All for You (Paris Nights #1)(14)

She wrapped her arm even more tightly around his thigh to keep herself there and not twisting to kneel between his thighs and force her hands up under his shirt to just feel his damn skin, warm and alive, not grabbing his head in two tight, angry hands that held him still by the roots of his hair while she kissed him because she was so angry with him she wanted to kiss him to death, kiss him until he begged for mercy and said he was sorry, so sorry, and he would never, ever, ever—

Joss winced, under her cheek, and she realized she had dug her nails into the underside of his thigh, near the knee. She loosed them slowly, reluctantly, because the next and far more tempting target would be to dig that same hand into a fistful of everything she could manage to grab through the crotch of his jeans.

Yeah, I bet you wouldn’t run away then, would you, you bastard? Not if I’ve got hold of your privates. Men never leave that part of them behind.


Priorities, after all.

She finally had to push herself away rather than do any of that. Scrubbing her hands over her face, she tried to figure out any way to redeem her behavior.

Yeah, there wasn’t one.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I guess I just—I—you know—”

“PMS?” Joss suggested.

PMS? “Joss, you were already an idiot about women before you joined a military service that doesn’t allow females in the ranks. Don’t aggravate your situation.”

Joss rested both his forearms flat on his thighs again and closed his hands over his knees. His body moved in one big sigh.

She studied his face. “Wait. Was that supposed to be a joke?” As in, that old thing friends did for each other, to try to ease a badly behaving friend back into the embrace of friendship, to show that it was okay, that was what friends were for?

Joss opened his mouth as if to speak, but then just took another of those deep breaths that shifted his whole body. Maybe he really had been joking, or trying to. He seemed so—tired suddenly. Flattened out. It was strange on such a big guy.

He’d already been a big, strong guy before he left. Working out, boxing, playing rugby, keeping himself big enough and tough enough to scare off most people who would mess with him. She’d loved it when she could walk through their cité by his side. Nobody ever messed with her when he was there. She felt entirely safe.

But now he was even bigger, stronger. He looked so tough, people probably crossed the street when they saw him coming.

The only person who would mess with him now was a man like Dom, someone who saw another big, strong male and went straight at him to confront him and get him the hell out of his territory. The kind of man who would rather kill or be killed than trust another strong man near anything his.

“Wait,” Joss said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter. “How was I already an idiot about women? I did just fine with women, I’ll have you know.”

Célie stood up as fast as if he’d just touched a live wire to her and started striding away. But she didn’t head back toward work. She strode farther north up the canal.

He swore under his breath and caught up.

Her phone burped. She pulled it out. Dom: OK?

Oui, she typed. Laisse-moi tranquille. Leave me alone.

Bossy idiot. Her heart warmed, though. It was good, really good, to have someone strong and with a good heart looking after her.

She glanced up at Joss, who had been that person when she was a teenager. He had angled his head enough to read the screen of her phone, and his mouth tightened.

She hit send and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “Sorry. I should get back to work.”

But she kept walking the wrong way.

“This isn’t going at all like I expected,” Joss said.

Her eyebrows scrunched together. She looked up at his profile, that stubborn jaw, those straight lashes, and a glimpse of those hazel eyes. “So what did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, an odd movement on those big, square, military-straight shoulders, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I guess I thought you’d still be in Tarterets, in your apartment with your mom, and that you’d look up at me, and your face would just light, and you’d throw yourself into my arms and not be able to stop kissing me from how happy you were.”

She stared at him so hard she tripped over a cobblestone. His hands came out of his pockets, but she had already righted herself.

“I mean, kiss on my cheeks, of course.” He touched one cheek and then the other, where bises would fall. Was that a tinge of color on his face? Impossible to tell, given how much the sun had darkened his already Mediterranean skin.

“I was just supposed to be sitting in my mom’s apartment in the projects in Tarterets? Waiting for you? For five years? Not growing up, or accomplishing anything, or making anything of myself? Thanks a lot.”

A faint frown. His hands went back into his pockets. “You could have kept writing,” he said suddenly, low and rough. “Let me know what you were doing, what you were becoming. Sent a few pictures whenever you changed hair color, that kind of thing. I hear selfies are hot these days.”

She glared at him. “Yeah. You could have written, too.”

The strangest wistfulness crossed his face. “I thought about it,” he said, the same way a man might say he used to dream of flying to the moon. “Once those first four months were up, and we had the right to send letters. I read once in a book about World War II how often soldiers would just make something up.”