Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(62)
Thank you, Jesus. And he followed right after her, too rough, too hungry, too overwhelmed.
It shattered him. She shattered him.
He had warned her. You make me feel like I’m f*cking blown sugar.
Oh, shit, what was he going to do to pull himself back together again, later? Five months from now?
Don’t think about it. Count on now.
He braced there, breathing as if he’d just finished one of their more masochistic PTs, his muscles slowly easing. She didn’t open her eyes, but a little smile curved her mouth.
He touched it, traced the shape of that happiness. It looks good on you, sweetheart.
He wished some genius would invent self-disposing condoms so he didn’t have to even think about getting up from this bed. But they hadn’t, so he eased to the side, circling his thumb and forefinger around himself to make sure he kept her safe as he pulled free.
Her smile deepened as she curved immediately into him, her hand over his hip. She found his other hand without opening her eyes and kissed it, then nestled it down into her own curls so that her cheek was pressed against it as her weight seemed to dissolve more and more into the bed.
She was falling asleep.
He waited for that. Waited for it to deepen enough he wouldn’t wake her, then went reluctantly to clean up.
He hesitated by the bed when he came back, still naked and not at all sure what to do. It had been one hell of a long time since he’d slept with a woman after. There’d been a period—after his stupid twenty-year-old days when women were just his prizes for being a badass and he didn’t quite realize really that they were people, too—when he’d started staying the night, wanting something more. But it just didn’t work out right. It opened a man up too wide, to spend the night, when that more never really felt possible.
It felt awkward to climb onto the bed beside her. But it would have felt stupider to leave.
She gave a little sigh, when his arm settled over her waist. He pulled the edge of her comforter up over her body.
Nice.
Really, really nice.
It reached up and pulled him under, that niceness, like warmth might to an exhausted man come in at last from the cold. He could feel himself growing fuzzy around the edges, sleep claiming him, little dreams stirring as they lost the confines of the waking world. They could fall in love, they could get married, yeah, he could see the whole team there, all the maleness that would pack around him in support and Lina handling them all with that amused, don’t-mess-with-me affection she showed Chase. They had kids, they lived happily ever after. This is a dream, some part of his brain mentioned. It was the blithe confidence in the live and ever after that alerted it. But that bit of sense was too fuzzy from niceness and warmth and blurred silent again.
Yeah, that would work. All kinds of things could work when you were falling asleep.
And he did fall asleep, content and oddly secure.
Chapter 16
“So this is why people date,” Jake said. The month of August had been a gentle one in some ways for them, in the aftermath of the harsh July. Jake’s schedule had been fairly constant, shifting more toward daytime training with RAID and GIGN, and Lina’s had been more or less up to her, since the restaurant was closed until mid-September. Plus, the blasted country seemed to have finally remembered it was summer, and they sat on a picnic blanket on the Champs de Mars on a balmy Sunday afternoon, the great field in front of the Eiffel Tower scattered with other couples and tourist families but not too crowded. Other than her police guards on active duty and the uniformed soldiers toting assault rifles around the base of the tower, he was by far the most alert person on the field, unable to completely relax, but he’d probably be that way all his life. Didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy an afternoon in front of the Eiffel Tower with his girl. It made him smile to think of her as his girl.
“So that they can be romantic in front of the Eiffel Tower?” Lina said, amused. “It’s true that might be fifty percent of the reason. At least, that’s the impression I got from Hollywood films.”
“Parisian snob,” he said, amused. “You guys are so spoiled.”
If anyone had ever told him as a kid growing up in a failing mining town in West Virginia that one day he would be sitting gazing at the Eiffel Tower with a pretty Parisian who thought he was something special…he would have believed it. As a kid, he’d thought that anything was possible.
And given that everything he’d ever aimed for had been possible in his life, you’d think he’d find this whole situation a little more credible now.
She waved her hand. “You guys might run the world, but we have the Eiffel Tower. By the way, it’s totally offensive cultural appropriation to keep building imitations of it all over the damn United States.”
“Last time I checked, you guys were convinced your culture was inherently superior and we all should be trying desperately to imitate your savoir-vivre. Now you’re blaming us for cultural appropriation?”
Lina grinned. “First time I’ve heard Las Vegas described as an attempt to imitate savoir-vivre. I’m not sure you should brag about that.”
Jake laughed. That was a thing she did to him. She worked her way inside his heart and then that warmth of hers expanded it, until he laughed with her easily. Until, half-sprawled on a blanket in front of the Eiffel Tower, he felt almost as innocent and easy as that twenty-year-old American-student-in-Paris over there acting sappy with his girlfriend. Even after a month, he couldn’t get used to how good being with her was. “So basically, if you’re not French, you can’t win.”