A Hippogriff for Christmas - Zoe Chant Page 0,35

just how very nearly his thigh was touching hers.

If I leaned over just a little, I could almost kiss him, Annie thought, licking her lips.

Beau’s eyes immediately darted down, following the movement of her tongue.

“Annie,” he said, his voice a low rumble that sent a warm shiver straight up her spine. “There’s something else you should know – something you might not think to ask. But it’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you since the first time I saw you.”

“O-Okay?” Annie said, feeling stupid, but her brain was too muddled to come up with anything else right now. Beau’s proximity, the heat of his body, the scent of him… all of it was almost too much to bear.

“There’re other things about shifters that are different to humans, aside from the whole ‘shift-into-another-form’ ability.”

His throat moved as he swallowed heavily, and Annie couldn’t help but notice how his eyes hadn’t left her lips.

Her breath felt caught in her chest, her heart thudding. She felt almost as if someone had tied a string around it, and was slowly pulling it tighter – but instead of causing her pain, it only filled her with a kind of delicious, thrilling anticipation; a sense that she was about to hear something that was going to change her life forever.

“Shifters… we also have something called a fated mate. I don’t really know how to begin to explain it. No one knows where it came from, or why it happens. But when it does… well, let’s just say, you know.”

“A – a fated mate?” Annie asked, blinking.

Does that mean what it sounds like it means?

Beau nodded. “A fated mate is someone… someone we’re meant to be with. And when we meet them, we know it immediately. Right from the very first moment we touch.”

Annie’s mind flew back to the moment when Beau’s fingers had brushed against hers at the bakery, when she’d been handing him his boxes of things he’d bought.

“That – that feeling –” she stuttered out, staring down at her hands. That shock of electricity that had seemed to run right through her arm and settle in her chest –

“I didn’t know if you’d felt it too,” Beau said, with obvious relief. “But even if you had, I didn’t think you’d know what it meant.”

Annie looked up at him, wide-eyed.

Is he saying what I think he’s saying?!

“I’m your fated mate?” she blurted out, before she could think.

No. No way. That’s impossible.

But the look in Beau’s eyes told her she’d guessed right.

“That’s right, Annie. It’s you. I knew it right away. I thought you beautiful from the first moment I saw you. I could tell you were brave, from the way you were standing up to that guy in the shop. But it wasn’t until I touched you that I knew just how special you were.”

Annie knew her mouth was hanging open, but right now she just couldn’t bring herself to care.

Can any of this actually be real?

Annie wasn’t about to start pinching herself again – mainly because if this was a dream, she definitely didn’t want to wake up anytime soon.

“That moment on the lake when you almost fell,” Beau said, laughing lightly. “It took all I had not to kiss you right there and then. But I wasn’t sure how you’d react at the time. I thought I needed more time to show you how I felt.”

“I kind of wish you had,” she said, then felt herself coloring. She opened her mouth to try to walk back what she’d said, but then found herself shaking her head instead. What was the point in denying it? “What I mean is, I really wish you had,” she said slowly, looking down at her hands. “I wanted to kiss you too. But I got scared suddenly – scared of how much I wanted you.”

Swallowing heavily, Annie forced herself to look up into Beau’s eyes. She wasn’t used to being so open with her thoughts and feelings. Even with people she knew fairly well, she kept her cards close to her chest.

“I felt the same way.” Beau’s eyes were on hers, never wavering. “Well – I guess I knew why I was feeling that way. So I wasn’t scared – not of kissing you, anyway.”

Annie forced herself to keep looking him in the eye as she said, “So… you still want to, then?”

The groan that left the back of Beau’s throat was, Annie had to admit, kind of gratifying.

“More than anything.”

Annie licked her lips as she leaned