Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(53)

Her eyebrows crinkled. “Does cock block mean something different in your country?”

He glared at her. “Do you just like to keep control or something? You had to take the reins before I could? Is that it?”

“Not all the time,” she purred, just to see what it did to him.

He narrowed his eyes at her as if he was going to strangle her.

“As you should know,” she added for good measure.

He held up a finger at her. “Stop giggling.”

Hey. “I was trying for low and sultry,” she said, offended.

“Oh, trust me,” he muttered viciously. “A woman laughing with delight in herself is way the hell more erotic than low and sultry.”

She grinned up at him. “You know, I like that about you.”

“Please don’t tell me what you like about me,” he said desperately, but his expression belied the words.

“What you find sexy in a woman.” She winked at him. “I mean, it’s one of the things I like about you. Do you want me to start a list?”

Yes, his eyes said, catching on hers even as he shook his head no. “It’s the post-trauma thing, isn’t it? You’ve decided you can still seize life with both hands, and now you’re effervescent with it. What did I do to deserve this?”

Lina stepped back into him and slipped her arm around his waist. “Maybe you were a really good boy,” she tried to purr. But even she could hear that her purr came out more like a ripple of pleasure.

Jake cursed low and heartfelt. Then he pulled her arm from around his waist and stepped backward, up into the sand behind him for lack of anywhere else to go.

“Allez, miss!” called one of the men in a group they had passed a moment before. “You can come here and kiss me.”

Jake turned and gave the man and his entire group a cold look.

This time, that cold look failed in its effect. The young men just elbowed each other and laughed. Their police guards watched them from their ten-meter distance, bemused.

“You know what else I like about you?” Lina said. “You’re really hot.”

“God damn it.” Jake stepped back onto the cobblestones and strode on.

Lina didn’t follow.

He stopped in two strides, turned back, and gave her an exasperated look.

She smiled, ridiculously delighted in her own power, and ran up to him, falling into step beside him again. “I’m just happy to be alive,” she said. Instead of guilty or scared or determined. She was alive.

“That’s exactly what I just said,” Jake said grimly. “And you want to be alive on me.”

Lina considered the image those words evoked.

Jake winced. “I mean—”

“You mean, like alive on top of you?” Lina said. “Yeah.”

“Damn it, Lina, if you don’t behave, I’m going to take us both for a swim in this damn river.”

The Seine was a filthy river. But hey, she’d survived bullets, she supposed she could survive a night swim in it. It sounded fun. Romantic. A good memory, for someone who was going to live a long life. “Can I take my boots off first? They were kind of expensive.”

“Seriously, don’t tempt me.”

Lina grinned. “You keep saying that, Jake, but I don’t see you walking away from temptation.”

He gave her the dirty look of a man who thought she was striking below the belt. Which was kind of true, she thought, her grin growing wider. She hoped she was doing at least something below the belt. “And stop saying my name like that!”

That one threw her. “Like what?”

“Jake.” He tried to do something tight and silky and sharp with his normally softer, drawling consonants and vowels.

“Jake,” Lina repeated, trying to figure out what he was talking about.

Jake closed his eyes.

Lina gave the Seine a sad look. Over the next bridge, the Eiffel Tower winked at her. “He doesn’t like my accent,” she told the dark water mournfully.

The Eiffel Tower sparkled in amusement.

There had been a hell of a lot of terrorist plots against that Tower. She’d survived every one.

“You are more trouble than any woman I have ever known,” Jake groaned.

One of Lina’s eyebrows went up a little. “If you meet most women by picking them up in a bar in under half an hour, I’m not sure you can claim to ‘know’ that many,” she said dryly.

Another dirty look, but this one darker, as if her blows were getting lower and starting to actually hurt. Like maybe the lack of real relationship in his life was a wound.

Oh.

And as that sank in further: Oh.

What had he said? It’s not my first time at this rodeo, honey. Being used for sex.

Oh.

Sobered, she slipped her hand into his again, but this time she linked her fingers with his bigger ones and gave them a squeeze, her brow knit.

He frowned down at her. The frown faded as he met her eyes.

His hand relaxed slowly around hers, shifting to enclose hers in warmth. For a while they walked without speaking, Jake gazing around at everything Paris stretched before him—either enjoying it or constantly checking for possible attackers, she wasn’t sure—while Lina mostly snuck glances at him.

“I’m having a hard time buying your inability to find a boyfriend,” Jake said. “I’m pretty sure most shy guys would be putty in your hands, and they’d sure as hell put up with your career just to get a chance at you.”