Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 26: Kiss and Tell

Frankie did not return to Carmen's place for nearly two weeks after the events with the werewolves. Though she talked to her friends on the phone and received visits during the light hours whenever those closest to her could spare them, Frankie was unable to bring herself to actually go down to the new alliance headquarters and face the inevitable of running into Vlad. But after much persuading and many pleading video calls and rambling text messages from Vesper, Frankie eventually ceded and, after a while, started to visit more regularly again.

By the third week since the south side incident, she and Vlad were still avoiding one another, scarcely in each other's company for more than maybe ten seconds at a time.

Frankie usually took to hiding out in the back kitchen, organizing the expenses and paperwork for the new place while helping Vesper with her studies, or providing a listening ear to Lyra as the woman recounted her amorous encounters with Raul the werewolf. She had also hired on an alliance veteran, Damon Novák, as Carmen's new in-house help and security, which the Castilian female naturally fought at first, but was quick to appreciate.

Vlad, meanwhile, was usually off on assignment with Rémy and Danny, and when the men were at Carmen's, they were usually locked away in some remote corner of the establishment, the three of them planning raids, skirmishes, and other acts of open rebellion against Augustine's administration.

It was one particular evening, while Rémy and a few other alliance members were discussing the details of an upcoming demonstration out in the front room, that found Frankie, Carmen, and Lyra had congregated in the back with Vesper. The former two were listening as the redhead recounted the details of yet another tryst with her lycan lover, leaving the poor teenage dhampir to try and block the conversation out with headphones as she struggled to focus on her studies.

"The man is a fucking GOD!" Lyra exclaimed with a lusty sigh. "I swear, I've never felt so satisfied in the whole of my life. There's something fantastic about having sex with a werewolf... they're so insatiable, and that stamina! Honestly, Frankie, I don't know how you and Tristan were even able to function in public without just bursting from the withdrawals. And how you've gone this long without the sex in general is beyond me. I don't think I could ever give up Raul."

"If only I had a dollar for every time you said that," Frankie answered with temperate indifference, though the corner of her lips tugged upward in amusement. "Though since we're all repeating ourselves here, I remain thoroughly impressed that you've managed to keep going back to the same man for as long as you have. You're usually bored and on to your next victim after a month."

"What can I say? His imagination is limitless... and I never thought I'd be into knotting, but I'm totally into it."

"Jesus Christ on a bike, mention his dick one more time and I'm going to stab out my ear drums with this pencil," Vesper snapped from the corner of the room, and that was after making overly dramatic retching sounds.

Lyra and Carmen laughed at the girl's outburst, while Frankie looked on a little sympathetically.

"Try and focus on your lesson, V," she encouraged her, attempting to bite back a chuckle of her own.

"Kind of hard to do..." she began before Lyra murmured to Carmen,

"That's what she said."

"...when I have to listen to her go on and on and on about that werewolf and his goddamned penis," the teenager insisted with a glare at the redhead. "I may know how sex works, but that doesn't mean I want to hear your pornographic play-by-play," and then she shoved her wireless earbuds back into her ears.

"Vesper's right, Lyra, you really need to tone it down," Frankie noted.

"More than a bit," Carmen corrected as she poured herself another shot of blood-laced tequila. "I swear, I can barely read a romance novel in the company of others, let alone listening to you go on like this."