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.
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 vehicle 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.