“Fuck you.” No sense wasting syllables on it’s none of your business when two would do. Not with Victor.
Victor laughed. “The real question is who’s fucking her?”
Joss shoved his chair back and shot to his feet. But before he could start a fight, their adjudant, Valdez, was there, gripping Joss’s shoulder, making a calm-down-boy gesture of his hand toward Victor. Valdez tended to treat them all like cute and poorly behaved puppies—an attitude that worked surprisingly well on a band of ferocious wolves—and tonight was his send-off. Fifteen years and now he was done. He’d even told them his real name out there in the world, so they could look him up: Delesvaux. He’d promised to cook them meals that would make them cry, if they came to see him. Joss believed it. The man always cooked them a Christmas dinner that really had made some of the men cry.
A shift in the atmosphere, and Captain Fontaine was suddenly there. He’d been sitting at the bar, fending off or encouraging a pretty brunette—hard to tell sometimes with Captain Fontaine—but whatever else he might be doing, Captain Fontaine always looked after his men. He had the scars to prove it, too, and the fine lines of fatigue around his eyes despite the energy in his body even in repose. Scoured by sand and sun, until all of him, sand and skin, were that same faded brown. You could always tell a Legionnaire by the way he carried himself, tough as nylon rope but rough around the edges like hemp.
“Bar full of tourists, mostly women,” Delesvaux told Joss, in that lazy, easy-boy tone he did so well, even in the midst of a firefight. “Not the send-off I’m looking for. Come on, guys, reassure me that you’re going to survive without me.”
“Cool it,” Fontaine told Victor flatly. He, too, knew better than to waste syllables with Victor.
Victor subsided. One thing they had all learned fast was not to mess with Captain Fontaine. Unlike some of those namby pants they sent over as officers from the regular Army or fresh out of Saint-Cyr, Fontaine had worked his way up to captain from that same bare room of what-the-hell-did-I-just-do engagés volontaires that Joss and Victor and all the others had passed through. Joss knew almost nothing about Fontaine’s past before that or his real name, per the usual Legionnaire silence on that subject, but he did know that the man who called himself Fontaine came from the south of France—that bouncing, drawling accent, strong on the N’s, made it obvious—that he had a lot of cousins in a family who worked in some kind of agriculture, and that once, after a nasty week in the Uzbin Valley, when they’d lost two of their men to fucking friendly fire because of a radio malfunction, Fontaine had actually gotten drunk, and drunk enough he’d gone along with the rest of them to get a tattoo. Exactly the kind of thing Legionnaires liked to do to assert themselves in a country where both alcohol and tattoos were illegal, at least for locals. Only instead of “Legio Patria Nostra” or “Honneur, Fidélité” or “March ou crève” or even the names of the dead, like most men got in those circumstances, Fontaine had gotten, of all things, a small rose.
He’d been pissed as hell the next day when he realized what he’d done, too. But he’d never had it removed. From time to time, when he was in a T-shirt, that olive green would slide up hard biceps and the rose would peek out again, surreal in that tough, harsh world of fighting men.
Maybe that rose was his own postcard, his own dream of another life. A woman he wished upon, like a star.
Joss had gotten “Honneur, Fidélité.”
“I’ve got a girl,” Joss told them all for the third time. “And just because you don’t doesn’t mean you get to fuck with me about mine.”
Because when it came down to it, that was why they messed with him about this: jealousy. Because Joss had a girl he could carry with him back into whatever hell they got sent to. In dust and mud and falling mortar shells, she smiled at him, she told him he could do anything.
And all the others had to carry them through the same thing was the memory of their last fuck above a bar.
***
The pigeon gave Joss a disgusted look at his paucity with crumbs and flew off to find a park. The Eiffel Tower started to sparkle.
He lifted his head and looked at it. That was kind of annoying. Why did it do that? Sparkle like that. He’d heard about it, of course, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing it before that evening on the bridge with Célie. Oh, yeah, once, he and Ludo and some other guys had hung out at Trocadéro getting drunk and pretending Paris was theirs until they missed the last RER home. It had been a long, cold night, waiting for the line to start running again at dawn, and the Eiffel Tower had gone black at one a.m., leaving them to endure those five bleak hours with no sparkles. Luring them in and leaving them out in the cold. Suckers.
But now, at a distance, the sparkling was much smaller.
It kind of reminded him of Célie, actually. That vibrancy she had, that resilient energy, that sparkle of toughness she let nothing extinguish. Not rain or cold or … anything really.
God damn it, he wanted to kill somebody. Anybody who had ever gotten his hands on that sparkle of hers.
He supposed he should be grateful that the jerks hadn’t been worth her—if anyone had, she’d still be with him and not letting Joss up to her apartment instead—but it just enraged him further, to imagine some bastard who didn’t deserve her getting his hands on her. Some lazy jerk who didn’t even take her walking on the Seine.
Joss had done five years in the Foreign Legion, damn it, to deserve her, and meanwhile there were pieces of shit who thought they deserved to touch her just because, what, they existed? Assholes.
Fucking bastards.
It’s your own fault.
Yeah, but that was what you couldn’t start doing, as a paratrooper in the Foreign Legion: you couldn’t start calling all you were killing yourself to accomplish a fault, a mistake, a decision that would ruin your life. You had to have all your courage, all your strength, all your belief in your goals, all the time.
It was a funny thing. He could climb a cliff barehanded with fifty kilos on his back. He could march two hundred kilometers over steep, mountainous terrain in four days or run thirty kilometers in under three hours, with a similar weight. Drop him off with only a handful of men in enemy territory, and it was the enemy who should be afraid.
Yes, he could take hurt.
Yes, he could persist.
Yes, he could crawl through a field of barbed wire for her.
But she wasn’t hitting him, no matter how much she said she wanted to.
She wasn’t asking him to crawl.
So he had to learn new skills.
He started to make his way down the steep slant of the zinc roof to her window and then remembered—he still needed to get some damn condoms. He wasn’t using that other bastard’s. The trapdoor onto the roof was locked, so he climbed down the inside, courtyard walls—helped drain some energy off—and let himself back out onto the street, walking down it until he came to the nearest white dispenser on the wall of a building and buying several. Then he realized he hadn’t paid enough attention to her damn code, so he couldn’t get back inside to the stairs or the courtyard. He checked the street. Kind of occupied but no police. Passersby probably wouldn’t assume he was a thief at least, with this many people around.
He waved to a few people to make them believe he was doing some authorized stunt, and then just climbed back up the building to her little railing. At least it was entertainment. The lack of physical challenge in this city was making all his muscles frantic under his skin.
Be kind of fun to get in a fight with the police, to be honest, but since he was out of the Legion now, they might actually be able to arrest him, instead of just sending him back to his Colonel to get reamed out, put on some god-awful corvée duty, and then given a suspended sentence because the Colonel was secretly smug at how his police-defying wild Legionnaires enhanced the Legion reputation.
The casement window was still open—she hadn’t locked him out at least—but for a second he thought Célie herself
was gone.
Then he spotted her, curled up between her bed and the wall, her arms wrapped around herself as if she was trying to turn into a turtle and shrink into a shell.
Hell.
He swung into the room, and she sprang up, forgetting she still wore only her bra and leather pants, her hands going to her hips. “You have one hell of a nerve.”
“I know.” He stripped off his own T-shirt so they matched.
She gasped and then just went stock-still, staring at him.
Fine, maybe he did pause at that stare so he could drink it in, glad to have his muscles already pumped for her from the climbing.
She swallowed. Her hands left her hips to press to her lips. “Oh, wow,” she whispered. “Oh, wow, you’re …” She looked dazed. “You’re really, really hot.”
Nice to know that part at least had worked out for him. He gestured to himself, to that feel of his muscles tightening still more to show off for her. “All for you.”
She licked her lips.
Well, then. Some other assholes might have gotten a chance at her before he did, but he’d damn well make sure she never wanted anyone else.
He’d wipe them so far out of her mind she’d never again even think sex without thinking him.
He put one knee on her bed—it was true you could barely move in her apartment without falling onto the thing—and her eyes widened so much, he just went with that, dropping his hands to the mattress, too, and prowling across it to her. “Want to touch?”
“Jesus.” She slipped one of her fingers into her mouth and bit it, hard.
He tsked and took it from her, slipping it into his own mouth and sucking on it soothingly. There you go. Put yourself in my hands. They’ll treat you far better than you do.
She made a soft sound, and heat surged in that merciless wave through his body. But … fuck it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d overcome his body and his mind and endured. He could do anything. He could take his time and make her lose her mind.
Make her lose all memory of anyone who had ever touched her before him.
“You can touch anything.” He drew her hand from his mouth and pressed it to his shoulder. “Anything you want.” He drew her hand down over his chest.
Her tongue touched her lips.
“Or that, too.” His gaze zeroed in on her mouth. “I’d love for you to lick me.”
“Joss …” A dazed whisper. It had to be the most beautiful way his name had ever been pronounced in his life.
“I’ll trade. You can have this.” He gestured to himself. “If I can have all this.” He reached for her, grazing his hand over her ribs to rest on her hip, tugging her gently toward him. “All for me, Célie.” He looked up at her from his kneeling position on her low bed. “All mine.”
“I—I—my body is actually mi-ine,” she managed, but she was following his tug, swaying in closer to him until her shins hit the edge of the bed.
“You don’t think it’s a fair trade?” he coaxed. Her breasts were only a topple away from his face. All he had to do was tug a little more until she lost her balance and fell toward him. Soft, full breasts, pressed up by the black lace of her bra. In his fantasies, he’d tested all possible colors of bras out on Célie’s body, depending on his mood. But his two favorites had included this one, the wannabe-tough sexy black from her Goth period, and a bright, hot pink like she really was inside.
“A fair trade for this?” she said incredulously, and her other hand came to rest on his other shoulder. “Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror?”
Apparently not the same way she looked at him now.
“You’re so pretty, Célie.” His hand slid up to cup her breast. Soft and full, the lace getting in the way with its tantalizing extra texture. God, her breast felt so much better in real life than in his imagination.
“No, I’m not,” she said warily, as if he’d just made himself suspicious by saying so.
“Cute. Full of life. Strong. Glowing.” Darling. How to explain it? “Beautiful.”
“You’re delusional.” But her face was crinkling up so funny, her eyes so wondering. “Joss, I think you really did turn me in your head into something I’m not.”
“How’d you imagine me?” He pulled her closer, breathing on her lace bra. Her pulse throbbed in her throat, and he rose a little on his knees to open his mouth over it, touching it with just the tip of his tongue.
“Here,” she said.
Damn it, he’d walked right into that one.
But when he pulled back, she didn’t look like someone who was trying to stick another needle in him. She looked like he felt most of the time: as if finding the one word that expressed what she meant was a careful struggle.
“Here,” he repeated, and drew her hand down his waist, over stomach muscles he tightened just to show off. “All right. I’m here. From now on.”
“Joss.” Her free hand flexed into his biceps. Then she lost track of whatever she had been going to say, her gaze going to her hand as she flexed again, and then again. “Wow.”
“Unless I burn up right now. It’s a possibility.”
“Umm … yeah. For me, too.”
Hell, that felt good to hear. Heat surged through him, higher and more urgent.
“I knew I’d never manage to make you work for it,” she said despairingly.
She had a really weird idea of working for it. Maybe he should show her some training videos from the Foreign Legion sometime. “I’ve worked. But I can work harder.”
“It makes my tongue tingle just looking at you,” she whispered. “You are so hot.”
Hell, yeah, did he like the idea of her tingling tongue.
He liked it so much that his body wanted to explode.
“I’m not going to screw this up,” he told her, flatly. He needed to approach this like any challenge in the Legion. Just because something was impossible was no excuse for failing.
“It does seem unlikely,” Célie said wonderingly, her fingers running a line of fire up his biceps to his shoulder. “God, Joss.” She squeezed his shoulder.
Sweet, small pressure against muscles that didn’t know how to yield to it. His head tilted back, his eyes closed, as all of his being, more than five years of waiting, focused on that feel of her hands. “I like that. Célie. Please do it some more.”
He opened his eyes to find her gazing down at his face, at her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were so utterly fascinated with him that pride and hunger surged all through his body, beat in his dick and in his head, fogging thought. That fascination and admiration surpassed anything he’d ever come up with for her expression in his fantasies.
With one finger she traced slowly over the letters across his right biceps: Honneur, Fidélité. Her expression grew somber, focused. Then her hands stroked up, and she kneaded his shoulders again, strong, capable hands that were completely ineffective against the muscles of his shoulders. And yet it felt so good. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Oh, hell, Célie, if you stop, I might die. I want you to touch me everywhere.”
“Can I really?” she breathed, as if he was some kind of glorious present on offer that might still be yanked away from her.
Hell. The giddy arousal of her wonder in him was going to drive him out of his mind. It beat in him, trying to burst out of his skin.
He caught her hands, twisting her down onto the bed under him, one of his hands locking her wrists above her head. “A little bit at a time.” His breathing was too fast and too rough, and he couldn’t get it to slow down. “I’m so triggered.” He pressed a kiss into her captured palms. His body was vibrating with arousal. It pulsed in his dick, this unbearable command.
“You let go of my wrists this second, Joss Castel. That’s not fair. You can’t look that hot and not let me touch.”
“Shit.” Joss released her reluctantly. “But then I will screw this up.”
Célie drew her freed hands down his back, her expression so concentrated on the feel of him that it ab
out drove him out of his mind. He’d never even imagined her sinking into him in this tactile, sensual way, as if he was something she had to greedily lap up. And he’d thought he’d imagined her every way possible by now.
“God, Joss.” She pushed at his shoulders suddenly.
Hell, no. He did not want to be pushed back. But that was the thing about making himself so strong—the strength was to take care of her, not to control her. If he ever broke that rule, he lost everything. So he rolled away from her onto the mattress, trying not to let curses hiss through his teeth.
And she came on top of him.
His eyes widened, and he reached above his head to try to grab something, anything on her bed to help him out, but there were no bars on her headboard, nothing to hold on to. He grabbed a pillow and squeezed with all his might, and hell, that was flimsy, as Célie sat astride him, as her hands ran down his chest, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as if she was tasting him.
Yeah, taste me. Oh, hell.
Down, down, down went her hands, over his stomach that flinched even tauter at her touch, to the waist of his jeans, her fingers tracing delicately, curiously, shyly even, along the line of them, that space left by his tightened stomach muscles where she could have slipped deeper.
But didn’t.
“Célie.” His head arched back. He thrust his hips up into her before he could stop himself.
She brought one hand to her face and bit the side of it. “You’re so hot,” she whispered. “Joss, God.”
“Merde, Célie.”
“It’s like you’re half a stranger. This exotic fantasy lover. But then I say your name, and I remember I’ve known you so long. You were my friend, the man who was always there for me.” Until you weren’t.
But at least she didn’t say it this time. He saw it flicker across her face, and his body tightened against the words, but she bit her lip and focused instead on her hands on his chest.
He, too, focused on her hands on his chest. And her pelvis pressed against his dick. Hell, but he would like to get these jeans off.
All for You Page 16