It was midafternoon when Cassie awoke. She was so thoroughly disoriented, she was momentarily unsure of when she was—she might be four years old, or fourteen, or twenty-four. It was the silence that fixed her to the present; no thumps or bangs from Tyler, no waterproof radio in the shower from Dad, no kitchen clatter from Mom. Just afternoon silence in a room with no pictures on the walls. She was alone.

She unrolled herself from her sweaty blanket-burrito, causing something to rustle to the floor: the bag of art supplies she had bought a million years ago this morning. Well now was the perfect time, wasn’t it? Too addled to think to make herself presentable, Cassie scuffed her shoes back on and scooped up the bag. She grabbed her gardening gloves on the way out the back door as an alibi in case anybody came home before she returned.

Rubus was waiting for her as soon as she slipped past the gate, standing barefoot and tall in the center of the bower. Sunlight dappled his arms, and for the first time he appeared clean-shaven. His hair was still long and rough, but it was no longer the unruly thicket it had been.

Cassie set the bag and gloves down. “The trim suits you.”

“Thank you.” He watched her pull each item out of the bag with great interest. “What was the excitement in the house this morning?”

Cassie sighed. “Tyler being a dick. He’s got kids number four and five on the way, and he’s panicking about money, so he’s jerking Mom around to try and get more than his fair share. Matt managed to stave him off—mostly—but it’s always such an ordeal with him.” She didn’t elaborate on the specifics. She wasn’t ready to think through the ramifications of selling the house, let alone breaking the news to Rubus. Later. There would be time later. “Shall I show you how to use the art supplies?”

“Yes please.”

Cassie knelt in the duff and sharpened a few of the pencils, explaining what she was doing as she went, and used the first page of a sketchpad to demonstrate them. The erasers and pen came next, and she finished it with the acrylic sealer. The watercolors she simply described and set aside. Rubus, kneeling across from her, picked up each item after she was done using it, long fingers turning and probing inquisitively. As he picked up the watercolor set, he asked, “What was the excitement after the house phone rang?”

“Oh!” Cassie straightened up, a smile spreading across her face. “I won a grant!”

He set the watercolors down again and focused on Cassie’s smile. “What’s a grant?”

“It’s money from the government to go learn something new.” If he was about to ask her what the government was, she was going to have a hard time with that, but he simply asked, “What will you be learning?”

“Well, the title of my grant is Field Evaluation in Ecoregions 2-4 of Apomixis and Propagation in Rosaceae Genera, but that’s pretty opaque so let me break it down.” Cassie used her hands as brackets around the words she could see in her head. Rubus watched as though he could see the words as well.

“‘Field evaluation’ means I will be going out and looking at things in nature, in the wild, rather than just in a laboratory. ‘Ecoregions’ are areas of land that have a particular set of natural characteristics—geology, weather, plants, animals, that sort of thing. A valley might be one ecoregion, or a desert, or a range of mountains.” Her words were animated by unconscious gestures: fingers dipped together for the valley, peaked for mountains. Rubus sat enthralled. “Ecoregions two and three are the Puget Lowland and Willamette Valley marine west-coast forests, and ecoregion four is the Cascades.”

“Where are those ecoregions?”

“Here, generally speaking.” Cassie waved vaguely. “A strip of land crossing north-south through Oregon and Washington, a bit inland from the coast. Good territory for wild varieties of edible cultivars of Rosaceae, both native and invasive—plums, serviceberries, cherries, raspberries.” Cassie smiled. “Blackberries.”

Rubus smiled back. “What is ‘apomixis’?”

“Asexual reproduction via clone seeds.”

Rubus absorbed this information in silence, looking thoughtful. Cassie imagined he was probably trying—and failing—to square that statement with whatever hodgepodge of facts he’d learned from the tumbleweed. “Boots on or off?” wasn’t really in the same philosophical realm.

“The Rosaceae family is absolutely enormous,” Cassie continued. “It’s got species everywhere except Antarctica. Roses, almonds, apples, rowan trees—they’re all in the same family. And nobody really knows exactly how many species there are. Almost five thousand, spread across nearly a hundred genera, but scientists aren’t sure about the taxonomy—how to properly organize them into groups and subgroups. When plants are capable of reproducing sexually and asexually—combining their genes with another plants’ or just using their own genetic material—it makes it really hard to figure out the best way to organize the groups.”

“And that’s what you’re hoping to learn?” Rubus asked. “How to organize the groups?”

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“Well I don’t expect to actually learn the entire answer,” Cassie replied, “but I do expect to help add to the body of knowledge that will help us all figure out more pieces of the answer. That’s usually how science works.”

“So you are going to go around Ecoregions Two through Four,” Rubus said, “and see how Rosaceae plants have sex.”

Cassie’s voice died in her throat. She had never felt like a bigger pervert. “No,” she retorted defensively, “I’m going to see which Rosaceae plants aren’t having sex!” That sounded bad. “By collecting their seeds.” Worse.

The expression in Rubus’ face was unreadable, but the bower began to grow darker. Truly, in the context of dryads, there was no way to salvage this conversation. Dr. Cassandra Harris, professional plant voyeur.

“I should go.” She moved to stand and leave, but her jeans were caught on something. She looked down; thorny vines had twined loosely about her calves. The denim was thick enough to keep the thorns from piercing through as long as she stayed where she was, but if she moved they might. Cassie stayed on the ground and looked up at Rubus in the darkening gloom. Even kneeling as they were, he towered over her, smelling faintly of wet leaves. She searched his shadowed face, looking for anger or disgust. Jealousy. Betrayal.

Instead, she found hope. Eagerness.

Lust.

His voice whispered from the bramble as it twisted close about her: “You want to learn how Rubus Armeniacus of Rosaceae has sex?”

Cassie stared. Something brushed her arm. Leaves. Fingers.

“You want to learn?” he asked again.

Cassie swallowed and closed her eyes. “Yes.”

The world tilted. Cassie flung her arms forward, but there was nothing there. She was being lifted, her clothes dragged inexorably from her outstretched limbs by thorns that never broke the skin, helped by fingers alternating between busy removal and caress. Rubus found her throat as her shirt was pulled over her head; the lingering kiss against her pulse was followed by something sharp, but she couldn’t tell if it was tooth or thorn.

Whether he rose to meet her or the bramble lowered her, she couldn’t tell, but Rubus was below her then, her whole front lying upon lean muscle and rigid bone, warm as the sun on a leaf. With his arms wrapped around her and legs entwined with hers, he kissed everything he could reach: her shoulder, her chest, her ear, her lips. Cassie put her hand out, down, trying to touch the ground beneath his back for purchase against the onslaught of his passion, but she felt only air.

They were suspended—he was suspended, and she was perched upon him—or else they had passed beyond some threshold of the world to a vertiginous firmament. She stopped questing for the ground in the dark and simply clung to his frame. Both his hands were on her hips, sliding her lower, until she could feel him against her. Lifting her. Within her.

Cassie dug her fingers into his flesh and hissed in pleasure, eyes closed, holding still. Rubus seemed equally keen to simply wait, hold, taut as a wire. Perhaps he was already on the edge. She opened her eyes, but it was too dark to make out more than the suggestion of a male body, his gaze trained resolutely on whatever distant, imaginary point allowed him to maintain control.

Cassie shifted.

Rubus closed his eyes and redoubled his grip upon her hips. It didn’t hurt, but when she tried to move again she found she couldn’t. She was immobilized, captive between hands and body in a grip as unyielding as the trunk of an oak. Cassie could do nothing but wait, and feel, and sense the canes weaving a silent tapestry about them both.

Finally, with a long exhalation that she felt rather than heard, Rubus moved. He had taken over the backyard like this, Cassie realized. Slow on a human scale, but fast as lightning for most plants. And utterly unstoppable. She grabbed unthinkingly at the hands on her hips. The dryad caught his breath for a moment before resuming his controlled glissade. Plant he may be, but not entirely.

Even at this tempo—perhaps because of it—Cassie could feel herself beginning to unravel. Kissy Cassie, not a dozen languid thrusts in and already the pressure had started to gather at her center. “Please,” she gasped. He didn’t respond, didn’t change his pace, eyes gleaming in the dark as he watched her writhe in his hands, felt her tightening around him. “If you keep—I can’t—”

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice rolled around her. One leaf caressed her shoulder, another lifted her hair from her neck. A third brushed her ear, making her shudder and stippling that entire side of her body with goosebumps. She leaned into the touch. “No,” she moaned, “I just want you to know…” She stopped. The leaves had found her where she was softest, and still he was moving inside her. She moaned again, wordlessly this time.

“Tell me,” he said.

But she couldn’t speak. She held absolutely still as the orgasm gathered itself, roiling from extremities to core, until he slid her down one last time and the waves unleashed. She didn’t cry out; her throat had seized shut with the intensity of the pleasure, so her mouth was parted silently as she shuddered. He waited, rigid, his hands still, his leaves never ceasing their feathery touch. But even through her waning spasms, Cassie could feel his tension between her thighs. He wasn’t far behind.

She would have collapsed upon his chest had he not been holding her upright, with two hands upon her hips and innumerable leaves pressed about the rest of her body in dappled support. Something tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie gasped. She reached an unsteady hand out and braced against his chest.

“Why are you sorry?” His voice rumbled between her thighs.

“I didn’t mean to come so soon.”

The rumble now was below the level of hearing, and came from all around. “It felt good.” He stretched the word like a vine seeking the sun.

The leaves pulled away. Finally moving his hands, he stroked down her thighs, then back up over her ribs to her breasts. That soon after an orgasm, the barest touch was enough to make Cassie shiver, almost flinch, and clench about him. A breeze hissed through the leaves. “Will you do it again?” he asked, running a finger down her sternum. “With me?” His finger stopped, awaiting her response.

She smiled. “Yes.”