“Whoa!”
He strode out of the elevator, lifting her to nuzzle her neck as he walked.
“You couldn’t have,” she said as he walked.
“I’m tricky.” He stopped in front of a particular door. “In my shirt pocket.”
Flicka unlatched one arm from his neck and found a hotel room keycard in his shirt pocket. “No way.”
“First rule of operational security. Be unpredictable.”
Flicka inserted the card into the door slot. It whirred, unlatching, and Dieter kicked it open. He strode toward the bed.
“I can’t believe you—”
The door slammed closed behind them as he tossed her on the bed and crawled after her, the mattress bending under his weight.
A ripple ran through her, but it was excitement.
He climbed on top of her, wedging one knee between her thighs and tenting his arms around her head. He took her lips with his, but everything about him slowed down. Flicka wound her arms around his neck and lifted herself to kiss him harder, but he deepened the kiss and pushed her down to lie on the sheets again. The tempo of his kiss slowed, sucking and caressing her lips instead of grabbing at her mouth with his.
He restrained her arms, but differently. When they’d been together back in London, he’d pinned her wrists above her head because he liked doing it and she’d liked it, too, but this time he held her hands, palm to palm with their fingers entwined, as he kissed her.
Hot adrenaline still coursed through her blood. She nudged her hips upward, trying to show Dieter that he could go for it, but he held her down with his hands on hers.
He backed off. “Durchlauchtig—”
“Lieblingwächter.”
“Flicka, out there, who are you?”
She grinned even though she was panting and simply dying to touch his skin. “I’m not a prinzessin anymore, but I feel more like Flicka von Hannover than I ever have.”
He ran his thumb over hers where their hands clasped. “And in here, with me, whose are you?”
This was what she’d been waiting for. “Yours. All yours.”
“Then I need you to be all mine,” he said.
She stopped. “What are you talking about?”
He dipped his head and ran his lips over her throat, sending a thrill over her skin. “Mine. All mine. All the fear, all the fright, every bit of the terror, it’s mine now. Let me take it from you. I’ll make sure he never touches you again, no matter what I have to do. I won’t let you go anywhere alone where he might be ever again. Give all that to me. Let me carry the fear. Let me worry about keeping you safe. Let me destroy the pain.”
She wanted so much not to be afraid anymore. “Okay.”
“Say yes.”
“Yes.”
He moved down her throat to her collarbones. “Let me have your skin. Let me have your body.”
“Yes.”
“Let me have every inch of you. Let me touch all of you. Let me kiss all of you. Let me make you mine.”
“Yes.”
He released her hands and moved down her body, pushing her clothes away. Flicka twisted her arms to pull her tee shirt over her head, and he double-looped the cloth around her wrists, tying her.
Okay, that was more like it.
Dieter moved down her body, throwing his shirt off the edge of the hotel bed. Muscle rounded his broad shoulders and wide chest in the sunshine, and his skin was crisscrossed with dozens of shallow, white scars and a few deeper, redder ones. One long, thin cord ran across his ribs to his stacked abdominal muscles.
Sunlight filtered through the gauze curtains and shone over the whole room, touching his skin and hair with bright gold glimmers.
She stretched as his hand went behind her back to unhook her bra, and he swirled his warm tongue over her, running the softness and warmth over her skin, and he sucked her until she strained against his mouth, moaning.
As he scooted backward, he pulled her shorts and panties down, and she kicked them away. She tucked one of her bare toes into his waistband and tried to push his pants down, but he ran his palm down her leg and wound it behind his back as he kissed down her stomach.
Oh, yes. She knew what Dieter liked.
Her back arched as his tongue slipped inside her folds.
He was gentle at first, as always, with slow licks and caresses designed to make her crave more.
And she did crave more. He knew every inch of her—that she liked it long and slow at first, that he could rub his thumb just above her folds and make her squirm, and that the point right above her core would make her come so hard her head throbbed.
He grasped her hips in his big hands and sucked her, tonguing her folds deeply, until the pleasure tightened around her. She grasped the pillow above her, tossing her head as the wave drove up her body so hard that she couldn’t see or hear anything, and she floated, only aware of his cinnamon scent and the strength of his arms holding her.
When her head cleared, when her eyes could see the sunlight over his shoulder, she realized his body was between her legs, and he was inside her. He barely moved, pulsing against her, because she was so sensitive from the orgasm.
But he knew that.
He knew her.
Dieter held her hands in his again, his fingers laced with hers, and he kissed her while he rubbed his length through her.
Flicka moaned, wanting more and yet filled so completely that, if he would have taken her hard, it would have hurt. Her body was swollen with desire and tight around him, and he felt nearly too big for her. Every time his hips pushed himself into her, the pressure was almost too much, but the pleasure swamped her. She was floating as his body rode her.
He shifted, grabbing her legs, and he folded her thighs against her chest to lift her hips.
Flicka gasped, grabbing the pillow above her head again as he pushed more deeply inside her, filling her and driving every thought from her head except to feel him and this moment.
“Mine,” he whispered in her ear as his body drove softly, deeply, into her.
“Yes.”
He moved slowly inside her, coaxing her to respond again, matching her rhythm.
Improbably, her body wound more tightly around him. She clenched her fists, still bound by her tee shirt above her head. His breath turned ragged, and he grunted as he went harder into her. Her breath caught in her throat as he pulsed, and his breath heated her shoulder. The pleasure took her, and she fell apart.
The mindless, fiery abyss of orgasm consumed her.
Flicka’s mind coalesced, tentatively at first.
She remembered how to breathe.
As she flexed her fingers, now freed from her tee shirt, on the white sheet on the bed, she was lying on her stomach with her legs dangling over the edge of the mattress.
Dieter brushed her hair away from the back of her hot neck and rubbed her shoulders, soothing her. His lips touched her spine, and he mouthed the skin on her back and waist until she was practically purring and yet quietly, sleepily turned on and dying for him to take her again.
His hands stroked her ass and thighs, kneading the muscles there. He caressed the tension out of her until she was languid and pliable.
He could have done anything to her, and she would have lain there and taken it.
Her purse thumped on the bed beside her face, then upended.
Her few things fell out of it: keys to the townhouse, her tiny wallet with her casino ID and a little cash, some pens and lip gloss, and a small tube like for toothpaste.
Tube? Weird, her muddled mind thought.
Dieter’s wide hand grabbed the tube.
Flicka was so wrung out that she couldn’t move. Limpness weighed on her limbs. She was a floppy rubber doll, and her brain was mush.
Cool, slippery stuff rubbed her ass, then slipped inside.
Oh. Flicka knew what the tube was now.
She almost chuckled. When the hell had he stuck lube in her purse?
Hardness nudged at
her asshole and pushed inside, burning. He slipped in with the lube, but his sheer size always pushed her to her limits.
Flicka clenched her fists, holding the sheets as he slowly, relentlessly, entered her. He rocked her forward against the side of the mattress.
She pushed back against him and let him take her, opening herself and craving the deep burn.
Years ago, in London, they’d had a day off, a real day off. On a Saturday, they’d had no classes and no events scheduled. They had practice and studies, sure, but there were no things to do.
Dieter had whispered to her, “I’m going to teach you to come when I take your ass.”
She’d stared at him. “You always make sure I come.”
“Yeah, by stroking your clit, but I want you to come while I push into your ass.”
“But it’s the clitoris—”
“It doesn’t have to be. Get undressed.”
“Right now? But it’s nine in the morning! I have to practice for a few hours at least.”
“Oh, you’ll practice all right, but I want you naked while you do it. Whose are you?”
“Yours,” she’d said, smiling.
He’d stood her in the middle of their Kensington Palace apartment and stripped her clothes off. He’d run his strong hands over her, stroking her breasts and her folds until she was gasping, and then he’d popped a slap on her butt and sent her off to practice the piano.
Frustrated and horny, she’d pounded the piano like she’d wanted him to pound her, banging out scales and arpeggios over and over, up and down the keyboard.
After an hour, he’d bent her over the piano and licked her until she’d almost come, al-damn-most, but he’d stopped.
He growled at her, “Keep practicing.”
“But you—”
“I said, keep practicing.”
“Come on, take me to bed.”
“I said that you needed to practice the piano.”
“I don’t want to practice the piano anymore! This is intolerable, teasing me like this! I—oh!”
He grabbed her and whirled her around so that he was sitting on the piano bench, and she was lying across his lap, ass up.
“What the hell are you—”
He brought his hand down on her butt, hard. Crack!
“Ow! What the hell are you doing?”
His thumb slipped between her legs and stroked her clit until her body tightened around the two fingers he pumped inside her. She tried to squirm backward to make him press harder.
He spanked her on her other bare butt cheek, not hard enough to bruise her at all, but certainly the roughest of Dieter’s power games.
“You will practice your piano like a good girl,” he said, “or else you’ll be spanked like a bad girl.”
“Spanking? Are you serious?”
“Do you want to use your safe word?”
“Oh, hell, no. I know that game. If I say ‘invisible,’ you will totally stop, and I’ll be wound up like this all night long. You are not going to trick me into doing that again.”
He stroked her, on her folds and then in between, until she was panting for him to let her come, and then he spanked her again.
A bright bolt of pain shot up her ass. “All right, all right! I’ll practice!”
“That’s a good girl. I must say, I like your ass all pink and sore like that.” He smoothed his hand over her stinging skin. “It makes me want to take you right now, but I’m a patient man. You’ll have to wait until tonight.”
“Tonight? I have to wait all day?”
Crack! “Okay! I’ll practice!”
When he let her up, his eyes were sharp with lust. “Now stand and practice the piano so I can run my hands over that sore, hurting ass of yours.”
He had teased her all day—sitting her on his lap and sucking her breasts until she was moaning or laying her on top of her baby grand piano and eating her out until she’d been crying from need—and when she complained, he’d spanked her again.
That night, he’d stroked and mouthed and caressed her more, denying her when she pleaded with him, until he slowly pushed himself into her ass. He stroked her slowly until the pressure and pleasure overwhelmed her, and she’d come so hard that she’d lost her mind, begging him to pound her harder.
After that, her ass had been as sensitive as her core, and he’d been able to make her come any way he’d felt like.
High in the Stratosphere hotel, with his hardness cramming into her ass, the burn turned into pleasure. Dieter gripped her shoulders and pressed himself inside her, stroking slowly in and out while she got used to it again. She bowed her head as he took her, pushing backward to meet him.
With his hands on her shoulders and his staff in her ass like that, she felt so small, like he was everything to her and she was a toy to be used.
Or a doll to be held.
Or a pet to be protected.
She groaned and pushed back harder, feeling the hard pleasure of him grinding into her until the fire burned up her spine to her skull, annihilating her.
Through the pulses of insanity, she heard Dieter’s shout. His fingers dug into her shoulders as he came, bucking his hips and shooting deep inside her body.
He gathered her in his arms and laid her on the bed, wrapping his arms around her.
Between his lovemaking, bites, his mouth sucking on her, and his fingers grabbing her, her skin was sore all over. She was sticky from his sweat and hers. If someone had powdered her, his fingerprints would have looked like lacework over every inch of her skin.
Every ache and scrape felt divine. His touch and his scent and his skin enveloped her.
Dieter whispered, “Remember, every inch of you is mine. All your fears are mine to deal with. You belong to me, now.”
She curled closer, breathing in the musk of his sweat and sex and the warm scent of cinnamon. Under her fingers, his smooth skin skimmed over his hard, thick muscles.
Somewhere in the back of her head, dark tendrils wove through her thoughts. Some of them were images of Pierre’s hand around her wrist or the clench of his fingers on the back of her neck. She blinked to forestall a wince.
Dieter’s arms firmed around her, holding her to his chest. “I mean it.”
She breathed, blowing through it.
She wanted Pierre out of her life and out of her head. Dieter had washed her body clean with his, covering her in his scent and touch.
Her mind was the last place that had to expel Pierre. “What if I can’t?”
He grinned, even though he was still breathing fast. “Then next week, we’ll do the bungee SkyJump.”
Signing the Affidavits
Flicka von Hannover
Martinis and Weizenbier.
They had lived in Las Vegas for six weeks.
Flicka had been so intent on day-to-day survival those six weeks—from having enough money to pay the rent and eat to watching out for someone about to throw her in an unmarked van—that she almost didn’t realize how much time had passed until two days before the six-week anniversary.
Suddenly, she needed to gather the necessary divorce paperwork and have it signed and notarized.
The French lawyer, Joachim Blanchard, had provided all the forms they would need on that little flash drive. Some of the fields were even pre-filled, like her name and Pierre’s, and the dates.
She sat at the small kitchen table in their townhouse and sorted the paperwork while Dieter watched soccer in the living room with Alina, trying to explain the off-sides rule to the toddler.
As Flicka ground through stacks of paper, Dieter succeeded in teaching Alina to shout “Goal!” and raise her arms whenever the ball came anywhere near the goalie. His deep shout and laugh and the baby’s shrill screech made Flicka smile as she deciphered the paperwork.
Okay, so the first order of business was an affidavit of residency, attesting that Flicka had lived in the county and hadn’t left for any significant time period during the six weeks. It had to be signed
by a person who had known her and seen her every two days or so but who was not emotionally attached to the outcome of the divorce.
So, Dieter himself was out. He had an emotional involvement.
Because she had quit her job at the Monaco Casino after two weeks and then had taken the job at the Silver Horseshoe less than a month before, no one from her work had known and seen her every day for the whole six weeks. She only saw the townhouse rental agent-slash-blackjack dealer, Indrani, on weekends.
Damn it, she’d kind of screwed herself here.
Although, now that she thought about it, there was one person whom she’d met right after she’d arrived in Las Vegas, on her second day working at the Monaco Casino, who’d followed her over to the Silver Horseshoe and then perched on a bar stool every day, talking with her about martinis and Weizenbier.
The next day while Flicka was at work, Bastien the silver fox again wandered into the Silver Horseshoe Casino and claimed his chair at the end of the bar, ordering his top-shelf martini and flicking out a newspaper to read the sports pages before he began placing bets on the various games playing on the screens above.
As always, Flicka’s bar was jumping by five o’clock in the afternoon. News of the bar’s good vibes had spread, and more people thronged her bar every night. People swarmed the betting windows and tapped wagers into their table consoles while they watched sports on the enormous televisions above the bar and hanging from the ceiling.
Flicka found a free few minutes and sidled up to Bastien, asking him if he would sign the affidavit of residency and attest that he had seen her at least every few days for the past six weeks.
Prissy wandered over, holding her notary embosser and a pen. Prissy didn’t handle other people’s pens. It was unsanitary.
Bastien grinned as she handed him the paperwork and asked, “An affidavit of residency? Are you divorcing someone, liebling Gretchen?”
“I mentioned that I had a problem ex. I need to finish making him an ex,” she said.
“That makes perfect sense. I am pleased to sign it for you.” He scrawled an illegible, loopy mess on the line. “Is it that big, blond brute from the Monaco Casino whom I see has followed you over here?”
In a Faraway Land Page 16