Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(22)

And she hit him again.

Or she tried. This time, he did duck, shifting with her attack so that her body flew half past him, guiding her wrist, bringing her back up so that he locked her against his body, back to him. “Honey—”

She stomped on his foot. With that stiletto heel. Fuck, that hurt.

He hefted her up so that she couldn’t reach it.

She kicked him in the shins.

Ow. “Will you stop?” He let her go, putting some space between them. At least she wasn’t as likely to break her foot on him as her hand.

Phones were out in the crowd around him. Yeah, this was definitely ending up on film, and some people were bound to be calling the police. Wonderful. If he got arrested, there were some people higher up his chain of command who were going to skin him alive.

If she got arrested a second time in one day, they might actually keep her in jail.

“Honey, we need to get your hand looked at, and—”

“If you call me honey one more time, I will kill you.”

He hesitated. “Hon—bab—sweetheart, listen.”

“And not sweetheart either!”

He frowned at her. “Mademoiselle Gorgeous, then, f*ck.”

“Mad-moi-selle!” she shouted.

“What?”

“You pronounce it mad’moiselle!”

Wasn’t that what he had just said? This damn language. “You’re getting hysterical.” And thank God she didn’t have her knives on her. “Will you just—”

“Hysterical?” Her fist clenched.

Oh, hell. He took the coward’s way out and just went ahead and threw himself back in the water before her fist could actually make impact.

He came up starting to get just a little mad himself and gripped the edge of the quay, glaring up at her. “Are we done yet?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she gave a look at his hands that made him jerk them back from the edge, just in case she decided to stomp on them with those stilettos. He gripped a ring halfway down the stone wall of the quay instead, out of stomping reach. Some people in the crowd were starting to laugh and applaud her. “You can swim, right?”

She took a very wise step back from the edge. Which she probably thought put her out of easy grabbing reach. Sometimes it was a real temptation to show her what he was made of, but he should resist the urge to toss her into the river herself to cool her off.

Really.

Resist.

Hard.

Although the expression on her face when she came up would be—

Resist!!

“Oh, we’re done.” Vi spun on her heel, striding away.

He leapt out of the water and caught up with her, also resisting the urge to grab all the phones he passed and throw them into the water. It would only escalate the situation. If he got in a fight with a mob of civilians at four p.m. in the middle of Paris, he was going to ruin his own career.

And he’d put far too much blood and sweat and effort into his own career to—

The thought faltered. He looked down at Violette’s head, his eyebrows drawing together. Remembering the burn scars he’d seen on her arms and hands, when they made love. The calluses from handling knives.

He’d joined the military when he was eighteen. She’d been doing this since she was fifteen. Fifteen. He was pretty sure his voice was still cracking on him at embarrassing moments when he was fifteen.

Within his team, reputation was everything. You were a badass, and you kept your shit wired tight, or you got forced onto another team, and your career was over.

Reputation.

He looked down at her proud face, the way she fought to keep from showing her pain.

“Hon—swee—Vi. I’m sorry.”

That long stride of hers faltered on a rough paving stone. She flicked a glance up at him.

“I would never,” he said quietly, “in a million years have caused you harm.” Except that I did. And it was at least half my choice. And even right now, I could lessen the harm if I broke security and told you the truth. But I won’t. Because it’s my job to save the world.

And you…you’re strong enough to handle this.

I bet you’re strong enough to handle anything.

It was an amazing thought. He’d never met a woman as strong as he was. Hard to wrap his mind around when she kept looking so much smaller.

“I didn’t know—” He stopped and pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head. He grabbed a deep breath, as if going underwater for another long dive. “Vi. Will you please let me look at your hand?”

She scowled and looked away from him, cradling her wrist.

Okay, now she was just being stubborn. But he knew all about stubborn. Stubborn wasn’t even an adequate word for the sheer bullheaded, don’t-yield-to-anything-ever determination of the men he worked with. It made it confusing to go out among ordinary people, actually. He kept expecting to run up against granite wills, and instead he just walked through everyone, their wills so flimsy they were almost immaterial. Most of the time, it took conscious effort to even notice that the average person actually did have a will of his own.

A wisp-of-fog will, easily ridden over or through by a man in a hurry.

And yet those same men who would ride over the wills of average people and never even notice would also throw themselves toward a suicide bomber for average people and put their own glorious wills entirely out, forever…and never think twice about that either.