All for You (Paris Nights #1)(84)
She laughed a bit and rose on her tiptoes suddenly to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “I can cover you in chocolate again sometime,” she murmured teasingly into his neck. “It’s a cute look on you.”
Laughter. His arms closed around her. If she could tease him, then she had let him back in.
“Trust me, I’ve been covered in worse.” He boosted her up, urging her thighs around his hips so he could fit them better together. That brought her face nearly level with his, and he kissed her quickly, unable to help himself.
She kissed him back. It was supposed to be a quick, stolen kiss, but it turned into something else—slow and careful on both sides, tender and gentle, checking out all the angles. Are you still here? I can still do this? This way, too? And this way? Are we going to be okay?
She leaned back to take a breath, her eyes a little shy.
“Do you, ah … think we could go back to dating?” he asked. “Like girlfriend and boyfriend?”
Her smile lit her whole face. “I would like that.”
“And … would you consider taking on this dump of an apartment with me? Maybe we could beat it into shape?”
She squeezed him in happiness and tucked her face into the side of his neck again, kissing his jaw.
So that was what it felt like to get covered in kisses.
Not quite how he had imagined it, but definitely good enough for him.
“You don’t make any sense, though,” he mentioned, involuntarily. “I mean—you’d rather break your back and rub your fingers raw on this dump than have the apartment handed to you shiny and beautiful, with nothing for you to do?”
“I don’t know, Joss. How would you feel if you found out I was working my butt off by myself trying to beat an apartment into shape to hand to you?”
He hesitated a very long moment. His eyebrows drew together suspiciously. “That can’t be the same thing.”
She nipped his neck very delicately. “Just chalk me up as weird, then.” She jumped down and spun around to look at the place and stopped before the wall covered with peeling, stained old wallpaper, her eyes narrowing. “What do you want to bet there’s a brick wall under there? It’s going to be a bitch to get off all the plaster and reveal it, though.”
“Did you see the fireplace?”
She looked back over her shoulder to give him a slow smile. “Nice, cozy rug right here?” She gestured to the space in front of the fireplace. “Couch here?” Another gesture.
And she was right. It was so much nicer to work on it together.
***
“I really do like this apartment that’s all bed,” Joss said that night, with that low, deep vibration of his voice through her back. His breath tickled her hair, his arm heavy and warm over her, that callused palm gently stroking her forearm. She smiled into the fold of white sheets that half blocked her view of the window. “I’m glad it’s going to take us six months to get that other apartment into shape. I’m sorry I take up so much of your space here, though.”
Her smile deepened. “No, you’re not. You like taking up as much space as you do.”
His thumb rubbed her forearm, and he kissed the top of her head.
“I like this cuddle,” she whispered. “I like it so much.”
“Yeah. I like it, too.”
Yet another thing that made it better than all her vague imaginings—the sand-rasped depth of his voice, the way she could feel it in her own body, because he lay so close and warm against her. That warmth and sweetness that seemed to sink all through her and become her in some essential way.
Maybe it was a good warmth and sweetness to let herself become.
“I could tell you a bedtime story,” that low, deep voice said against her back.
She linked her fingers with his big ones and waited.
“There was once a man nobody believed in. Not one person. Except you. And he’d do anything, anything in the world, not to lose that belief in him. But he felt like this unfired clay standing out there in the rain, slowly dissolving, while she kept looking up at him like he was a marble statue. And one day, he thought: I will go get fired in a kiln at least. I will become that man, so nothing and nobody can melt me into mud at her feet instead of the hero she thinks I am. He thought it was a fair trade—to take away the clay and mud for a while so that he could come back as the real thing.”
Her fingers tightened on his, pressing his hand to her belly. Oh, Joss.
“But … he was just a stupid kid. And kind of screwed up. He didn’t know how long five years was, or that his girl couldn’t possibly wait in a tower that long—she’d climb down her own hair and cut it off to get free and go make herself into someone she could admire, since she had to have someone. He’s proud of her that she did that, though.” His arm squeezed her. “He’s sorry that he wasn’t there, but he’s very, very proud.”
She brought their linked hands to her lips and kissed the calluses on his palm. “She’s proud of him, too,” she whispered. “She’s very, very proud.”
Chapter 25
“I love this rug.” Célie petted the plush, soft white thing. Joss watched her, a profound peace and satisfaction stretching through his body, like the warmth from the fire.