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Barrett kicked off his jeans and underwear and moved onto the bed, his large frame hovering over me. I should have felt small beneath him. Instead, I felt powerful. Protected. Safe enough to want without holding anything back.

His mouth found mine, deeper this time, while one careful hand—knuckles instead of claws—slid between my legs. I was already slick for him. He made a rough, satisfied sound against my lips and stroked me with the confidence of someone who now knew exactly where and how firm I liked it. When his thumb pressed against my swollen bud, I arched hard enough that my head tipped back.

“Barrett—”

“Need to taste you.”

He kissed his way down my body without stopping, nuzzling the soft skin below my navel, then lower. The first long stroke of his tongue had me crying out. He held my hips steady with one massive hand while he licked me in long, deliberate strokes that made my thighs shake. I fisted both hands in the fur at the back of his head and held on while he took me apart with the thoroughness of a man who had spent three days mapping every response I had.

The orgasm hit hard and bright, rolling through me in waves that left me gasping his name. His mouth stayed on me through every tremor, extending the pleasure that rippled through my core.

Only then did he crawl back up my body, kissing me with a fervor that turned my bones to liquid. I reached between us and guided the broad head of him to my entrance.

Barrett watched my face as he eased into me. The old fear of physically hurting me hadn’t disappeared completely, but it no longer ruled him. He knew I could take him. Trusted me to tell him if I couldn’t. And beneath that last thread of caution was pure, unguarded hunger.

When he finally seated himself to the hilt, I made a helpless, broken sound. He filled me completely, stretching me to the edge of what I could take, and the intensity of it only made the pleasure sharper.

“Still good?” he managed, voice strained.

“So good it almost hurts,” I breathed against his jaw, tilting my hips to take him deeper. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He withdrew almost all the way and thrust back in harder. The bedframe groaned. I gasped at the perfect, overwhelming fullness, and locked my heels behind his thighs, urging him on. He found a rhythm that was no longer careful—deep, powerful strokes that forced a cry from my throat every time he bottomed out. Each time he hesitated even a fraction, I dug my nails into the fur at his shoulders and demanded more, and he gave it.

The growls rolling out of his chest grew louder, less restrained. His hips snapped forward with increasing force, the thick length of him dragging against every sensitive place inside me until I was shaking apart again. I came with a raw, open-mouthed cry, clenching around him so tightly that he snarled. Two more hard thrusts and he followed, burying himself to the root as he emptied into me in long, shuddering pulses. I felt every one of them—the heat, the pulse, the exact moment the last of his control shattered.

He collapsed carefully onto his forearms, still buried deep, breathing hard against my neck. My fingers combed slowly through the damp fur at his nape, gentling him even as aftershocks rippled through both of us.

After a long moment, he lifted his head. Amber-brown eyes found mine, soft and wrecked and wondering in a way that still undid me.

“You didn’t break me,” I whispered, giving him the same words I had three nights ago. “I think you’re doing the opposite.”

His brow creased. “What’s that mean?”

I thought about the woman who had arrived in Screaming Woods with a grant proposal, a research schedule, and three weeks to prove she deserved to be taken seriously. The woman who could classify almost anything except the things that made her happy.

I brushed my thumb through the fur at his temple. “I’m a scientist. But I’m learning that I’m allowed to be other things too.”

Barrett rolled onto his back, taking me with him. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, then my temple, then the hollow under my ear that still made me shiver. I traced the seam where his beard met bearskin and closed my eyes, feeling the steady, heavy beat of his heart against my cheek.

The room smelled like warm skin, cedar, and the faint sweetness of honey from the soap he used. Outside, evening insects had started their chorus in the trees. The bedroom window stood open a few inches, letting cool air move over the bed.

“You know what’s strange?” I murmured.

Barrett’s chest moved under my cheek. “Could make a list.”

I pinched him.

He grunted. “Violent.”

I smiled against him. “I used to think being with someone would be exhausting.”

His hand paused in my hair. “That flattering?”

“Very. Let me finish. I thought it would mean constantly negotiating. Schedules. Space. Who needed what. Whether I was giving enough attention to someone or too much to my work.” I looked toward the open bedroom door. From here, I could see the edge of the kitchen table and one corner of Grandma’s map on the wall. “I thought another person would take up space I needed for everything else.”

Barrett was quiet.

“But you don’t.” I propped myself on one elbow so he could see my face. “You somehow make more space. I get more done here than I do at the inn. I eat actual food. I sleep better. And I don’t feel like I have to choose between being with you and doing the work.”