Page 52 of Sweet Heart for the Bear

It’s stupid to feel shy with him after what we just did.

But I am.

I mean, I do.

Feel shy, that is.

“Come here,” he murmurs, voice thick with something I can’t quite name.

Possessiveness? Affection?

Something that makes my stomach flip in a way I know better than to trust.

I’m grateful the only lights he’s turned on are the dim ambient ones, the glow soft and golden, making this whole thing feel more like a dream than reality. Maybe it is.

Maybe I’ll wake up and realize I imagined the best sex of my life with the most ridiculously attractive man I’ve ever met.

His fingers brush over my skin, rough with calluses.

Which is weird, because he’s a programmer.

I imagined he’d have smooth hands, the kind that spend more time dancing over keyboards than anything else.

But these hands? They feel like they’ve done more than just type.

They feel like they were made to touch me.

It’s too soon to be this turned on again. I should be exhausted. I should be blissed out and drifting into a coma-level sleep.

But when I glance up at him, his dark eyes are molten heat, his lips parted, his entire body wound tight with restraint.

“You feel good too, Sweetheart,” he murmurs, moaning into my mouth as he kisses me, and I freeze for a second.

Wait. Did I say that out loud?

His arms tighten around me, pulling me flush against him, and I have to admit—I don’t hate how big he is. How solid. How he makes me feel small, even though I never am.

I’m curvy.

Which is just the polite way of saying I’m fat.

But that is the blunt truth of it.

I take up a lot of space. I know my body.

I know what people think when they see it.

But Horace? He looks at me like I’m a feast laid out just for him.

Like he’s starving and I’m the only thing in the world that can satisfy him.

He makes me feel—well, that’s just it. He makes mefeel.

Cherished.

Protected.

Wanted.

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