Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(31)
“Yeah, half the sexism in the world is due to that. Men standing up for men.”
“Like you and Célie and Vi don’t stand up for each other?”
“That’s different! We have to, in this world.”
Chase just smiled at her.
Lina frowned at him suspiciously, wondering if that smile meant some point was supposed to be sinking into her brain. Chase could be really annoying that way. “I notice you needed a gun, while I took out a terrorist with liquid nitrogen. Explain to me again how much stronger you are?”
A warm, low laugh from Jake behind her, and Ian licked his finger and made a sizzling noise as he scored a point in the air. Chase sighed, dramatically enough to hide the flicker of darkness in his eyes.
“Not wife,” Jake said, probably to save Chase from her. “Didn’t Sartre and Beauvoir have one of those open relationship things? Used each other for sex?”
Elias pressed his forehead into the palm of his hand.
Lina slanted a glance at Jake, who had settled into the doorway, his back to the frame, his angle such that he could look down the hall toward Vi’s room and the elevator and the police there. Lina’s escort and Vi’s were chatting, relaxed a bit in their vigilance because of the safety of the hospital and the sheer number of top warriors currently present. She focused on opening the case of pastries.
“Some very sophisticated kind of relationship anyway,” Jake said. “Parisian.”
Lina hesitated with her hand under the first pastry. She had used six-centimeter rings to shape the desserts, the croustillant of chocolate and shortbread on the bottom, the dark chocolate cream next, the pistachio cream in a beautiful raindrop shape on top, scattered with caramelized pistachios and a drizzle of dark chocolate.
Simple, crowd-pleasing flavors that someone’s palate could love even if that palate’s primary education was from military rations. The familiarity and comfort of chocolate and pistachio, combined with a grace and elegance that made her feel she was bringing something rare and precious into their lives.
A gift of beauty. In a form that didn’t impose that beauty uncomfortably on them but let them savor it.
And only twenty-four hours before, Jake’s finger had slipped a first version of that pistachio cream into her mouth.
You get to open your mouth if I want to put something in it.
Maybe she should read Simone de Beauvoir herself.
But, boy, she hadn't thought of a single other thing but him and her body, the whole time he was holding her down by her nape on a counter.
He'd done what she had asked him to.
The very bare minimum of what she had asked him to, and not a thing more.
She gave one of the chocolate-pistachio pastries to Chase, who was suitably delighted. She gave one to Mark and Ian and Elias, who all told her she was the best thing to ever happen to them and asked Chase if he would mind getting shot by terrorists more often. And then she had to give one to Jake.
He looked down at it in her hands as she held it up to him, trying both to catch a glimpse of his expression and not meet his eyes. His expression was so unreadable and he gazed at the dessert held up in her hands so long without reaching for it that she lost her precaution and studied his face fully, and when his lashes lifted suddenly, he caught her gaze.
Heat climbed up her cheeks but she couldn't look away from that hazel.
His hands lifted and curved over hers around the dessert. Brushes of warmth and strength and texture. She eased her hands free so that he held it by himself.
He touched a finger to the pistachio cream and, watching her, slipped his finger into his mouth and sucked the cream clean.
Oh, boy.
She looked away. He lowered his lashes.
“I can't stay long today,” she said.
“Don't tell me you have a hot date.” Ian pulled down his black-framed glasses and looking at her over them like a librarian who generally carried a sniper rifle to pick off chatter in the stacks. “I don't want to have to kill anybody.”
“Do you want to have to die?” Jake asked behind her conversationally.
Ian grinned as if the possibility of facing death at Jake's hands just filled him with joy. “Besides,” he said, “this Harry kid is living in a closet. There are spiders. You don't want to hear how he escapes and grows to be the hero of the world?”
“I saw the movies,” Lina said.
Ian clapped his hands to the sides of his head and hissed, “Mark! Cover your ears!”
Lina relented. “I read the books, too. When I was a kid.”
“They're suitable for adults,” Ian told her severely. “Multiple re-reads. I mean, Myth of Sisyphus. What's more Sisyphean than this kid's battle with Voldemort? Seven freaking books evil kept taking another shape and rising again.”
“More,” Lina said.
Ian frowned. “No, I'm pretty sure there were only seven. Wait. There wasn't some release we missed because we were stuck in some hellhole, was there? Because if you guys didn't tell me—”
“No. Mort. Vol de mort. You don’t say the T. He steals from death.”
“Like Sisyphus!” Ian said triumphantly. “That's how that Sisyphus guy ends up with his rock up a hill punishment. See, Mark? It will allow us thematic continuity. Comparative studies. If they both cheated death, why is only one an existentialist hero? Because Voldemort’s battle is pretty Sisyphean, too, if you think about it. That Harry is one damn big boulder crashing down on him over and over.”