Chapter 9

Easy. She was so damn easy.

Arousal swelled through Lucien, pressing out all other thoughts. Shame, pain, confusion, the knowledge of how much he had lost. Desire created a bubble around them, safe from a past of work and laughter and bonding in this factory and fifteen years of not being here while his cousins grew into men.

It siphoned off his need to flee back to Corsica, to where he had fifteen years of memories, of work and risk and laughter and bonding and trust, built with his bare hands and will, from scratch, by a man so new and so beholden to none that he’d started out by giving up his name.

Giving up all this.

Everything outside this bubble of desire.

But here, inside it, the two of them were brand new. His mind could focus all on her. That silky feel of her auburn hair. The gloss of something shimmery she had put on her lips, and the way she and he kissed all that gloss away, until it was only silk and slide and them. He could focus on goals that were clear, and incremental, and made sense. If he did this, and this, would she enjoy it so much that she’d let him touch her breasts next, slide his hand up her thigh again but under her skirt next time. Would she—

She lifted her head, with a little gasp, and pulled his head hard against her breasts, bending over him, so that her hair still fell around them.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. His face against that generous swell, her hair a veil against all the world.

“Merde, you’re easy,” he whispered wonderingly.

And he lost it.

Her body stiffened up as if she’d been frozen solid, and she shoved them apart, her legs pulling up on the burlap as she withdrew.

He looked up at her, trying to find out what had yanked them out of this moment, and caught a sheen in her eyes, a fierce crumpling of her mouth, as if he’d struck her straight to the heart. An abrupt shift from falling into him to fighting tears.

What?

“Fuck you,” she said.

He’d said she was—hell. “Not like that.” He rested his hand on her thigh again, stroking.

She struck it away.

“To me,” he said. “You make me feel easy, Elena.” How to explain? “As if everything makes sense here.”

“I get why men seek out women for sexual oblivion, thanks.”

Shit.

“Soldiers even have a reputation for it.” Those golden-brown eyes locked with his, and if you asked him, it was a real violation of their nature that they could go so ironically cool. “I bet some of them do it as a habit.”

That set him back. His hand curled against the burlap. He’d had plenty of moments of sexual oblivion with someone picked up in a bar off base as soon as they got back from a mission.

Maybe he did have a habit. It usually felt like a pretty damn good one.

“Maybe you need better habits,” he said between his teeth. “Or to quit assuming I’m judging you.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, because ‘you’re easy’ is a compliment now?”

It had felt like one when he said it. The ease that filled him, that had risen up and wrapped them in their own protective bubble, nothing in this world easier or surer than how much he wanted to keep touching her.

“Yeah,” he finally said flatly. “Yeah, it was.”

The ease that he had felt on a lookout above the Italian coast, soft breeze and luminous villages and a little play of words as her hair drifted across the space between them and grazed his arm and she never noticed it was teasing him that way. The ease that had toyed with him just like those strands of hair, almost there if she would let it, when he stood under a moon in a field of roses that hurt so much, and instead focused on her, rubbing her knuckles against his chin because he hoped she liked the prickles.

“I wouldn’t sell ease short,” he said. “It isn’t as easy to come by as it makes itself sound.”

That bar hook-up ease she correctly assumed was a habit, for example. It often left a man feeling cheap and alone and tired. Wondering whether it wasn’t about time to get out of the Legion and go build a normal life.

Only he couldn’t get out of the Legion because, up until exactly two days ago when Miss Don’t Call Me Easy had dropped Niccolò’s ring on him, it was the only home he had.

He closed his eyes, remembering that struggle in Italy after she left. The profound revulsion at the idea of her looking down at him the way she’d seemed to when she walked out. The frustration with himself for driving her away, and the complete inability to calm the roiling of emotions inside him enough to go after her on the spot and try to smooth things over. The damn ring burning his hand so much it made him feel like fucking Frodo.

Visions of family crowding his head, visions of joy, childhood, and the brutal sudden loss of everything he was. But now I belong, he’d told himself. He’d made his place in the Legion. Now I know who I am.

A him that didn’t need blood family. That didn’t need the Rosiers. A pure him he’d made all by himself. And a place he’d formed for himself, too, his own family, the Legion.

With that solidity and solidarity at his back, the bedrock certainty of who he was, he had thought about Elena’s straight back as she walked away from him. He’d thought about the ring of fire he’d have to go through to follow her. And he’d told himself that he could surely go back to make some kind of peace with the Rosiers, because he was big enough that he no longer needed them. Also, she would be there. And knowing she would be there had made him feel oddly centered. Eased, yes.

“Well, excuse me for not wanting to be your easy,” Elena said, with a curl of her lips.

“Oh, fine then,” he snapped, profoundly frustrated. “Go ahead and be complicated, too.” He pressed the heel of his palm against his aching head and turned and paced a couple of strides.

“Shut up,” Elena said to his completely silent back. “I’m not playing that sucker game. The sweet, compassionate little woman who wraps her maternal self all around the warrior and soothes his wounds.”

He turned enough to give her a hard look he usually reserved for one of his men getting out of line. “A, I’m not wounded.”

Elena rolled her eyes.

What the fuck? He wasn’t wounded. “And B, thanks for caring.”

She scowled at him, halfway to sulky. “Don’t you pull that on me. Act like I’d let you get inside my panties if only I was nice enough.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He arched his head back and glared at the ceiling. What a way to screw things up, you asshole. Never, ever tell a woman she’s easy. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. You’re the polar opposite of easy. You’re fucking high maintenance.”

Elena put her chin in the air as if that was a well-deserved compliment. Or at least should be meant as a compliment.

Lucien narrowed his eyes at a completely blameless blue barrel for a long moment. And when that failed to explode satisfyingly under the pressure, took a rueful breath, rubbed his nape, and sent her a sidelong look. “Still sexy as hell, though.”

Elena looked confused.

She was pretty as hell confused. Like maybe he wasn’t quite the man she expected all men to be.

“Come on.” He picked her up off the burlap and set her back on her feet, letting his hands hold her hips just long enough to bend and kiss her hairline. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She stared up at him as if he’d just sprouted two heads.

“You know, Elena, something tells me you’ve met far too many assholes in your life.” He twined a lock of that gorgeous auburn hair around his callused finger, smiled in pure pleasure at how unfamiliar and yet perfect that looked, and then tucked it behind her ear. “Want me to fight the rest of them off for you?”

For some reason, she looked as if he’d punched her right in the gut. Her lips parted, and all at once there was that hard-fought sheen in her eyes. “Oh, fuck you,” she said fiercely, and strode away leaving him staring dumbfounded.

***

Of course the first person Lucien saw after that was his dad.

Not his dad, fuck these habits of mind. Michel Rosier, the man who’d been tricked into parenting a…fucking cuckoo bird.

He was smoking under one of the apricot trees near the extraction plant doors, and he stiffened just as much as Lucien did when they spotted each other. It was all Lucien could do not to snarl. His little escape to safer emotions had not worked out for him, and here he was right back in the worst of the fire.

Lucien gazed across the gravel at the other man grimly. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m bigger than you, I’m tougher than you. I don’t need a father now.

He’d gotten his blue eyes from a one-night stand his mother had had a few years into a marriage she was already wanting to escape. An American tourist, she hadn’t even had a last name to give Lucien. Realizing she was pregnant had changed her mind about leaving the marriage, and at the time she’d kept her secret well. Back then, his mom had always insisted that he had Michel Rosier’s ears, his chin, his height, and that the blue eyes were a throwback to his grandfather. Stupid things he could see through for what they were now, looking at the puffier, aged version of the man he had thought his father, the gray hair and the weary lines around his brown eyes, as if life didn’t hold a whole hell of a lot for him.

Yeah, well, it could have held a son.

Michel Rosier looked at his watch and looked away, as if counting the minutes until he could shake the dust of this wedding from his feet and never have to see Lucien again. But then he looked back at Lucien.

A slim body appeared suddenly by Lucien’s side and tucked herself under his arm, slipping her own arm around his waist. Lucien looked down at Elena. “Didn’t you just tell me to fuck off?”

“My sense of self-preservation is perforated with compassion,” she said resignedly.

Lucien gazed down at her thoughtfully, so glad to focus on her instead of his father he wished to hell she would let him kiss her again. “And you’re testing me by telling me that, aren’t you? Seeing what I do with knowledge of one of your weaknesses.”

“You’ve spent most of your life steeped in military tactics. I’m expecting you to exploit it.”

“You only exploit an enemy’s weaknesses, Elena. If someone’s on your side, you help compensate for their weaknesses and they help compensate for yours.”

She got that stymied look on her face again, but her arm tightened around his waist. So he tightened his own around her, hugging her more securely to him.

His fath—Michel Rosier took a half-step in their direction, almost as if he was going to attempt conversation. Or thought he had to and wanted to get it over with.

“So there you are,” said a deep voice from Lucien’s right. Raoul. Charcoal in the hair that had once been all red-brown but still the same wolf-amber eyes, that hint of feral to them that he’d had ever since Lucien had found him shot and lying in a rudimentary hospital ward in Centrafrique a few years ago.

Some of Lucien’s tension eased. Raoul and he were only a few months apart in age and had been as close as the closest of brothers. And even to this day, Raoul was the only one who could understand. He, too, had burned bridges and stormed off at nineteen—they’d left within a week of each other. Although Raoul had kept ties, come home for Christmas at least, not changed his name.

Of course, Raoul really had been a Rosier. Only Lucien had had to deal with the fact that their whole “blood brothers” thing had been a fucking myth.

Although…another thought, further easing the tension at the back of his skull, sending lines of calm down through his shoulders. He had a big band of brothers now. And not one of them shared the same genes with him.

Maybe…maybe he’d put too much of his heart into the blood and biology of it back then and let that heart get broken. He spared a flickering glance at his non-biological father, who had taken a step back now at Raoul’s appearance.

Elena gave Raoul a brilliant smile, as if he’d earned her gold star of approval, poked her finger into Lucien’s chest, said sternly, “I meant what I said earlier. Fuck off,” and headed back to the pavilion. Lucien watched that beautiful auburn hair slide against her back as she walked away and just tucked the image into his mind, front and center, where he could dwell on it no matter what else hit him today.

When he looked around again, Michel Rosier was striding away, too. And Lucien was able to watch his back with a flat, cold dismissal. You weren’t worth me.

“Was wondering if you were ready to slip off,” Raoul said, watching his uncle go. “A lot to handle this weekend.”

Yeah, Raoul was probably the only one who could even start to understand. “I’ll let you know, before I go back. I won’t just disappear again, okay?”

“I figured.” No judgment whatsoever in Raoul. No room for judgment, since he’d made some huge screw-ups himself. “We’re both past the age of melodramatic gestures.”

Yeah, true enough. Lucien sighed and rubbed his cropped hair. He’d been such a teenager back then. Running off to become a man who needed no one but himself.

The Foreign Legion had taught him differently immediately. Teams. The Legion as family. He’d thrived on it. Was proud as hell of his family, the men who had become his brothers in arms as a commando and now all the men who looked to him for his lead.

“Still pissing women off, though, I see,” Raoul said mildly, a little gleam in those wolf eyes.

“Fuck you,” Lucien said cordially. It felt good to say. Like they were still as close as brothers.

A line of sharp teeth showed as Raoul bit back a grin.

“You’re engaged now?” Lucien said abruptly, on a fresh wave of incredulity at all the changes. He tried for their old rough humor. “How the hell did that happen? Did you blackmail her into it?”

“I hold a puppy hostage,” Raoul said promptly. “Send her photos from time to time of pitiful puppy eyes so she’ll know not to dump me.”

Lucien laughed, but filed the idea away. He might have to up his flirting game with Elena. Or just quit screwing up. “When are you getting married? Pépé said the two of you got engaged Christmas before last.” Raoul had never been one to beat around the bush, not back in the old days anyway. Saw what he wanted and pounced on it like a wolf on a bunny.

Raoul was silent for a moment. It was odd, walking shoulder to shoulder with him along the edge of the rose fields, as two grown men. It didn’t feel the same as it had when they were teenagers. Instead of adolescents trying to imitate their grandfather, it felt as if they were their grandfather in some way. Strong men who now should be leading others in their turn.

“We were waiting for you,” Raoul said.

Lucien stopped in his tracks. Raoul had just reached inside his lungs and pulled out all his breath.

“I knew you were nearing the fifteen year mark, and I thought if we held off a year, you…might be available. To be best man.”

Lucien stared straight ahead of him. Then he closed his eyes. He couldn’t handle this. He really couldn’t. He understood exactly where that crunched, fierce expression on Elena’s face came from when she fought so hard against a sudden sheen of tears. It had been overwhelming enough to find himself suddenly roped into Damien’s line of witnesses yesterday. But this…

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Jesus.” He pressed the heel of his palm to just below his heart. “Jesus, Raoul.”

Raoul said nothing.

Lucien grappled and grappled and still couldn’t come to grips with it, but finally had to open his eyes.

Raoul gave him such a funny look for a big, fierce predator of a man. A wanting, even delicate look. “That’s what we always were, right?” he said. “Together against the world?”

“Oh, fuck.” Lucien turned away, striding a few paces into the roses again, hunching his shoulders, breathing deep.

The muscles at the back of his neck clenched when Raoul finally spoke again, and then relaxed as he realized Raoul was just talking, giving him a conversational bridge. “Allegra—she’s very confident. In herself. In me. She didn’t have any need to hurry to get married, and I…”

Raoul’s voice trailed off. Lucien tilted his head back and stared at the blue sky.

“So anyway,” Raoul finally said, awkward and rough. “I guess you say the word, and we can set the date.”

“Jesus,” Lucien said. “Fuck, Raoul.”

“You know, I kind of figured you would say something like that,” Raoul finally said provocatively. “You always had a limited vocabulary.”

Lucien turned at last and gave him a speaking look.

“But then, after, I was hoping you’d say, ‘Congratulations. I’d be thrilled.’”

Raoul’s amber eyes watched him. Alert, a little feral still himself. Gentled around the edges of that feralness, though, compared to when Lucien had seen him in a hospital bed in Centrafrique. As if someone petted the wild wolf regularly these days.

The two of them had worked and played in these fields and through these hills, and fought plenty of times, too. Lucien had felt he’d lost everything, when he’d learned they weren’t true cousins. Maybe the fact that his father had rejected him so abruptly and completely had made it impossible for him to believe his cousins and his grandfather still thought of him as theirs.

He cleared his throat. “Congratulations,” he said roughly. “I’d be thrilled.”

He reached out and gripped Raoul’s shoulder, as he’d know to do to one of his men or fellow officers who asked for his support getting married. Yeah. “Congratulations,” he said again, a little more easily. Fifteen years they had missed of each other’s lives. And now Raoul was asking him to stand at his side as he changed his entire life. Lucien cleared his throat one more time. “If you promise to release the puppy so I know the bride is willing, I’d be thrilled.”