Page 15 of Bear Naked Truth
Then she leaned against it, heart pounding like she’d just outrun something.
Because she had.
Him.
No, that wasn’t fair. She hadn’t run from Dorian. She’d run from herself.
Her past curled up like smoke around the edges of her thoughts. A thousand moments that had taught her that getting close meant getting hurt. That love was a leash, not a home. That the more someonesawher, the more it would eventually cost her.
Her mother’s voice whispered from memory,You scare people, Autumn. They don’t understand. And when people don’t understand, they leave.
And so she had learned to stay small. Stay distant. To let people getjust close enoughto think they knew her, but never enough to see where she really bled.
And then came Dorian with his bad jokes and steady hands and eyes that looked at her like she wassafe.
She couldn’t trust that. She wasn’t surehowto trust that.
Autumn sank onto the bed, hands trembling slightly. She lit a small lavender candle, the flame steady even if she wasn’t. The light flickered over her fingers as she rubbed the red jasper stone between her palms, grounding herself.
“I don’t do this,” she whispered to the room. “I don’tfeellike this.”
But her magic betrayed her. It still hummed in her skin, responding to his presence even when he wasn’t in the room. It had reached for him,claimedhim, in the way only her gift could. And that terrified her more than any spirit ever had. Because what if she let him in, and he left? What if he stayed, and she broke?
There was a knock at the door.
Autumn stiffened.
“Yeah?” she called.
Dorian’s voice, low and cautious. “Left a cup of tea outside your door. Just chamomile. No tricks.”
She didn’t answer.
“Sleep well, Autumn,” he added after a moment, then his footsteps receded down the hall.
She waited a full minute before opening the door.
The mug sat there, steam still curling from the rim. No note. No message. Just warmth.
She picked it up with careful hands, brought it to her lips.
It tasted like honey and peace and something that almost made her cry. She sipped it anyway, watching the moonlight spill across the floorboards.
In that moment of weakness, she let herself wonder what it might feel like to stay.
8
DORIAN
Three days had passed since Autumn flinched from his touch, and Dorian still hadn’t shaken the weight of it.
He didn’t bring it up again. Didn’t push. That wasn’t his way, and she was skittish enough without him crowding her with his feelings. But something shifted after that night. The easy rhythm they’d started building over the first few days had grown jagged. Stilted. She still worked her magic, still drank the coffee he made every morning, still offered quiet insights when the spirits stirred—but the warmth she’d briefly shown him had cooled again.
He tried not to take it personally.
Tried.
But every time she left a room a second too fast or answered a question with that soft-but-sharp edge of hers, it chipped away at him.
