Page 103 of Bearly Out Loud

“You’re offering me a creative partnership that has nothing to do with my last name.”

“Your last name is irrelevant. Your brain is the point.”

The words landed in a place she hadn’t known was tender. Thirty-four years of being Hideo’s granddaughter, of walking into rooms where her name preceded her, where people smiledat her face and saw a legacy she hadn’t built. She’d made her career on her own—fought for every role, earned every credit—but the shadow was always there, and the men she’d been with had either wanted the shadow or resented it, and not one of them had looked past both to see the brain underneath.

“Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

“Then everyone you’ve met was paying attention to the wrong things.”

She closed the portfolio. Set it on the desk. Placed both hands on his face. His jaw under her palms, warm, the faintest rasp of stubble. His eyes in the garden light were brown and gold and steady—seven years of carrying a dream in a desk drawer, and he was offering it to the one person he trusted to hold it.

“Yes.”

Full volume. The word bounced off the rooftop panels, startled two bees, and sent a flock of pigeons scattering from the building’s ledge. She said it again—“YES”—because once was not enough, because Nari Wixx did not whisper the important things, and his face cracked open into a smile so wide and so unguarded that she realized she’d never seen him smile like that. Not once. Not in months of knowing him.

He lifted her. Stood from the chair in one motion, arms around her waist, her feet off the ground, her laughter knocked loose by the sheer ridiculous strength of being loved by a bear. She was laughing and he was smiling and her hands were in his hair and then she kissed him because the laughter needed a destination, and his mouth was warm, and the kiss started bright and joyful and somewhere between the rooftop and the stairwell, the laughter caught fire.

FIFTY-FOUR

NARI

They didn’t make it to the bed.

His quarters were four steps from the roof access—a door, a short hall—and she was kissing him while he walked them backward, her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands holding her up with the effortless strength she’d stopped marveling at and started relying on. The door closed behind them. He turned. Her back hit wood and the impact sent a shock up her spine that mixed with the heat already building between them and the result was a sound she made into his mouth that was half gasp and half command.

“Here.” She pulled his shirt collar. “Right here. Don’t move.”

He braced one arm above her head. The other held her hip, thumb finding bare skin where her dress had ridden up. His mouth left hers and tracked down her jaw, her neck, the curve of her shoulder where the mark lived. He pressed his lips to it and the bond flared—hot, bright, a current between his body and hers that hummed in her teeth.

She yanked his shirt free. Buttons were a casualty. Neither of them looked down to assess the damage.

“Harder.” Her voice against his ear. Not a request. A direction, delivered with the same authority she brought to every recording session—words aimed and landed.

He obeyed. His hips pinned her to the door and the friction drew a sound from her throat that she would have been embarrassed by in any other context but this was Dojin and he was looking at her like her voice was the only music he’d ever needed and embarrassment was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

“Faster.”

He adjusted. Found the angle that made her head drop back against the wood and her nails dig into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks of her own.

“Right there—God, Dojin,right there?—”

Her voice bounced off the walls of his quarters. She was not quiet. She had never been quiet. She filled every space she occupied, including this one, and he loved it—loved that the sound of her was as big and uncontainable as everything else about her. The mark burned warm at her shoulder and his response poured through it: pride, hunger, the deep satisfaction of a man who had chosen well and knew it.

He leaned in. Mouth against her ear. Two syllables.

“Louder.”

She laughed. The laugh broke into a moan that broke into his name, full-throated, the pitch that filled studios and screening rooms and the hearts of people who loved her voice, and she came with his name still vibrating in her chest and his forehead dropped to her shoulder and the door shook in its frame.

The bees on the rooftop above them went very still. Then resumed buzzing. Concerned, perhaps, but ultimately nonjudgmental.

Round two was the bed.

Slower. She pushed him onto his back—hands flat on his chest, a shove that moved him because he let it—and straddled his hips. He lay beneath her: enormous, bare, eyes half-lidded, watching her with his hands resting on her thighs. Not guiding. Not directing. Letting her set the pace because this was the man who had learned that control was not the same as care, and care meant giving her the lead when she wanted it.

She rolled her hips. Took her time. Watched his jaw tighten, his fingers flex against her skin, the visible effort of a bear’s patience tested by the woman on top of him, movingdeliberately slowly.

“You’re doing that on purpose.” His voice was wrecked. Gravel and need.