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She moved her hips. His eyes opened. Kate moved again. That was all the encouragement he needed.

Wes began to move, keeping the rhythm slow at first. Kate matched him, sliding her hands over his shoulders and back as pleasure began to build again.

This felt different from everything that had happened before it. More intimate somehow.

Not because of fate or mates or bears.

Because it was Wes.

The man who had listened while she talked about Penny. The man who had helped her parents without treating them as incompetent. The man who had stood completely still in the orchard while she decided whether she wanted to touch his bear.

Kate kissed him. His pace deepened.

She tightened her legs around him, drawing him closer as each thrust sent another pulse through her. Wes’s hand slid beneath her hip, changing the angle between them.

Kate gasped. He did it again. “Yes.”

Her nails pressed into his shoulders. The pressure built quickly now. Wes’s breathing had become rough against her neck, his control fraying as Kate moved with him.

She did not want him careful anymore. Her hands slid down his back and urged him closer.

Wes lifted his head, and the intensity in his eyes sent another shiver through her. Then he kissed her.

Pleasure rushed through her a second time, stronger than before. She cried out against his mouth and held on as the sensation moved through her. Wes followed moments later, his body tensing above hers as he buried his face against her neck.

For a while neither of them moved. Kate could hear his heartbeat.

Eventually Wes eased onto his side and drew her with him, pulling the covers over them. Kate rested her cheek against his chest. His hand moved slowly over her back, not asking for anything, simply touching her.

Outside, the orchard was quiet. Only a few hours ago she had been standing in her parents’ kitchen while her mother finished dinner.

Then pizza. Coffee. A bear. And now this.

The thought should have been ridiculous. Instead Kate smiled against Wes’s skin.

His fingers moved through her hair. “You okay?”

She lifted her head enough to look at him. “Very.”

Wes smiled and kissed her forehead.

Kate settled against him again. He had called it certainty. Was this what it felt like from his side? She had no bear to tell her anything. She had his heartbeat under her cheek and no wish to be anywhere else, and she did not need to know more than that yet.

She would go back to Bramblewood later. Penny would be asleep, and her parents would probably be asleep too. Tomorrow there would be work, apples, questions she had not yet thought to ask and the ordinary life she had brought with her to Bear Creek.

None of that needed her attention tonight.

For now, she stayed where she was, warm beneath the covers with Wes’s arm around her.

CHAPTER 14

Wes

Wes had been working for nearly three hours when his bear lifted his head. Kate.

The word carried enough pleasure that Wes smiled before he had even looked toward the boundary.

He was standing beside one of the lower rows, checking a bin trailer before the crew moved it farther uphill. The morning had started cooler than the day before, with thin cloud hanging over the mountains and a forecast that had shifted enough overnight for Wes to change the order of the day’s picking. Nothing urgent. Enough to make him pay attention.