ansel,” she tried and got a grunt in response. “I don’t– I don’t… date.”

He lifted his head so that his nose traced up her neck to the back of her ear; something warm flicked at her earlobe and she shivered. “I know. That’s the only reason I’ve been able to keep my distance. I got word you were dating, I’d have been on your porch with a bunch of flowers or something.”

Well, that boggled her mind. She had no idea what to think of it. So she pushed it away and went back to the matter at hand.

“No, I mean… I don’t know how to do, oh God, any of this. I’m really, really inexperienced.” There. That oughta do it. She deserved a medal for being able to piece together a coherent thought while he was sliding that tongue up the side of her neck.

But if her words made him hesitate, she didn’t notice. If the movies were accurate, then telling a guy you were a virgin was pretty much the equivalent of jamming a massive pause button. She expected him to freeze, unhand her, maybe ask some questions about how she got to age 28 never having slept with a man.

None of those things happened.

“Alright,” he muttered against the sensitive skin of her neck. “Then why don’t you just lay back and let me kiss on you for a little while.”

With that, he shifted them across the love seat so that she was on her back and he was over her. He gave her more of his weight than she’d expected, and she was shocked at how good it felt to have a man over top of her in this way. He settled himself between her legs and Ruby’s mouth fell open in surprise when pure instinct had her knees falling apart.

A hardness pressed insistently against her hot, wet core, but he didn’t move, he just pressed. His mouth fell back to hers and their tongues tangled again. He kissed and kissed and kissed her. One of his hands tangled in her hair and the other traveled up and down her side, ribs to knee, over and over again.

Time sprawled out as Ansel heated her up, melting her like wax under a magnifying glass. When he seemed extremely content to keep doing exactly what they were doing, her mind eventually quieted. Ruby stopped asking questions or trying to catch up. She began to simply enjoy the feel of him. The taste of him. The heat of his skin. His rough hardness pressing into the heat between her legs like the most erotic hug of her life.

Ruby was in a warm cocoon of heat and safety that Ansel had spun around her. She lost any sense of place or time. She didn’t even notice when she began to make those little helpless sounds again in the back of her throat. Ansel noticed. He swallowed them down, burned them into his brain. He held his hips completely still with ruthless intensity. The woman had just admitted that she was inexperienced. He was not going to dry hump her on a love seat an hour into their first kiss.

But she apparently had other ideas. Ansel groaned when her hips started to move. First it was just her legs moving, restless and pressing into his sides. One of her legs hitched over his hip. Soon she’d hooked her ankles together around his back.

His brain short-circuited and he felt dizzy from lack of blood to his brain as his cock strained to get to her. It was a few minutes later when, her hands in his hair, she started to rock against him. He wondered if she knew she was chasing pleasure, or if her body had just completely taken over the reins.

He could feel her heat searing him through her dress and through his jeans as she rub, rub, rubbed against him. Yeah. No. He was strong. Maybe even a master of control. But this was too much.

He sat up, taking her with him, and dragged her into his lap. There, that was better. This way he could kiss her without– Nope. No, well, she was straddling him and she definitely didn’t stop rubbing herself against him in this position. 

Ansel tore his mouth from hers and sucked in air. He noticed dimly that the sun was getting low in the sky. Jesus, how long had they been at this?

He tangled his hand in her hair and pulled her face back. Her eyes were blurry and hooded. Her lips were ravaged and raw from his attention. Her neck was raw in a few places from his beard.

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips; she tried to chase his mouth but he chuckled and pulled back. “We need food, darlin’. And water.”

“What?” she asked, as if he’d been speaking another language. Her eyes were on his lips and his cock jerked in his pants. Well, that got her attention. Her eyes flew to his. He chuckled again.

“I need to feed you, darlin’,” he tried again.

“Oh.” She shook her head for a second. “What time is it?”

Anchoring a hand around her waist, Ansel lifted his hips up off the love seat to get to his phone in his back pocket. The movement made both of them gasp, Ruby’s legs clutching either side of his hips.

He woke up his phone and they both gaped at the time.

“6:45?” she gasped. “Oh my God, we’ve been kissing for four hours.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. You look like it, too.” She blushed and brought a hand up to check her hair but he batted it away. “Sexy as hell.”

His eyes dropped to her neck and a little chagrin crossed his face. “Darlin’, you want me to shave my beard before this goes any further?”

“What?” She looked at him like he was insane.

“I mean, I gave you some road rash on your skin here.” He traced a hand over her neck.

Ruby shook her head again like she was trying to keep up. “Don’t shave your beard. It’s… really hot.” She blushed. “And I liked the way it felt. Rough. Good and bad at the same time.”

His cock jumped again and on a wave of boldness, she wiggled herself into it just a little bit.

“Dinner,” he bit out the word, commanding himself to be a damn gentleman.