“Please.” My voice broke, I swallowed and finished on a return whisper, “Please stop talking, my love.”
“I will you answer this. Do you have a midnight soul?” he asked.
“Apparently not,” I continued whispering.
And apparently, I actually did not.
“No, you do not,” he affirmed. “Am I gonna hear that again?”
I shook my head.
“You gonna think it?”
I shook my head again (though it was perhaps more hesitant than the first).
Noc, of course, did not miss it.
“You think it, baby, you give that shit to me and I’ll remind you what makes you. We got a deal?”
I nodded.
“Promise me,” he demanded.
I drew in a trembling breath before I gave him what he asked.
“I promise, darling.”
He let that drift between us before he dipped closer and spoke again gently, his thumb caressing the apple of my cheek.
“There is not a single soul on this earth who has not done things they regret, Frannie. Multiple things. Years of doing stupid shit or mean shit or thoughtless shit or whatever. It’s part of growing up. It’s part of life. It’s part of surviving. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone finds their way. You were who you had to be. It’s just the way it was. And now it isn’t that way and you aren’t that way either. You said earlier it’s our future, not the past that interests you. But you’re still livin’ in the past, sweetheart. Let it go. Be with me. Really be here with me. Because I love you here, baby, and what we got, it’s a beautiful place to be.”
He was right.
Very, very right.
That was that past. That was the way it was and now it wasn’t that way anymore.
I wasn’t that way anymore.
I was free to be the real me.
“You’re right, Noc.”
“I know.”
The arrogance of his words made me give him a shaky grin.
His other hand came to my opposite cheek and he swept the tear that dropped there across that temple.
“I dislike weeping,” I muttered.
“God gave us a variety of ways to get hurt out and do it clean. Blood cleans a wound. Tears clean a different kind of wound. You might not like it, Frannie, but you shouldn’t stop yourself from doing it. Clean the wound so it can heal. Then move on.”
By the gods, I really could take no more.
“You do know you’re demonstrating my earlier point, being handsome, having a magnificent physique, being thoughtful, kind, patient, intuitive and wise, all this meaning you’re rather perfect, do you not?” I noted.
Noc continued his acute study of me before his expression cleared and his lips tipped up.
“You wanna think I’m perfect, sugarlips, be my guest. My point was never about arguing yours.”
This was true.
But I was done.
“Can we go to sleep?” I requested.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
I actually was.
Exhausted.
It seemed coming to terms with your wonderfulness took a good deal out of you.
I nodded.
His voice quieted. “Then yeah, gorgeous, you want, we can go to sleep.”
“Are you tired?” I queried.
“Not so much.”
“Then—”
“You’re down with it, I’ll turn on the TV. I watch, you sleep. You can’t get to sleep with the TV on, I’ll turn it off and read. Cool?”
I nodded.
Noc dipped in for a lip brush but when he was done, he pulled only slightly away.
“That was heavy, you okay?” he asked gently.
I nodded, though in truth I wasn’t.
But I suspected I would be.
“Gonna be a hard promise to keep, the promise you made me, but want you to keep it, Frannie.”
I drew in a deep breath and let it go.
“I’ll keep it, Noc,” I promised again.
His face again assumed a version of the sated contentment he’d had before. It did not run as deep but it was still there.
He was pleased.
Which made me pleased.
He dipped in for something much deeper than a lip brush before he rolled off me and rearranged us, the covers, and turned off the lights, but he turned on the television that was resting on a cabinet at the other side of the room beyond the end of the bed.
He lay with head and shoulders propped on pillows, holding me tucked close to his side, my cheek to his ribs.
I held him around the stomach and stared at the perfect hair on his chest, feeling his finger again drawing languid patterns, this time on the skin just below the small of my back.
Healthy skin, where I could feel his caress and what he wished it to communicate to me.
And I felt his caress.
But more, I felt what he wished it to communicate.
I was there, really there, with him, where he wanted me to be, where he liked me to be, a good, safe, healthy place. And he wanted me right there, and a man like Noc would not chose a woman to be right there if she did not deserve to be.
The sound of the television strangely did not distract me from falling asleep.
Strangely, it and Noc’s warmth, his nearness, his touch, his simply being and being with me lulled me to sleep.
And when I slept, I slept deep, snuggled up to sheer perfection.
Chapter Eighteen
Fallen for Me
Franka
I sat alone at a table in one of Valentine’s sitting rooms, looking into my crystal ball that sat atop its lovely pillow of sapphire-blue velvet.
I was trying to concentrate, but although I’d been in it now for a full five days, I didn’t know this world enough to understand the visions I was calling up.