Alina ran to him, and he swept his baby into his arms as they walked into the brilliant Mediterranean sunshine.
He drew a breath of cool sea air and sunlight with Alina snuggled against his shoulder and his arm around Flicka’s waist.
Russian guards surrounded them.
The hired soldiers ushered them to the cars and drove them away from the church.
His First Time
Raphael Mirabaud
I hadn’t done it before.
Wait, that sounds bad.
Can we back up and do this again?
Under the watchful eyes of the imprisoning guards, the wedding party had a formal supper in a hotel’s private dining room. Flicka had magicked the hotel’s phone number out of the ether because she’d stayed there with girlfriends for a weekend while in college three years before, so she’d called and made arrangements for an entire wedding reception. The call had taken fifteen minutes.
As a military general, Flicka would have been formidable. If Raphael had been a Swiss mercenary two centuries ago, he would have been terrified to go up against the coalition of allies that she would have put together during an afternoon of chatting over drinks. She could have marched on France and conquered all of Europe with just a word to a few friends and relatives.
At the reception supper, Raphael drank wine along with everyone else, but he made it look like he was drinking more than he was actually consuming. He placed the crystal goblet carefully on the snow-white tablecloth and looked over the low centerpieces.
The Russian guards stood at the walls of the room. They weren’t drinking anything.
On the long table, alabaster flowers tucked into deep greenery glowed like stars with their pointed petals. He recognized the little sprays as jasmine, and their heady perfume filled the air while they drank the wine. Their sweet scent slipped over his neck and down his collar to his chest because they smelled like Flicka’s bare skin.
His parents, Valerian and Sophie, were half-sloshed. His mother was giggly and pawing Flicka, who accepted it with amazingly good grace. Princesses are trained that way, Raphael supposed, but he didn’t know how she stood it.
His father stared into his wine glass on a few occasions, contemplating something, but in general kept the conversation up. His sisters were great at that, of course, and Anaïs was practically giddy.
Against all odds, the reception supper was a lovely affair, full of laughter for many hours and really good seafood. Alina was perfect. She climbed up on his lap, cuddled up to his side, and went to sleep around nine.
He held his baby, enjoying her scant weight in his arm because he’d been at the bank too much lately, until Flicka dusted off her hands and stood, announcing, “Thank you all for coming on such astonishingly short notice. We’ll be heading back to the hotels now.”
With a flutter of her hand, the Russian guards transformed into chauffeurs and attendants, though as attendants, they watched their charges a bit too closely.
Raphael’s mother came over and gathered Alina from his arms. “Her car seat is already in our car. She can stay in our room tonight.”
“If she’s not all right, call me,” he told his mother, though Alina was accustomed to sleeping over at her babysitters’ houses, from Suze-mama’s house to Uncle Tinashe’s Las Vegas condo while he and Flicka had worked nights. Alina’s little hands grasped the air as Sophie lifted her, grunting a little, but her eyes didn’t open. As soon as Sophie settled Alina on her hip, her arms clamped around Sophie’s neck.
Yeah, she would be fine.
Raphael watched at the easy way Sophie carried Alina. She must have carried him and his sisters on her hip like that.
He found Flicka’s fingers with his, and they walked to the cars under heavy guard.
The ride to the hotel through the night took only moments. The hotel valets had already stashed their luggage in their rooms on the fifth floor.
Four Russian guards stood around their door, but Raphael closed the door firmly and locked it with them outside.
When he turned, Flicka stood in the middle of the dark room. Moonlight streamed through the windows and danced over the subtle sparkles on her dress.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at his shoes, black against the dark carpeting.
She asked, “What is it?”
“This is all coming to a crescendo. My father has been biting his lip all evening. There is something he has to tell me, but he didn’t want to ruin today. Something will happen soon.”
“We have tonight,” she said. She’d walked over and was standing right in front of him. The jasmine scent of her reached him, and he longed to touch her.
He nodded and reached for her hands, holding her fingers between his. “I’m making arrangements for you. You’ll be safe.”
She nodded, the dim light reflecting in her clear green eyes.
“But I might not get out of this,” he said.
Flicka nodded. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I’ve lived with a walking target my whole life. Wulfram was always prepared to die. Every day, he raised me like it was our last day together. You’re acting the same way.”
Raphael sucked in a deep breath and said, “I know you want to get pregnant because you think Pierre will leave you alone, but I might not be around. I don’t want to leave you with a child to raise without me. It’s the only thing that would make this worse.”
She leaned in and whispered, nearly against his lips, “It’s not just to make Pierre leave me alone. It’s because I want to have a child with you. I know what’s going on. You’re looking at the world with that same dark fatalism that Wulf has borne his entire life. I know what that looks like, and I know how it feels. I’ve always been a target, too, as no one has allowed me to forget for even one minute. Between my mother and Wulfram and you, I have been aware that the world has always been gunning for me. I don’t want to live that way anymore.”
“This is different,” Raphael argued. “This is a specific threat.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. “Every day is a specific threat. Every day, the jackal might walk out of the crowd and find my back with his bullets.”
“But there’s a reason,” he said.
Flicka squeezed his hands. “Wulfie has finally looked up from the grave under his feet. He fell in love with Rae, and he married her. They’re having a baby as if nothing in the world will ever go wrong. He’s really alive, and he’s living. You saw him when we were at Schloss Southwestern. He’s happy for the first time in his life, not desperate. He’s fighting death instead of walking into it, because he has something to live for.”
“But I might not make it out,” he said. “I don’t want to make it worse.”
Flicka said, “We’re all going to die someday, but not today. If anything were to happen to you, I want to raise our child. I want to know them and love them, even if I have to do it alone. I want them in my life.”
Her words jolted straight to his heart.
Raphael dropped her hands and stepped forward. He slid one of his hands around her waist, the tiny beads of her wedding gown rough against his palm, and he cupped her satiny cheek with the other before finger-combing her silken hair behind her ear to stall for time so his throat would open.
She said, “I love you, and I want to have our child.”
Pain creased Raphael’s chest. His eyes burned.
He forced words through his throat. “Your child would be beautiful, and brilliant, and have your dark green eyes and your devious talent for escape.”
She smiled. “Our child will be tall, and strong, and honorable, and as pure as the alpine snow. They’ll be a Swiss hero who could earn a mountaineering badge and rescue people who were in mortal danger. They’ll be protective of the people they love, and they’ll live a long, happy life.”
“As long as they aren’t in finance,” Raphael murmured to her. “Tell them to stay away from Geneva Trust. Tell them not t
o listen to my father, even if it seems like the only way. Tell them to listen to their mother because she’s the strongest and wisest person I’ve ever known, so they’ll live a long, happy life.”
Flicka’s eyes fluttered closed, and her lips parted.
Raphael ducked his head and brushed his lips over hers, a first kiss to start the night.
Her lithe body melted against his, soothing the pain in his heart.
He pulled her closer and wove his fingers into her hair, feeling every moment.
If this was their last night together or if Raphael did die sometime soon, he wanted to treasure their little time left, and he wanted the night they conceived their child to be as beautiful as his wife.
He fit his mouth to hers and caressed her with his lips and tongue until her body moved in his arms, and then he carried her to the bedroom in the hotel suite.
Her weight in his strong arms was nothing, but her body warmed his chest through his dark suit. He laid her down on the bed and climbed in beside her.
The brightness in her green eyes was already turning misty with longing, and he held himself back from stripping off her clothes and taking her right there.
She touched his cheek. “You look so serious.”
He said, “I have always loved you.”
“I know, Raphael.”
“When you were little, I was your protector.” He felt himself smile at her, though he was breathless. “When you insisted that I look at you that night in London, I loved you as a man loves a woman from that very first night, from that very first kiss. I want you to know I have always loved you.”
“Okay?” she said, looking at him warily.
“No matter what happens, I have always loved you, and I always will.”
“Okay.” She looked like she understood him more.
He leaned and kissed her neck, almost behind her ear. “I will always love you.”
“And I’ll always love you,” she said.
His heart swelled, and he rolled her over to unbutton the frustrating row of tiny buttons down her back. He straddled her and moved her hair aside to mouth the back of her neck while he did it, working the minuscule buttons with one hand while he held himself off her with the other. “Always.”
“Always,” she mumbled into the pillow, and she arched her neck as he nipped the tendons below her hair.
He spread the white dress apart over her back and slipped his hand inside and around her waist. The silk lining caught on his knuckles where scars roughened his skin, and he lifted her to her hands and knees while he kissed her delicate skin over her spine.
In his arm, her ribs expanded as she gasped, so he slid his hand down to stroke her over her panties.
She gasped again.
He loved it when she did that.
He loved it even more when he slipped his finger inside her panties and found she was slippery and hot down there.
Her fingers contracted on the sheet, grasping.
He pushed the dress down her arms, stripped her wedding gown and panties off, and rolled her over, stroking her until she was a bare, trembling thing in his arms, and then he went to work on her with his hands, his body, and his mouth.
In minutes, he had her gasping with her fingers threading through his hair.
A few more, and she was begging him, her back arching off the bed as he fluttered his tongue over her folds, not letting her come but teasing her higher and higher.
He needed her to come when he was inside her, taking her, leaving his seed in her.
So, he held her there by letting her drift down a bit before he ran his tongue more deeply into her, feeling her tension, feeling her desperation for him.
He was so hard that his dick rubbing on the sheets while he ate her was distracting him.
Her skin was driving him crazy. Her scent, her body in his hands, and her moans jumbled up his thoughts, and all he could think of—
He crawled up her body and into her arms, settling himself between her thighs and pressing inside her heat.
—was mine, mine, mine.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear as he rocked inside her. “I have always loved you. I will always love you.”
Her body rose under his, and their breath and sweat mingled in the bed. He went slowly, feeling her body pulse around him as she gasped and clung to him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he made love to her. He cradled her close to him as he felt every inch of her satin skin against his stomach and chest, and he ground his body into hers to make her rise higher as she pushed against him, feeling him, too.
He took her harder, deeper, as she clung to him, her arms wrapped around him as his were around her.
The urgency rose in him. His body tightened, straining to pump harder into her. If he was going to die, he wished it could be now, this minute, in her arms, hearing his name from her lips, but he said, “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I will always love you. No matter what happens, I will always love you.”
“Raphael, my angel,” she whispered.
The first wave of white-hot silence rolled through him, a barrage of bliss that swept him away and drowned him, and then a breath, and another, as his balls pumped his seed into her.
She was quivering, straining in his arms as she gasped, her body rigid as the ecstasy drove through her, too.
“Yes,” he whispered to her as she gasped against his shoulder. “I’ll be your angel, and I’ll always love you.”
Games
Flicka von Hannover
The difference between games
and the real thing.
Sometime during the night, Flicka was watching the stars over the Mediterranean Sea, and she realized that Raphael’s breathing wasn’t the deep, restful tides of sleep.
He rolled over under the sheets and wrapped her bare skin with one naked arm and leg.
“Again?” she asked.
He chuckled in the dark. “Are you up for it?”
“Um, sure?”
“Or we could go back to sleep,” he whispered.
“Yeah, okay.” She stared at the stars some more.
He asked, “What are you thinking?”
She probably shouldn’t even say it. “Just that it’s funny. In London, we played games all the time.”
“When Wulfram left for Chicago, the poker games with the Kensington Palace guys moved to their ready room instead of our apartment. I don’t remember you sitting in more than a couple of times.”
“I mean the other kind of games.”
“Oh.” He cuddled closer to her, and his voice deepened. “I liked those games.”
Just that tone in his voice sent an erotic shiver through her. “We don’t play those games anymore.”
“Time,” he mumbled. “And Alina. Kind of difficult, with Alina.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“It’s more than that, though.”
“Yeah?”
He nuzzled her shoulder, running his lips over her skin. “In London, we were safe, so we played at danger. We pretended that I was dangerous, and I was controlling you. It was just a game, there.”
“Oh,” Flicka said, “yeah.”
She moved closer to him for comfort, huddling in the strength of his arms and against his muscular body, feeling safe for just a few minutes.
The danger wasn’t just a game anymore.
They pretended they were safe, instead.
Stepmother
Flicka von Hannover
I hate it when people keep secrets from me,
most of the time.
The small, private plane flew from Gibraltar to Geneva early the next morning. The galley had been stocked with breakfast and coffee for the short flight, and an air hostess took orders and passed out the food.
Flight time was a shade over two hours, so Flicka ate her yogurt with fruit and made sure Alina did the same. Morning sunlight shone through the airplane from the sunrise on the starboard side of the plane.
Two days.
> Two days without birth control pills, and they’d had sex twice. It was kind of early in her cycle for her to ovulate, she thought, but she’d never tracked it because she’d always been on the Pill.
Would Flicka know if she were pregnant? How would she know? Would it just be a feeling, or would she need to measure her boobs or pee on a stick or something? How soon would it show up on a pee stick?
What would it feel like to have a . . . parasite, like that?
“Flicka-mama, how much?” Alina asked her, poking Flicka’s arm.
“Eat the whole thing if you can, Alina-baby,” she said, feeling the small bobbles of the plane as queasiness in her stomach. Was that morning sickness or just air sickness? How would she know? “It’s just a little yogurt, bananas, and berries. Breakfast will make you grow up big and strong. I ate all of mine, see?”
Alina glared at the food in the white coffee cup, but she ate a few more bites.
Raphael was sitting in the row behind them. The newspaper he was reading crackled as he turned the page.
They’d arisen late that morning, as befitted newlyweds after their wedding night.
A real wedding night.
A satisfying wedding night.
Anyway, they’d had trouble crawling out of bed, half-hungover and entirely exhausted, and Raphael hadn’t shaved that morning.
In the dawn’s bronze sunlight streaming through the plane’s windows, the scruff on his chin caught the light and turned gold.
Flicka told him, “You’d look good with a beard.”
Raphael raised one dark blond eyebrow at her. “I’ve never grown a beard.”
“When you used to come home from—” she caught herself before she said operations or missions, “from vacations, you had a beard sometimes. I always liked it.”
He smiled. “Did you?”
At Midnight Page 17