All for You (Paris Nights #1)(59)

“Sleeping?”

“The cuddle!” she yelled.

His eyebrows went up again. “A … cuddle?”

“Yes!”

“That’s hard?”

“Not for you.” She glared at him. “You just have to lie there.”

He laughed, unexpectedly. It warmed her middle when he laughed, like drinking hot chocolate. “I guess you probably could have just lain there for my fantasy, too, Célie, but I appreciate it that you didn’t.” He grinned at her.

It was really not fair for him to grin. It made all her insides cozy and happy, as if she just wanted to hug him. As if this was real, as if it was going to work, as if they were together.

His fingers came up to sift gently through the feathered wings of her hair. “Why’s it hard for you, sweetheart?”

“Because it’s the thing I always dreamed about the most. The thing I fantasized every night, that you were here. It’s what got me through. And I’m afraid if I believe in it, it will disappear. And then I’ll never have it again.” She closed her eyes a moment, ashamed and vulnerable and wishing she could hide under the sheet.

When she opened her eyes again, Joss’s eyes were very intent. “You dreamed about me every night? Just about this? Me being here?”

“I tried not to,” she muttered. “But … it helped get me to sleep. It made me, you know … fall asleep happy.”

His eyes were somber. “I wish I had done some things differently. But I can’t fix yesterday, Célie. I can only work on today and tomorrow.” He shifted to the side and nestled her body in closer to his. “I can do this.”

Breath moved through her, shaky and wanting, as his warmth wrapped around her. “You don’t have to do anything,” she whispered. “You just have to be there. That’s all it takes for the cuddle.”

“Seems as if I might be able to improve on it, beyond lying flat on my back to enjoy it.” He nestled her more closely, turning her body so that her back was against his chest, his arm over her, his chin tucked against the top of her head, his body angling to envelope her in him without crushing her. “How about this?”

Her nose stung. “It’s perfect.”

“We have very different concepts of what is hard,” he murmured to the top of her head. “This is the sweetest, easiest thing I have ever done, in my entire life.”

“Is that bad?” Unease came back so quickly. “I know you thrive on challenge. You would never have gone off to the Legion, if you didn’t need to seek out the most difficult challenges possible.”

A little silence. “You don’t trust me,” he said suddenly, a note of realization. “It’s not just that you’re mad at me for before. You don’t trust me now, not to let you down.”


Of course she didn’t! How could she? She scowled at the sheets in front of her.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m not going to go off to find another challenge, Célie. You’re challenging enough just by existing.”

“Hey.”

“Shhhh.” He jostled her gently, rocking her.

“I’m not as challenging as the Foreign Legion!”

“Maybe I have high standards for you. Maybe those are the challenge.”

She frowned. That sounded far too close to the princess-on-a-glass-hill thing.

“It’s not all about the challenge, Célie. You do that—you challenge me—but you do something else, too. You … rest me.”

Really? That made her feel so whole and centered and wonderful, to be his point of rest.

“Except that … it’s not that you’re restful, exactly. Most of the time, you make me feel the opposite of rested. Full of energy. Wanting to do something, usually to you.” He fell silent again.

Joss, searching for words. She waited, his quiet seriousness sinking into her as it always had, anchoring her. He made her bounce all over the place with energy and the need for his attention. And yet he was also the man she had curled up against to be able to fall asleep, in her head, night after night, for years. Before he even left, she would do that.

He closed his hand around hers and brought it behind her back, pressing it to his flat stomach. “You make me feel alive, down here.”

Oh. Her fingers caressed that hard shield of muscle that protected all his soft essential organs.

“Sometimes it kicks up into a fire, and sometimes it’s this low heat, but it’s always what keeps me warm.”

Her eyes prickled. She pulled his arm back around her, tucking his hand now against her belly, where it rode, firm and sure.

That warmth of him, the embrace, the sweetness, the happiness sank through her skin from his body stretching through her until it became her in a way that was terrifying. Because if this was her, and that happiness got taken away again, what her would there be left?

If so much solidity and security and warmth came from him, how precarious and vulnerable and cold would she feel when he was gone again?

“I can tell you a bedtime story,” he murmured, his voice vibrating against her back.

“Mmm?”

“There once was a very young man who stood looking at tacky fake diamond rings in some stupid, low-class jewelry store window. Because he knew he had to leave, to become better, but … there was this girl. And even though she didn’t know it, and he shouldn’t tell her, he really, really wanted her to promise to wait for him. He wanted it more than anything. But he hated how cheap those rings were so damn much, and he was so damn proud, and … he couldn’t. He just couldn’t do it. He had to be able to offer her more.”