by Selena Scott
He smiled at her discomfort over telling him his tattoo was way too obvious. “Closest to grizzly. But we’re all blond.”
He began to tell her about his brothers and sisters then. How careful they were to keep everything secret. How much the four of them depended on one another.
“I want to see it,” she insisted, and then when his eyes shuttered with caution, “Please.”
He gave in and gathered her to him. She instantly snuggled into his side and whatever was racing in his chest calmed just a little bit. “Ah, Ruby Red. I don’t know. I’ve never shown a civilian before. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She traced his paw tattoo and looked up at him, eyes the size of saucers. “Because you’d hurt me?”
He let the air out of his lungs in a huge rush. “Never,” he said with such vehemence that Ruby gasped. “No. I’m still me when I’m in my bear form. I don’t go out of control or anything.”
“Then why can’t I see it?” she insisted.
“Because I don’t want you to think differently of me.”
Her eyes clouded. “That ship has sailed, Ansel. You already told me you’re a shifter.”
He froze. Then he slowly unhanded her and sat up in the bed, scraping a hand over his eyes and over the top of his blond head of hair. “Differently as in you don’t want to be… close to me?”
Her eyes narrowed as he started to slide out of the bed. He stiffened when she launched herself onto his back like a kid. Her ankles hooked around his stomach, her arms around his neck. She used all her weight and momentum to wrestle him backwards.
She flopped him onto his side and he let out a muffled grunt as her heel caught him in the side. “Ruby!”
She scrambled around him and straddled him, her small hands holding his massive wrists to the bed. He could have easily sat up and shaken her off, but there was something in her eyes that told him to lay still.
“Don’t you dare,” she said to him in a very strict tone he’d rarely heard her use. “Do you even know how lonely I’ve been? How sad? And then you come along all shiny and handsome and friendly and, and, and yummy. And then you drop one piece of news, which is very hard to digest, by the way! And you just assume I won’t want you anymore? No. No. Just a million nos. Because I really want you. Okay? And bears are cool! I mean I would want you if you were something less cool. Like a squirrel or a toad or something. But bears are cool and I don’t want you to get out of this bed!”
She was breathing hard by the time she finished her speech and to Ansel’s great horror, her eyes were beginning to fill. He broke her grip at his wrists to wrap his arms around her and bring her closer.
“Hey,” he soothed her, one hand through her hair. “Hey, I won’t go. I thought you might want a second of space from me or something. But I wasn’t gonna really go. I– God. Darlin’, this is where I’ve dreamed of being for years now.” He patted the comforter beside them. “This here is Ruby Sayers’s bed.”
She laughed, though her expression was still a little muddy. Ruby let her cheek flop down onto his chest and she breathed for a minute, just breathed. When she looked up at him, he could see that the panic she’d been feeling was mostly gone. “At some point we’re gonna have to talk about you being weirdly obsessed with me.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Not obsessed. Just crushing.”
She smiled but the expression fell away to a shrewder expression. “I want to see you as a bear, Ansel. Please.”
He sighed. He wanted to confirm with her that it wouldn’t change her feelings for him, but he didn’t want to panic her again. So he just scraped a hand over his hair. “Tonight?”
She sat up all at once, a look of great excitement and joy on that pretty face of hers. “Really?”
He let out another sigh. How could he refuse her when she was looking at him like that? “Sure.”
She was up and off of him like a shot. She grabbed his jeans from off the chair where he’d lain them and tossed them over to him. She was pulling on a hoodie and socks a second later, her eyes bright with thrill.
“Well, I guess we’re going now,” he said to no one in particular.
***
When they’d gone a mile into the woods, Ansel stopped them. “This is far enough. I’ll be able to smell anyone coming.”
“You have a good sense of smell in your bear form?”
“All the time. Remember? I told you that.”
“Right,” she squinted up at him. “But I didn’t think you meant that good. You can smell people from a mile away, like, right now?”
Ansel cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
She squinted at him even more. “You’re underselling it right now, aren’t you?”
Ansel sighed. “I don’t want to freak you out.”
“Come on!” She tugged his hand. “Tell me!”
He really just couldn’t refuse her anything when she was smiling at him like that. “I can smell and identify people and animals for five, ten miles, depending on the weather and who the person is. People who wear a lot of synthetic scents can be traced for a lot longer.” He stepped forward. “You, however, have the lightest little natural scent that drives me insane.”
She blushed hard. She’d wanted to know everything about his superhuman senses, but she hadn’t anticipated how they’d apply to her. “Remind me to shower every time I’m about to see you.”
“No,” he grinned down at her, dropping a kiss at the back of one ear. “I like when you haven’t showered.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned and buried her forehead in his chest. “You can tell?”
He grinned. “Ruby, I can tell you that there are five rabbit families, an adolescent male fox, a male raccoon, and a geriatric hoot owl within a half mile of us right now. I can hear a car that could use new brake pads over on the highway, I can see like it’s daytime.” He bent down and kissed her lips quickly. “I can taste your red mouth. I can scent when you’re anxious or fearful. Yes. I know whether or not you’ve used your strawberry soap that day or not. But to be honest, I like it better when you haven’t because then you smell just like you.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned again. “I just, okay, yeah. I’m just gonna erase the last minute from my mind and go about my regular life.”
He smiled down at her. “Whatever you say, darlin’.”
Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose and stepped back. “Okay. I’m ready. I wanna see.”
She raised an eyebrow as Ansel began to skin out of his clothes, passing them one by one to Ruby.
“I’m sorry,” Ruby said. “Was this all a ruse to deflower me in the forest?”
He looked quickly at her, making sure she was joking, and then let his grin match hers. “Yeah, totally. I thought nothing could make that moment more special than pine needles and neighboring deer droppings.”
She laughed, shaking her head. It was one of the many things she’d come to really, really like about Ansel Keto over the last few days. He wasn’t freaked out by her lack of experience in all things romantic/physical/sexual. He was patient and into her. That simple. And the focus that man was working with. Jesus. Being close to him was like being under a magnifying glass. After a year of basically being completely by herself, it was a very intense change for Ruby. But as she watched him toe off his boots, toss her one sock and then the next, she realized that she was already hooked on it. On him. On that fierce way he looked at her, every time. He’d shined a bright light into the black hole her life had become. And if he took it away now, well, now she knew how dark things had actually been. She wasn’t going back.
She knew without a doubt that she would chase him if he went.
“What you thinkin’ about so hard, darlin’?” he asked as he stepped out of his jeans and underwear, laying them over the pile of clothes in her arms.
“Uh. What?” she asked, her eyes and mind suddenly blank as Ansel stood before her, completely naked. Sure, she’d seen him naked bit by bit. But this was the first time she�
��d ever seen him completely naked. And dang. The man packed a punch. He was golden from head to toe, somehow looked twice as big without clothes on, and seriously had more muscles than any human could possibly need. Though, she realized, he wasn’t entirely human so maybe it sort of made sense.
“Ruby,” he said, snapping his fingers up by his eyes.
She started and slid her eyes back to his face. Her face blushed harder than a rose. “Um. Yeah. Sorry. What?”
Ansel laughed. Couldn’t help but feel good as hell that this cute ass little woman he was so into had just lost every thought in her head.
“I asked what you were thinking about so hard. But from the look on your face, I think I can guess.”
Her eyes had wandered down again. “Um. Right. Okay.”
Ansel took a few steps back from her, shaking his head and chuckling as her eyes trailed after his favorite part of his body. He figured there might be only one way to startle her out of her sex stupor.
The air around him pulsed, thick and altered, magnified and blurry. Ansel was Ansel for one tight, tense second. And then he was… a bear. A very golden, very giant, bear.
And when she said giant… she meant giant. Like, Jesus. Basically the size of the pine tree next to him. He must have been close to twelve feet tall. And as wide as four men standing shoulder to shoulder. Each claw was at least six inches long and thicker than her whole finger. His mouth was closed, but he licked out at the air as he came down onto all four feet and Ruby got just a glimpse of teeth that were white as bone and inches long.
The clothes fell from her hands and she cursed herself for not asking a million questions before he shifted.
The bear held perfectly still in the middle of the shadowy clearing where they stood for a long, vibrating second before he rested back on his haunches, flopping down to one side.
He was trying to look smaller, Ruby knew; he was trying to look as unintimidating as possible.
“G-gold,” she managed to sputter. Her body wouldn’t quite allow her to take a step forward yet, but her shaking was slowing down as the humongous animal rested his chin on two great paws and eyed her. “You’re gold.”
The bear lifted his head and nodded. An extremely human gesture that had a sharp, hysterical laugh tearing out of Ruby. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“You can understand me in your bear form?”
The bear squinted at her and looked so much like Ansel that Ruby gasped. He chuffed and nodded his head again.
“Wow. Just. This is. Wow.” Ruby stepped over the clothes of his that she’d dropped and tentatively closed some of the distance between them.
Her body was tense, tight, everything was racing inside her and telling her to get the ever-loving hell away from this grizzly bear. But her heart had her taking another step forward. And then another.
Soon, the bear was right in front of her, frozen as ice, as Ruby dropped to her knees. She extended one trembling hand to right behind the bear’s ear. He leaned into her fingers, speeding up the process.
“Wow,” she whispered again as she tested the bear’s blond fur. “Rough. And thick. Sort of like your beard.”
The bear chuffed in what she thought might have been a chuckle. Ruby burrowed her hand into the fur and scratched all the way down to the skin. The bear’s eyes went half closed and Ruby smiled.
“Ansel,” she whispered and the bear turned his massive head. They were not human eyes looking at her. But they were intelligent and kind. He slowly nuzzled his snout into her belly, against her chest. Her arms naturally came around the bear’s neck and she gave an instinctual hugging squeeze. He hummed a noise of satisfaction so deeply, she felt the vibration but could barely hear it.
Minutes passed like that and Ruby felt her heart rate slow. She was so warm there. And the safety that she usually felt at Ansel’s side was starting to return. The longer she sat with the bear, the more she felt that it was Ansel there with her. She tried to remember all the things she’d learned about shifters in school, but couldn’t remember almost anything. Not with a half-ton animal breathing deeply up against her, his earthy scent mixing with the night air.
A small breeze tousled the leaves of the tree closest to them and Ansel sniffed at the air. He lifted his head and sniffed again. The bear lifted one paw and pointed toward his pile of clothes on the ground. Ruby rose and grabbed them. As she turned back to him, she saw the bear had come up to all fours. With a flip of his head, he gestured at his back.
“You want me to get on your back?” she asked skeptically. She’d never ridden anything more adventurous than a bike in her entire life.
The bear nodded. And then gestured again when she continued to pause. He continued to sniff at the air. She wished they could speak to one another.
“Yeah. Uh. Here we go.” So grateful she was wearing pajama pants and not a dress, Ruby held on to Ansel’s clothes and flung one leg over the massive bear’s body as he crouched forward for her. She found immediately that sitting tall was not possible. The bear’s back was too wide, the movements not smooth enough. Her only choice was to lay forward on her stomach and to lace her hands into his thick, golden fur.
Ansel walked them through the forest, though his pace was much faster than Ruby could have achieved on foot. A little ways more into the woods and Ruby was fairly certain that they were pretty close to her house again. She wondered where they were going and what scent it had been that Ansel had caught on the air. She was just about to ask him to stop, shift back to human form, and explain everything when the bear underneath her made a chuffing growling noise that had Ruby jumping.
Ruby stiffened, her hands curling into Ansel’s fur. What had he made that noise for? Out of the darkness came an extremely similar sound. A chuffing growl echoed back out of the woods. There was another bear. Okay. There was obviously another bear out there. Well. If that other bear was dangerous, then there was no way that Ansel would be hanging around out here, sitting back on his haunches and sniffing idly at the ground. So it must be a related bear. One of his siblings.
Seconds later, a smaller, darker bear stepped through the trees and greeted Ansel with a brush of their two muzzles. The smaller bear sat back on her haunches and cocked her head at Ruby. Ruby, stunned, uncomfortable, dazed, and daffy, assumed that this must be Inka, Ansel’s semi-loopy sister. She could see it in the loose set of the bear’s shoulders, the wide, whimsical eyes.
“H-hi there,” Ruby said, nodding her head from where she sat on Ansel’s back. “You’re Inka, right?”
The darker bear nodded her head and sniffed at Ruby’s leg. The two bears grunted and groaned at one another and Ruby could have sworn that Ansel laughed.
Ansel sat his butt down so that Ruby had to slide off and she stumbled to the side. Inka held out one large paw and Ruby stumbled into it, grateful for the balance.
Within seconds, Ruby was squeaking as she watched the air thicken and magnify around the great golden bear in front of her. She wondered if all his siblings shifted in the same manner or not, because there was something about it that was just so Ansel. The animal grace, the squint-eyed look, the deeply practiced control of such a powerful body.
And then he stood there before her, all tan skin and blond hair and man.
CHAPTER TEN
Ruby couldn’t help but take two running steps across the clearing and fling herself into his arms. Ansel chuckled low in her ear.
“I should have shifted back when I scented Inka, I didn’t think about it. I just wanted to get here fast so that she wouldn’t scent my bear form with a human and think there was trouble.”
Ruby waved her hands in the air and completely dismissed his apology. “Ansel, that was amazing. Incredible! I’ve never seen anything so special in my entire life.”
She pulled back from hugging him just long enough to go up on her tiptoes to kiss him. She was much too short to reach his mouth on her own so Ansel ducked down, kissing the breath out of her. She tore her lips away a second
later, laid her cheek on his chest.
“Thank you for showing me.”
Ansel looked up and glanced back at Inka who was watching the two of them closely. People thought Inka wasn’t playing with a full deck, but Ansel had always known better. She was a very smart person who saw more than almost anyone else. She always knew how to comfort Kain when his temper got the best of him. She knew when Milla needed to be told to slow down and rest. And she’d known, the second she’d sighted them together, that Ansel was so far gone where Ruby was concerned, there was no coming back.
“You and the wife out for an evening stroll?” Inka had chuffed at him as they’d come into the clearing all together.
“This is, like, our fourth date, Inka,” he’d corrected, more out of habit than anything.
And then Inka had given him those eyes. The famous Inka eyes. Somehow both beguiling and world wise. “Yeah, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the way you feel about her. And the way you feel about her is wife.”
Ansel had stared back at his sister for a moment, and then had to chuckle to himself. All he knew was the way he’d felt when Ruby had finally seen him in his bear form. She’d looked so scared and awed and brave and overwhelmed all at once. But all of that had given way to something so much softer. She’d crossed that clearing to his bear form with wonder and tenderness on her face. Tenderness for him! In bear form!
It was that moment that Ansel knew he’d never have another. She was it for him. And if she wasn’t sure, then he’d wait as long as he had to. He was patient. But she’d sat and curled her fingers into his fur and he’d felt a beating, pulsing heat for her. A longing, even though she was there next to him. He felt a tether leave his chest and connect right to hers.
He just wondered if she’d felt the same thing.
Love. Of the very romantic variety.
