Page 78 of Bearly Out Loud

And the bed.

The bed was absurd. Built for his frame, which meant proportions that were only partially human. A California king would have been a starting point. This was bigger—a custom frame in dark walnut, a mattress thick enough to absorb eight hundred pounds of bear. Covered in sheets so soft that Naritouched them and understood, immediately, that she was never sleeping on her own thread count again.

“This bed is ridiculous.”

“It’s practical.”

“It’s a landing strip. You could fit four people in here.”

“I only need two.”

She turned to face him. He was in the doorway—filling it, because he filled every doorway, because the man was six foot four and built like a mountain range had developed opinions about interior design. His sleeves were rolled. His eyes hadn’t cooled. The tension was visible in his forearms, the set of his shoulders, one hand gripping the door frame as though holding himself in place.

She walked to him. Slowly. Let him watch her cross the room—with total attention, the same focus he brought to the studio glass, every instinct pushing toward close and closer andnot close enough.She stopped in front of him. Tilted her chin up. Put one hand flat on his abdomen. The muscle tensed under her palm. The vibration intensified—not a sound anymore but a physical force, trembling through his body into her hand.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m restraining.”

“Stop.”

His control snapped. He moved—fast, bear-fast, a speed that defied his size—and she was off the ground. Her legs went around his waist on instinct, her arms around his neck, and his mouth found hers while he was still carrying her across the room. The kiss was consuming. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her against him, and the heat of his body bled through her dress into her skin. She tasted honey and want and a wildness that made every nerve ending light up simultaneously.

He set her on the bed. She pulled him down on top of her. His weight was extraordinary—not crushing, he was holding himselfabove her on one arm, but the mass of him, the sheer physical reality of a bear shifter hovering over her with a jaw tight with need—it sent a rush through her that started in her stomach and spread outward until her toes curled in her heels.

“Careful.” The word was rough against her mouth. “I need to be?—”

“I know you won’t hurt me.” Quiet. The performance gone from her voice.

He stilled. Pulled back enough to see her face. She saw the battle—the man wanting to be gentle, the bear wanting to claim, both of them looking at her with an intensity that stripped the sarcasm from her vocabulary and left her with nothing but honest desire and the woman underneath the performance.

“Attentive.”

“Better.”

He was attentive. Thoroughly, methodically, infuriatingly attentive. His mouth moved from her lips to her jaw to her neck, finding the spots that made her breath catch and staying on each one until the catch became a gasp. His hands learned her body with the patience of a lifetime’s practiced restraint, now applied entirely to undoing her—button by button, zipper by zipper, layer by layer, until the dress was on the floor and she was bare beneath him and he stilled above her for three unbroken seconds.

“You’re staring.”

“Yes.” No apology. No deflection. He looked at her with the same reverence he’d given Hideo’s sketchbooks—attention to detail, the understanding that what he was seeing was rare and worthy of care.

“Staring and shaking.”

“You’re bare in my bed, and you expect me to be steady.” His voice had dropped below speech—into the territory wherehuman and bear overlapped, words dissolving into something felt through skin rather than heard.

“I expect you to comehere.”

He came there. His mouth on the center of her chest, her ribs, the plane of her stomach—a trail mapping the geography between her collarbone and her hip. His hands followed. Wide, warm, spanning the distance from her waist to her thigh in a single grip that made her feel simultaneously tiny and infinite. She arched. His name left her mouth before she could shape it into a sentence.

When he finally settled between her hips, she was already shaking. Her fingers dug into his shoulders—the one that still bore the bandaged furrow from the parking structure—and he flinched. Barely. She loosened her grip. He caught her hand and pressed it back.

“Don’t.” Rough. “Stay.”

She stayed. He moved inside her, and her vision went white at the edges, and the sound that left her throat was not the controlled, crafted sound of a voice actress but the raw, unedited, full-volume sound of a woman coming undone beneath a man whose body was designed to overwhelm and whose patience had turned that power into precision. He met every sound she made with his own—a response, an answer, a duet.

She was loud. She was always loud. But here, in his bed, in his sheets, with his body moving against hers and his mouth on her shoulder and the Manhattan skyline blurring through the floor-to-ceiling windows—here, she was louder than she’d ever been. Because he didn’t flinch. He pressed closer. Deeper. His mouth found the curve of her ear:

“Louder.”