All for You (19 page)

Her steps managed to speed up a little more. Adrenaline raced through her. When she glanced down from two flights up, he still hadn’t moved, straining against his own hold on the railing. Their eyes met. His locked with hers from two flights below. She licked her lips.

And he let go of that railing and surged up the stairs, in an explosion of lethal power. He barely made a sound, taking the stairs two at a time, in this smooth, clean burst of a predator in pursuit.

Her heart kicked into overdrive, a terrified prey but with this surge of laughter through it, too. It was a challenge now. And she’d always loved challenging Joss, teasing him.

Now she had to beat him. She raced up the next flight. A sixth-floor apartment and running up and down the stairs at work a thousand times a day left her in excellent stair-climbing shape. And gazelles were faster than leopards. She could do this. She could—

She tripped in her rush and started to fall, just as that dark pursuit surged up and caught her. A hard grip pulled her in.

“Joss,” she whispered.

He pressed her back against the door. “
Merde
, Célie.”

The jacket she’d been holding in her hand had fallen when she tripped. Without it, she could feel the nakedness of her arms, the bareness of her shoulders, how thin and fragile her silky top was against that strength and that gaze. He braced both hands on the door on either side of her.

“I’m going to screw this up,” he said hoarsely, big hands flexing against the door. “I want it too damn bad.”

She squeezed her eyes tight against her own wanting. “Me, too,” she whispered. It confused her, because she hadn’t known that her body could want sex this intensely. Sex had always made her feel anxious, naked, wishing the guy would quit touching her because his touch felt so totally wrong against her bare skin. She hadn’t done that much of it, in fact, and she’d always felt guilty about how rare her efforts were, as if she wasn’t properly trying.

“Merde.”
A rough expulsion of breath. Joss’s hand left the door, lowering to just above her breast and hovering there a second, open. She tried to breathe deeply enough to lift her breasts to his palm. “God, Célie.”

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 inside 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.”