Chapter 18

Elena radiated security and happiness in the company of his aunt. The streets were sometimes too narrow to allow three people abreast, so Lucien had fallen a few steps behind, watching the two of them. The way Elena’s head turned up to Tante Colette’s, the way his tough Tante Colette had a certain gentleness for her. It must do her heart good to see the granddaughter of a little girl she had saved grown up to be such a warm-spirited person.

To think Elena could have been snuffed out seventy years ago. That was what the Nazis had tried to do, after all—erase her genes from the earth.

I owe you, he thought to his aunt’s straight back. We all owe you.

They passed under an abundance of rich fuchsia-colored bougainvillea, arching over the cobblestoned street. Elena was on the subject of the old forbidden balls, eagerly inquisitive. Where did the balls take place? Did anybody ever get arrested by the gendarmes? Who were the best musicians in this area? What did Tante Colette wear to them? Was Lucien always such a good dancer? Wait, she’d jumped a couple of generations there.

A small smile from his aunt. “That boy would be out on the dance floor clapping his little baby hands when he was still in diapers.”

Seriously, Tante Colette? Did you have to mention diapers? I’m trying to impress her here. Paratrooper, former commando, captain in the Foreign Legion.

Elena sent a bright smile at him over her shoulder.

Okay, fine, maybe his aunt knew what she was doing.

There was something profoundly…easing, to pull out chairs for both of them on the place at the top of town. He could see the sea and Corsica in the distance, the twilight warming the lights of all the houses that filled the slopes between Sainte-Mère and the water. Nothing about the open place was all that different from Corsica, off base. The court for boules over there with the old men playing, the pine trees around it, the paving stones, and the kind of golden warmth that came from the people gathered at tables to share a drink and a meal and their time together. Because spending it together made it richer.

But the company was different. Feminine and strong and belonging to him in a way his men—despite the fact that they were his men—didn’t. His aunt, whom he had known since he was in diapers, who had tended to his growth the same way she tended her garden—trimming off a branch that was growing wrong, with some moral guidance, making sure he had enough sunlight and enough nourishment for his roots, with the way she listened so well that a kid talked himself around to the right answer.

And Elena, who…he watched her. The way her open love and admiration for his aunt added to her vibrancy. The way the breeze pulled at that auburn hair. The slim strength of her arms, one gesturing, the other resting on the table near his. That chipped glass heart that dangled deep red above the table as she leaned forward, into her conversation with his aunt. Yes, both she and his aunt felt his, profoundly his. An old treasure from his past, that he had rediscovered, and a new treasure that had walked out of a sunset in Italy, into his life.

He closed his hand over Elena’s, content to listen to the two women talk. To direct their attention to the waiter when he hovered, to refill their drinks from the bottle left on the table, to enjoy how the lights below them sparkled more and more the darker it grew.

Elena didn’t understand about easy. Ease like this was a rare and precious thing.

A man who stumbled upon it knew damn well better than to let it get away from him.

You hooked me, Elena. I may be one hell of a lot bigger fish than you expected, but that doesn’t mean you get to throw me back.

***

“So you did all right in the Legion,” Tante Colette said quietly, when Elena left the table to go to the bathroom. “Grew tougher. Smarter. Learned how to spot what you want.”

He smiled at his aunt. “How can you tell that? We’re just sitting here enjoying the view.”

“You’re a paratrooper. A commando.”

“Former commando,” he specified scrupulously. To accept the promotion to captain, he had had to choose to leave his commando unit and take on a company. He’d chosen the responsibillity, although he had let the adrenaline and the tight bonding with his former unit go with a great deal of regret.

“Captain in the Foreign Legion. That’s a hard job. For a hard man.”

Lucien opened his mouth but then decided not to argue. It was just…people had this impression about the Legion. Maybe about military men in general. Yes, you had to be a badass. You had to be tough. But from his own perspective, inside the job of leading those men, of becoming the man whom wary loners learned to trust…he thought it also took a lot of heart.

People who believed in no one and nothing weren’t going to start believing in you enough to follow you into battle unless you gave them a good reason.

“But here you are. Going after what’s important.”

Lucien remained discreetly silent, his eyes flicking toward the restaurant door where Elena had disappeared.

“I worried about you in the Legion. That’s a hard crucible. I worried you would become someone I didn’t know, and maybe didn’t want to know. That happened a lot, with people caught in the war. But you kept your core. I still recognize you.”

Lucien said nothing, but something released in the nape of his neck and spread through his shoulders and down his back. Relief.

“I don’t see how you can tell any of this, Tante Colette.”

“You’re getting that girl to trust you.” Elena re-appeared at the restaurant door. Colette sat back. “And she’s a wary one. Even more careful than an old Resistance fighter to give her trust. Although she never would tell me why.”

***

Elena’s heart thumped, thumped, thumped as Lucien followed her up her little staircase. She missed Madame Colette already. The safety of her. The security.

But oh, she liked the way her skirt slid over her butt with Lucien watching it. His own strength and promise of security prowled after her up the stairs, as if it was going to catch her. All she had to do was trip and fall back into it…and it would catch her and hold her tight.

“Still want that limoncellu?” he asked her, leaning an elbow on the bar counter, big body filling her kitchen. She always left the kitchen lights on their dim setting to welcome herself home, and she had not yet turned on any other lights, so the apartment held a quiet to it. An intimacy and promise of night.

“Maybe just a sip.” She held her thumb and index finger a centimeter apart.

He poured her a couple of finger’s widths in one of her narrow apéritif glasses, added ice and soda water, and slid it to her, pouring a similarly small portion for himself.

A sip of it, like Italy, her eyes lifting to his. The evening in Italy had started out so magically. As if anything was possible, just for a night.

She touched her lionheart. That, if it got one more chip, might shatter. But you can’t be a lionheart if you’re afraid of breaking yourself.

He lifted a curved hand to brush his knuckles over her cheek and down her jawline, then spread his fingers into her hair and stroked it away from her face. The blue of his eyes was more secret, in the dimly lit kitchen. The shadows softened his strong jaw. But his body was just as big. Just as warm.

“I wonder if this is a good idea,” he said softly, his fingers sinking further into her hair, curving behind her head, so that they stirred all her roots and grazed over the nape of her neck. Pleasure shivered through her.

Trust was so erotic. Such a strong hand on her vulnerable nape. And yet she didn’t have to fear it. She could just sink into the pleasure of touch.

“I think I might still be rushing my goal.”

Wasn’t he the one who typically picked up women in bars? How was this going fast compared to his usual?

“What do you think, Elena?”

“I think you over-analyze things?” she said doubtfully. In relationships at least, she was more instinctive. With most of her instincts usually trying to make sure she avoided committing her heart to a situation, and those all tangled now with an overpowering instinct to step forward into him and bury herself in his warmth as if it would hold her forever.

“You don’t feel rushed?”

She shook her head slowly, even though a great sense of rushing came over her at the gesture, as if she had gotten caught in a flash flood carrying her straight over the edge of a great fall.

His arm slid around her and pulled her into him, firm and sure, like someone who could hold onto her and a log to keep them afloat even while going over a waterfall. But she was pretty sure heroes could only do that in movies. In real life, she’d be dragged out of his hold and drown, right? If she couldn’t keep her head above water on her own.

She touched her lionheart again, seeking its chips.

Lucien turned so that he leaned back against the counter and her weight was angled on top of him.

It placed all his strength under her, a support not a trap. As if everything that happened was her choice. He slipped his fingers between hers, lifted her lionheart from them, and kissed it. Right on one of the chips.

Oh. She felt awash in gentleness. In care. It dissolved all her armor.

He tucked the heart back under her shirt, his fingers grazing the curve of her breasts. Her breath caught.

His lashes lifted and his eyes met hers and grew heavier at what he saw there. He brushed his knuckles against the curve of her breast again, deliberately, but oh so lightly.

She might have made a soft sound. A sigh.

His fingers opened, a spread of warmth and calluses up to her collarbone, teasing the hollow of her throat. And grazing slowly down. Testing between the curve of her breasts to the tiny bow on her bra.

She shivered and curved her fingers around his biceps. Oh, she liked the feel of those.

Touching him was instantly addictive. Her drug, the thing she couldn’t resist—strength and hope and promise.

Her hands stroked up to his shoulders, broad and solid. Spread out over his chest, kneading his T-shirt into resilience. He grazed his fingers back up over the curve of her breasts to her throat again, brushed them so teasingly delicately under her jaw, until the way he could wield strength and hardness so gently was shivering all through her.

A swell of urgency rose through him, his hands suddenly stroking down her back and sinking into her butt muscles, pulling her up and into him so that he could kiss her. Then gentling again.

Trust could let a woman do anything. The freedom of it was overwhelmingly sensual.

She didn’t doubt him. She didn’t worry about what he would do. She knew what he would do—only what they both wanted. And that meant she could do anything she wanted at all.

Run her hands all over that hard body. Drop kisses down his throat until she was back to his chest, no longer straining up to reach his mouth but where it was so, so entirely comfortable…her mouth moving across his T-shirt, which tasted of cotton and got entirely in the way.

She pushed it up, over a taut washboard of abs and a little flinching sound from him as if that tickled. And then a deep murmur of encouragement that made her lose her mind and spread her fingers over his bare skin and see if she could get more of those murmurs from him, vibrating through her, charging her body.

He made a little hissing, cursing sound when she first got his T-shirt high enough to press her lips against bare skin.

“Yes. Bella.” His hands threading through her hair, cupping her head to him, running down her back and up again.

His chest hair tickled her nose, so she found a spot that didn’t have any—a flat nipple, pushing the bunched T-shirt up higher to make it available.

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and threw it somewhere.

Oh. Oh.

Nice.

That expanse of chest and shoulder all revealed. The ridges of his abs. The lean waist. The curve of biceps and the sinewy forearms, and that burgundy-dark rose tattoo. His dog tags lay against his chest, and—oh, he had the ring with them. Niccolò’s ring. Joy and approval surged through her arousal.

But he pulled his tags off now, too, and set them on the counter.

So nothing at all was in her way.

There was too much to kiss. She wanted to kiss all of it. She rested her hands in some awe on those washboard abs, spreading her fingers to stroke, and he made that little sound again, half-laughing, half-flinching. Ticklish. He’s ticklish.

Then he tightened his body and forced himself still, as she ran her hands up past his ticklish zone to where he could just enjoy their touch. Oh, wow. Those shoulders. She pressed a kiss into the hollow of his throat. Rubbed her cheek into the curls of his chest hair. Wrapped her arms around him and for a moment just held on tight.

She breathed there, hard, feeling as if she was taking them past the point of no return. Did she want to go there? He felt delicious, all that strength, just a little under her with his lean against the counter, as if that strength was to support her, not control her. She was just a little on top. As if everything that happened was all her choice. She loved it.

And she almost immediately stepped away from him to test if it was really true.

His hands resisted her first effort to withdraw, fingers kneading into her butt, pulling her back. She felt a little jolt of worry. But she pushed her hands against his chest, stepping back more firmly, and he made a rough sound of protest and let go.

She stepped back two steps. His hands spread to either side of him to grip the edge of the counter. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were brilliant blue around dark, dilated pupils. But he smiled at her.

He didn’t grab her or complain or do anything else. He just seemed to focus on catching his breath. Calming down.

So she came right back to him. And he was still there. All that strength and warmth and his arms closing around her immediately. It felt wonderful.

It felt as if she could play with his body as much as she wanted, and it would still always be about whether she wanted more of it, and not about whether he thought she should want it.

I think I love you, she thought, all out of the blue. Her lips even parted around the first word, and she twisted her head and pressed them firmly to his chest instead.

You idiot, Elena. Where the hell did that come from?

She kissed him more so she didn’t actually say it, so that the words didn’t escape her on one of those little gentle, lapping waves of the urge that kept coming back. She kissed him all over. Kissed herself to silence.

She liked the way he muttered her name. She liked the way he kind of begged for her. Begging was so different from taking.

She liked going up on her tiptoes and pulling his head back down to her, she liked pulling herself up his body to wrap her thighs around him and give him more of her.

He wrapped his hands under her butt to help hold her there and straightened from the counter to give her knees room. Then moved with her riding against his hips through the apartment, clearly seeking a place where she could wrap her thighs around him more comfortably.

He found her bedroom and lowered her on the bed with a hard and hungry sound, kissing her again lavishly, dominantly, coming down on top of her.

Mostly she loved it, but a little part of her clicked off right then. Because now she was committed. Now it wasn’t her choice anymore. And now somewhere, deep down, now that she could no longer back out if she wanted, the play lost a little of its savor. Her hands lost a little of their intensity in their stroking. She stopped kissing him and let him kiss her.

Lucien rolled off her, onto his side.

He was breathing very hard. “You are knocking my strategies to fucking hell,” he murmured, ruefully, taking her hand and kissing the inside of her wrist.

Oh. That felt sweet. Seductive.

As if he still needed to seduce her.

“Too fast?” he said. “Do we need to back up and slow down?”

What?

“Merde, but you’re pretty.” He leaned across the space of mattress to kiss her again.

But then he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, breathing great, deep breaths.

Until she had to roll up onto her elbow to look down at him curiously. “What are you doing?” He was a very strange creature, he really was.

So damn sexy, though. Her hand lowered involuntarily to that muscled torso again, stroking it in tactile fascination.

“Discipline,” he said wryly. “And self-control.” His head arched back into the mattress at her stroking, a shiver running up his skin.

Her eyebrows crinkled. “Are you still practicing your tactics?”

A rough laugh. “They’re a little tangled up in kisses right now.” He covered her hand with his and stroked it more across his body, closing his eyes, breathing still fast.

“Don’t you still want to?” she asked, completely confused.

His eyes flared open. “Oh, fuck, yes. I thought we were going too fast.” He searched her face. “We’re not?”

He really was the most baffling man. “You know, no offense, but you really overthink sex.”

“Oh, is that what we’re still calling this?” he said, exasperated. “Sex? Can we go back to Italian?”

She frowned down at him, exasperated herself. But his chest so close to her grew too tempting. She lowered her head to rest against it and felt instantly as if everything was all right again.

His heart thumped under her ear. His arms closed around her, hands stroking, just gently, not like the urgency of a moment before.

“Do you know when it’s too late to get me to stop?” that deep voice murmured, and she could feel it vibrating through his chest, against her ear.

Apparently not when they entered her bedroom. So what was his line? She trailed her fingers down the V of hair that showed the way to the snap of his jeans. Would it be there? If she touched that snap?

“Never,” he said. He rolled them suddenly, so that they were both on their sides on the mattress and he could hold her eyes. “Never, Elena. I could be inside you, and you could tell me, never mind, you don’t like it, it hurts or you’re bored or what the hell ever, and I would still stop. I don’t know what the fuck kind of men you have met in your life, but if you want to point some out to me, I will be more than happy to rip a few damn dicks off since they seem to think someone else controls theirs anyway.”

Elena stared at him, blinking great, big blinks.

“And this is a lousy subject of conversation.” Lucien lifted her astride him and smiled up at her. “We could play on this bed all night and I’ll never even unzip my jeans, if you want. Would you like that?”

“Would you like that?” Elena said incredulously.

He made a kind-of-sort-of waggle of his hand in the air, his expression rueful. “Sometimes a man has to suffer short-term in pursuit of his long-term goals.”

“What are your long-term goals?”

He rolled them again, coming up onto his elbow, so that his body was now dominant over hers, bigger. It made her nipples prickle with anticipation. “Right now, I have a really burning desire to see what you look like when you orgasm,” he said. “Let’s work on that one.”