She never actually existed, Antoine’s voice carried on. A part you played, mon ange, beautifully. But you’ve quite literally taken off the costume and face paint, put on new, and are now ready for a different role. The role, to be banal, of a lifetime. The role of you just being…you.
I turned my head and saw myself in the mirror.
Was that me, the woman with her hair flowing unhindered, her cheeks pink with excitement (and what Valentine said in her world was fittingly called “blush”), her eyes bright with nervousness, her breaths coming fast from anticipation?
I always loved your legs, Antoine murmured.
“Mon cœur,” I whispered.
Farewell, my Franka. I’d bid you be happy, but I don’t need to.
“Why?” I asked.
You’ll see.
Those simple words made a tickle run down my spine.
He said no more.
“Antoine?” I called.
He didn’t speak to me, and in my soul I knew he never again would.
“Antoine,” I whispered, feeling not-so-oddly pleased the last I heard of his voice, he sounded happy.
But mostly I felt uncertain that I was facing my greatest adventure and in doing so had long since let him go and was moving on.
That greatest adventure was not going to a parallel universe where women were referred to as infants (of a variety of species) and wore death-defying shoes.
That adventure was living life from that point on simply as me.
Franka Drakkar.
A woman prone to generosity (even if I had to force it on those who were stubbornly opposed to it), outgoingness and sociability.
And also a woman who was a practicing witch.
On this thought, the room filled with green.
I turned to where I sensed her joining me and Valentine appeared right there.
She cocked her head to the side. “Ready?”
I was.
And I was not.
“How odd would I seem if I went to your new world in my own attire?” I queried.
“Nothing is odd in New Orleans,” she answered. “This is one of the vast number of reasons it’s the greatest city in my world…or yours.”
“Then I—”
“Rubbish,” she stated before I could even finish my thought, lifting her hands, the green of her magic returning.
“Valentine,” I snapped.
“Come closer, ma petite sorcière.”
I came closer but repeated on a sharper snap, “Valentine!”
She smiled again as I sensed the room receding and then there was nothing but her magic shrouding us.
I did not find this alarming.
What I found alarming was her smile.
It was another one I’d perfected many years ago.
And it was the one I’d indulge in when a fine bit of conniving was about to come gloriously to fruition.
“What have you done?” I demanded to know.
I got no answer.
Instead, suddenly, I had earth beneath my feet, bright lights, loud noise and movement everywhere, and I was experiencing an odor so foul, it would have turned my stomach.
It did not because it did not have my focus.
My focus was on the fact that Valentine had gone.
And right in front of me, Noc was standing.
I stared up in his extraordinary blue eyes and watched his head jerk in surprise at my abrupt appearance.
My.
He was right there.
Right there.
An inch away.
So there, I’d barely have to sway and I’d brush against him.
“Frannie,” he whispered, saying the name he gave me with unhidden affection and relief.
Bloody hell!
I was going to burst into tears.
“Noc,” I forced out.
“Frannie,” he repeated.
Yes. Drat it all!
I was going to start weeping within moments of starting my grand adventure!
Bloody Noc.
Slowly, his lips formed one of the grins I so adored and he raised a hand. In it were long strings of shiny beads, gold, purple and green. He lifted them over my head and settled them around my neck.
They appeared like they’d be heavy, but as his hands moved away, leaving them behind, they were light.
Light and bright and festive.
“Welcome home,” Noc said, and my eyes shot from the beads dangling down my front to Noc’s. “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
How odd, he was speaking Fleuridian. He’d never done that before.
At that point, before I could ask after this, it seemed he became aware that there was more of me that had been transported, not just my face.
He leaned back an inch as his eyes traveled down my body and I watched his expression begin to change.
Gods.
I had nothing against harlots. I’d fallen in love with the male variety of a harlot and had happily acted as one myself without shame.
Now, however…
“Valentine selected it,” I stated quickly, referring to my attire that Noc was right then gazing at fixedly. “I can be risqué but—”
“Fuck,” he muttered.
I went silent at the timbre in his voice.
His eyes moved, made it to my feet, and slowly, they traveled up.
Halfway to my face, it came as a growl.
“Fuck.”
It had been some time, but his tone was not lost on me.
In entering the period of my recent (prolonged) celibacy, I had declared I was done with that part of my life.
Of course, Noc changed all that, and if I was honest, he did it months ago.
But if he had not, he would have done it with that one word, the look on his face as he said it, and the tone with which he uttered it.
And it would seem, in but seconds, any questions (lamentations, anxieties, fears, trepidations) I had about what would become of Noc and me upon our reunion, he answered.
In one word.
Even if that word and the way he said it had answered it, what he did next really answered it.
That being the fact I suddenly had his hand at the small of my back.
It didn’t press in.
It hauled me in and I was plastered against his long body.
The instant I was, his other hand dove in my hair, tangling and gripping.
There was no pain at his touch. Thus the gasp that came from my mouth and drifted across his descending lips was indication of an altogether different feeling.
I closed my eyes after his lips crushed down on mine.
It was not instinct but instead a driving need that made me lift my hands and filter my fingers in his thick, soft hair to hold him to me.
And it was not generosity but pure greed that made me open my mouth to invite him inside.
He accepted the invitation with a low snarl down my throat, his head slanting, his hand at the small of my back gliding around and curving at my hip so he could hold me closer to him, all as he deepened the kiss.
He tasted good. Fresh and warm and spicy.
He smelled good, all of those same things.
And he felt good.
Like coming home, and I knew the feeling even though I’d never felt that in my life.
I burrowed into him as I accepted the invasion of his tongue, his talented workings scuttling along my skin, from my hair to my toes, gathering specifically between my legs, forcing me to press my hips to his, grind them against him, seek something I needed.
Intimacy.
Connection.
Just Noc.
I pulled one hand from his hair to wrap my arm around his neck, going up further on my toes to push even closer.
I did not hear the calls or whistles or shouts.
But vaguely, only because of what happened after it came, I heard, “Serious, dude, get a freakin’ room.”
Noc broke only the connections of our mouths and we panted at each o
ther’s lips, our gazes sultry and hooded but locked as he muttered, “Great fuckin’ idea.”
And then I was teetering for a moment, bereft of Noc’s hold.
But only for a moment.
His hand closed around mine and he turned, dragging me behind him.
The earth beneath my feet was paved with an odd, continuous (though uneven and broken in parts) stone, but I couldn’t really pay attention to it or any of the rather active, raucous, loud and smelly goings-on around us.
I had to concentrate on walking on my heels.
This did not go well.
I tripped, emitting a faint cry, caught myself and called out, “Noc, I—”
He stopped, yanked at my hand so I completely lost balance, but did it falling toward him. He released me but only to bend at his waist whereupon I had his shoulder in my belly. Promptly I was on said shoulder, one of his arms wrapped around the backs of my thighs, and we were advancing through the street at the great speed Noc’s long strides afforded us.
“You go, brutha!” someone shouted.
“Right the fuck on, man!” someone else shouted.
“Oh my God, I think I just had an orgasm,” someone further said.
The first two were male voices.
The last was a woman.
I could pay no mind to this. Noc was marching down the crowded street and the way he was doing so—as I put my hands to the sides of his waist and peered around him to the front—I saw the throng part to ease his way.
He made the mouth of the road, turned left and kept striding down a slightly less populated, but much wider, avenue.
All I could see were the contraptions on the road.
Automobiles. Cars. Trucks. All that Noc had described, but far more fanciful in real life, vied for space on the thoroughfare.
By the gods.
He couldn’t be telling it true.
It had to be magic.
I stared at this until Noc stopped moving, bent, put me on my feet, took my hand and looked into my eyes.
“You think you’re good to go now?” he asked.
I didn’t know the answer to that.
But I was with Noctorno Hawthorne of the parallel universe. Thus there was only one answer to anything he requested.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He nodded shortly, turned to face forward and resumed walking (quickly), pulling me with him.
Fortunately, we didn’t go far. There was a door to our left that Noc turned toward, pushed through, and he continued pulling me along with him as we walked through what appeared to be a large, elegantly-appointed, rather elaborate entrance hall.
He took us directly to a long, tall desk, behind which a man and a woman, oddly (albeit different sexes) both attired in what looked to be poorly-fitting uniforms, were standing.
“May I help you, sir?” the male asked, looking from Noc to me and back to Noc.
“A room,” Noc stated. “King-size bed.”
The man cast his eyes down at the desk and his fingers started tapping on a peculiar apparatus that had letters and numbers on it.
I stared, transfixed.
“How long will you be staying?” he queried, not lifting his head (which, distractedly, I found rude).
“The night,” Noc answered.
“Two people?”
“Only two.”
“We have availability,” the man declared, looked up and gave Noc a courteous smile. “How will you be paying?”
Noc let my hand go to pull a billfold out of the back pocket of his jeans, and I watched all that happened next with fascination.
I stopped watching when Noc shoved the billfold back in his jeans, took a tiny envelope from the man and grunted, “Thanks,” when the man invited us to “Call should you need anything and enjoy your stay.”
Then I again had my hand in Noc’s and he was towing me toward a wall that had four shining-gold double doors (that couldn’t be real gold, surely), all inexplicably situated close together.
He stopped me near them, reached out and depressed a button in the wall between the doors.
I watched him do this.
I stopped watching when that hand came right to my face, cupped my jaw and forced it back so I was looking up at him.
My, but he was handsome.
“We’re about to get in an elevator, baby,” he declared.
I had no idea what that meant.
I also did not care one whit what that meant.
I only cared about the heat in his beautiful eyes.
“We’ll walk into a little box, you’ll feel it move. It takes you up and down automatically so you don’t have to use stairs. We’ll be going up,” he explained then asked, “You get that?”
It occurred to me vaguely that with the variety of things he shared that they had in that world—motorcycles, automobiles, these…elevators—much of it doing things “automatically,” that there might be a reason Noc ran around the Winter Palace frequently to “keep fit.”
If one didn’t even have to climb stairs in this world, such inactivity could make one quite unhealthy.
This thought, vague as it was, flew from my head as a bing was heard and I looked in that direction.
A set of the golden doors was sliding open in a way that made me stare in shock, but I had no time to recover. Noc’s hand left my face, grabbed mine, and he pulled me to them, through them, and we were as he said, in a little box.
And that box was really quite little. I’d been in privies that were larger.
Not to mention, Noc told me it was going to move.
Upward.
Taking us with it!
I felt a frisson of panic gather at the small of my back and my eyes shot to Noc’s.
“Noc, I’m uncertain—”
My attention shifted instantly to the doors as they slid closed.
My heart bolted up to my throat and my body locked.
Then my back hit the wall of the box, Noc’s body pressing it there, and both his hands were at my jaw tipping it up.
Before I could draw in a breath, his mouth crashed down on mine, his tongue slid inside and the panic disappeared.
There was no box.
There was no world.
There was only Noc, his touch, his taste…him.
He kissed me even as I felt my belly fall (and it wasn’t only because of his kiss).
He kept kissing me even as I heard the soft whoosh noise of the doors opening.
He stopped kissing me to grab my hand and pull me down a carpeted hallway that was wide and elegant and exceptionally brightly lit.
I was breathing with difficulty, trying to focus on walking without falling, something that was not easy considering my focus wanted to be on the tingling occurring at my lips, along my skin, and between my legs.
He stopped us at a door, pulled the tiny envelope the man gave him out of his front pocket and opened it. He then took a flat, rectangular doodad from it, touched it to a space above the door handle and I blinked in surprise as I heard a whirring noise at the same time a section at the top of the area Noc touched with the doodad lit green.
“My word,” I whispered, staring at the green light.
How could Noc say this world had no magic?
It seemed to be everywhere!
Noc opened the door, pulled me inside and stopped us both.
He touched something on the wall and the space we were in illuminated.
Just.
Like.
That!
And there was more magic!
“My word,” I breathed.
He took a placard that was hanging from the back door handle and suspended it from the front, pushed the door closed, flicked a metal doohickey at the jamb that looked like a rather clever door latch that could not be opened from the outside (an excellent safety feature in this, what appeared to be, large public inn), and then he caught my hand again.
Before I could take in where I was and all that had happened, I was standing
at the foot of a large bed, my back to it, Noc standing in front of me.
I looked up at him.
“Noc—”
“Shut up, baby.”
I blinked up at him.
He twisted at the waist, and with a flick of his fingers, he flung the doodad across to a bureau behind him. It landed on the top but even before it did, he’d twisted back to me.
“Noc—”
He lifted his hands to my jaw again and I quieted.
“Missed you,” he said softly.
I stared into his eyes.
He did.
It was written right there, right there for me to see.
With a wide variety of other things.
All of which I loved.
“And I you,” I replied.
“Done missin’ you, and really fuckin’ glad I am,” he stated.
Still staring deep into his eyes, I did nothing but nod.
I was done too and I was very, very glad I was.
“Yeah,” he muttered like I spoke my words aloud, his gaze falling to my mouth.
“Noc.” I said his name with a different purpose this time, swaying toward him.
“Shoulda known that mouth would be sweet,” he murmured.
I had the feeling Noc needed to take hold of me somewhere other than my jaw, for if he kept speaking words like that while gazing at my mouth, my legs were going to give way.
He dipped his head so I could feel his breath caress my lips.
“But in all the time I spent wondering how sweet it would be, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine it’s as sweet as it is.”
Yes.
He needed to hold me elsewhere or I’d crumple at his feet.
“Noc,” I whispered yet again.
He didn’t kiss me as I expected him to do.
Wanted him to do.
No.
His hands went from my jaw to my bottom, his fingers clenched in, and I gasped when I was lifted up.
With no choice, my legs curled around his hips, and in no time he’d entered the bed on his knees and placed me on it.
He then placed him on me.
It was then he kissed me.
And it was then something happened that had never happened to me.
I had exceptional skills at making love. I’d made a practice of it to the point I’d made an art of it. My approach to it was considered, deliberate, unhurried. A climax was not an occasion to rush to but a sensation to shape and manipulate, and when reached, to revel in…languidly.
Noc did not make love like this.