All for You (Paris Nights #1)(76)

Breath hissed between Célie’s teeth. She felt as if she’d just been hit in the stomach. Almost as hard a punch as that morning when she’d learned that Joss had gone off without a word to join the Foreign Legion. “No. Nobody mentioned that.”


“Oh.” Jaime put a hand to her lips, glancing worriedly at Dom. “Uh-oh.”

Below, Joss lifted an inquiring palm, asking maybe, Will you be long? Or, Why aren’t you smiling at me?

Célie stared down at him. Her brain hurt, swelling against her skull as if it was trying to get out. That damn clutch in her diaphragm still hadn’t released, the pressure of that interrupted hiccup of joy growing unbearable.

Joss raised his eyebrows at her in smiling inquiry, no clue in his head what might be wrong. Because, yeah, it would never even occur to him to have told her any of this himself.

And all of a sudden, all that pressure burst. “Joss Castel!”

His smile faded at her tone. He searched her eyes from the distance of a floor below.

“You—you—you—” On a surge of pure rage, Célie grabbed up the bowl of ganache Dom had just tasted and dumped its entire contents out the window, down onto his head below.

That would teach him to try to treat her like a princess in a tower who had nothing whatsoever to do but be his object. She knew how to defend her ramparts, if that was the way he wanted to be.

The ganache splattered all over his hair and face in this giant slosh of chocolate. Several customers leaving the shop stopped dead. Then they pulled out their cameras.

Jaime clapped both hands to her mouth, twilight blue eyes enormous.

“Nice shot.” Dom leaned in the window beside her. “That one’s going to be all over the blogs. Good job on the publicity, Célie.” He held up a hand to give her a high five. Célie ignored him, glaring at Joss below.

Joss shook himself, scraping chocolate off his face until he could open his eyes again. “Okay, what the hell?”

“You—aargh!” Célie grabbed up the nearest ammunition she could find—chocolates—and threw whole handfuls that bounced off his shoulders and head.

“Hell, Célie.” Dom grabbed her wrists. “Now you’re getting expensive.”

“You go to hell, Joss Castel!” Célie yelled through the window. “I—you—” She pulled her wrists free and grabbed her hair, yanking it as she strangled her scream. One of these days, she was going to take a rowboat out into the middle of the ocean for the pure purpose of being able to scream as loud as she possibly could over Joss Castel.

“Célie,” Joss said, in that firm, warning note that always ran a little jolt of eroticism through her. You are over the line, that note said.

And her body responded: Oh, yeah? What you gonna do about it?

“I—I—” Célie grabbed another chocolate and threw it at him.

“Damn it, Célie!” Dom grabbed for her wrist again.

Joss caught the chocolate and looked at it a second, his eyes narrowing. Then he looked up at her.

A frisson of expectation ran through her body. It was the Legionnaire look. And it was turned on her. Very deliberately, holding her eyes, he ate the chocolate.

She licked her lips.

He launched himself straight toward her—one powerful lunge of his body upward, a catch of some point in the wall she hadn’t even known existed as a possible hold. Involuntarily, she stretched through the window to try to follow what he was doing—and his body surged into her vision, both hands gripping the edge of the window as he pulled himself into it.

Chocolate coated most of his face and shoulders, except for the smeared somewhat-clear spot where he’d wiped it off his eyes and nose. His eyes locked with hers.

She took two steps back before she caught herself and braced her feet, putting her hands on her hips.

“Can I just push him?” Dom asked Jaime. “This is my territory, damn it.”

Jaime grabbed Dom’s hand and pulled him toward the door of the ganache room. When he stopped at the doorway itself, she shifted behind him, put both hands on his butt, and shoved him. It was a considerable tribute to Dom’s utter adoration of Jaime that he actually let that move him.

“Good chocolate,” Joss said meditatively, rubbing his fingers across his chocolate-smeared mouth. “You want to tell me what the hell, Célie?”

“I’m—going—to—kill you!” Célie gripped her chef’s jacket to give her hands something to strangle. He couldn’t even guess what the hell?

Joss came away from the window in one easy, lethal move and caught her, lifting her up and pressing his face right between her breasts, holding her there while he rubbed his face clean against her chef’s jacket.

More or less clean. When he lifted it—still holding her off the ground—liberal smears still decorated it and his military short hair, but at least half his skin was visible in random streaks and stripes of chocolate.


He looked kind of yummy that way, actually. He made her mouth tingle.

And if his hair had been even a centimeter longer, she probably would have yanked his instead of her own.

“You—you—you—I can’t believe you haven’t learned one damn thing!”

“I’ve learned plenty. But apparently not about you.”