“Baby, what the fuck?”
“I’m returning to your world after Brikitta delivers my future niece or nephew safely,” I announced.
Noc did one of those odd blinks that was slow and included his eyebrows lifting.
“Say again?”
“I’m going to your world,” I stated. “And when I shared this with my brother earlier, he and I had a…” I struggled to find a word, “moment. I found it…” more struggling, “affecting. I needed some time to collect myself. I’m collected. Now I need wine.”
“Great. And now I don’t know whether to go high five Kristian for pulling that off or punch him in the face,” he declared.
My shoulders straightened with affront. “Why would you punch him in the face?”
“Because you look emotionally wasted by whatever was affecting and he was the one who did that to you.”
“Noc—”
“But you’re goin’ home with me so I should probably keep my shit.”
“There’s no probably about that,” I stated tartly.
Finally, the harshness in his face disappeared and he grinned.
That was worse.
Drat.
I moved past that and queried, “What does ‘high five’ mean?”
Inexplicably, he grabbed the wrist of the hand sitting in my lap and lifted it up in front of me.
“Palm out, fingers straight,” he ordered.
I did as told.
He kept hold of my wrist, and with his other hand, slapped mine.
I jumped in surprise at this preposterousness.
He then slid the hand holding my wrist up so his fingers were laced in mine and he brought both our hands down to rest on the table, like we were lovers out at an intimate dinner by ourselves, not sitting at a table in a palace surrounded by royalty.
By the gods.
Bloody Noc.
“High five,” he declared.
“Pardon?”
“Five fingers, slapped high, high five.”
Oh.
Well that explained the name of said maneuver.
But it did not explain the absurdity of it.
“Why would one do that?” I asked.
“To celebrate,” he answered.
“You do know that’s absurd,” I shared.
He grinned again. “You’re comin’ home with me, sugarlips. That means I’m gettin’ you into the Seahawks. We’ll be in Saints country, but you and me, we’ll keep our allegiance true. And when they kick ass, you’ll get the high five.”
“You do know that all those words are understood by me and yet all of them are not.”
His grin grew.
I sighed.
“Wine, milady?” the footman asked, and I pulled my hand from Noc’s to look over my shoulder at him.
“Absolutely.”
He nodded and poured. He barely got to Noc’s other side before I had a healthy dose down my gullet.
I took the glass from my lips, drew in a large breath, let it go and relaxed.
I ceased relaxing when Noc’s hand wrapped around my thigh under the table and squeezed.
This was not bolstering, as Cora’s squeeze had been.
It was something else entirely.
“Pleased as fuck you’re comin’ home with me,” he declared, thankfully letting my thigh go.
“Mm…” I murmured.
“It’s gonna be culture shock, trust me, huge. But you’ll get over that and love it.”
I hoped so.
I said nothing and took another sip of wine.
“Baby?” he called.
I looked his way and nearly downed the glass at the happiness warming his face and making his handsome so much more handsome it was almost unendurable to lay witness to.
“You made the right decision,” he decreed.
“I hope so, Noc.”
“I know so, Frannie.”
I nodded.
He smiled.
Hesitantly, I smiled back.
* * * * *
Late that evening, after Josette had prepared me for bed and gone to seek her own, I stood in front of the mirror in the dressing room and closed my eyes.
It had been so long since I’d tried this—and the last time I’d done it my mother had sensed it and punished me for it—I was quite certain it wouldn’t work.
But I needed to do what had to be done and I’d made a variety of decisions that day.
It was time to carry them all out.
Therefore I sought it and it wasn’t hard to find, the quickening I felt in my innards, always there in truth, but vague, and it having been there for so long, I’d learned to live with the sensation.
And ignore it.
Now, I focused on it, and the instant I did, to my astonishment, I felt it sparking up my spine, the sensation like the light touch of a lover, stirring tickles of awareness all over my skin.
I opened my eyes and saw the muted glow of the one lamp I’d lit had a sapphire, hue and the mirror in front of me had gone from clearly showing my visage to cloudy.
“By the gods, it worked,” I whispered, staring at the clouds in front of me as they started to swirl, those too, tinted blue.
I’d managed that, it was time to try my next.
“I wish to speak to you,” I said into the mirror.
I stood there and waited.
The clouds swirled languidly.
I waited longer.
Nothing but clouds.
Over time, I noted it was actually quite mesmerizing in a relaxing way.
But after more time elapsed, I noted it was also quite boring.
All right then, maybe it didn’t work.
I started to turn away, seeing the tinge of blue in the room starting to dissipate when suddenly, the entire room turned jade green.
My eyes flew to the mirror and I saw Valentine’s reflection there, not my own.