Her brain had turned into chocolate too long in the sun. Nothing left of it but something a greedy person could lick off his fingers.
What was he
doing
to her? Joss had always been her brother’s friend. She’d had a crush on him, sure, but no matter how many ways she’d tried to hint them into something more than friendship, he’d never taken her up on it. He’d been safe.
Until he left her and broke her heart into a million tiny shards that cut in her throat and her eyes all the nights she cried over him, hiding between her bed and the wall and hoping no psychopathic sergeant was making him do a thousand push-ups without food or water at noon, or carry rocks in his mouth for three hours in the hot sun while he did them, or beating him to broken bones for some infraction, or all the other things she read about the Foreign Legion training. That was in the first six months. Then, when she knew the Foreign Legion was being called into action in Mali and Afghanistan, she’d had to worry about whether he might right that second be in a firefight, whether—
She jerked her hand away. It didn’t jerk very easily. First his grip tightened and restrained her, until he made himself loosen it and let her fingers free. “You are five years too late for this, Joss. Too bad you
saved me for later
when I actually had a crush on you. And ditched me. What, did you think our HLM was your own personal little walk-in freezer for me and you could just thaw me out when you got home?”
His face closed again immediately, hiding his weaknesses from anyone who might see a chance to exploit them, and it made her want to
cry.
Their
cité
had taught him that skill, but the Legion had perfected it. “I screwed up with you,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, Célie.”
She frowned, discomfited. He
had
screwed up, and it was much too big a screw-up to be solved by a simple apology. What was she supposed to do? Shrug and say,
No problem, it’s all okay
?
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up, though, Célie. I don’t actually know how to quit.”
It was true. He never had. That’s why she’d known, once he’d signed up for the Legion, that he wouldn’t be back. No matter what kind of hell training was, he would see it through those whole five years.
She thrust out her jaw. “You quit on
me.
”
You left me there. You just … left me. As if I was nothing.
I guess I was nothing. A drug-dealing pseudo-friend’s little sister.
Hell, if the thought of her on the back of a motorcycle flying out of there with him had ever even ghosted across his mind, the thought of them going
together
,
he must have instantly dropped her out of that picture as dead weight.
“Célie.” He struggled visibly for words. She hesitated, caught by that as she always had been—by the desire to know what he was thinking that was so very hard to say. “I did it for you.”
Her fists clenched. A scream rose up in her, strangled by all the city around them, this primal scream that needed an entire empty desert or mountain range to let it out. “
Fuck you
,” she said again and pivoted, striding for her moped.
“Célie.” He came after her. Not even hurrying to keep up with her, just this easy, ground-eating walk. Her chocolates still rode against his waist.
She swung back, putting the moped between them. “Don’t you
tell me
that you did it for me, you
bastard
.” She yanked her helmet away from him and thrust it onto her head. “And quit stalking me! It’s creepy! They’re about ready to have you arrested!”
An eyebrow went up a little, and he rubbed the back of his military cut. “That would be weird. And I’d have to go quietly to be polite? Or were they planning on sending a SWAT team?”
“Aaaarghh.”
She strangled the scream as best she could, but the sound vibrated in her throat. She zipped her leather jacket.
“I didn’t realize I was stalking you. I was just waiting. Do you—” Straight brown eyebrows drew slowly together. “Do you want me to go away?” His words came out hard, jumbled, as if he was back in school, having to make sense of a text while the letters danced and twisted in front of him.
And her eyes filled again
of course
. Of course she had to keep crying in front of him. Wasn’t that perfect? “Don’t you—don’t you—” She had to gasp through the threat of sobs.
“Don’t you dare go away again.”
She yanked the metal box out of his waistband and shoved it into his hand. “And this is to be eaten! Not melted against your skin like you’re some …
porn star
!”
She swung onto the moped, starting it, wishing she had a big, growling motor like Dom on his real motorcycle instead of her silent little electric thing.
Joss reached out and grabbed hold of the handlebars. “Célie. I don’t know where you live. I don’t have your number. You don’t have mine. And I can’t give it to you, because I still need to buy a phone and find a place to stay. I don’t even know when you usually get off. If you don’t like me waiting outside where you work all day, can we come up with some plan for how I’m supposed to
not go away
?”
She stared at him, wishing for once she had a face shield on her helmet to provide a barrier against the world. “Fine,” she snapped. “Get on.”
And instead of roaring out of their
banlieue
with her arms wrapped around him on a powerful motorbike he’d souped up so he could rescue her on it as she used to daydream, she wobbled carefully with all his weight behind her and his thighs pressed against hers on her little moped into the mass of traffic circling République.
She’d always known she would regret not getting the pink bike.
“You need a helmet,” Célie grumbled, sitting on the edge of the quay of the Île de la Cité. She folded her legs under her, so she wouldn’t be tempted to lean back against the wall instead and … tuck herself up against a shoulder.
She’d always wanted to do that. Tuck herself up against his shoulder. She’d been looking for another guy against whose shoulder she would love to tuck herself for five years, but … yeah, no. No, the last thing she wanted to do was lower her guard to someone else, depend on someone else, and have him disappear in pursuit of all those big dreams that had no room for her.
“I need a car,” Joss said. “And a phone.” He leaned back against the wall behind him, stretching out his legs and folding his hands behind his head, contemplating the Seine. “
Merde
, but it’s good to be out of the Legion.”
I didn’t tell you to join it
, Célie thought bitterly. She pulled her jacket off and draped it over her helmet, using it as an armrest. “Was it terrible?”
“It was challenging,” Joss said, of what was supposed to be one of the most brutally demanding military services on the planet. “Especially Corsica. It changed everything I understood about my own limits, about what I could do. But in the end, you’re under the orders of officers you don’t always agree with, and politicians, and, God forbid, sometimes even the UN. Also, while there are some of the best men in the world there, men you can look up to, there are definitely also some psychopath officers and NCOs. I hated having to do things I didn’t agree with, so I couldn’t see myself doing it another ten years.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked warily. Wait, Corsica?
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. The river stretched behind her, the sun setting beyond the bridges and the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or looking at the view of Paris with that hint of wonder that even seemed to ease the hardness his eyes had gained in the past five years. “I imagined taking you to the south of France or even one of the islands, like Tahiti or Réunion, and living there. But you seem to be happy here in Paris, so I’ll have to readjust. Unless Tahiti appeals.” A questioning lift of his eyebrows.
“Every time you talk about all the plans you made for me, like I was a snack in the refrigerator you were looking forward to eating when you got off work, it makes my head want to explode,” Célie growled.
His expression blanked again. He did that even better than he used to—hid his thoughts and feelings. Yeah, she could imagine that skill standing him in good stead as he went through training under those psychopaths he mentioned, and she could imagine that skill getting honed relentlessly. Coming as she did from an emotive and unstable family, something about that control of his reassured her. But it could also drive her completely nuts.
“You never thought about me, Célie?” he asked carefully.
Oh. She wrapped her arms around herself and the pain in her middle. Oh, yes, she had thought about him. Sometimes, when she had a bad day, particularly if that bad day included yet another dating disaster, she would curl up with the thought of him in her bed, as if he was still her old dream of happily ever after.
He had been thinking about her, too? Imagining all his own happily ever afters with her? She hugged her knees harder, a sweetness and a wistfulness calming her frustration, turning it into something more painful and more longing. “You were in Corsica?” she asked warily. “Isn’t that where the paratrooper regiment trains?”
He nodded, his hands still clasped behind his head.
Holy crap. She’d read about them, of course. She’d read obsessively about the Foreign Legion, the first six months he was gone. The Legion itself was already considered elite, albeit insane, but the 2e REP was the elite of that elite, one of the most elite combat regiments in the world, with the training to match.
And it hit her that he could not possibly be her same Joss anymore. That everything she knew about him was like knowing what cocoa beans were like before they got turned into chocolate. No. Nothing as soft and sweet as chocolate. Like knowing what fresh-mined iron ore was like before it got turned into a steel blade. She stared at him, wondering if his heart had changed, too.
He gazed back at her, his face hard to read but his eyes still that same steady hazel green. He did look hardened, everywhere hardened, even his eyes and the set of his chin. And yet …
There was this quiet to him, still. That same quiet strength that had made her crush on him so hard back when she was a teenager.
That made her shiver with hunger now, so that she had to rub her arms to disguise herself, as if the evening was bringing a chill.
“A porn star, hmm?” Joss’s voice was so neutrally musing, but a little curl snuck into the corners of his lips. He lounged there against the rock, with his hands behind his head, and his whole body in this lazy display of … of … something a woman could really easily jump on.
Heat chased the chill away from her skin. “That was not a compliment!”
“Oh, trust me. None taken.” But the curve of his mouth deepened.
“Only a man would think it was a compliment to be compared to a porn star!”
“No.” He shook his head. “But it’s a compliment to know you were thinking about sex.”
Oh.
She gasped, both her fists clenching against it. If the Seine wasn’t such a disgustingly dirty river, she would dive right into it this second and maybe swim around to the opposite end of the island before she came back up for air. Then just sneak away and go hide between her bed and the wall, the way she did so many nights worrying about him.
God, he looked so freaking gorgeous, stretched out almost to the point of
relaxation
, there so close to her. He looked real. He looked as if her Joss had come back, only … not hers and completely different.
And her mouth watered to know what he tasted like.
He picked up her box of chocolates from the stones beside him. “If I eat these up again now, are you going to be mad at me?” He pried the metal lid off.
“Maybe you need dinner.” She watched the strong fingers ease free a small, perfect piece. He sure could consume a lot of chocolates.
The thought made her happy. She could
make
a lot of chocolates. She might be the only woman in Paris who could keep this guy filled up.
He shook his head and slipped the entire chocolate into his mouth in one bite. She stared at his mouth, as her whole day of work, everything she had accomplished in the past five years, just melted in a rush of flavors inside it. “It gives me something else to focus on,” he said. “I’m thinking about sex, too.”
Her lips parted. She squeezed herself so tightly her feet came off the stone, and she wobbled on the edge of the quay.
He lunged forward and grabbed her arm, pulling her back into steadiness before she’d even properly lost balance.
The sudden surge of power, just to capture her, made everything inside her go still. Waiting to be captured. His lashes lowered, as his gaze fixed on his hand, firm on her arm. Slowly, his grip softened, and his fingers spread, his hand rubbing gently back and forth once against her forearm. “You’re cold,” he said softly.
Yes. It was midsummer, and yet the hair rose all over her body at the need to bury herself in the closest source of warmth.
“Célie.” His voice dropped deep and low and sand-rasped. “I could warm you up.”
“I
know
,” she said between her teeth. It was her deepest, most persistent fantasy about him, the one she still, even just two nights before, had used to ease herself to sleep—that his big body was there, warming her up. The fantasy she found more soothing to cuddle into at night than any actual male body of any man she had ever dated.
She patted blindly for her leather jacket and pulled it back over her legs.
I can take care of warming myself up. Since I had five years of knowing I, and only I, was ever going to take care of me.
“I want to go home,” she lied fiercely. The thought of leaving him on this quay, of separating herself from him by more than a meter, made her feel as if she was prying her own skin off.
His mouth twisted. “I can’t do that. Until my home decides to let me back in.”
That made her feel like an apartment broken into and wide open, a flimsy sheet over the door, no possible way to shut him out and keep herself safe. “Joss—”