Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,71
find words for what she wanted to say.
Quiet settled around them. Not the silence of the world around the cabin; a smaller, cozier silence, somehow all the more precious because of the traces of other lives carrying on around them. The hint of music from a nearby building, the odd shriek of childish excitement from further away.
The air was cool, but not freezing. A world away from the icy mountainside where she’d spent the last few days with Hardwick.
She’d thought of that as his world and this as her world but that was wrong too, wasn’t it?
He’d been hiding from people that caused him pain. She’d been hiding—as alone as Hardwick had been among the people who could cause her the most pain, hiding her true self to keep herself safe.
But maybe there was a place they could be safe, and themselves, together.
“I never expected to find someone like you,” she said. “I thought, everything else about me that should have been magical didn’t exist, so why would I have a mate anywhere in the world? And if I had imagined who my mate would be—”
“You wouldn’t have imagined me.”
“Not even slightly.” She laughed softly and tucked her head against his chest. He rested his hand tentatively on the back of her neck and she sighed, listening to the thud of his heart through his coat.
Even this close, though, there was still distance between them. Still some ice left to thaw before she let herself look into her heart. “I would have imagined someone I had to keep the truth a secret from and keep away from my family, and I would have stayed trapped in the life I had built for myself. Even when I knew you were mine, and knew that I couldn’t keep living a lie, I thought that if you met my family and they found out the truth then I would be left crawling back to you because you were all I had left in the world. I know that lying was wrong, but I couldn’t see how I could live with that and not end up resenting you. But now…”
She molded herself against him, pressing her breasts against his chest, stomach to stomach, standing so close if either of them moved too quickly their legs would tangle and they would end up on the ground.
“…Now, I’m so glad I found you. I’m glad everyone knows the truth. And I know it’s going to be difficult, and we have so much to learn about each other and figure out and get wrong before we get right, but I’m not scared. I have spent so long pretending to myself about what I want and don’t want, and I know, right now, that what I want is to be with you.”
“Delphine, I…” Hardwick crushed her to him. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Yes, you do. You changed my life for the better.” She wriggled in his grasp just enough so she could look up at his face and brush a strand of hair away from his eyes. “You wanted to save me. I say you did. Not just today. Not just when you pulled me out of the snow. Every minute we’ve been together.”
She kissed him. His lips were slow to respond, then urgent and hungry. She guessed—no, she knew—that he had been processing what she’d said, his griffin picking it over for lies. The kiss had surprised him. But now he wasn’t letting her go.
He was passionate and demanding, his teeth grazing her lips and his hand firm on the back of her head. Her mind darted back to the night they’d spent together: his body hard against hers, his possessive joy at her telling him what she wanted and what she wanted being him. She’d been afraid she was asking too much. Too hard, too fast, too obvious. But he’d more than accepted her. He’d relished every secret desire she whispered in his ear.
And she was going to get a lifetime of that.
And of finding out his secret desires in return.
As though he was reading her mind, Hardwick broke off the kiss and muttered roughly in her ear: “You said that I’m yours.”
“You are.”
He made a sound that was more growl than word and kissed her again.
And deep inside her heart, light blossomed like dawn on a frosty morning.
Chapter Thirty
Hardwick
The town’s only restaurant was closed for the holiday, as were the bakeries and coffee shops. But Pine Valley had more miracles in store that Christmas.
Jasper Heartwell came