All for You by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online Page A

adjudant-chef yelled, shoving him down again.
    He could hit the instructor and then crawl home. Home to her .And he could eat , for God’s sake. Sleep ten years.
    Be a failure.
    Célie wouldn’t mind.
    She’d settle. After all, she’d been so desperate for a man to look up to that she’d even looked up to him .
    She wouldn’t know how he’d failed, because he’d made sure she couldn’t see it. Only he would know.
    She’d take what he could manage, as he folded in on himself. She’d take less and less, as they grew older and he never made her dreams come true, as that light faded out of her eyes, as she stopped believing and turned into every other middle-aged woman in that HLM.
    You can do anything.
    She’d stop saying that.
    Maybe she’d even stop saying it to herself in the mirror. Dull-eyed when she looked at herself, all the light gone out.
    “Non.” He gasped it, in the first breath he could take free of mud.
    “ What did you say?” The hard grip on his neck shoved him down into the mud again.
    He forced himself back up on arms that thought they had no strength left, struggling for breath. After five days with three hours sleep and one ration pack for food, he’d just finished a ten-mile race in combat gear, followed by an impossible obstacle course, and was now on his three hundredth push-up in the mud as punishment for having slid back down a mud-coated rope on a mud-slick incline before he made it to the top. He had an infection crawling up his right arm from a scratch that made even slight movements flame like fire and something wrenching his stomach inside out because he’d cracked and drunk water from a creek on yesterday’s twenty-mile march. He hated this bastard with everything in him—but he didn’t have much left. Why the hell am I doing this? I could quit. I could give up. I could go back.
    You can do anything. Chin in the air, heart in her eyes.
    “No.” Joss spat mud out of his mouth.
    “Non?”
    You can do anything. He braced himself out of the mud. Fire lanced through his arms. His stomach heaved again. Mud coated his face. “Non, mon chef.”
    “Tu es sûr?”
    Oh, fuck, here came more. It always did, when they asked if a recruit was sure. But … I can do anything. I am not a failure. I will do this. “Oui, mon chef.”
    “You think you can take it?” the man asked contemptuously.
    Joss gritted his teeth. “I can take it.” Here it came. A blow, a kick, a shove into the mud. The order to climb to the top of a mountain barefoot. Anything.
    The hard hand released his nape. The fifty-year-old career bastard who was their instructor stepped back, with a small moue on that merciless face. A maybe you’ll pass muster moue. “Then you’d better get up and get back in line.”
    ***
    Well, she’d certainly made a fool of herself today, hadn’t she? Célie thought, her face pressed into Joss’s leg. Probably so traumatized him he’d abandon any plans of looking up any other old friends.
    His thigh felt so good under her cheek, though. His arm over her back, his hand curving over her head. Warmth and strength and so much himness that it was all she could do not to turn her head toward his crotch, not to open her mouth there and shock-destroy all his defenses so that she could crawl into him, bury herself in his arms, get held close and hard.
    She wrapped her arm even more tightly around his thigh to keep herself there and not twisting to kneel between his thighs and force her hands up under his shirt to just feel his damn skin, warm and alive , not grabbing his head in two tight, angry hands that held him still by the roots of his hair while she kissed him because she was so angry with him she wanted to kiss him to death, kiss him until he begged for mercy and said he was sorry, so sorry, and he would never, ever, ever—
    Joss winced, under her cheek, and she realized she had dug her nails into the underside of his thigh, near the knee. She loosed them slowly, reluctantly,