Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,81
else, I’ll go there. But I’m not going to drag you back into my old life.”
“I’m not sure I want to drag you into mine,” she admitted.
Hardwick frowned. “Your boss doesn’t know the truth about you.”
“And the moment he does, it’ll be all ‘I always knew!’ and ‘If only I had been there with you, to protect you from your family’s wrath!’ and ‘I, of course, would never think less of anyone for not being a shifter!’” She made a face. “I couldn’t stand it. And neither would you.”
“You need to surround yourself with better people,” Hardwick said grimly.
She tipped her head back to smile at him. “I’m working on it,” she said. “Starting with you. And if you’re thinking of staying here in Pine Valley… well, the other shifters I’ve met here seem to have their heads on straighter than I’m used to. Maybe they’ll be a good influence on me.”
“On us both,” Hardwick muttered.
She gazed into his eyes. A final knot deep inside her finally started to loosen.
“This is going to work, isn’t it?” she whispered. “I think I didn’t actually believe it until now.”
A hint of sadness flickered in the depths of his eyes, replaced quickly with warmth and love. “I’d be surprised if you let yourself fall all in, all at once.”
“But I believe it now.”
A slow smile spread across his face. Real happiness, because she was really telling the truth. And because—she guessed, but it was an educated guess—he’d been feeling the same way. Tentative, unsure, still feeling his way towards letting himself be open to her, just as she’d held back until she knew how he felt.
Love wasn’t a one-off thing. It wasn’t the universe smacking you around the head and tying you to someone. Even soulmate love. It was a dance, a series of steps, of trust given and received. They could each have chosen to pull away. But they were together. Choosing each other. And the connection that had sparked between them in the run-down cabin that night was nothing compared to what they would build together.
Starting now. Because he might not be acting like it, but Delphine couldn’t keep distracting herself from the fact that her mate was very, very naked.
She let her eyes drop down his body and linger over some certain places so that he would have no doubts about the direction her mind was going in, and said:
“I can’t make any promises that I won’t lie to you by mistake, or from forgetting myself.”
“I know.”
“So maybe we should start with the first thing that really worked between us, for making me tell the truth.”
A spark lit in his eye. “Oh?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about.” Just in case he didn’t, she stood on tip-toe and whispered in his ear.
His hands tightened around her waist as she went into more detail.
“… and like I said. The bed’s already made. We might as well test it out.”
Hardwick’s eyes flashed dark fire at her. “Who says we’ll make it as far as the bed?”
Hardwick
They did make it to the bed, eventually. But he put up a good enough fight that it took them a while.
A foggy combination of exhaustion and satisfaction filled his veins as he lay back, Delphine resting in his arms. That had been…
He searched for fancier words and came up blank. It had been everything their first time had been, but better. Then, he’d let his guard down, let himself hope that everything would be fixed between them. The sense of peace that had given him had come crashing down the next day when Delphine was reunited with her family, and maybe it was that resolution that made the memory bittersweet and what he was feeling now so much brighter.
Or maybe it was because of that first time that every time they slept together since had been so much sweeter. He’d already faced what happened when things went wrong. This time, neither of them wanted to hide anything from the other; if tomorrow morning brought on hurt, then they would face it together.
He let his eyes half-close, still looking down at Delphine tucked against his chest. He was more than just exhausted. His head felt clear, unburdened. When he checked in with his griffin, it felt the same. The constant, pained vigilance that had kept it on-edge so long that it had stopped noticing anything was wrong had eased.
When he thought of what might have been, if he’d let his own fear and pain take him