Free All for You by Laura Florand Page B

box with chocolates. “Shut up,” she told Dom.
    He hadn’t said anything, of course, busy rapping his knuckles against the nearest marble counter and looking from her to Jaime to the casement window.
    “It will be fine ,” Célie said. “Damn it, men are such idiots.” She stomped down the stairs.
    Outside, she hesitated, glancing between her moped up the street on her left and Joss, leaning against a wall in the opposite direction. But she couldn’t resist the pull of that muscled body, those hazel-green eyes.
    She turned toward him, and he straightened from the wall as soon as she did, coming toward her. He moved differently than he had five years ago. He’d always been strong, fit, someone who made her feel safe, but now he had this hardness to him, as if he could cut a path through stone and steel just by walking toward it.
    Or through bullets. Her stomach knotted even to think about it. She’d read about the Foreign Legion when he first disappeared into it—about the training he would be going through, about the brutal dog-eat-dog world of it, about the situations they were sent to handle in the world—and she would crawl between her own bed and the wall to hide, like she had when she was a little girl and her mom brought home a doubtful boyfriend. She’d clutch her arms around herself there, fighting in desperate anguish the knowledge of all he must be going through.
    He stopped in front of her, taking her helmet for her but keeping his other hand at his side, his eyes sweeping over her face as if he was touching every part of it. Her skin burned from the look, and she flexed her hand around the box of chocolates so she wouldn’t drop it on the ground and just fling her arms around him. You’re home, you’re home, you’re home.
    “You’ve still got chocolate on you.” That sand-rasped quality to his deep voice now made her want to go up on tiptoe and kiss his throat, to slide silk over it so he remembered what softness felt like.
    “I’m a chocolatier,” she growled. “It’s a hazard of the trade. Like mud and blood for a Legionnaire, only … much nicer.”
    His face closed, and she wondered abruptly if she had just said something terrible. Like … maybe that was a really stupid, flip thing to say to someone who might actually have seen a lot of blood in the past five years.
    She thrust out her chin, somewhere between defiance and apology. “What I mean is, you might be tougher, but I taste better.”
    Wait. Did that sound—
    Joss clasped his wrist behind his back, going into parade rest, his face almost completely blank. Except for the gleam of gold in those hazel eyes. “You don’t know what I taste like.”
    A slow fire kindled somewhere down in the curl of Célie’s toes and just started to burn, burn up through her. Joss didn’t hit on her. He’d never, ever said anything sexual to her before.
    And she’d never even imagined what he might taste like, until now. She’d imagined how warm he would be, in bed beside her. She’d imagined the texture of his strength. She’d imagined kissing him, even. But his taste —
    If she opened her mouth against his skin, the taste of it would be—
    No taste, maybe just a little salt, and … and she realized she was actually sucking on the knuckle of her thumb to establish this for herself, right there in front of him. Whipping her hand away from her mouth, she shoved it into the pocket of her leather jacket.
    “Here.” She thrust her box of chocolates at him, pressing it flat against his chest, a metal shield between her hand and his heat. “Now you know what I taste like.”
    Wait. What the hell had she just said?
    Joss brought one big, callused hand to cover hers, holding it against the metal she pressed against his chest. It must be her imagination that she could feel his heart thumping even through that aluminum box. It must be her own heart, beating in her brain.
    Calluses and strength and warmth, sliding over the back of her hand.