Midnight Soul

  He didn’t need to fight a grin anymore.

  “Babe,” he said shortly. “Making something else crystal clear right now, something I don’t want to tell you again, I do not like being called Noctorno.”

  “I have heard you say that, repeatedly. But it is your name, it’s a regal, manly name, and when you’re being vexing it’s mostly when you’re being very much a man, and a high-handed one to boot, so that’s how I’ll refer to you. And I will admit I’m not beneath using something I know annoys you to do just that after you’ve annoyed me.”

  Noc sighed.

  Franka held his gaze.

  “It’s good you taste so goddamned sweet, or even with all the rest, you might not be worth it,” he muttered.

  “I do hope you jest,” she bit out.

  “Just finding things that annoy you that I can use after you’ve annoyed me.”

  She glared at him.

  Then she burst out laughing.

  Noc stared at her.

  Fuck, he’d never seen or heard her laugh like that. Not like that. Totally giving into it. Totally giving him all of it.

  Christ, even her laughter sounded like a purr.

  Beautiful.

  She was still doing it when she undid her seatbelt and erased the distance between them, putting her laughing mouth to his and sliding her hand up his thigh.

  “I do believe you need to feed me, darling. I’m quite famished.”

  He couldn’t stay ticked. Not after what she just gave him and now, with her mouth on his, hearing her humor in her voice and seeing her eyes dance in the dashboard lights.

  “Best get you to some food, then,” he muttered, brushing his mouth against hers.

  He was about to pull away when she caught him with her hand cupping his cheek.

  “We balance worlds,” she said softly.

  He felt those words in his gut.

  “Yeah,” he replied softly.

  “You’re my type too, Noc, even though I didn’t know it until I met you,” she shared.

  Fuck.

  That did it.

  They had a booking. They didn’t have the time to sit in his SUV and have a conversation.

  But it was important and it had to be had.

  So they had it.

  Now they did not have time for him to make out with her the way he wanted to make out with her to show his appreciation of not only how she ended an argument, but what she’d just said.

  But it was important.

  So he took that time.

  They were twenty minutes late for their reservation.

  The busy restaurant sat them regardless.

  And Noc was not surprised that every man followed Frannie with his eyes as she passed, which meant no way in fuck he could wipe the satisfied grin off his face that all that was her was all his.

  He was also not surprised his Frannie liked shrimp étouffée better than pizza.

  By a lot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My Command

  Franka

  “Noc?”

  “Mm?”

  Gods, I loved it when he made that noise.

  I also loved how he held my fingers laced in his.

  But in that very moment what I loved most was how he was lazily circling his thumb on the inside of my wrist, even if he did it as he drove (seeing as it was my view that it was probably far safer to operate his vehicle with two hands).

  We were just then heading to his home after an utterly sumptuous dinner, the like I’d never had. Such flavors. Complicated. Rich. Spicy. Decadent.

  This world seemed rushed. It was loud. It did not smell very good. I found it disconcerting there were only glimpses of nature here and there—along avenues, trees growing up from stone pavements. Although there was great beauty in (some) of the architecture, I was uncertain how I felt about the overall look, sound and smell of the place.

  But the food was wonderful.

  And Noc’s company…as ever, there was none better.

  “On our journey to dinner, you mentioned your father and stepmother,” I noted.

  “Yeah?” Noc prompted when I said no more.

  “Although I know a good deal about King Ludlum and his history, that’s history from the other world. Due to circumstances being what they were, you know all about my family, and unfortunately in the case of my parents, you’ve met them. In discussions, you’ve mentioned your family but you haven’t shared much but anecdotes.”

  Noc, ever generous, did not dillydally in giving me a reply.

  But regardless, I thought with a smile, as he’d said, what was his was mine and therefore what he did was not dillydally in giving me just that.

  Pieces of him.

  All of which were mine.

  “Probably won’t surprise you that it’s all the same,” he said. “My dad’s name’s Ludlum Hawthorne and he kept the tradition of saddling his kids with crazy-ass names that’ll have one purpose, they’ll get real good at fighting because every asshat in school that gives them shit about their names’ll get a fist in his face.”

  “Oh dear,” I murmured, rethinking, if this was his lot since schoolyard days, of using that very same thing to annoy him (even if it was deserved).

  “Yeah,” Noc confirmed. “It wasn’t fun, but they learned and eventually word got out and it ended. So I got a brother named Dashiell, known only as Dash or he gets even more pissed than I do when you call me Noctorno.”

  “Right.” I kept murmuring.

  “And our youngest brother is Orlando, we call him Orly. He got the short end of the stick because Noc isn’t great but it doesn’t totally suck. Dash is actually kinda cool. Orly is just bad.”

  I squeezed his hand as a soft chuckle escaped me.

  I didn’t chuckle long.

  This was because he said quietly, “Same for our moms.”

  I clutched his hand because I knew the wretched story of King Ludlum and the loss of not one, but three loves of his life.

  Noc went on with his own story.

  “Mom died in childbirth with me. Dash’s mom died of pneumonia. And Orly’s mom was with us longer than the Orlando of your world’s mom made it, but she eventually died of breast cancer. She was the one who got pissed about Dad teaching me how to drive.”

  I turned to him as best I could with the obnoxious, but apparently mandatory, belt restraining me to the seat.

  “I’m so sorry, darling.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought it up,”

  “Nope,” he said on gentle shake of my hand, “you wanna know, ask.”

  I looked out the window in front of me. “I shall, my dearest, but we’ve had a lovely night. Knowing the way of our two worlds, I should have assumed that would be the case and picked a better time.”

  “Babe, she was great,” he declared. “Only mom I had and she was a good one. She’s gone and I miss her. Think about her every day. And she deserves that. She deserves me talking about her. Keeping her alive that way. She took on my dad and two boys. Gave my dad another son. Gave us a brother, good kid, grew into a good man, proud he’s my baby bro. She made our family better and Dad didn’t suck at lookin’ after his boys. I was little but I remember he did it all and gave it his all. But when Judy showed, we really had it all.”

  I looked to his profile. “Even if her time with you was cut short, I’m pleased you had that.”

  “I am too,” he replied quietly and kept sharing. “Only thing I’d change was the way we lost her. Dash’s mom, Christina, I was too young, don’t remember much. Seemed like one day she was there, next she was gone. I know now it took a while, by that ‘while’ I mean a couple of weeks, but truth was, her pregnancy was a difficult one, she never recovered from having Dash, so when she got pneumonia, it was the worst thing that coulda happened. But I was a little kid, all I felt was confusion and a lot of bad shit I didn’t get and then it got worse. Judy, Frannie…” he paused, and through it the air in his ve
hicle became heavy, “fuck.”

  He suddenly stopped speaking and I didn’t start. I just held his hand, turned my eyes from him to give him his time and stared at the road ahead of us.

  He eventually continued, his voice thicker so I held his hand tighter.

  “She fought it. She gave it her all. Kept strong the whole time. Still amazes me how she’d come home from treatment, her and Dad would disappear in their room but we heard her puking, crying. God, the way she cried, Frannie, I can still hear it. So exhausted. Never heard anything like that, like she didn’t have the energy to do it but still couldn’t stop. Fucking hated hearing her cry like that. Wouldn’t want Judy to cry ever, but never like that.”

  After gifting this awful beauty to me—awful, what had happened, beauty, Noc sharing the depths it made him feel—he took another moment and I did too, swallowing against the sadness that seemed to coat my throat in a layer of acrid dust.

  “Next day, she’d be over it,” he eventually carried on. “Even on the days she actually wasn’t, she was in the kitchen giving us shit and making us some of the magic she made there. The cancer kicked her ass in the end, though, and that pissed me off. It still pisses me off. She fought so fuckin’ hard, she shoulda won. But it beat her and that wasn’t right. It wasn’t how it should go. Not for Judy.”

  His last was hoarse.

  He cleared his throat and finished softly, “Not for her.”

  I didn’t have any idea what “breast cancer” was, but in my world we had terrible illnesses that were prolonged, nightmares for those who fell to them, much longer nightmares for those who had to watch them struggle and carry on with those memories.

  Apollo’s first wife, I’d been told, had such an illness. Many believed it was the reason he mourned her so tremendously after she was lost. He’d been marked not simply by her passing but by being forced to experience, at some length, the excruciating torture of how she’d passed.

  I was one who believed just that.

  “Your father now?” I queried gently.

  “Lost three good women, he’s not gonna try again. He’s got a lady friend. He says it ‘isn’t like that,’ but the only way it’s ‘not like that’ is that he refuses to marry her. Like having Lud Hawthorne’s ring on your finger is a curse, and I get why he thinks that and it’s none of my business so I don’t go there. She’s down with that. She loves him. She’s good with taking him as he feels he can give himself to her. They live together. Her name is Sue. She makes him happy. She’s a good cook. She’s smart enough not to try to be a mom to three grown men who lost their real moms in an ugly way. But she doesn’t hide she cares about our dad, likes it when we’re around and wants us to quit dicking around because she loves kids and she wants grandkids. ‘Even if they aren’t blood, the more the merrier,’ she says. Seeing as she has two already from her own kids, it’s just me, Dash and Orly who are taking our time. Last, she’s wicked funny. You’ll meet her. You’ll like her.”

  By the gods, I’d meet her?

  I’d meet a woman who was pressing her not-exactly-but-still stepsons to give her grandchildren, Noc being one of those stepsons?

  Dear goddess!

  “My mom was named Amara.”

  My panicked thoughts vanished at his tone and my gaze immediately turned to him.

  “Only thing I got of her is pictures but she was beautiful, Frannie. Most beautiful woman I ever saw, until I met you.”

  I felt it again, as I’d felt it several times with some of the things he’d said when he’d stopped his vehicle and gave his words to me before dinner.

  My eyes starting to sting.

  “If I have a baby girl, first one I have, I’m naming her Amara,” he declared.

  It was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard.

  I swallowed in an effort not to expose the emotion I was feeling before I shared, “I think that’s lovely, Noc, and your mother’s name is even more so.”

  His thumb stopped absently stroking and his hand tightened around mine, pulling them further up his thigh where he’d been resting them.

  He did this as he murmured, “Good you’re on board with that.”

  “On board?” I asked.

  “You agree,” he explained.

  I turned to face forward again, feeling the alarming sensation of my heart swelling.

  A beautiful baby girl with Noc’s unusual blue eyes named Amara.

  My word, did anything sound sweeter?

  “You want kids?” he asked quietly.

  “That was not my future,” I answered in the same vein.

  “How’s that?”

  “Anyone I loved was in danger.”

  His thumb started stroking my wrist again as he reminded me, “That’s not the case anymore, Frannie.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “Then I’ll repeat, you want kids?”

  I wanted a little girl with beautiful blue eyes and black hair named Amara.

  And this desire, the like I’d never allowed myself to have, bubbled up my throat. A throat having been ravaged by emotion that night, that feeling grew, built and blocked it so it wasn’t my choice not to speak.

  It was an impossibility.

  “Frannie?” he called.

  It took effort to clear the blockage.

  I did it, but even so, my voice was not as I’d ever heard it when I replied, “It’s just occurred to me how much my life has changed since that night in the buttery.” I felt my fingers curl deep into his, not at my direction, but automatically as I continued speaking. “How free I actually am. How my life and my future are truly, for the first time, my own.”

  “I’m hopin’ that’s a good thing, baby, and it doesn’t freak you, because it is a good thing and you should rejoice in it,” he advised.

  I looked to his handsome profile and announced suddenly and with not a small amount of fervor, “I want children, Noc. Girls. Boys. As many of them as I can have, stopping only when I feel like I cannot give them the love and attention they deserve if I had another.”

  He again stopped stroking my wrist so his hand could clasp mine, but this time it did it fiercely, causing a twinge of pain.

  “Good to hear,” he murmured.

  That was his wish as well.

  My.

  It would seem I had to pull myself together or I’d be crawling all over him in this vehicle, and if I did such it would mean certain death.

  Therefore, I demanded, “We must cease talking about this or I fear the results would be calamitous.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “I wish to kiss you,” I shared, but didn’t stop at that. “And do other things to you, and you may have demonstrated you can concentrate on more than operating this contraption, however, I would hope my crawling into your lap to deliver a kiss would not be such a thing.”

  “You’re right,” he replied with humor. “You crawled into my lap and kissed me while I was driving, sugarlips, it’s likely the results would be calamitous.”

  “Then let us get to your home and swiftly, Noc,” I ordered. “For I have need of a digestif, your lovemaking and a soft pillow. I’m afraid after the events of the last two days, I’m quite fatigued.”

  “Your wish is my command, gorgeous,” he muttered.

  I looked forward, murmuring myself. “What a lovely thing to say.”

  More muttering from Noc. “Fuck, you’re cute.”

  I made no reply. I no longer had qualms that he thought that of me. Indeed, it pleased me.

  We spoke of nothing earth-shattering, and fortunately our journey wasn’t much longer before Noc executed an alarming maneuver of stopping in the street then going backwards at a disquieting angle in order to park very close to the edge of the pavement.

  I did hope he was correct and I’d grow accustomed to his, as he called it, “SUV.”

  Though I suspected I would (I was still Franka Drakkar), I also suspected it would take some time.

  “We’re here, babe,” he
said as I felt the vehicle’s engine cease running, and then I heard him open his door.

  But I looked beyond the pavement to “here.”

  I heard Noc’s door slam as I whispered, “Oh my.”

  It was a home unlike any I’d seen before. There was dim light coming from the inside that I could see vaguely through the front windows of the house and the window over the door. The night hid the color his home was painted, but I could see that the woodwork was white. And there was a lovely, black, wrought iron fence before it spiking up proudly from the edge of the small lawn.

  There was also a vast amount of intricate millwork along the portico and railing.

  And among the three windows at the front of the house, the middle one was made of rather simple, but quite lovely, stained glass.

  It was tidy. It was immensely attractive. It had personality. It was in no way grand or overwhelming, but instead well-tended and welcoming.

  All very Noc.

  He opened my door as I unleashed myself from the seat and he took my hand, assisting me to alight his vehicle.

  I saw then the pavements leading to his home were made of brick.

  A lovely touch.

  “Shotgun house,” Noc stated as I continued to take in his home while he guided me there. “Told Valentine I was going to move to NOLA, I wanted to live in something that was NOLA. Only other thing it had to have was me bein’ able to own it and live in it fast as money could change hands. Her agent found this for me and it rocks.”

  He’d opened the iron gate, led me through and was taking me up the steps as I asked, “Shotgun?”

  He looked down at me. “Right. Forgot. You don’t have guns in your world.” He took me across the small veranda and let me go to stop at the door, explaining, “A gun is a weapon. Fires a bullet, or a small projectile, fast, faster than the eye can see. The bullet travels straight from the barrel to the target. There’s change in its trajectory due to distance and wind, but it’s minimal. Not sure you were in a state to notice it, but it’s what I used when I did my thing against those witch bitches on your world.”

  I was not really in that state to notice. However, I did recall, vaguely. Obviously, there’d been other things on my mind.

  He opened the door and I saw through to acres of gleaming wood floors, a brick fireplace with a beautifully carved wood mantelpiece that was freestanding in a room that went on the length of the house. Sitting room first, fireplace delineating it from a dining room and then the this-world kitchen was entirely visible at the back.