Page 40 of Bearly Out Loud

Everything in him roared.

Not a sound anyone else heard—internal, seismic, a tectonic event that started at the base of his spine and traveled upward through every nerve ending he possessed. Possessiveness hit with such absolute force it blurred the line between thought and instinct, and for one disorienting second, he was nothing but the need to hold on.

She tasted like matcha and ambition. Her mouth was warm and demanding and she kissed the way she did everything—with her whole body committed, holding nothing in reserve. Her hands fisted his shirt, knuckles white against the fabric. He heard a button strain. Didn’t care.

His hands went to her hair. Fingers threading through dark strands that were softer than he’d spent weeks pretending he hadn’t imagined. He cradled the back of her skull. Tilted her head. Deepened the kiss until her spine arched and a sound escaped her—a small, sharp inhale that rewired something permanent in his chest.

She pushed up on her toes. One hand released his shirt and gripped his shoulder—fingers digging in, finding muscle, anchoring herself against him like gravity had renegotiated itsterms. Her other hand flattened against his chest, and he knew she could feel it. The vibration. The low, steady hum that he could not suppress and had stopped trying to.

The kiss wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t polite. It was weeks of proximity and restraint and the specific torture of watching her perform emotional demolition from the other side of a pane of glass while pretending his interest was professional. Every session where her voice cracked open and he gripped the armrest. Every late night where she looked at him like she was building a case for or against him and hadn’t decided which.

All of it. Detonating. Now.

TWENTY-TWO

DOJIN

Her back hit the hallway wall. His forearm braced above her—plaster cool under his skin, and some distant rational corner of his brain registered that he was pinning a woman against a wall in his own studio and his HR department would have thoughts about this. The rest of his brain was occupied with the sound she made when his mouth moved to the corner of her jaw. A hitch. Half breath, half moan. He wanted to devour it.

This. Her. Always. The only thought his mind could form, and it repeated like a drumbeat, steady and relentless and undeniable.

She pulled back first. Not far—an inch. Her eyes were dark, her breath uneven, her lips flushed. His jacket had slipped off one shoulder and her hair was wrecked and she looked like a woman who’d been kissed by someone who’d been thinking about it for a very long time.

“That was?—”

“Overdue.”

She blinked. “I was going to say complicated.”

“Also true.”

“We work together.”

“Aware.”

Her hand was still on his chest. She hadn’t moved it. Her fingers pressed flat against his sternum, right over the vibration.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“The chest thing. The humming.”

“Dojin. I am a professional audio engineer’s nightmare. I hear frequencies most people ignore. You are humming. From your chest. Like a space heater with opinions.”

He couldn’t help it. He laughed. With her palm still pressed against him and her back against his wall and her mouth still swollen from his—he laughed, and the sound vibrated through her hand and her fingers curled into his shirt again and she grinned up at him with an expression that leveled him entirely.

“Your phone is buzzing.”

It was. He’d been ignoring it. He pulled it from his pocket without stepping back, because stepping back was a physical impossibility at the moment.

Reo.

Your car’s still in the garage. Either you’re dead or this is about the voice actress.

Second text, twelve seconds later.

Called it.