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She reached up and undid the top button of my shirt. I put my hand over hers to still them because if she kept going, I wouldn’t be able to think, and I wanted to remember this moment forever.

“Hazel.” Her name came out cracked. “I don’t know how to say it right.”

“Then say it your way.”

The words fell out of my mouth the way a limb goes over, a clean crack before falling.

“I love you.” My shoulders dropped the tension I’d been carrying without realizing it. “I’ve loved you since the first time you kissed me.”

She made a small sound and nodded slowly.

“I want you here,” I said. “In the cabin. With me.”

Her hand slid from my face. Down my throat. Across the collar of my flannel. Under it. Onto the fur that ran down the centre of my chest. She flattened her palm over my heart, as though it was hers to hold.

I let her undo the second button.

I’d touched her many times. This was different. This was her taking my shirt off me in our kitchen, on the afternoon of the day she’d chosen this life, and she was doing it slowly enough that I couldn’t outrun it.

I picked her up because I’d been waiting to know what it felt like to hold my woman now that I knew she was staying.

“Bed,” I said.

She made a soft, needy sound against my throat. “I want all of you, Barrett, including the animal you keep holding back.”

My bear stood up.

Ours, he said.

Ours, I answered.

She’d asked for all of me. She was going to get it.

I don’t remember pushing past the kitchen table. I don’t remember closing the distance between us. I only remember the second her lips met mine, and my control snapping like brittle wood.

I kissed her like I was drowning. Like I’d spent years holding my breath and finally found air. My hands went to her waist, gripping, pulling her flush against me, my hips slotting hard into hers through denim so thick it should have dulled the friction. It didn’t. It only made me want to tear every seam open until there was nothing between us but skin and heat.

She gasped into my mouth, her nails digging into my shoulders through the flannel. I felt every point. Felt her give. Felt her match me.

I backed her up. One step. Two. My shoulder hit the bedroom door. I kicked it shut behind us with my boot, and planted her against it. I cradled the back of her head, my thumb pressing beside her ear, and kissed her until she was unsteady. Until her legs shook. Until she rolled her hips against mine in a slow, deliberate grind that made my breath tear out of me.

Good.

I wanted her there. All the way there. Out of her head and into her body, and I wanted my hands to be the ones that put her there.

Her fingers were already at my belt. The buckle clinked. The leather gave.

I lifted her and carried her the two steps to the bed, setting her down on the edge of the mattress and following her down. I didn’t hold my weight off her this time. I let it settle. Fully. Every ounce of me pressed her into the sheets. She made that low, rough sound again and dragged the flannel off my shoulders. It bunched at my elbows. She pushed it the rest of the way. Dropped it.

She looked at me like I was exactly the right size.

I’d spent years being smaller than I was; ducking through doorways, angling sideways past strangers, making my shoulders less so people would let their kids stand near me. I did none of it now. I let her see all of me—the fur, the size, the shape I had spent decades folding inward.

Hazel put both hands into the thick pelt along my collarbone. Then one hand went lower, past the fur on my chest, past my ribs, to the button of my jeans. She got it open in one movement. Her palm closed around me through the cotton of my shorts and squeezed. My cock jerked hard, already leaking at the tip, soaking the fabric so her palm slid wetly over me.

She laughed low against my jaw and shoved my jeans down past my hips. Buttons popped off and skittered across the floor. I didn’t care.

I made a feral sound I didn’t recognize. “Hazel⁠—”