All for You (Paris Nights #1)(58)

“But we can pretend otherwise,” he corrected himself, expressionlessly. “If that’s better for you.”

She opened her eyes to stare at him, so gorgeous and so focused, there in her bed in the soft lamplight. God, he was beautiful. Just utterly beautiful, there and alive and in her bed and … there. I love you. I’ve always loved you.

“Now why are you on the floor right now, Célie? You can’t tell me you’re scared of something with me right here?” Sheer incredulity in his tone, that there might be any fear she had that he couldn’t kill with his pinky finger.

She tightened her arms on her knees again, foolish and stubborn. “It’s all very well for you,” she muttered. “Your fantasy was easy. An inflatable doll could have done that—”

Joss’s lips tightened into a hard line, and his eyes blazed. He held up one finger, and that one gesture shut her up, her eyes widening. “Did you just say I treated you like an inflatable doll?”

“No! I just meant—merde, Joss, you know you’re sex-starved, and that’s the only reason you fixated on me! Your personal pin-up, you said. Anybody could have done! You just happened to focus on me!”

Joss’s body did something she would have thought impossible—it got even harder. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve said yet,” he said flatly, his lips thin. “I joined the Legion for you, and I did those five years for you, and if I focused my fantasies on you it was because you’re the person I always fantasized about, f*cking hell, Célie! Well the hell before you were even old enough for me to be doing that, and trust me, you were not my only damn option back then. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t now, either. God damn it. My inflatable doll,” he repeated bitterly, and threw himself onto his back on the bed, covering his eyes with his forearm.

Célie unfolded herself and knelt by the bed so that she could see his face again, stunned. “Don’t be mad.” She touched his chest.

He shifted his forearm just enough to glare at her. “What, you’re the only person who gets to do that?”

“You never used to get mad at me before.” Except a couple of times when he’d thought she’d done something stupidly dangerous. She felt completely disoriented by his anger, in fact.

“I was protecting you from me before, Célie. I was being your damn older brother, since your own was so crappy. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want you to take all that I am.”

“Oh,” she breathed. That made her feel … too full, overflowing, the thought of taking all that he was. But … “I want that, too. That’s exactly what I want.”

“That’s why I spent five years making myself into the best man I could, Célie. So when I asked you to do that, I wouldn’t be ashamed.”

Her eyes stung. “You … you might be too big for me, Joss. I’m … only me.”

Joss touched her chin. “Well, look at that, you’ve managed to say something even stupider.”

She frowned at him.

“Célie … only you?”

Well … she shrugged, embarrassed and annoyed. Sure, she was good with chocolate, but … had he looked at himself, ever? “You could have, like, Gisele Bündchen now,” she muttered hostilely. “Laetitia Casta.”

He cupped her chin, fingers curving against her jaw, into her hair. “Where’s my Célie? The girl who never puts herself down, who always has her chin up, defying the world to think less of her than who she is?”


Her eyes stung again.

“Besides, you know very well that you would punch Gisele Bündchen in the nose if she got near me.”

Well … yeah.

Joss smiled a little, tugging her gently closer. “And think of the lawsuit on that one. Her nose is probably insured for millions.”

“Then she should keep it away from you,” Célie muttered.

A leap of laughter in Joss’s eyes. It still made pure joy light in her own heart, to see him laugh. On one elbow, he shifted forward to kiss her, slow and warm.

Oh.

The fact that Joss Castel, her hopeless crush, had just given her a casual, affectionate, possessive kiss kind of blew Célie’s mind.

“You going to get up off that floor and get back in this bed and tell me why you were down there in the first place?” Joss’s voice was so warm and firm. Quit messing around, Célie.

It was so exactly like Joss, such a familiar tone from when she was still a teenager.

He slid his hand around her back and urged her body toward the mattress.

She braced her hands against the edge to fight the pull, in a resurgence of panic. He stopped pulling and raised his eyebrows at her, waiting.

“It’s all very well for you! Your fantasy was just … just sex!” She knew better than to say the “inflatable doll” thing again. Joss got mad so rarely, she tended to respect it when he did. “But this is my fantasy. It’s hard!”

“Célie, damn it.” Joss abruptly picked her up and set her on the bed. She half sat, half knelt, awkward and stubborn, and he took her shoulders and forced her horizontal. “What’s hard?” He propped himself above her to hold her eyes, exasperated.

“This is.” She scowled at him, pissed off at her own ridiculousness and how he managed to make her even more ridiculous just by existing.