Chapter 12

Lucien could not remember, ever, having a woman fall asleep in his arms.

It was nice. Made a man feel as if all those years building his strength and discipline had been well-spent.

A little breeze got past the shelter of his body and stirred her hair across her sleep-parted lips, and he stroked the strand of it back. The moon stole the auburn color and turned it brown, but he could still imagine it. Damn, she was pretty. Her lashes lay long on her cheeks now, skin pale in the moonlight. Full, soft lips, and an expressive face that liked to frown and laugh and look at him as if he was some kind of alien from outer space.

He was having so much fun getting to know her, and he’d barely started yet. Hell, he didn’t even know what she did for a living. Even his family wasn’t crazy enough for her to be able to find stray relatives for Tante Colette as a full-time job.

He stroked a knuckle down the curve of her cheek. Pretty. Sexy. What did happen to the girl ugly duckling when she turned pretty, Elena?

And what had she meant when she said he was one of her heroes?

He slipped a finger under the chain of that little glass heart of hers and lifted it so that he wasn’t accidentally feeling up her breasts while he studied it. She had to be awake to allow him to touch her breasts. Murano glass, a brilliant, deep red in the daylight, with gold foil inside it making it richer. Maybe a memento from some trip to Venice, which was only a five-hour drive from here. He sure as hell hoped it wasn’t a romantic trip, but with this being a heart, odds were not in his favor there. Maybe the guy who’d given her such a cynical attitude toward men? And she carried it to remind her to keep her head on straight? Kind of a messed up memento, if so, but he’d seen men get worse tattoos. He touched the two chips in the glass, then settled it gently back over her shirt.

Protectiveness wasn’t a feeling he got to indulge in very often. He’d missed it. A man just couldn’t be protective of other legionnaires. Men joined the Legion for the opposite of protection. Care-taking, sure—ever since he’d become an officer, more than half his job was care-taking, he swore. With the other half, a deep dichotomy, sending men into harm’s way, and the other half administrative, for his sins. And yes, being a captain in the 2e REP in the Foreign Legion took 150% of a man.

But protectiveness he only got to do, say, in bars, when he made sure the woman with three legionnaires surrounding her wanted the attention and wasn’t feeling threatened by it. Or that the woman leaving the bar on the arm of one of his men hadn’t had too much to drink before she made that decision. He’d always been the guy to get in a fight on behalf of a strange woman. He’d been raised that way, by his grandfather, but also…he just liked it. Liked saving someone, liked being the hero, liked protecting, liked taking care.

Hell, he’d nearly gotten kicked out of high school right there at the last for beating the crap out of some asshole who had cornered a barely-adolescent kid from the collège down the street. His grandfather was the one who had fought the school over his expulsion, cowing the director with icy moral authority. Lucien still remembered it. He’d held to that vision of his grandfather in the face of some of the great challenges he’d had in the Legion, especially as a young man who could easily have been led down some dark paths. He’d used the desire to retain his own moral authority to keep himself centered.

This was a different kind of protectiveness, now. Intimate. Asleep in his arms on the top of the world, under the moon in a field of lavender, Elena Lyon felt very much his to guard.

He grazed his thumb very gently over the curve of her biceps, thinking of that self-deprecating but defiant pride of hers in the fact that she lifted weights and did martial arts. Good for her. Still. Kind of a screwed up world she lived in, where she had to fight for herself. Evolution pretty obviously hadn’t intended it to be her forte.

Nope. Evolution had pretty obviously made her forte one of getting a guy like him to want to fight for her.

He smiled down at her, wondering if she’d argue with him or stare at him as if he had eyeballs stuck on two green antennae on top of his head if he told her that, and sat there enjoying the weight of her against him and the beautiful view.

Home. It roiled around him too much down in the valley where those lights sparkled. But up here, where the scent of lavender cleared his head, and he could see the life he’d made for himself in the Legion there on that sparkle-and-shadow that was Corsica, and a beautiful, wannabe-tough little redhead curled in his arms, he felt for the first time at home.

***

“I thought your battle plans didn’t include jumping my bones,” Elena said. Waking in his arms had made her very grumpy—he was going to take a wild stab here and say she had trust issues—and she was currently withdrawn into the corner of the passenger seat of her own car, her arms folded, taking about ten years off her age by how sulky she looked. He had stopped by the mas again and persuaded her to give him her keys so that he could take her to Sainte-Mère in the comfort of her car, but she was still arguing about it.

“Tactics,” Lucien corrected. “They can be applied to something other than a battle.”

“Then why are you insisting on driving me home?”

“To make sure you get home safe,” he said patiently. Jesus. She had dated some prizes, hadn’t she?

“How are you going to get home?”

Now there was a question. The scent of lavender was gone, she was pushed to the far side of the car, and he wasn’t sure this was home anymore. And at the same time…Elena had been right, and it was a home he had needed to go back to. To reclaim? “You live in the same town as my Tante Colette, right? I can always sleep there. Maybe I’ll climb the wall of her garden and break my arm.”

“What?”

Damn, they’d had fun together, him and his cousins. “We always wanted to find the old missing treasures of our house from the war.” The ring was warm against his chest. “It was a game for us. So we climbed the wall of my aunt’s garden in the middle of the night to go on a treasure hunt, and I broke my arm.”

The recalcitrant look faded as she turned her head against the back of the seat to watch him as he told the story.

Lucien smiled a little. Elena Lyon might be all messed up and very stubborn, but she liked him, and he loved that. “My aunt’s face when she found us. She always leaves her door unlocked anyway, and it was pretty obvious that she thought there was no idiocy five boys would not get up to together.”

“You five must have been holy terrors.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lucien agreed fervently, and memories surged up in him. Running through the woods. Climbing cliff faces. Jumping off the Bonifaccio cliff the first time he ever went to Corsica, because he had to go save Tristan, that little brat, who had run and jumped off first. Building bonfires in the middle of the night. Trying to find Tristan before they got in trouble after the kid snuck away from them in his determination to hike to the sea by himself, since no one would drive him. That time Damien had cut himself up trying to catch the moon, which Tristan had also been involved in now that he thought about it. That kid was pure trouble.

Hell, the things they’d gotten into.

Good, good times.

He took Elena’s hand, rubbing it as he handled the surge of emotions. Not so painful maybe, this time. Not so forbidden. As if he really could dwell on those memories, and the joy of them, without hurting himself.

She let him hold her hand, but after a moment, she pulled it back and tucked it under her arm, looking out the window, tilting her head until she got a fall of hair to hide her face.

Okay.

Walking through the cobbled streets of Sainte-Mère with her was another blast from the past. The jasmine grew thick up walls and over doors, white blooms all fresh from their winter rest. The old church clock tower glowed above them, and lamps warmed the night streets. It was late enough that most of the restaurants were shutting their doors, a murmur here and there of people still returning late but the streets mostly quiet. A hush of all the time in the world, and the stir of mortal humans enjoying the moments they had.

They made you feel temporary, these streets. And they made you feel as if some part of you would be here for hundreds of years.

They had pain in them—Elena’s grandmother, for example—and they had hope, and they had persistence. The streets had them, her hand in his, his blood thrumming and his body tightening, more and more eager for touch, with every step they took toward her building door.

Oh, good. It was in a little angled alley shielded by jasmine where no one was likely to walk by.

Just them. Just the night.

***

Just them. Just the night. Elena could feel her breathing growing shallower, that waking of shimmery butterflies in her tummy, as they walked through the streets to her place, that big, callused hand holding hers so gently and so firmly, as if her hand inside it was as secure as it could be.

She loved this little town enough to live in it, even though it gave her a twenty-minute commute to Grasse every day to work. She loved its little side streets, its arches, its jasmine, its quiet and cobblestones and the way the lamp light warmed the dark. She loved that Madame Colette lived here and so sometimes she could slip over there for tea, like a stray kitten that snuck in behind a legitimate guest and curled up in the knitting basket by the fire while the family members talked over and around it and hopefully never noticed.

She always felt like that around the Rosiers, and unlike Antoine it suited her. She was perfectly happy in the knitting basket.

But tonight she felt as if one of those guests, one of those big family members she’d snuck in behind, had picked her up and was petting her, studying her, enjoying making her purr.

And she wasn’t a kitten. A kitten had about a million times more likelihood of being adopted permanently by whatever family noticed it, taken in and made part of the family, than a woman did.

The older you got, after all…the less likely a family would want you.

She flexed her fingers into his, to link them, not wanting to think about that.

And also because she wasn’t a kitten, dependent on whether someone petted her or gave her milk. She was a human being, and she didn’t need anyone, and she could make her own choices—she had all the choices in the world—and flexing her fingers to hold his hand proved it.

Seize experiences. They may be all you get to keep.

You can’t be a lionheart if you’re afraid of breaking yourself.

She stopped in front of her door and looked up at him. He was a lot bigger than she was. And she felt it suddenly so keenly not as a threat but as a promise that it made her want to claw at him to fight her way free before she believed in him.

It was the expression on his face when he looked down at her that did it. The warmth in his eyes that seemed especially for her. The curve of his lips that was almost…tender. Possessive.

Like he wanted to keep her.

It made her nearly frantic.

You can’t keep me! No one can! I’m only mine. Only. And that is just a fine way to be!

“This the door to your apartment or to the building?” Lucien said, lifting a fall of her hair and stroking his thumb over her cheek.

“The stair only gives access to my place.” She pointed upward to her balcony. The little wooden chair and table with chipped pale blue paint were shared between her and the friendly artist who lived below her, but the stair was private. The lamp over the door shone low and warm over the two of them, low enough not to bother everyone else on the street, warm enough to welcome her home. She liked making homes. This one was hers.

Lucien still held her car keys, and he unlocked her door and then tucked the keys back in the outer zip pocket of her purse. He leaned over her slow and easy, the same way he had flirted with her in Italy, giving her all the space and time she might need to push him away.

But she didn’t push him away. She liked being closed in against the door. She liked the way his shoulders shut out the rest of the world. She liked the way her lamplight fell so softly over them, as if it was only theirs. That shimmer of butterfly wings woke, rippling up through her.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” he said, in that easy, deep voice, like a hand stroking her fur.

“Mmm…no?” She couldn’t focus on much but how close he was and how warm his body felt. But whatever he was asking her if she believed, odds were…probably not.

“That I’m only bringing you safe home. That I’m not going to…jump your bones.”

Well, no. Of course she didn’t believe that. But it was okay. Actually, it might be perfect. The wedding was over, he was almost certainly leaving tomorrow, and she knew that. It would be kind of like Italy. She wouldn’t start thinking things. Wanting things. Just a fling. Everybody had to have sex sometimes. It was good for your health.

Like chocolate.

Everybody knew that. And he was a really…really nice specimen of…his face was getting closer, his knuckles stroking her cheek, his eyes oddly…tender, still. Tender.

“But I’m not, Elena Lyon. Because it’s hard to teach a woman she can trust you if she actually can’t.”

“Mmm?” His lips were so close. And his words didn’t make any sense. So she murmured something placating, the kind of thing guys liked that made them think she was listening to their bullshit, and she lifted herself onto her toes.

He liked that. His head angled immediately to match hers.

“I’m just going to kiss you,” he breathed against her lips. “I’m going to kiss you for a long time.”

Oh, goodie. He kissed so damn well.

She could trust his kissing. She could trust everything about hi…no, no. Not that. Not everything. But the kissing.

Yes.

Warm and seeking, his hands sliding behind her neck and stroking down her body to her butt, his thigh nudging her back against her door. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled herself up into him, and he scooped his hands under her butt and gave her his thigh to help her climb.

She thought she might know what he meant by “easy”. It was so easy to kiss him. God, it was easy. She could do it forever.

Kissing and kissing, as if they were the only couple that had ever kissed in these thousand-year-old streets, as if they were every couple that had ever kissed, and they could kiss time away, kiss the world away, kiss in a fall of lamplight and a scent of jasmine, against an old wooden door framed by stone. His body hard and growing harder, the slide of his hands more hungry, his mouth more urgent. Her hands running over that hard body, digging into his butt and pulling. Her mouth sought more, nipping and sucking and teasing and taking.

All those butterflies in her tummy just soared up and flurried all around them like a curtain of colors, and all that was left inside her was want.

She dragged at him, but he wouldn’t come.

She pushed the door to the stairs open and fisted his shirt and pulled, but he covered her fist with his hand and pried it free and pulled her back against him, bracing his arm against the stone arch since the door was no longer there.

She dropped her fingers to grip the waist of his jeans and pulled, stepping back toward the stairs, but he pulled her right back to him, and kissed her some more, breathing hard, their hearts thundering.

“Lucien,” she whimpered.

“You said that once before.” His mouth brushed her hair back, tickling her ear. “When you were scared. But it’s okay now, Elena. I remember my name.”

“No, I mean…I don’t care about your tactics. I don’t care about your stupid battle plan.” She pulled on him.

“I do.” He braced his arm and kissed her so that she forgot how to talk.

Until she pulled him again, and again he wouldn’t come. “Lucien. I don’t care about your stupid long-term strategy.” Long-term strategy, as if. His idea of long term was probably forty-eight hours.

“I do.” He rubbed his mouth down her throat and teased the hollow with his tongue.

She actually stamped her foot. “Will you listen to me?”

He pushed her shirt aside and kissed over her collar bone, and she felt his mouth curve in a smile. That little smile, that she felt but couldn’t see, ran like an erotic charge all through her body. “Maybe…non parlo francese.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she groaned. “Don’t you start with the Italian.”

His smile traced up her throat again, brushed over her chin. “Ma sei bella,” he whispered to her. “Molto bella.”

She was beautiful? Oh, that, that…cheater.

“Bellissima.” He nipped her lower lip. And then kissed her again, on a sudden rush, as if his own hunger swamped him before he could stop it.

And she thought she’d won, but she must not know any tactics to win at sex. She only knew how to fight a good defense, to ward off intruders. Because somehow he still didn’t fall. He buried his face in her hair, making a rough sound as if his whole body hurt.

If his hair was long enough, she’d yank it in frustration. “It’s just upstairs.”

“Shh,” he said into her hair. He was breathing so hard it was like having a dragon tucked up against her neck.

And just as he’d done before, he forced himself back from that peak of urgency. He turned gentle again, elusively, maddeningly gentle, his lips grazing down the side of her neck. “I know where your bed is, Elena.” He kissed the join of her neck and shoulder. “I know how far away that wall is just on the other side of this door and how easy it would be to close it.” His teeth teased her collarbone. “I know what I could do on those stairs.” He nipped her, gently, a teasing hunger that seemed to run from her collarbone through every other bone in her body. “And I’m not going to, bella.”

“Why not?” she snapped, in frantic frustration.

He pulled back enough to look down at her. And there it was again. Despite how full and open that firm line of his lips had grown, despite the flush on his cheeks, despite the way the stone dug into his arm as he held himself back from her. That tenderness. That possessiveness. That gentleness that swamped her with such an overwhelming conviction of her own security that she wanted to smack him.

“Because I told you I wouldn’t, chérie. And it’s very hard to get a woman to trust you, if she actually can’t.”

He bent and kissed her, quick and firm and final, and straightened and pushed her back, through her doorway.

She stood on the other side of the threshold and stared at him as he took a long step back.

“Go.” He gestured. “Up the stairs.”

“I don’t understand you at all.”

“I know, bella. If you manage to move that appointment up, you can tell your therapist all about it. How you met this completely unpredictable man who kept his word. And practiced self-control.” He was rubbing his chest with his knuckles as if to calm himself, taking deep breaths, arching his head back to stare at the slender sky above the alley. But he still managed to give her that warm, amused look that crinkled up his eyes. As if he just flat out liked her. “Buona notte, bella.”

Elena clamped her teeth over a scream of frustration, so that it came out as strangled rage. Abruptly she spun and ran all the way up the stairs.

And straight out onto her balcony, where there was a convenient pot of lavender she could drop on his head.

But he was standing there looking up at her, and his expression was so damn…wistful. She gripped the railing. “I’m going to smack you if you speak Italian one more time.”

“Trust me, I am already suffering enough.” He reached under her arch and pulled the stairwell door closed. “Sleep tight, bella.”

And he strode stiffly away down the alley.