She tilted her head back. “I taught
myself
how to be brave. I conquered those nightmares
myself
. I don’t need you anymore.”
Pain shocked across his face before the blankness caught up and hid it. He started to drop his arms.
She grabbed onto his shirt with both fists. “Please don’t let go!”
He hesitated, staring down at her.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, holding on tight enough to rip the shirt if he tried.
His arms slowly settled back into that firm hold.
“Please don’t,” she whispered again, letting her head rest on his chest.
He didn’t.
He didn’t, and he didn’t, and he still didn’t.
No matter how much she had said to drive him away, he didn’t abandon her, cold and alone, for such a long time, that the skyline of Paris stretching out below them slowly turned pink, and her body slowly started to relax into his. As if her body had latched on to this absurd, ridiculous optimism that someday, she might be able to trust him again with her.
He was kind of a bastard, Joss thought.
No, he really was a hopeless bastard, no
kind of
about it.
Because all he could think about was how much he would like to turn this hug into something else.
It was driving him absolutely out of his mind.
Five fucking years he’d been fantasizing about Célie. No, who was he kidding, longer than that—back when she was a damn teenager and he was supposed to be her brother’s friend, the guy who looked out for her, he’d been fantasizing about her. She was the only reason he’d put up with Ludo as long as he had.
One of the worst duties during Legionnaire training was guard duty. Everybody hated that one. It was nothing like actual, practical guard duty later. No, two solid hours you had to stand without moving a single damn muscle, which felt like two days. Two years, sometimes. You’d be ready to kill your relief by the time he showed up, because you were so convinced he was late, but he never was. (The relief
engagé
knew better, knew somebody might really beat the crap out of him if he was even five minutes late.)
He tried to call on it now, that guard duty training.
Don’t move. Just hold. Don’t get aroused, damn it!
But he did get aroused. Her body felt so sweet and good and
real
after all those fantasies. His own body just pressed and pressed more insistently into her belly, against all his will, rising of its own volition. It was all he could do not to press even harder. Not to lift her so he could fit that pressure between her thighs, press her back against that damn kissing tree and have at it again.
Better yet, haul her back to her damn apartment that was
all bed
.
“I’m sorry, too,” Célie said suddenly into his chest.
He latched on to the words, trying to focus on anything besides what her body felt like pressed against his, besides what she would look like caught between him and white sheets, besides what should be the very first item of clothing he removed. Should he unbutton her jeans? Work down that zip? Slide his hands under her knit shirt first and push it up? Get this damn leather jacket out of the way …
“I know you had the right to live your own life and make everything you could out of it. I don’t mean to be this way. I just—can’t—every time you say you did it for me, it makes me want to
pound
on you.”
He did do it for her, though. So was he supposed to lie to her? Or just not talk about it? Célie was the one person he talked best to.
He gazed down at the fists that still clutched his T-shirt, the fists that wanted to pound on him. He knew her hands must be incredibly capable, to produce those chocolates, even more capable than when they’d kneaded dough and made croissants as a pastry apprentice in an average bakery in their
banlieue
, but … he covered one fist with his hand. Yeah. His hand completely engulfed hers.
It made him feel big as the universe, to be able to so completely embrace her within the size of his own body.
When she was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and he was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, his much greater size had always made him feel a breath away from being like every other loser, user guy in their
cité
to her. Literally a breath—that if he ever bent his head and breathed in the scent of her when she was teasing him, he would just grab her ass and pull her against his body and take every advantage he could of that cursed, so-tantalizing, so-flattering crush she had on him.
But now he felt made for her. Made
by himself
for her, through the crucible of the Legion, so that his size and strength and control, everything about him, now was just right. He could protect her hand from all the world.
He slid a thumb under her fingers to loose the clutch of his shirt and then gently struck his chest with her fist, again, and then again, in a pretense that she was pounding on him.
She turned her head suddenly and kissed his hand covering hers. The touch of her lips lanced through him in ways he didn’t have the words to describe. A heat and hunger and sweetness that went so far beyond sex.
He held both their hands very still, so as not to shake away that press of her lips.
“I wish I could touch you all over,” she whispered, and his whole body jolted. “You have the most amazing
texture
.”
Oh, yeah. Hers was amazing, too. “I can grant that wish,” he said, rough and harsh. Heat was rising in him like an inferno, engulfing him. “Hell, Célie.”
“But I’m still so
mad
at you,” she said fiercely into his chest.
“You could have mad sex. And I could have just … sex.” If she poured all her anger and hurt into sex, maybe she’d almost match the fierceness and intensity coming from him. He wanted to beg.
Merde, Célie, please.
His fingers flexed into her butt.
“And I don’t even know you anymore,” she said.
Merde.
She drew far enough back from his chest to look up at him. “You’re really a stranger. And I’m a stranger to you, too.”
No, she wasn’t. She was still exactly Célie, bigger, brighter, stronger, more accomplished, but as vibrant and gutsy and beautiful as she had always been.
Fuck.
He drew a deep breath and then another. And managed to ease his hips far enough away from hers that he wasn’t grinding his damn erection into her in a vain, desperate pressure for more. He braced his arms on the tree by the bench to help him, framing her.
She looked smaller and more vulnerable than usual, vulnerable like when Ludo had been arrested, vulnerable like when she’d pressed her face into his thigh there on that bridge over the Canal St. Martin. In both cases, she’d trusted him with that vulnerability. He’d been the man she turned to with it.
The man who had never taken advantage of her vulnerability. Never used it to lure her into anything she thought she was ready for when he knew neither of them really were.
“Maybe we should date,” he said. His hand left the tree to frame her face. She looked startled, as if her cheek had no idea what a man’s hand felt like up until that very moment.
Or maybe just not what his hand felt like.
Her face crinkled up so funnily, happiness and wonder and fear and the threat of more tears. “
Date?
Like … like we might have done if you hadn’t
saved me for later
?” Her eyes flashed on that phrase, but the flash faded into a curious hunger. “As if … as if you wanted me to be your girlfriend?”
He stroked his fingertips over the curve of her ear, gently rubbing those two piercings. “Exactly like that.” Exactly what he had always wanted her to be. “Does that work for you?”
She nodded vigorously.
His face relaxed into a smile. “Then it works for me, too.”
“I’ll take it,” Joss said. Hell, he couldn’t believe his luck. Sixty square meters and with a view right on Célie’s favorite park, the park where he’d kissed her for the very first time. The place where he’d known: Yes. She was going to forgive him, and this was going to work out.
And it was an utter dump, so the owner, who had inherited it from an old aunt who passed away, wanted to get it off his hands as quickly as possible, meaning that Joss could buy it cheap, remodel it, and flip it for a great profit, if Célie decided she’d rather live in Tahiti after all.
Something
physical
for him to do. Something for him to build, accomplish. Clear out the trash, get rid of the rotting floorboards. The bathroom needed a total remodel, the kitchen was like some nightmare out of a haunted house from the fifties, and he’d bet that plaster covered up some gorgeous old brick, given the age of the building and the Belleville location. There was even a fireplace, which he could keep, if Célie wanted to stay in Paris, or break and remove to add an extra square meter to the surface area—and thus tens of thousands of euros to the apartment’s market value—if he resold.
He’d build a full wall of shelving into the walls here, to maximize storage space, remove the old bath entirely and replace it with a luxury shower, open up the kitchen and put down … had those been granite or marble counters upstairs in Dom’s shop? He’d figure out a way to get her to tell him what she preferred, without letting her know what he was doing.
And then, when he had it beautiful, perfect, the most perfect apartment she could ever imagine … he’d show it to her.
And her face would light up, and she’d run her hand over those granite—or marble—counters, and she’d run to the big windows that gave her a view onto her park and the Eiffel Tower. She’d bounce the hell all over the apartment, she’d be so happy.
See? You were right about me, Célie. I
can
do anything. Even give you this.
And then, maybe, she’d cuddle up with him on a … really comfy couch.
Yes. Definitely a big, deep couch.
“I’ll take it,” he repeated. “Let’s get the paperwork started.”
Célie was going to
love
this.
As soon as he got it into a shape that he could be proud to offer her. He was damn well not showing her the dump it was right now.
***
As soon as Célie spied Joss through the window the next day, happiness leapt inside her. He was in his spot, over there to the right. His leaning stance held a lot more hardness to it these days, though, hard not just in the presence of muscles, since he’d been in great shape before he left, but in the way those muscles seemed ready for anything.
She finished up, cleaning chocolate off her hands, changing out of her chef’s jacket into a sexy, sleeveless, cream-colored silk top that draped with affectionate looseness against the curves of her body down to graze over some butt-clinging leather pants. She jumped up and down in the bathroom to try to get a glimpse of her butt in the small mirror over the sink, hoping this outfit looked as good on her as it was supposed to, but the glimpse was far too inadequate.
She poked her head out. “Have you ever thought about installing a full-length mirror in this bathroom?” she called to Dom.
He glowered at her. “No.”
“Can I organize the workers and go on strike until we get one?”
Dom stared at her.
“And a makeup mirror,” Célie said. “Or at least proper lighting. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve put up with these working conditions so long.” Apparently she hadn’t been that worried about what someone else thought of her post-work appearance before this.
Dom groaned and swung back to his work, muttering about how “this kind of thing never happens to Sylvain.” Célie grinned, grabbed the box of chocolates she had made and slipped it in her messenger bag, then ran down the stairs and across the street.
Joss jerked away from the wall in what almost seemed the start of a hard lunge toward her, as she darted across, but he caught himself and stilled on the edge of the sidewalk, waiting for her.
She sank into happiness until it was slowing her down, until it was like too much caramel and she was an ant trying to make her way across it. It bogged up her feet, it pulled her under, until by the time she reached him, she’d remembered why an ant should never get close to caramel in the first place. The infinity of sweetness might seem like paradise, but that was before your six little feet got caught in it and you ended up smushed and limp, all the life sucked out of you. Like last time.
Joss let out a fast breath as she stopped in front of him, his gaze going quickly up and down the street to either side of her, checking high and low, and then back to her.
Célie went up on tiptoes to kiss him on each cheek, feeling solemn, as if she was re-opening a long-abandoned ritual: Joss waiting for her after work, as she danced across the street to him and kissed him on each cheek and they walked home together, and she was full of happiness just to be in his company and nobody messed with her.
Joss turned his head and caught her lips with his, his hands closing around her hips to pull her in closer to him.
Oh.
Oh.
Memories of what they had been blurred with all those unfulfilled dreams of what she’d wanted them to be. Firm hands pulled her against a hard body, lips opened on hers as hers opened against his, as she got lost in him, sinking deeper and deeper into the kiss, into the slide and shift of lips against each other, into the hunger to take it deeper still, to take it horizontal, to use tongues and teeth and …
Joss lifted his head, his hands flexing into her hips. She stared up into those beautiful hazel-green eyes of his, her hands on his shoulders. She caught a breath and then another, and then found herself up on tiptoe, seeking his mouth again.
“
Ça va, les jeunes?
” an amused old man asked as he passed, and Joss lifted his head again, taking a deep breath.
Célie pressed her fingers to her lips to hold the feeling of his kiss there better, staring up at him. Vaguely, she started to remember that all her colleagues were probably peeking through the casement windows, commenting on her, right about now, but she stroked her hands over those hard shoulders and chest, through the fine knit T-shirt, and didn’t care.