Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka

by Blair Babylon

  Flicka watched her brother Prince Wulfram von Hannover marry the commoner Rae Stone.

  This marriage was just the legal ceremony, some vows and signatures on the marriage license, not the religious ceremony where the real wedding took place. The office smelled like lemon air freshener was covering up faint, old cigarette smoke. Spring sunshine fell through the skyscraper glass on one side of the room.

  Some friends had flown in to stand up with Rae. Wulfie had Dieter, Yoshi, and his cousin William standing with him in the small office of the mayor of Paris.

  Flicka’s pale blue dress and fake smile covered up her total shock and dismay that this wedding was taking place.

  She would have laid odds that Wulfie would never, ever marry, let alone to someone who would, indeed, be destroyed when that fateful assassin stepped out of the crowd in a day, a week, or a year.

  The way that Rae gazed at Wulf, almost star-struck, was almost as distressing as the way he was head-over-heels infatuated with her.

  This couldn’t end well.

  Flicka’s husband, Pierre, had shown up to Wulf’s wedding exactly on time and mostly sober, delivered by his chief of security, Quentin Sault. Flicka had alerted Alcide of this sudden addition to Pierre’s schedule, and Alcide had ensured that he showed up, just like always.

  Wulf seemed genuinely, magnificently happy as he said his vows and slid a plain gold band onto Rae’s finger.

  Flicka’s hands cramped from squeezing the life out of her little clutch purse.

  Dieter stood behind Wulf, his face as grim as she felt.

  He wasn’t watching the clouds outside the windows or the closed door, however, like he always did.

  His dove gray eyes were trained on her, locked on her face. Between them, Wulf married the woman he was so in love with.

  Flicka’s serene smile never faltered. She was too much of a princess for that.

  But his eyes—

  She had thought of his eyes as just gray when she was a kid, but her perception had changed the year she’d turned eighteen.

  They were too dark to be silvery.

  They were the gray of dangerous storm clouds building on the horizon, ready to sweep down and overturn your life.

  Every time he had touched her, her whole world had turned upside down. Everything she had thought was important in her life—music, revolution—had fallen away when his fingers had grazed her skin.

  She had been twenty when he’d made love to her the first time.

  Her very first time.

  And it had been completely her idea.

  And after that, she’d never gotten over him.

  If she had been so uncultured to not remain still and serene at her brother’s wedding, she would have shaken that thought out of her head.

  Instead, like a chain of thoughts, it was replaced with moments from their year-long affair. She could feel the patchwork of it: a touch from the night she’d attended Christine Grimaldi’s recital, a glance from his gray eyes on a day after she’d aced a performance at college, the way he moved in her one late night when she’d attended a charity benefit with a date but gone home with Dieter.

  Every moment of their year together was at her fingertips.

  He had insisted that they keep their relationship an absolute secret. No one knew at the time, and no one must ever know.

  So Flicka went to charity and social events with other men.

  Her dates picked her up in their cars driven by their chauffeurs, danced with her, talked with her, and drove her home for a comparatively chaste kiss.

  Dieter squired her inside Kensington Palace without a twitch of emotion for her or them, even though he had been shadowing her all night from the walls, the balconies, and the front seats of the cars.

  Once inside, his hands found her.

  One time, she had been out with some duke or another to some event benefitting the impoverished children of somewhere, and the duke had been driven off in his limo into the night.

  As soon as the door had shut on the Kensington Palace apartment that they shared for her protection, he had shoved her against the wall.

  He whispered in her ear, “Out there, who are you?”

  “Prinzessin Friederike Augusta,” she whispered, trying not to smile too much.

  “And in here?” he asked. “In my bed, whose are you?”

  “Yours,” Flicka whispered.

  He picked her up in his arms, easily carrying her to his bedroom, his eyes never looking away from hers. They were dark gray smoke rising from a forest fire.

  The only time he let down his guard was to make love to her. Every other minute of the day, his eyes restlessly scanned the area for dangers to her.

  But when Dieter held her, he looked at her.

  His eyes never left hers, locking her in his intense, storm cloud gaze, as he stripped the gown that had cost thousands off her body and then shucked the custom tuxedo that they’d had cut to accommodate his wide shoulders, tight waist, and the guns under his arms.

  The fall of the cloth revealed his pale gold skin and the deep crevices between his rounded muscles.

  Her hands rose. She couldn’t help reaching for him, even while he was pulling a flat square out of the nightstand drawer and laying it on the top.

  His body rested between her thighs already, kissing her and pressing her back into the soft mattress. His mouth still tasted faintly of fresh mint because he never drank while he was protecting her. His skin on hers ignited the fire in her veins, and she arched under him as his mouth found her throat.

  “Remember, when you’re out there,” he whispered as he rolled her over and mouthed the backs of her shoulders, breathing on the skin of her spine, “that in here, you’re mine. I do whatever I want to you.”

  “Yes,” she said, panting. Sweat gathered around her hair. She was burning for his touch.

  He kissed her back until she was yearning for him, pressing her ass up to try to make him slide inside of her. His hands grasped her breasts, hips, and the round globes of her ass, making her whimper for him to take her.

  He pulled her hips in the air. “Say yes again.”

  That meant he had something planned, something wild. “Yes.”

  Something cool nudged her ass.

  She almost jerked forward because he’d never done that. When she looked over her shoulder at Dieter, he was sitting back on his heels. Muscles wrapped his body as if thick ropes wound his arms and braided over his torso. She rocked back a little to show him she was agreeing to it.

  He pressed a thing inside her ass with a pinch. She gasped.

  “Good girl,” he whispered, pushing her over on her back and spreading her thighs.

  He took her with his mouth first, kissing and sucking her clit more and more roughly until she was arched so hard that she balanced on her butt and the top of her head, running her fingers through his short, blond hair as he dug into her with his tongue.

  When she was crying with need, almost coming, he crawled up and reached for the package on the nightstand, rolling it on and then pushing himself inside her. The spice of his cologne surrounded her, warm cinnamon, fresh spring air, and the dark, masculine musk of him.

  Passion built inside Flicka. That thing in her ass pressed him up against the top of her channel, filling her more tightly. Every time he stroked into her, a stripe of sheer pleasure crested through her body.

  She was twisted so tightly, trying to come, that she couldn’t hear herself keening but could feel every cell of his body on hers, the silk of the soft hairs on his chest and the trail down his stomach, the roughness of him inside her, and the warmth of his arms around her.

  One of his arms moved, reaching around her thigh to where the thing ached in her ass.

  A tremor started in the thing, a slow throb that built, keeping time with Dieter’s strokes into her. A buzz spread through her body, riding the waves of pure pleasure up her spine as he pounded into her and the thing vibrated harder.

  A cry tore
from her throat that she could feel but not hear.

  The whole world crashed around her, a shattering that she felt in her soul.

  When the pieces of herself came back together, Dieter had held her in his arms, murmuring to her how beautiful she was.

  The sheets were ripped where she’d clawed them.

  And then, just like now at Wulfram’s wedding, he had never looked away from her. He had held her with his eyes and his arms.

  Flicka had loved when he did that, so she looked back at him and let herself drift in the memory, dreaming for just a moment.

  But the wedding ended.

  Dieter looked away to shake Wulfram’s hand, and Flicka looked back at her husband, standing behind her.

  Pierre Grimaldi jutted his elbow toward her. “Shall we?”

  She slid her hand under his arm, feeling his muscular biceps under his finely tailored suit. “Of course.”

  At The Wedding

  Dieter Schwarz

  I wish him every happiness.

  Dieter watched Rae Stone over Wulf’s shoulder as they said their vows.

  Wulf’s cousin William stood between him and Wulf, but that was because William Windsor was family and outranked Dieter.

  Everyone outranked Dieter, these days.

  Past William’s and Wulf’s shoulders, Rae practically glowed with happiness as they faced each other and repeated what the Mayor of Paris told them to. Her brown eyes glittered with tears, but she grinned as she carefully slipped a ring on Wulf’s hand.

  This was what real love looked like.

  When Dieter had married Gretchen in a Las Vegas chapel one evening, she had never gazed at him like that. The service had been absolutely perfunctory, an exchange of rings and vows in accented English.

  The minister must have assumed it was a green-card wedding.

  But it wasn’t. It was a “shotgun wedding,” as Rae’s family would have called it.

  Wulf had flown out to Nevada at a moment’s notice to stand up with Dieter. He must have known that something was wrong, but he took them to a ridiculously expensive restaurant on the top floor of some hotel afterward and then rented a huge, stocked suite for their wedding night.

  Since Wulf had met Rae just weeks ago, he had been far happier than Dieter had ever seen him.

  Well, tormented, but ecstatically so.

  Love can be brutal.

  On the other side of the room, Flicka smiled the beautiful smile she used for formal occasions.

  Her new husband, Pierre Grimaldi, beamed over her shoulder at the couple and, when she turned to him, down at his wife.

  But Flicka’s hands gripped her tiny purse like she was strangling it.

  Her hands always gave her away.

  When she played the piano, her emotion flowed through her strong fingers, and sometimes she couldn’t quite control her hands in social situations.

  The tension even reached her creamy shoulders above the pale blue of her dress that brought out her startlingly green eyes.

  Her eyes met his for just a moment over Wulf’s shoulder, and she smiled at him.

  For just that second of contact, anguish filled her gorgeous eyes.

  Was it a signal for Dieter to stop the wedding or to rescue Flicka?

  He raised one eyebrow at her, but she settled back into perfect serenity.

  She was still returning his gaze, though.

  These days, she never did that. She looked away the second she could.

  God, she had beautiful eyes. They were as deeply green as emeralds, but warmer, and with the sharp glimmer of intelligence behind them. When they had been together, he’d had a hard time keeping his eyes away from her while he provided the security she needed.

  Her slim body enticed him as she swayed when she danced with other men. Her laugh enchanted him when one of the bastards quipped something that amused her.

  Her smile during Wulfram’s wedding was the serene, shiny smile that she could show the world whenever she wished, and it didn’t mean a damn thing. If anything, it meant that turmoil was crashing through her behind the beautiful veneer she had so carefully built.

  He could almost see the tumult battering her in the total absence of movement or tremor in her body.

  He would drop back and make sure she was all right before they ran the gantlet to the cars after the ceremony.

  The healing gunshot wound on his arm itched under the bandage.

  Georgiana Oelrichs

  Flicka von Hannover

  No one’s demanded pistols at ten paces yet.

  So, that’s good.

  Sometimes, the universe hands you clues as to what the future will bring.

  It’s never as obvious as a fortune cookie telling you not to trust the woman in the red dress or a suicide king turning up three times during blackjack.

  Sometimes, it’s a closure that leaves a void.

  Someone is found.

  And then someone has to run away.

  Flicka was standing in the small luncheon wedding reception for her brother and his new wife. She and the hotel concierge staff had managed to throw it together within a few hours in a nice little salon at the rear of the hotel.

  The staff had commandeered most of the hotel’s daily flower delivery and arranged the maroon, violet, and Delft blue hydrangea blooms into low centerpieces, their colors saturating the room as much as their scent. The tables and chairs were dressed in royal purples and blues with crisp, white tablecloths on top. Bright sunlight showered outside the long windows, a beautiful day for their wedding.

  Just enough guests circulated among the tables. All of Wulf’s and Rae’s closest friends had managed to stay over or fly in, but the reception was small enough to be intimate and lovely. There were only two hundred people or so there.

  Flicka sort of envied Wulf in that he had such a sweet little reception instead of the three extravaganzas that she had thrown.

  She’d funded three schools, maybe five, in perpetuity though. Their differing goals had been met.

  Other than the head table for the wedding party and a reserved table for Flicka and her friends, guests were left to find their own seats.

  Flicka had been talked into the laissez-faire risk by Huguette and the other concierges. She hated how much could go wrong with unspecified seating arrangements, for the love of God.

  The guests filled the room, many of whom had been in Paris for Flicka’s wedding the night before and were just waking up after those parties.

  Yes, well, Flicka had slept even less, and she wasn’t complaining. She hadn’t gotten anywhere near her usual four hours of rest.

  After all, what good is a princess if she can’t throw a fairy tale wedding in a few hours? Flicka didn’t need a fairy godmother to work her magic, just a competent concierge staff.

  She flitted around the room, heading off people who were about to make unwise seating choices and settling them with company more congenial to their interests and predilections.

  Lord in Heaven, if one more married geezer tried to wedge himself between two of her school friends, she would simply explode.

  But in a sophisticated manner, as was befitting a princess.

  She stalked over to intercept Duchess Lassiter from inviting herself to sit at a table with a group of men who preferred each other’s company. The Duchess was notoriously closed-minded and loud-mouthed, and her last encounter had resulted in drinks thrown in people’s faces. The Duchess had deeply deserved it, but that didn’t mean that Flicka wanted a repeat.

  With Flicka’s constant vigilance, Wulfram’s reception had come off beautifully, complete with champagne, lunch, and cake. So far, no invitations for satisfaction with pistols at ten paces had been issued.

  Flicka had earned her princess stripes that day.

  Over on the side of the reception, Dieter Schwarz and Wulfram’s other security guys watched the crowd, the windows, and the doors that led to the George V Hotel lobby. Some of the other security men looked tense as they watch
ed, but Dieter didn’t. His hunting stare and easy movements reminded Flicka of a stalking tiger, always ready to flow across the room and attack.

  Even with a bulky bandage under the arm of his suit jacket, he looked masculine and graceful, not jumpy.

  The bulge of that bandage wove guilt through Flicka again.

  The champagne was flowing freely, and Victoria Adelaide leaned across the table to top off Flicka’s and Alexia’s glasses as soon as they dipped at all. Flicka was a tall woman, a tad over five feet, ten inches, but she had the liver of a sumo wrestler tucked inside her rib cage. Considering how much she’d drunk at her three different receptions last night, that outsized liver might have saved her life. Indeed, she wasn’t even hung over, so she poured more alcohol into her body.

  Maybe if she poured enough in there, she would forget that her husband hadn’t made it to the honeymoon suite for their wedding night.

  Not that either of them would have been in any shape to consummate it, and not that consummation was particularly important. It wasn’t like they hadn’t already done it many times before. Flicka wasn’t an eighteenth-century, virgin-princess prude.

  Maybe it was today’s champagne warring with last night’s, or maybe it was exhaustion from a week of not sleeping more than a few hours a night, but when Flicka turned her bleary eyes to the room and looked over the crowd of women glittering with jewels and satin and men wearing blue, black, or gray suits with shining ties as the morning sun bounced around the crystal and brilliant tablecloths, she found the one woman who was out of place.

  What?

  Flicka rubbed her eyes and looked again.

  A door to Flicka’s past opened, and that woman walked out of it and into the Parisian sunlight streaming through the windows along the far wall.

  The woman had been sixteen, just like Flicka, that summer at Tanglewood, the elite music program for young musicians who had world-class aspirations, but they had known each other for years. She had matured, too, the baby fat melted away to reveal stunning beauty. Her hair was knotted too severely on the back of her head, and for some reason, she was wearing evening makeup at brunch. Knowledge of this woman jolted Flicka.