At Midnight

by Blair Babylon

  Sophie’s shoulders lowered a fraction of an inch, and her smile warmed. “Yes, a tour. I’d like to show you the house. Supper is at nine o’clock.”

  “Perfect,” Flicka said. “Can I get something for Alina, earlier?”

  “Oh, yes. You can stop by the kitchen or use the intercom,” she flicked a careless gesture toward the wall beside the door, “to call for something to be sent up.”

  “Okay, thanks. That’s perfect.”

  “I’ll stop by a little later to collect you for the tour.”

  “That would be great.”

  Sophie crouched and spread her arms, asking Alina for a hug in French.

  Flicka translated for Alina, saying, “Grand-maman wants a hug. It’s okay. You can if you want to.”

  Alina, ever-affectionate and happy to hug anyone, bobbled over and patted her chubby hands on Sophie’s shoulders.

  Sophie closed her pale blue eyes for a moment as she hugged her granddaughter, and creases lined the skin around her eyes.

  She stood. “I didn’t think I would ever see my Raphael again, let alone his child. You must excuse me.”

  Sophie left the room, and Flicka sank to the couch.

  She was definitely a prisoner here, and she had no idea why.

  And, worse, so was Alina.

  Alina toddled over and patted her knee. “Flicka-mama? Play? Or die-die change?”

  Flicka grasped her legs and pushed herself to stand. “Yes. The nice ladies brought new diapers, so let’s get that changed, shall we?”

  Whispers

  Flicka von Hannover

  Promises, promises.

  After Raphael returned from the bank, he wouldn’t talk to her, pointing at the blue-plastered ceiling and walls of their small suite.

  Yeah, Flicka got it. Microphones.

  The guards continued their vigil and avoided eye contact.

  Flicka had expected Diet—

  No.

  —She had expected Raphael to return from the bank with news or theories or ideas or something.

  What she hadn’t expected, however, was the finely tailored, dove-gray, three-piece suit he was wearing.

  Flicka had been around men who dressed well every day of her life, starting with her father when she was toddling around the castle of Schloss Marienburg, to her older brother (who had no personal taste but retained excellent tailors on Saville Row,) to every royal and nobleman she’d ever dated or been friends with. Exquisite fashion was not optional with the jet set. Every man she associated with socially wore fashionable, tailored suits that had cost ten thousand dollars or more.

  Dieter Schwarz had always dressed in suits cut generously under the arms and around the hips to conceal his weapons, as befitted a bodyguard. They’d just always looked a little baggy or less than perfect on him, though he’d always looked acceptable. She’d never said anything. She’d never minded. It was just a little difference.

  But now—

  Now, Raphael Mirabaud wore a designer, Reiss suit with narrow lapels, a modern silhouette, and cut close to his muscular body. He took off the jacket, revealing a trim vest of the same gray wool that molded to his broad chest and tight waist. The sleeves of his white shirt contrasted it, accentuating his biceps bulging underneath.

  “Wow,” Flicka said.

  He raised a blond eyebrow and smiled with one side of his mouth.

  “Nice suit,” she said.

  Raphael frowned a bit and folded the jacket over the back of a chair. “My family owns a private bank. One does not do office casual at an elite financial institution. This morning, my father called emergency tailors, who rushed over with three suits and a box of shirts they altered on the spot. Evidently, custom suits have been ordered and will arrive within a few days.”

  She laughed. “It looks good on you.”

  “Does it?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She let her gaze travel down his muscular, toned body—those flat abs and long legs—and back up to his gray eyes that matched the gray of his suit. “Really good.”

  “I’ve worn a suit around you many times.”

  She grinned at him. “You know this one is better.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She moved closer to him, standing so close that she hid her mouth behind his broad shoulder so that the men at the door couldn’t see her lips move.

  The carpet underfoot was thick and deep, and Flicka thought that it would dampen quiet whispers well enough.

  She leaned toward him and whispered, “They’re holding us hostage.”

  “Did anyone hurt you?” he asked, his deep voice sharpening, “or threaten you?”

  “No, but they wouldn’t let me leave to go shopping to pick up some baby stuff. Your mother told me to make a list and give it to them. She said Valerian insisted that we couldn’t leave.”

  “Did they get the things?” he asked, turning and watching her.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “But that’s not the point. We’re being held hostage.” Her voice had risen slightly, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.

  He leaned in. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m working on it. I’ll get us all out, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “Your mother gave me a tour of the house, but we couldn’t even go outside to the garden. Those overgrown men skulked behind us and lurked near the doors like they expected me to make a break for it.”

  “I’ll tell you more later. In the meantime, go along with it, okay?”

  She nodded and stepped closer to him.

  Raphael wrapped his arms around her, pressing her against his chest. “I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’ll get us out.”

  She nodded and slid her arms around his slim waist. “Okay.”

  “I’ll tell you more tonight.”

  Invisible

  Flicka von Hannover

  I felt invisible.

  I have never felt so invisible

  in my life.

  Flicka and Raphael fed Alina an early supper and put her to bed. The time change from the western US to Europe had made the toddler cranky, and she probably needed a few days to get over the clock shift. One of the Mirabauds’ housekeepers, a Finnish woman named Kyllikki, was tasked with sitting in the guest suite’s living room in case Alina woke up because Flicka was not going down to supper if it meant leaving Alina with no one but those Russian guards.

  Earlier, Flicka had picked through the box that had been delivered and found that the clothes were pretty close to her size, though the taste was a tad more conservative than her own. She dressed in teal silk trousers and an ivory blouse, both with designer labels. Sophie wasn’t throwing castoff clothes at her, not that Flicka would have been choosy at all. Yet, she appreciated the sentiment.

  A few minutes before nine o’clock, Raphael donned his suit jacket again and offered Flicka his elbow, and they went down to supper.

  The supper in the formal dining room felt odd to Flicka.

  At Schloss Marienburg, the castle where she’d spent the first five years of her life, her father dined formally and late, like this. She hadn’t been invited to the table as a child, of course. When she’d gone back there during high school, she’d occasionally been offered a seat at the long table in the ostentatious dining room in the palace, where servants rotated through with trays and served five or more courses on the porcelain plates. Glistening silverware and glasses stretched to the sides.

  The Mirabauds also ate a formal supper.

  And so Flicka would dine with them, her jailers.

  During supper, Flicka smiled and made pleasant conversation because she had been trained to do so since she was a child. A princess must be sophisticated and serene at all times, of course. She was the serenest person in the whole room, perhaps in all of Geneva.

  Below the table, she strangled her napkin and tied it into knots.

  She strained her hearing, listening to make sure Alina didn’t wake up frightened in a new place wit
hout her unicorn mural that she had said goodnight to at every bedtime in Nevada.

  Valerian Mirabaud, seated at the head of the table because he was the patriarch, also made polite conversation. His questions seemed a bit more on edge than when he’d chaperoned his nieces to the Shooting Star Cotillion or when Flicka had seen him at other events. His chin and nose wove in the air a bit more.

  Haughty. He was haughtier than before, now that Flicka was under his control.

  “And what did you do with yourselves all day?” Valerian asked.

  “Sophie was kind enough to give us a tour of the house,” Flicka said, her fingers jabbing her napkin.

  Valerian smiled. “Sophie has done a lovely job with the decor, for all I know of these things. What did you think of it?”

  “I like your house very much. It’s elegant,” Flicka said. She wasn’t lying. Everything was carefully, tastefully done with expensive fabrics in shades of dusty pastels and ivory. The furniture was all clean lines and restrained modernity. No one could ever criticize it, which Flicka suspected was the point.

  “Oh, Flicka is too kind. You must be used to castles and palaces,” Sophie said, but she smiled.

  “Not really. I’m used to hotel rooms, musty apartments, and boarding school dormitories. That’s where I’ve lived most of my life, but I certainly know good taste when I see it. Alina enjoyed the tour, too.”

  Raphael looked away from his father and glanced at Flicka. “Alina wandered around the house with you?”

  “Why, yes. Sophie insisted, and she behaved so well. I think it’s so nice that Alina is getting to know her grandparents. It seems like she likes her grand-maman. She’s trying to learn every word of French that anyone says around her because Grand-maman told her to.”

  Sophie’s small smile seemed like she was pleased by this tidbit of information. “I have a few grandchildren from my daughters, but they’re all older now. Teenagers just aren’t the same as babies, not nearly as fun as the little ones. I didn’t think I’d get a chance to have another baby granddaughter.”

  Flicka pounced on the chance to recruit more allies.

  “Oh, yes. Raphael—” Flicka remembered to use the correct name, “—mentioned that he has three sisters. Will they be around the house at any point? I’m sure Alina would love to meet her aunts.”

  Sophie dropped her gaze to her lap.

  Valerian’s low voice seemed perfectly nonchalant when he said, “They’re very busy with their own families and their careers at the bank. I doubt they’ll have time to drop by.”

  “Océane and I were close,” Raphael said. “She’ll want to meet Alina.”

  That’s right, Océane, Flicka reminded herself. She knew some of Raphael’s sisters from cotillions and events. Océane had attended her wedding.

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together, before.

  She should have recognized those striking, storm-cloud gray Mirabaud eyes sometime during all those years she had known Dieter.

  “Océane has three children, now,” Sophie said to Raphael. “You have eight nieces and nephews, and three brothers-in-law. I can’t believe how much you’ve missed. You have to meet them all.” She glanced at Valerian and caught the sharp look in his eyes. “Eventually. At some point, surely. All of them are very busy.”

  “At some point,” Valerian agreed. “Perhaps.”

  “I have pictures, though, if you would like to see your nieces and nephews,” Sophie added.

  “I’ll see my sisters every day at the bank,” Raphael said. “My fiancée and my daughter are staying at your house, and my sisters will want to meet their niece and future sister-in-law.”

  Valerian said, “Then you’d better not mention them.”

  Raphael swelled as he leaned forward, staring his father straight in his eyes. “Are you threatening them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you saying you would hurt them?”

  Flicka wanted to intervene and defuse the situation, but Dieter had been in charge of her security for many years. She knew better than to interfere.

  Valerian smoothed his napkin in his lap. “Of course not. You weren’t even spanked as a child, Raphael. I’m not a violent man.” He leaned toward Raphael as if to emphasize what he was saying. “I’m trying to save your life. There are too many contacts between Geneva Trust and the Ilyin Bratva. Someone would slip. If Piotr Ilyin knew that you have a fiancée and a child here, he might decide to make an example of you rather than allowing you to make amends because the revenge would be so much sweeter. If he knew Flicka was here, he might inform Pierre, either to gain the goodwill of the monarch of Monaco or just to watch the chaos. No good can result from tipping our hand too soon.”

  Sophie said, “Surely he wouldn’t do anything to a woman and a child.”

  “I’ve known him to do terrible things to women and children, if it made his point,” Valerian said, “so we’ll just keep Flicka and Alina to ourselves. It’s best for everyone that way.”

  Flicka wound her napkin around her fingers.

  No one knew she was there. No one had seen her. No one even knew she had entered the country.

  If something did happen to Flicka and Alina, no one would ever know they were missing because no one would know they had ever been there at all.

  How To Whisper Secrets

  Flicka von Hannover

  It was one way to keep them from listening in.

  Flicka strode into the guest suite ahead of Raphael and kicked her flats into a corner by the door. “What the living hell was that?”

  Raphael closed the door behind them. A lock clicked. “Flicka—”

  “Don’t you ‘Flicka’ me. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “We can’t discuss this.”

  The Russian guards stared straight ahead, whether at the paintings or the windows, Flicka wasn’t sure. “We sure as hell can. I don’t care who hears me. This is insane. This is actually, literally, certifiably insane. I won’t tolerate—”

  Warmth grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  “What the hell!” she said.

  Raphael, or Dieter, was almost nose-to-nose with her, his gray eyes stormy and narrowed. He grabbed both her arms and pinned her wrists together behind her back, and his mouth crashed down on hers.

  Desire flooded her, and Flicka leaned against him, letting him pull her closer with his strong arm twined around her waist.

  He ducked his head, and his mouth traveled down her throat, sucking her skin while he held her wrists behind her back.

  Her mind fogged with wanting him.

  A worm of panic wiggled in her head, and she breathed in his scent, clean soap and warmth, and pushed it out of her head. The panic wasn’t hers anymore, she told herself. Dieter was keeping her safe from it.

  The words swirled in her head—Dieter—Raphael—and became the glowing comfort and lust that wrapped her body.

  He dipped and lifted her in the air. His muscular arms clamped around her back and under her knees, and he carried her to their bedroom. His foot shot out as they passed, kicking the door shut behind them.

  As the door shut, Flicka saw one of the guards rub his temple while the other’s shoulders shook as he laughed.

  Dieter dropped her on the bed and stripped off her clothes and his, revealing his pale gold skin and heavy muscles wrapping his limbs and torso. Flicka recognized the hunger in his gray eyes and knew this was going to be rough, fast, and hard.

  She reached for him, as eager as he was.

  He was on her in a heartbeat, his hard body pushing between her legs and his face above hers.

  God, that hot, savage look filled his eyes, just like when he got home from an adrenaline-fueled, testosterone-driven operation.

  He shoved his hand between their bodies, and his fingers slipped over the skin between her legs, massaging her clit.

  Flicka gasped and lifted her hips, trying to feel more of him.

  “God, you’re we
t,” he said, his fingers pressing inside her already. “I love how wet you are, how hot. Say it. Tell me you like it.”

  “I do,” Flicka whispered. “I like it.”

  “Tell me how you want it.”

  “However you want.”

  “Because—”

  “Because I’m yours.”

  With that, he moved his hand and plunged into her, filling her so aggressively that she arched off the bed, trying not cry out. His hardness shoved inside her, and his hips ground into her softness.

  He took her hard, riding her. That was the only word for it, riding. His long stride drove inside her like he was pushing her to go faster, run harder, propelling her toward a cliff to fling herself over.

  Flicka met and matched him, taking his body as he moved over her, his hips thrusting and pounding against her.

  Beside her ear, he whispered, “Can you hear me?”

  Flicka tried to answer, and her moan became a panted, repeated, “Yes, yes, yes.”

  Raphael bit her neck, a bright spark of pain that spiraled through her body and made her leap as he lunged into her. “If you find a time where you can slip away, go. If you can take Alina with you, take her. Contact Wulfram. He’ll come for you. He’ll take Alina. It’s all been arranged. If you can, run.”

  She turned her head, seeking his ear, and the room spun as he bucked his hips against her. “But they’ll kill you.”

  “They’ll try.” His skin slapped hers. “They’ll walk into my office with guns drawn. If they do, I’ll know you’re gone and safe, and I’ll be able to do anything to take them down and get away. If you’re safe, I can escape. So if you can, run.”

  “And I’ve been training my whole life for this, right? All those times that I dodged my security to take a walk in the park, alone?”

  “If you can get away and take Alina with you, I will take back every, single thing I ever said about you going on your walkabouts,” he growled. “Run, Flicka. Take Alina and run.”