All for You (Paris Nights #1)(37)
Oh.
Memories of what they had been blurred with all those unfulfilled dreams of what she’d wanted them to be. Firm hands pulled her against a hard body, lips opened on hers as hers opened against his, as she got lost in him, sinking deeper and deeper into the kiss, into the slide and shift of lips against each other, into the hunger to take it deeper still, to take it horizontal, to use tongues and teeth and …
Joss lifted his head, his hands flexing into her hips. She stared up into those beautiful hazel-green eyes of his, her hands on his shoulders. She caught a breath and then another, and then found herself up on tiptoe, seeking his mouth again.
“?a va, les jeunes?” an amused old man asked as he passed, and Joss lifted his head again, taking a deep breath.
Célie pressed her fingers to her lips to hold the feeling of his kiss there better, staring up at him. Vaguely, she started to remember that all her colleagues were probably peeking through the casement windows, commenting on her, right about now, but she stroked her hands over those hard shoulders and chest, through the fine knit T-shirt, and didn’t care.
“Nice color,” she said randomly of the soft sea green with its hint of gray. “It brings out your eyes.”
“I went shopping.” He, too, seemed to have difficulty focusing on his own words, thrown out randomly. And Joss was almost never random. Thus the even greater shock when he ran off to join the Foreign Legion. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to choose my own clothes in five years, beyond choosing whether to wear camouflage shorts and a muscle shirt or camouflage pants and a T-shirt in my downtime.”
Célie instantly planned a secret shopping spree in her head. Hey, if she’d spent five years stuck in uniforms and camouflage, she’d love it if someone came home with sacks of brand-new clothes for her to try on.
“And I opened a bank account, got a phone. All the paperwork things.”
“You got your nationality back?” Yet another layer to why she’d been so pissed at him about the Foreign Legion. Couldn’t he have just joined the regular army or something? Sure, it wasn’t as dramatic and glorious, but … to give up everything about himself, his nationality, his name. Her.
It was as if he didn’t have any hint of the true value of who he was at all, to give it all up to the Foreign Damn Legion. Or of the value of who she was, to give her up. Which she’d kind of accepted as his right, to not value her, but it had hurt her terribly just the same.
And she’d been livid about him giving himself up. Who he was.
He nodded.
“What were you, while you were in?”
“Monaco.” He shrugged. “Marc Lenoir. Castel is what we call one of the regimental training bases, at Castelnaudary, so it avoided confusion.”
“Did you change it back after the first year, when you were allowed?”
He shook his head.
She frowned at him. He hadn’t wanted to be Joss?
He spoke slowly. “It seemed easier to just stick with Marc than try to make everyone change what they called me. And it … kind of protected Joss from them. Kept him safe … for you.”
She stared up at him, her eyebrows drawing together as she processed that. “So … after getting out of the Foreign Legion, do you need therapy now?”
He smiled slightly and shook his head.
A sudden thought startled her: in five years, had she been the first person to call him by his real name? By who he used to be? “Is it weird? Changing back to Joss?”
“Not when you say it,” he answered simply.
And while she was still hugging that to her and thinking it over, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little paper bag and handed it to her without a word.
She opened it to find a necklace, nothing expensive, just a little red hibiscus, hung on a simple chain.
Her heart brightened. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, disconcertingly awkward for a man who exuded so much power and confidence in every situation but dealing with her. “It’s just a little—I just wanted to—” He stopped.
“You were just thinking of me,” Célie supplied, stroking the delicate petals, ridiculously pleased, far more pleased than if it had been a calculated and expensive diamond. Diamonds were insistent and demanding, even burdensome, like an investment against some return. This … this was pure sweet. That sweetness of a quiet thought. I was going about my day, and I saw this, and it made me happy to bring it to you.
Joss shrugged again.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and went up on tiptoe to kiss him again. At the last second, she pressed the kiss against his chin, to avoid starting more public displays of affection in full view of her colleagues.
He rubbed the spot on his chin, watching her as she dropped back onto her heels. He was still so hard to read. Harder even, than back before he left. She reached behind her neck to fasten the necklace, and his big hands took over from hers, fastening it for her far more slowly than she would have managed. The graze of his hands against her nape sent shivers down her spine.
His callused fingers trailed down the chain to touch the little hibiscus with his thumb. “Perfect,” he said, of that cheerful, sweet flower against her consciously sexy, leather-pants-and-silk outfit. “It looks just like you.”
“Do you know, sometimes back then I would get my hopes up about you,” she whispered to him. “We got along so well, and you were there so much for me, that I’d start to tell myself, Hey, maybe … just maybe … he likes me. And then I’d see you again and try to flirt with you and you’d keep me at a distance and I’d realize, No, no, he must just be a nice guy. Or need a friend.”