Page 77 of Bearly Out Loud

“Always.”

She was quiet for a moment. Not her alarming silence—the other kind. The kind where she was arranging words in the right order before she let them out, respecting their weight.

“Explain the mate thing to me.”

He’d been expecting this. Not dreading it—expecting. She was a woman who needed information organized before she could organize her response to it. He leaned against the railing beside her. Their arms were parallel, two inches apart, not touching. The gap hummed.

“The bear recognized you. I chose you. They’re different.”

“Different how?”

“Recognition is instinct. A biological response to compatibility—scent, proximity, a pull. The bear identifies a potential mate the way a compass identifies north. It’s not destiny. It’s data.”

“Data.” Her mouth twitched. “Romantic.”

“The choice is the romantic part. The bear can recognize a hundred compatible people. The man decides which one to love.”

She looked at him. The city lights caught her eyes, turning them luminous. “So your bear has better instincts than your dating history.”

“Considerably.”

“How would you put it?”

“The bear knew first. I caught up.”

“How quickly?”

“About thirty seconds after you told me my console looked like it lost a fight with a toddler.”

Her laugh broke open the evening air. Bright, startled, genuine—cracking through every guard she’d held since the parking garage. “You fell for me because I insulted your equipment.”

“You were honest. Everyone else is careful around me. You called it like you saw it.”

She turned the carved bear over one more time. Set it on the railing between them. “That’s actually romantic, and I hate that.”

He picked up the bear. Placed it back in her hand. Closed her fingers around it. His hands stayed around hers—warm, steady, the calluses on his palms rough against her knuckles.

“The recognition means I’ll always want to protect you. Build a life around you. That’s the bear.” His thumb traced the ridge of her knuckles. “The choice means I want to hear your opinions about ventilation systems and watch you roast my production equipment and sit on studio floors with you in the dark. That’s the man. There’s more. The biology isn’t only instinct.”

He paused. Measured. “And if the bond fully forms, there would be a physical component. A mark. And a dual heartbeat—you’d feel mine alongside yours, layered beneath your own.”

“You’re combining a species biology lecture with a love confession on a rooftop.” Her voice had dropped. Lost its edge. Gone soft in a way she rarely allowed, in a way that made his bear go absolutely motionless with the focus of a creature that recognized a moment of surrender and refused to breathe through it. “That’s either the most Dojin Keiser thing you’ve ever done or the most bear.”

“The man who learned to listen to the bear.”

She stepped into him. Closed the two inches. Her free hand found his collar—grabbed it—and pulled him down to her mouth. Not the kiss from the hallway outside the studio. Not desperate or confused or fueled by weeks of unresolved tension. This was deliberate. Decided. A woman who had listened to the biology and the confession and the distinction between instinct and choice and had made her own choice in the time it took to pocket a carved cherry bear.

He kissed her back. His hands found her waist, her ribs, the bare skin of her lower back where the dress dipped. She arched into the touch, and a sound rose from somewhere between man and animal—building since the first studio session and now pouring through him with a force that shook his spine. She swallowed it. Pressed closer. Her teeth caught his lower lip, and the sound doubled.

“Take me inside.” Not a question. Her fingers were in his hair. Her breath was warm against his jaw. “Now.”

His eyes went gold. “Are you sure?”

“Dojin. I believe you. I’ve heard the bear speech and the choice speech, and I’ve eaten all seven courses, and your father gave me a carved Kodiak. Stop being chivalrous and take me to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

His quarters wereon the fortieth floor. Through a door she hadn’t been through before, down a short hall that smelled like cedar and warm linen. The room was him—warm wood walls, low lighting, bookshelves heavy with spines in English, Japanese, and Swedish. A leather chair by the window, worn in the seat from use. A desk scattered with production sketches and honey labels and a photo of Hana at a piano that made Nari’s heart clench.