All for You (Paris Nights #1)(21)

Wait. Did that sound—

Joss clasped his wrist behind his back, going into parade rest, his face almost completely blank. Except for the gleam of gold in those hazel eyes. “You don’t know what I taste like.”

A slow fire kindled somewhere down in the curl of Célie’s toes and just started to burn, burn up through her. Joss didn’t hit on her. He’d never, ever said anything sexual to her before.


And she’d never even imagined what he might taste like, until now. She’d imagined how warm he would be, in bed beside her. She’d imagined the texture of his strength. She’d imagined kissing him, even. But his taste—

If she opened her mouth against his skin, the taste of it would be—

No taste, maybe just a little salt, and … and she realized she was actually sucking on the knuckle of her thumb to establish this for herself, right there in front of him. Whipping her hand away from her mouth, she shoved it into the pocket of her leather jacket.

“Here.” She thrust her box of chocolates at him, pressing it flat against his chest, a metal shield between her hand and his heat. “Now you know what I taste like.”

Wait. What the hell had she just said?

Joss brought one big, callused hand to cover hers, holding it against the metal she pressed against his chest. It must be her imagination that she could feel his heart thumping even through that aluminum box. It must be her own heart, beating in her brain.

Calluses and strength and warmth, sliding over the back of her hand. He held it and the box together, sliding it down, down his chest, to tuck the box in the waistband of his jeans. Célie’s brain fused. She just stared at that flat silvery box angled there where it was absolutely too hot for chocolates … they were going to melt … it …

He linked his fingers with hers, these big, firm fingers that felt way better than she had ever managed to imagine, making their space in between her smaller ones, and brought her hand to his mouth … to suck on the knuckle of her thumb. “Hmm,” he said. “I expected something a little more exciting.”

Hey! More exciting? She was going to dissolve in a puddle. Her heart felt like one of those cartoon hearts, thumping in great zigzag elastic bounds outside her body as if it wanted to break free.

“Maybe you’ll taste different in other places,” he said.

Her brain had turned into chocolate too long in the sun. Nothing left of it but something a greedy person could lick off his fingers.

What was he doing to her? Joss had always been her brother’s friend. She’d had a crush on him, sure, but no matter how many ways she’d tried to hint them into something more than friendship, he’d never taken her up on it. He’d been safe.

Until he left her and broke her heart into a million tiny shards that cut in her throat and her eyes all the nights she cried over him, hiding between her bed and the wall and hoping no psychopathic sergeant was making him do a thousand push-ups without food or water at noon, or carry rocks in his mouth for three hours in the hot sun while he did them, or beating him to broken bones for some infraction, or all the other things she read about the Foreign Legion training. That was in the first six months. Then, when she knew the Foreign Legion was being called into action in Mali and Afghanistan, she’d had to worry about whether he might right that second be in a firefight, whether—

She jerked her hand away. It didn’t jerk very easily. First his grip tightened and restrained her, until he made himself loosen it and let her fingers free. “You are five years too late for this, Joss. Too bad you saved me for later when I actually had a crush on you. And ditched me. What, did you think our HLM was your own personal little walk-in freezer for me and you could just thaw me out when you got home?”

His face closed again immediately, hiding his weaknesses from anyone who might see a chance to exploit them, and it made her want to cry. Their cité had taught him that skill, but the Legion had perfected it. “I screwed up with you,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, Célie.”

She frowned, discomfited. He had screwed up, and it was much too big a screw-up to be solved by a simple apology. What was she supposed to do? Shrug and say, No problem, it’s all okay?

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up, though, Célie. I don’t actually know how to quit.”

It was true. He never had. That’s why she’d known, once he’d signed up for the Legion, that he wouldn’t be back. No matter what kind of hell training was, he would see it through those whole five years.

She thrust out her jaw. “You quit on me.” You left me there. You just … left me. As if I was nothing.

I guess I was nothing. A drug-dealing pseudo-friend’s little sister.

Hell, if the thought of her on the back of a motorcycle flying out of there with him had ever even ghosted across his mind, the thought of them going together, he must have instantly dropped her out of that picture as dead weight.

“Célie.” He struggled visibly for words. She hesitated, caught by that as she always had been—by the desire to know what he was thinking that was so very hard to say. “I did it for you.”


Her fists clenched. A scream rose up in her, strangled by all the city around them, this primal scream that needed an entire empty desert or mountain range to let it out. “Fuck you,” she said again and pivoted, striding for her moped.