Her smile deepened. “No, you’re not. You like taking up as much space as you do.”
His thumb rubbed her forearm, and he kissed the top of her head.
“I like this cuddle,” she whispered. “I like it so much.”
“Yeah. I like it, too.”
Yet another thing that made it better than all her vague imaginings—the sand-rasped depth of his voice, the way she could feel it in her own body, because he lay so close and warm against her. That warmth and sweetness that seemed to sink all through her and become her in some essential way.
Maybe it was a good warmth and sweetness to let herself become.
“I could tell you a bedtime story,” that low, deep voice said against her back.
She linked her fingers with his big ones and waited.
“There was once a man nobody believed in. Not one person. Except you. And he’d do anything, anything in the world, not to lose that belief in him. But he felt like this unfired clay standing out there in the rain, slowly dissolving, while she kept looking up at him like he was a marble statue. And one day, he thought: I will go get fired in a kiln at least. I will become that man, so nothing and nobody can melt me into mud at her feet instead of the hero she thinks I am. He thought it was a fair trade—to take away the clay and mud for a while so that he could come back as the real thing.”
Her fingers tightened on his, pressing his hand to her belly.
Oh, Joss.
“But … he was just a stupid kid. And kind of screwed up. He didn’t know how long five years was, or that
his
girl couldn’t possibly wait in a tower that long—she’d climb down her own hair and cut it off to get free and go make her
self
into someone she could admire, since she had to have someone. He’s proud of her that she did that, though.” His arm squeezed her. “He’s sorry that he wasn’t there, but he’s very, very proud.”
She brought their linked hands to her lips and kissed the calluses on his palm. “She’s proud of him, too,” she whispered. “She’s very, very proud.”
“I love this rug.” Célie petted the plush, soft white thing. Joss watched her, a profound peace and satisfaction stretching through his body, like the warmth from the fire.
Their motorcycle leathers hung by the door, drops of rain still clinging to them, and the light from the fire flickered over them. They’d finally been able to move in three weeks ago. Just in time for the Christmas season, when Célie was utterly swamped.
She’d worked until ten yet again, and Joss had swung by to pick her up. Mostly Célie preferred to drive herself. In fact, he’d kind of created a monster with that gift of a motorcycle, because she drove
way
the hell too fast, he was
always
having to fight with her to slow down, and she’d decided to let her hair grow to shoulder-length so she could see if that and the motorcycle leathers made her look like Black Widow.
She teased him about being Captain America, too, but Joss just shook his head at her. No offense to Captain America, but that man did not need to wait around eight years respecting Black Widow and not making his move on her. Just a little tip Joss could give him.
Plus … Captain America was a superhero, serum-enhanced. And Joss … Joss was human. All the impossible tasks Joss and his fellow Legionnaires had accomplished, all the buildings they’d jumped from and cliffs they’d scaled and weights they’d carried, all the wounds they’d survived, they’d had to do it with their own base human bodies.
With the clay of them, that they fired in a kiln of their own will.
He liked the hardness of his human body. Liked the way it felt, when he picked Célie up on his own motorcycle because she’d worked so hard and so late that she … maybe didn’t
need
him. Maybe that wasn’t the right word. But it helped her, that he was there when she could finally get off, those nights when she was too tired to play at Black Widow. It helped her that she could slide exhausted on the bike behind him and wrap her arms around him and let him handle the traffic in the dark and the rain. It helped her that he made sure she put some actual decent rations into her body besides just chocolate, to get her ready again for another tough day tomorrow, and the next day, and all the way through until after New Year’s.
He liked being her strength when she needed it. He liked it a lot.
“I love this hot chocolate,” he said, because even as tired as she was, she’d made him some anyway, with a quick smile and sparkle of her eyes, whisking the chocolate into hot milk as he washed their plates.
He’d spent the hours between his quitting time and hers in the gym, working out, so he could use all the hot chocolate he could get.
His muscles were still a little pumped, in fact, which he was enjoying quite a bit because Célie’s eyes kept lingering on his biceps whenever she glanced his way. He smiled at her.
She rolled on her back on the rug, gazing at the brick wall. God, the backbreaking, tedious hours she’d spent scraping plaster off that thing. And now she beamed every time she looked at it.
Kind of like he did, every time he looked at the gleaming hardwood floors or the elegant efficiency of the bathroom or the beautiful kitchen he’d built her, after consulting with her every step of the way—how she moved, what she reached for, what kind of things needed to go on the high shelves only he could reach for her, and what things in the cabinets she had to bend for. It meant that most of the things were slightly misplaced for him when he cooked, but that was okay. It was still way the hell better than anywhere he’d ever lived before.
On the wood mantle he had built for the fireplace sat photos Célie had framed. Them dressed up at Jaime’s wedding—about damn time Dom got his guts up for that—and another of them a mess of sand and fun after helping build a sandcastle that same wedding weekend over in the U.S. Joss in Legion camouflage, with the men from his unit after they’d just finished cleaning out camps of drug dealers in Guyane. Herself, splattered with chocolate and beaming, holding up a trophy she’d won in a chocolate-making competition. Joss loved that one. It made him want to lean over and taste her for chocolate every time he looked at it.
She kept the postcards he had sent her in a drawer by her side of the bed, hidden, thank God, so that every friend who came over didn’t have to see how bad he’d been at putting his heart down on paper. But sometimes, if they started snapping at each other over some minor thing, she would stomp off to the bedroom mad. He’d take a few minutes to calm down and want to make up, then follow to find her sitting on the bed looking through the postcards. And she’d smile at him, the irritation forgiven and forgotten in favor of what really mattered.
“I love this place,” she said softly.
“I love you,” he said.
She found his bare ankle and curved her hand around it, her thumb caressing his ankle bone as if even that part of his body had a texture she couldn’t resist.
Hell, that felt good.
He set his chocolate on the hearth and pulled her up to nestle back against his body, her head tucked against the join of his thigh and hip.
“A lot. I mean … really a lot.”
He just didn’t have the eloquence to tell her how much. “Really a lot,” hell. Maybe he should have gone off for five years of poetry classes instead. He suspected Corey Chocolate wouldn’t pay him nearly as well for an expertise in poetry, though.
She smiled at him. “I love you, too.”
Maybe … now would be a good time?
His stomach tightened. He tried to breathe through it. Hell, if Dom Richard could finally get up the nerve to propose to Jaime,
Joss
could risk a second rejection.
He could.
Damn it, he could.
Mostly because he just wanted it so damn bad.
Célie reached up from her position against his thigh to stroke his cheeks, and the coolness of her fingers made him realize how hot his skin was. Oh, fuck, was he blushing?
“How am I doing on the cuddles?” he asked.
She nestled her face into his thigh. “I’m so happy.”
Sometimes he didn’t know what to do with how much tenderness swamped him in moments like this. He almost couldn’t breathe from it, as if it was his kryptonite or something. A force that could overwhelm a man no matter how strong he tried to be. He had to stroke her cheek and just sink into it.
“I wanted to ask you something.” Heat burning in his cheeks, he rubbed one hand against the slate of the hearth. “I suppose now is a good time.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. She’d gotten so good at that—listening to him. She’d managed to breathe that anger out of her somehow and release it, in the way his mother had never been able to release her anger with his father, not even when she let it spill onto her son, too. Célie’s quiet when he tried to talk to her now made him feel as if they were teenagers again—when they could talk about anything. When she had been his refuge, the person who made his thoughts feel whole and true and worthy of being shared.
Like teenagers, but … bigger. Stronger. Even a little wiser.
Oh, hell, he just had to go for it. He cleared his throat and dug awkwardly into the pocket of the hip she wasn’t lying on. Yes, he
had
been putting this item in his pocket every morning for the past six months, just in case his chances looked good that day. Just in case he could get his nerve up.
He got it free and took one deep breath, trying for the techniques he’d learned to deal with adrenaline in the Legion—fill your lungs. Hold it two seconds. Let it out long and slow. And go. “Do you ever think there might come a time again when people would think you were running around in sequins because it would make you so happy … to wear this?”
He held out the diamond ring she had once turned down.
And his stomach tightened to the point of implosion. The platinum burned against his fingers as if he’d pulled it straight out of a fire.
She drew in a breath, pressing her fist to her mouth.
Was that—oh, God, that was the exact same expression she’d had on her face just before she said
no
the other time.
His fist clenched around the ring. “Or, if you’d rather …” He had to clear his throat much harder this time. He fished in his pocket again. “There’s this one.”
God, this goddamn ring. Cheap, slim band, oversize fake diamond, bent setting. He had to breathe slowly to keep his hand open and the cheap thing resting on his palm, instead of hidden inside a fist.
But Célie … she lit up like, like … sequins. She sat up, grabbing his hand so she could look at it better. “Did you go back and buy me one just like the one you almost bought me before?” Her voice came out so hushed and wondering.
Damn, his throat felt rough. Five years in the Legion had ruined his voice. He tried to clear it anyway. “This is the one I bought before. Five and a half years ago, the night before I left.”
See how pathetic it was? See why I couldn’t offer it to you?
Her hands tightened spasmodically on his. She jerked up her head so fast she almost hit him in the chin. “You
bought
it? You actually had it in your pocket when you told me good-bye that night? And you lost your nerve?”
“I wanted to be better,” he said low, a little helplessly.
“Oh, Joss.” She threw her arms around him, holding on as tight as she could. Hell, that felt good. That was so much better than crying and telling him to go away. Oh, thank God. No matter how badly this proposal attempt turned out, at least it was already better than the last time. “I will strangle you one of these days, I swear.”
He rubbed her back gently. “I’ve got a strong neck. I can risk it. For you.”
“I love you so much,” she whispered. “I always have.”
Okay, so he was making progress. He was definitely getting better results this attempt than last one. But …
Oh, fuck, would she just
say
it? Yes or no? The fucking suspense was killing him. What if she was letting him down gently? Or
what if she was going to say yes?
He set both rings into the same hand and held them out to her on his palm. “You can have either one you want.”
His pinky finger curled surreptitiously over the cheap one, trying to hide it.
Célie peeled his pinky finger back, looking at it. Oh, hell.
She looked back and forth between the two rings for a long time, the one that he was so proud of, that showed all that he had been able to accomplish, and the one of which he was ashamed, that showed where he came from. When she looked up at him, her eyes were shimmering.
Fuck
, not the tears. That had ended so badly for him last time.
And then she said, “Can I have both?”
He blinked, not quite able to absorb what she had just said. He felt kind of … dizzy. As if all his world had just turned into this mass of swirling sequins under a disco ball.
“Because I love both those parts of you. Who you were and who you drove yourself to become. I love that you loved me then, and I love that you love me now,” Célie said.
He snatched her into him, hugging her hard as he buried his face in her hair. “You can have either one you want.” His voice hurt, coming through his throat. “As long as you say yes this time.”
“
Yes
,” she whispered.
Yes.
His arms tightened on her so hard that she made a muffled sound of protest, and he eased his hold, but his empty hand kept petting her too deeply, over her back, her arm, up to frame her face. Yes, she was still there. It was the real Célie. She wasn’t disappearing before his over-urgent fantasies. “Really? Hell, Célie,
really
?”
She opened the fist he’d made over the rings when he grabbed her and eased the tip of her ring finger into the cheap ring on his palm.
Damn that cheap one. But he took her hand and eased it on properly, then followed it with the other, much finer one.
Which looked ridiculous. “Célie.” He covered the cheap one with his finger. There now. That expensive one on her finger—
that
looked beautiful.
“Maybe one on each hand.” She pulled them off, and Joss quickly pre-empted her choice and slid the expensive one on her left ring finger, leaving the right ring finger for the cheap one.