All for You (Paris Nights #1)(26)
Besides, it had been a year since his last leave. And right now, being outside like this, under the non-starry sky of bright Paris, with people of both sexes all around just living their lives, no real menace to him anywhere, instead of in barracks surrounded by the solidarity and snores and problematic temperaments of other fighting men or outside where he had to keep an eye out for snipers or someone smiling coming up to him with a basket of flowers that hid a bomb … it felt so free, it was almost like flying. He didn’t even know if he’d be able to sleep. He might want to pace Paris, see it with all its lights and cynicism and the profound romantic innocence of its sleep.
He turned his head toward Célie’s window again, wondering what she looked like when she slept. Romantic? Innocent? Cynical? Cute. He was pretty sure about the cute part.
He couldn’t see her moving in her apartment anymore. A sigh of wistful arousal ran through him at the thought of her, either in the shower or already tucking herself into her pillow.
“Joss.”
His head twisted at her voice coming from across the street. What was she doing back down here and not in bed? Oh, hey, had she missed him? Maybe even … started thinking about inviting him up?
She crossed the street determinedly as he stood and stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
He looked from her to his jacket in a pillow position on the bench, not quite grasping the question when the answer seemed pretty obvious. “Nothing much,” he admitted. “Just going to take a break for a while.” He’d been up a lot longer than twenty hours at a stretch before. Sleep deprivation to push a man past his breaking point was a key component of Legion training, a well-founded component it turned out later, given what they had to deal with in actual combat situations. But that sleep deprivation was also how a man learned to catch sleep when he could, too.
“Are you sleeping on that bench? Joss—don’t you have anywhere to stay?”
“I hadn’t gotten around to it. I just got into town this morning, and … I’ve been busy.” Besides, originally, he hadn’t intended to stay. He’d thought he’d sweep Célie off to some place like Tahiti, and they’d spend the rest of their lives in some dreamy paradise. Now … well, she seemed happy here.
“Do you want to help me find a place?” he asked hopefully. That way, even if she tried to be noncommittal, he’d know exactly how much or little she liked his options. He could read Célie like an open book.
Actually better. He could focus on her longer, without the sense of her swimming away from him. She … rested his eyes. His brain. Made him feel as if everything was clear now, beautifully so, as if all that energy and tough-hearted optimism in her washed the world around her clean and made it sparkle.
Every time he thought of her insane little chocolates, that so-easily-melted, delicate perfection held out to the world with all her heart, it made him smile. Maybe the smile didn’t show, because he’d spent the last five years in situations where you didn’t want to give anyone a weapon against you, but it curled up there, deep in his middle. God, I want to kiss you.
“Joss.” She put both hands to her head. He loved it when she did that, the way it showed off her whole body—energy and curves and gracefully determined muscle—in some dramatic chiding. He liked being the focus of her chiding. He got off on it a little bit, to tell the truth. “People already want to arrest you as a crazy stalker.”
He stopped smiling. “Damn it, now I can’t even sleep on a bench? Merde, Célie. It’s a nice night.” Nice night to be alive, nice night to be out of the Legion, nice night to gaze up at an apartment window and contemplate his goal and how he was going to get to it. He sure as hell had spent nights in far worse conditions contemplating his goal and how he was going to reach it and, ideally, survive.
Of course, in those cases, sometimes he had to kill his goal, which was another of the contrasts that was so nice here.
She jerked her hands down from her head and folded her arms across her chest, a look he didn’t like on her at all. It closed her off. “And that’s a load of bullshit,” she said stiffly.
Oh, really? He clasped his left wrist behind his back in parade rest. “What is?” he asked coolly.
“That you did it all for me. First of all, if you did it all for me, I’ll kill you. And second, you damn well did not. You must have just started some fantasy thing about me to get you through.”
One thing a man learned fast in the first four months training in the Legion was when to keep his mouth shut, no matter what someone said or even yelled in his face. Just because somebody said something completely idiotic and insulting didn’t mean you had to react to it. Plus, she’d put him in the typical drill sergeant lose-lose situation there—damned no matter what point he argued.
“Just like some—some calendar pin-up girl or something,” Célie muttered.
Joss grinned before he could catch himself, a sneak escape out through his neutral expression, at the idea of Célie as a pin-up girl. “You’d make a rather unique Playboy bunny.”
Her hands dropped to her hips. There you go. He liked that position, too. Much more open than the arms folded one, and, yes, yes, getting in trouble with her did give him a hot erotic charge. Made him want to just … mess with her. Get her more riled up until they were wrestling on a big bed and he was proving to her exactly how much she liked the kind of trouble he could get into. He’d never done it in real life, but always in his fantasies, that was a familiar tussle, one they got into a lot.