All for You

by Laura Florand

  His hand shifted enough to finally cup her breast.

  Both of them stilled at that claiming. The first time Joss had ever touched her there. The first time Joss had ever touched her anywhere a man could only touch in private and with permission.

  His hand felt so hot and big against that fragile, intimate part of her. Within seconds, he had lost his paralysis, and his hand was shifting, massaging, his body pressing in closer to hers.

  “Hell,” he said. And then a string of curse words in this mix of languages that must be the way he had learned to curse in the Legion. But he said all those profane curses in this wondering, incredulous tone, his hands squeezing her breasts, sliding down her ribs, rubbing back up to her breasts to squeeze again.

  She shivered and flexed against that door and dragged her hands over his torso. How could anyone be so muscled? This lethal, intense strength of a body that could meet any demand anyone made of it.

  Except, perhaps, hers.

  Because that body flinched and tightened under her touch. His breathing grew labored. His hands slid down her body and grabbed her ass, gripping too hard. He lifted her until he could press his hips against hers, driving her back against the door. “Tell me to slow down,” he said roughly. “I’ll do it if you tell me. You have to keep telling me and not let me forget.”

  “God, your shoulders are hot,” Célie whispered, dragging her hands over them and down. She found the hem of his T-shirt and shoved it up so that her hands could slide bare against those muscled ribs. “Merde, Joss, your body.”

  Ripped, hungry strength. As if every ounce of fat had been sacrificed to maximize its power.

  “Give me your keys,” he muttered against her mouth.

  “It’s”—she gasped and pulled her mouth away—“It’s not my door.”

  He turned toward the other door on the landing.

  She pointed upward, desperate. “One more flight.”

  A far more violent stream of mixed-language curse words erupted. He dipped down and caught her jacket in one hand.

  And then he just scooped one big hand under her butt and lifted her up to him, starting up the stairs. She wrapped her thighs around his hips instinctively, for security. “Joss”—the shifting pressure of his erection against the crotch of her jeans rocketed through her—“you can’t carry me up the stairs.”

  “You really have no idea what I can do, do you?”

  His strength and agility didn’t seem challenged by carrying her up those stairs one-handed, but his control did. Hunger built with every step. She felt halfway to being devoured already.

  “Keys.” He set her down in front of her door. His hand pressed against it, and he put all his weight against that arm above her as she twisted to try to unlock it. “Honest to God, I could tear this door down right now, Célie, if you fumble too long.”

  She got it open and stumbled in.

  He closed it with too much of a slam behind them, and she looked back as her fourth step away from it brought her to her bed. He pressed himself back against the door as if he was afraid to leave it. “I’m going to screw this up,” he said again, his eyes eating her alive. “I’m not going to get this right. You’re too—I’m too—”

  She felt as if she was burning up, frantic with the itch to be touched, handled, squeezed. “It’s all right.” It won’t be the first time a guy has screwed up sex with me. But she realized just in time that the wry comment would not go over well at all and kept it back. “It’s not really about the sex.”

  “Hell. It’s not? That’s all I can think about. My brain is going to explode. Or something else.”

  She hesitated a nervous second. And then she just caught the hem of her silky top and pulled it over her head.

  Joss made a sound as if she’d punched him in the stomach. “Célie.” His hands flexed against the door behind him. He took a harsh breath. “We should slow down. It took me much, much longer to ease your shirt off in my fantasies. A month, I think.”

  “That’s because in your fantasies I must not have been helping,” Célie said dryly. “Real, live women, we do all kinds of things on our own.”

  One corner of his mouth twisted. “Right.” He left the door and came toward her, carefully, as if he suspected land mines.

  “We might be different,” she said defiantly, “in real life than in fantasies. We might have minds of our own.”

  “I got it, Célie,” he said, very evenly. He stopped only a few inches from her, his fists at his sides, clenching and unclenching as he stared down at her breasts, pushed up by her bra. “Trust me, I know the fantasy was a poor man’s substitute for the real you.”

  Her mouth trembled all of a sudden. “Do you?” she whispered. Because it was hard to live up to a fantasy a man had been building for five years without any contact with the real woman.

  “Yeah. Nothing compares to this.”

  “This?”

  His eyes burned down over her body, his fists flexing by his thighs as he held himself in. “This moment. Right here. This.”

  The room felt too hot, too tight. She twisted away from him suddenly, around the bed, to open the casement window. Street noise invaded immediately, echoing up between stone buildings from the cars and voices six floors below.

  She turned back.

  Joss still stood where she had left him, still holding himself in. Energy came off his body like a force of nature barely contained. He tilted his head just a little … and then held out a hand, fingers curling to coax her back.

  She came because she couldn’t say no. She wanted to touch him so much. Be pulled in against that hard chest. Be held.

  Know he was alive.

  Somewhere inside her flared the panicked sense of rolling down a mountainside, of going too fast, flailing for holds and unable to stop herself. They weren’t ready for this. They hadn’t made that transition from her brother’s patient friend to this, this fire and storm of hunger.

  But as soon as her hand touched his chest, he pulled her in with a groan, hands pressing into her back and butt hard as he lifted her into him, kissing her.

  He kissed her so hungrily, so intensely, his hands running so hard all over her body, fingers digging into her, gripping her. He kissed her until he’d toppled them on the bed behind her with the force of the kiss. And still he didn’t stop, pushing his hand up her ribs, squeezing her breasts.

  She’d imagined making love to Joss, too, and it hadn’t been anything like this. It had been quiet and protective and strong. Sweet.

  Vague.

  This was all-out hunger, as if an intense maleness packed too tight for too long had burst through the first hairline crack in the dam that it found and was buffeting her in its force. This wasn’t protection. This was utter greed.

  “I’ve got to slow down,” he said hoarsely into her hair, against her ear, against her throat, as his mouth slid over her, his hands gripped her everywhere, moving and squeezing and rubbing as if he had to touch all of her right now, all at once, now. “Please tell me to slow down.”

  “I’ve never—” She broke off. Made love like this, she couldn’t say. He didn’t want to hear comparisons to other men right now. But she hadn’t ever made love like this. As if she was being consumed in an inferno of need. Her own need, too. She fought his to make space for herself, scrubbing her hands down his arms to feel all his muscles, gripping him through his T-shirt to make sure all of him was really there. “I’m so glad you’re home.” So glad you’re alive and here.

  “Anything I get right—just stop me and tell me. Grab my hand and hold it there. Whatever. And I’ll keep doing it.”

  “You, too,” she whispered. She had to live up to five years of a soldier’s fantasies, after all. And everything about him was overwhelming her—bigger, more urgent, so much more real and male than she had ever imagined him in her head. “You tell me, too.”

  A groan that held something between despair and humor. “Célie, I’m way easier than you. As long as I can get in
side you, everything is right for me.”

  It was kind of infuriatingly unfeminist how tempting it was to just yield to that need, to say, Oh, if that’s what you need so much then you can have it. To just give up her own body to his demands. She caught herself. This was for her, too.

  “I like this,” she said, and felt shy to tell him. The man who had once been her friend, once been her hero. The man who had once been so infuriatingly trustworthy that she could test out all her fresh, teenage flirting skills on him, and he would never take advantage of her. She had to whisper what she wanted to that man, looking up at him. “I like it when you touch me all over a little rough like that, as if you’re so hungry for me you can’t stand it.”

  “I can’t stand it.” He kissed up her arm, this scrape of twenty-four hours without a shave and this stern silk of firm lips. “Sweetheart, if I screw this up, please be kind and let me try again. Please. I want you so damn bad.”

  “Okay.”

  He lifted his head, a little confused by the word even though he had made the request. “Okay?”

  “Joss. You don’t have to be perfect for me.” She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into that chest that had a scent. Dreams never had scents, but the reality smelled of heat and a hint of sweat, of pine and strength and him. “I’ve always loved you just the way you were,” she whispered into his chest.

  A shudder ran through him. “Célie.” He braced on his arms to look down at her. “Célie, you’re so damn—God.” His hips thrust against hers, through denim and leather.

  Her body softened at the pressure, in the desire to yield to it and let him in. She ran her hands over his chest again, flexing fingers into his muscles.

  He stroked a hand over her stomach, down to her leather, bracing himself enough off her so that he could watch the path of his own hand. The warmth of it settled heavily over the waist of her pants. Her breathing deepened as she went very still, gazing up at him, suspended in desire for that hand to do anything it wanted. Slide a little farther down. Cup. Press. Open. Slip in—

  “Oh, fuck.” His head drooped suddenly, his fists clenching so that all the muscles on his arms stood out. “I don’t have any—fuck.” He lifted his head. “I wasn’t—I’ve been living in barracks, and I didn’t expect you to—”

  “I’ve got some,” Célie said without thinking, pulling open the drawer of her nightstand.

  His face blanked. That deep dive into blankness that he did these days, whenever anything got to him too badly.

  “I mean, they’re not mine,” Célie said quickly. “They’re just leftover from—a—a”—guy I dated. She faltered to a stop, cringing as she realized exactly how much she shouldn’t be saying any of this.

  Joss reached into the drawer and took out the small, open box of condoms. His face, as he looked at it, went so completely devoid of expression it was scary.

  “I didn’t mean—” Célie broke off again, realizing she was starting to apologize. It was none of his damn business who had used condoms in her apartment. Joss was a friend of her brother who’d left for five years. She hadn’t owed him any fidelity. She’d owed it to herself to try to make a good, new life on her own.

  “I need a minute,” Joss said abruptly, and thrust away from her, striding the one long stride it took to reach one of her casement windows. Célie sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees, still fighting that urge to apologize. She would not apologize, damn it.

  “Joss, what did you expect?” she finally burst out, angry and desperate.

  “I didn’t expect anything,” he said flatly without turning around. “I just didn’t—think about that part.” His fist opened, dropping the purple box to the floor. It had been crushed into a small ball.

  “Of course not.” She fisted handfuls of her sheet. “Because in your fantasies I was only what you needed me to be. Not what I actually was.”

  He threw her one dark, dangerous glance over his shoulder, like the throw of a knife blade, and abruptly jumped onto her balcony railing.

  It was so sudden that she drew her breath to scream Don’t jump! But she didn’t have time to make a sound. His feet touched the railing just long enough to launch him upwards.

  She ran forward, in a desperate urge to catch him back to safety, even as his body pulled upwards out of her sight. She got to the window and leaned out.

  He was hauling himself over the edge of the roof.

  “Joss!”

  He paused to look down, leaning back over the edge of the roof. “I need a few minutes.” It was flat and final.

  “You have no right to be upset!”

  “I know.” His body disappeared.

  “Joss!”

  Just his head reappeared. He waited.

  She sought for words. “Don’t fall!”

  He gave a brief nod and was gone.

  Chapter 17

  Joss sat on the zinc sheets of the rooftop, by a line of ceramic chimney tops, gazing down over Paris. Apparently this area where Célie lived had been built on higher land than the older, more central part of Paris, and from the rooftop, he had a clear view over those endless zinc-roofed mansards and chimney tops all the way to the Eiffel Tower. A pigeon came and pecked beside him, in the optimistic conviction that Joss must have climbed up here just to give it leftover baguette crumbs.

  Grief tried to seize him in this gray, grim wave, that grief a man had to fight off in the Legion, because if you yielded to it, it was all over. You couldn’t let yourself think about all you had given up, all you were missing out on, all the ways you might have screwed up by making this stupid, over-romantic choice to join the Legion because it sounded good from a distance. Heroic. So much better than being a barely adult mechanic who couldn’t get another job because he’d lost the last one when his boss started thinking he must be in on the drug dealing, too, given the company he kept.

  You couldn’t think about how stupid you had been, once the choice was made, how much you wished you could undo that choice and just go home. You couldn’t think about how the girl you wanted was probably dating other men, maybe even getting married, having babies. Legionnaires who let their thoughts go down those roads ended up killing themselves or deserting.

  And a man who joined the Legion to make something of himself and then deserted halfway through because he couldn’t handle it had nothing left of himself to hold on to, to believe in, at all.

  So after that grim, bleak year two, Joss had learned mostly how not to think of anything but success, strength, getting through. When he imagined Célie, she was delighted to see him, she threw her arms around him, she kissed him, he kissed her, he nestled himself in those beautiful moments of her and never, ever let himself think about what the reality might be.

  A half-full box of condoms.

  None of his business.

  Just his loss.

  And that great, gray grief that he’d fought off for five years slumped down on him out of the gray-dark sky of Paris, pressing all its weight down on him until even his shoulders didn’t want to bear up under it. And he’d formed those shoulders to bear up under anything.

  ***

  Calvi, Corsica, three years before

  Women were everywhere. Leaning against the bar, luring men into corners, glancing his way. Short-skirted, sweet-smelling, eager for fun.

  Joss rubbed his thumb over the battered edge of the folded postcard in his wallet. Most of those cheerful postcards Célie had sent him the first six months he kept safe above his bunk, but he’d had to carry one with him. He’d chosen this one: We miss you here, but I know you can do it! You can do anything. Bisous. Célie. With a heart over the I in her name.

  Uniforms mixed with all the scantily clad tourists in the bar around him. Back from Opération Serval and a successful nighttime drop over Timbuktu, the 2e REP was pretty full of itself. Back, covered in glory, by blue seas, where women wore bikinis, and no one was shooting at them.

  Oh, yeah, those bikinis. Even in the bar, some
of the women had only put on skirts with their bikini tops. They’d come to Calvi for one reason, those women, and the bar was full of exactly what they wanted: Legionnaires.

  Joss pressed down harder on the edge of his postcard.

  “That one’s for you.” Jefe shoved him in the ribs with his elbow. “She can’t take her eyes off you.”

  Joss flicked a glance at the pretty blonde in a tight white skirt and lace-edged cami. No. That lace was the edge of her bra peeking over. Hell. “I’ve got a girl,” he said flatly. Even if she’d stopped sending him postcards a year ago. He still had her. He did.

  Jefe snorted. “Trust me, she’s found some other guy by now. Come on. I’ll take the redhead.”

  Joss’s glance flicked to the redhead, and his heart stopped. Curves and athleticism, perky nose, braid down her back … she turned her head.

  He flattened. Not Célie. Of course not. What would she be doing in Corsica? Chasing him?

  Ruthlessly, he crushed down that wish. First, he proved himself, that he could, indeed, do anything.

  Then he got to go after his next goal, Célie. One goal at a time. Like a horse with blinders on, one of his instructors had told them during the six weeks in the green hell of jungle warfare training. Keep focused on your one objective. Nothing else counts. Certainly not how much it hurts.

  But when morale was at its lowest, when a man was exhausted and bloodied and almost beaten, he always needed a thought, a dream, to save him. And Célie—she was such a bright, glowing dream. She shone through everything.

  As long as he didn’t, himself, tarnish her.

  “I’ve got a girl,” Joss said again.

  The other men lounging at the table groaned. “Not that again.” They all agreed with Jefe on this one. From Noah, with that geeky face of his and angular body that made him look like a surprisingly tanned hacker until he started moving, to Michael, whose altar boy eyes made him look as if he’d accidentally woken up in the wrong story, to Victor, the Ukrainian with whom Joss butted heads constantly—all of them thought he was crazy.

  Beside him, Victor snorted. Victor had saved his life more than once, and Joss had saved his, but he still had a hard time not hitting the Ukrainian most days. “That girl you never go see on leave?”