In Shining Armor

by Blair Babylon

Surely not all men had this effect on her. That would be intolerable.

  Flicka looked over at Wulfie, her much older brother who had raised her since she was six-years-old.

  Wulfram was still lounging in his chair, reading his book.

  His blond hair was shaggy around the edges, and it fell near his blue eyes. He looked unkempt, even slovenly. She told him, “You need a haircut.”

  He didn’t look up from his book. “So noted.”

  Dieter had his backpack in his large, strong hands, and he was looking right at her. His dark gray eyes settled on her skin, and she could almost feel his gaze. “Good to see you, Durchlauchtig.”

  Her breath seemed to have leaked out of her lungs, and she had to suck in some air to answer him. “You, too, Lieblingwächter.”

  Dieter walked out of the room, stalking like a tiger.

  The white album of Flicka’s music school musings slipped from her arms and crashed on the floor.

  Wulfram looked up from his book, one eyebrow raised.

  Flicka told him, “I’m going to attend the Royal Academy, here in London.”

  “Excellent,” Wulfram said, settling back into his book. “You can live here at Kensington with me. Security will be easier with you in London, too.”

  Yes, she was counting on it.

  The Pitfall of Perfect Logic

  It had made perfect sense at the time.

  Dieter Schwarz was one of the very few commandos in the Swiss Army, a member of a special services unit called the Army Reconnaissance Detachment Ten in English. ARD-10 is the equivalent of the Navy SEALs or the British SAS, a military unit that uses special weapons and tactics and is less restrained by ethics or conventional warfare, except for the mandate to maintain Switzerland’s absolute neutrality in all global conflicts. Considering that their primary mission was to rescue kidnapped Swiss citizens around the world, a better analogy might be the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

  Wulfram and Dieter had met in the Swiss Army because, like many of the four thousand or so regulars who had made the Swiss military their career, Dieter rotated between training the annual batch of cannon fodder, er, conscripts, and his own career. Wulfram Hannover had been in Dieter’s weapons class his first year and already highly skilled with a rifle.

  When Wulf had stayed in the military for an extra year past his obligation, Dieter recruited him as a sniper for ARD-10.

  Thus, Dieter Schwarz was highly trained with many weapons, frighteningly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and could plan a military maneuver with the best tacticians in the world.

  After Dieter and Wulf mustered out of the Swiss Army the same year, Wulf hired Dieter to head his security team, of course. Wulf would have been mad to pass up such a highly trained commando to head his security team, a force he knew would only grow over the years.

  It made sense that, when Wulf moved to the UK for graduate school at the London School of Economics, Dieter went with him, and the two bachelors lived in Wulf’s apartment at Kensington Palace to oversee Wulf’s personal protection. Because the royal palace had security measures already in place, Dieter began coursework toward degrees in political science, wartime tactics, and business management while he was there. Wulfram always encouraged his people to better themselves and move on, even back then, when Wulfram was twenty-two and Dieter, twenty-three years old.

  When Wulf’s younger sister Flicka graduated from Le Rosey, it was obvious that she should come live with them at Kensington Palace and continue her music education at the Royal College of Music, which was literally around the corner from Kensington Palace.

  Wulfram graduated with his doctorate in economics and secured a professorship at the University of Chicago, and it was logical that he must go. Chicago produced most of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Wulf was on track to become a Nobel laureate early in his career.

  However, Flicka was a sophomore at the Royal College at the time, doing stellar work on her piano, and Dieter had been accepted to the M.B.A. program at the London Business School.

  Thus, it made perfect sense that Wulfram’s Head of Security would continue to provide personal protection for Wulfram’s sister while she finished college, and so did he.

  Dieter was practically an uncle to Flicka.

  When Wulfram left for Chicago that final time that summer, amid the hearty handshakes and bluster about seeing each other soon, neither he nor Dieter noticed the spark of mischief in Flicka’s emerald green eyes.

  First Betrayal

  Dieter Schwarz

  I warned Wulfram to never

  leave her alone with anyone,

  even me.

  Dieter was sitting on the couch with Flicka and watching television one chilly London evening. He had finished his reading for his M.B.A. classes for the next day and his first beer.

  He popped the cap on the second one. The bottle was cool in his hand but not cold because they were in England. The Kensington Palace staff probably would have had a proper English tizzy if they’d found beer in the apartment’s small refrigerator.

  The BBC sports broadcast was recapping the truly brilliant match that Manchester United had played against Liverpool. He sipped his beer while watching it and rubbing Flicka’s feet that lay in his lap.

  Earlier, Flicka had been wearing headphones and silently practicing on an electronic piano, first scales and then some complicated piece that had required much grunting and weaving back and forth from one end of the keyboard to the other.

  Her back had been toward Dieter, and sometimes he got caught up in watching the theatrics, her slender form shaking and hunching with emotion and effort as she pounded on the eerily silent electric piano.

  It got funny, but he didn’t dare laugh at her.

  He’d made that mistake once.

  Once.

  She’d been sixteen or so, staying with him and Wulfram for her summer break, and he’d cracked up at her completely silent performance of something very emotional and deep that was obviously requiring a lot of effort and concentration and dramatic hand flourishes. She’d been throwing her arms into the air and then hunching over the keyboard, pounding on the keys that barely pattered when she played.

  Dieter and Wulfram had laughed so loudly that she’d heard them through her big, round earphones.

  Wulf hadn’t laughed quite as loudly, and he’d shut off his chuckle as Flicka had whipped around and ripped off the headphones to see what was so damn funny.

  Wulf, already perfectly composed, had shrugged and pointed at Dieter, selling him out.

  Flicka had leaped across the room and battered Dieter with a priceless, embroidered pillow while he laughed harder at her. She shrieked at him the whole time about how music was important to her and was the only thing in the world that meant anything, and if he understood her at all, he would respect that.

  Dieter was still cracking up under her onslaught, yelling, “Jesus, Wulf! Get her off me!”

  She yelled, “I have been working on that music for hours every day of my life—”

  He curled into the fetal position to protect his nuts and covered his head with his arms. “It’s beautiful! It’s beautiful! Durchlauchtig, I swear that I was not laughing at you. Ouch. I was laughing with you. Ouch!”

  She climbed on top of him to whack him harder, her bony knees and elbows poking him in the ribs and gut.

  A particularly well-aimed blow caught the back of his skull. “Ouch! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t— I swear I won’t—” Of course, he couldn’t stop laughing at her, which infuriated the little whelp further. “Wulf, help me!”

  Wulf eventually pulled her off of him, her skinny arms and legs flailing.

  Dieter was still laughing his ass off at her attack. She screamed at him like an enraged hamster going for his jugular.

  But he didn’t laugh at her after that.

  He grinned when she wasn’t looking.

  Like he was grinning now.

  The Kensington Palace apartment had been
quieter since Wulfram had moved to Chicago. Flicka pounded on her electronic piano and studied sheet music while Dieter read and worked on his thesis. They both went out with friends, of course. Dieter went out singly, and he tagged along with Flicka at a respectable distance when she went out, making sure she was safe.

  London was safer for her than many cities. Wulf had been smart when he had picked it out, as usual. If nothing else, the British royal family was a more valuable target than their deposed German cousins, though as Dieter got to know Wulf’s cousins, he hated that reasoning more and more. They were nice people.

  Still, he tailed her, and she knew he was there.

  But the apartment was quiet without Wulfram, and Flicka had taken to knocking off her studies to keep Dieter company while he watched the BBC sports recap show every night.

  That evening when the show had started, he’d thrown a pillow at Flicka to get her attention. She padded over, barefoot and wearing fluffy pajamas, and rolled onto the couch with him, plopping her feet in his lap.

  He raised his thigh to block her heels that still seemed aimed at his balls, and he massaged the soles of her feet absently while they watched the show, just like most nights.

  They spent many weeknight evenings like this, with her warmly curled against his side like a blond yellow Labrador retriever or with her hind paws in his lap, talking about sports and laughing at the worse rugby plays, football own goals, and cricket sticky wickets.

  Tonight, she seemed twitchy as they watched, contemplating something.

  Dieter sipped his beer. She would talk to him or she wouldn’t. She might be mulling over a difficult piece of music, in which case Dieter would be no help at all.

  He stroked her feet gently, her soft heels and pink-painted toenails, while he watched the television. Manchester United had put on a clinic, keeping the ball in the air so much that it seemed like the players were dancing ballet instead of running on the ground.

  His hands strayed up to her smooth ankles, massaging, and back down to her insteps. Even her heels were satiny.

  And larger, he noticed. They almost looked like grown-up feet.

  Flicka jumped across the couch and straddled his legs.

  Her fragile hands cradled his jaw.

  Her silky blond hair fell from behind her shoulders, curling softly around Dieter’s face, curtaining them.

  “Hey!” Dieter leaned sideways, peering around her and trying to get out from under her hair.

  “Dieter—”

  “I can’t see the telly.”

  “Lieblingwächter.”

  He leaned the other way, half-hanging over the arm of the couch, and brushed her hair aside. “Come on, Durchlauchtig. Manchester played a brill match today—”

  Near his ear, Flicka breathed, “Make love to me.”

  “What!” Dieter pressed himself back into the couch cushions, trying to mash himself through the upholstery to escape.

  Her sparkling green eyes were right above him, and her hands really were holding his face so that he couldn’t turn away. She said, “I’ve been waiting for you for years—”

  “Flicka, no. No, Durchlauchtig. I don’t think of you like that. You’re just a little girl. I couldn’t—”

  “I am not a little girl.”

  “You are! You’re my little Flicka, my Durchlauchtig, and you’re Wulf’s baby sister. If you were any younger, I’d have custody of you while Wulfram is in Chicago.”

  “I’m twenty years old,” she said. “Twenty. Not seventeen, not eighteen. Twenty years old. The big two-oh.”

  “Jesus, Flicka. If you had any idea how ridiculous that sounds—”

  “—and I want to go to bed with you.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “I’ve had a crush on you for years.”

  “A teenage crush. Flicka, I’m almost thirty. I’m not right for you. You’re just a little girl—”

  “Look at me.”

  “I am looking at you, Durchlauchtig. You’re just the same—”

  To retreat farther from her, Dieter laid his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes, and he put his hands on her waist to tumble her off of his thighs.

  Closing his eyes was the mistake.

  Touching her made him realize it.

  Dieter’s eyes remembered Flicka as a silly kid or gawky teen, composed of stabbing elbows and heels, too-large teeth, and braided blond hair.

  But for a year or longer, his body had been responding to the adult woman she was, following the perfume she trailed as she walked through the apartment they shared.

  His heart rate picked up when her warmth neared him.

  When he massaged her feet, he’d been allowing his hands to drift upward to her ankles and calves, stroking her soft skin, rather than just holding her feet so she wouldn’t nail him in the nuts when she found something funny and kicked.

  Every morning before they left the apartment, she asked him, “How do I look?”

  The last year or so, he’d looked at her, his eyes following the swells and dips of her body and seeing the glowing light in her emerald green eyes, and he’d meant it when he said, “Beautiful, Durchlauchtig.”

  His throat had closed sometimes, and those words had come out in a testosterone-laced growl.

  He had not allowed himself to realize how physically he had been responding to her.

  When his hands alighted on Flicka’s hips and stroked up to her waist, he traced the smooth, rounded hips of the woman on his lap.

  He froze, unable to reconcile the womanly curves in his hands with the child in his mind.

  Beside his ear, a woman’s alto voice whispered, “Make love to me.”

  When Dieter opened his eyes, the world tilted under him like he was falling through airless space.

  The woman hovering above him had a heart-shaped face, not tiny and child-like. Her emerald green eyes, tilted up at the outside corners, were almost unearthly in their beauty.

  His hands found her slender waist.

  She had a slim, hourglass figure, sweet and curving and soft in his hands.

  He slid his hands over the swell of her hips to her soft thighs, mesmerized by her shape.

  The stars above the Earth shifted in the dark sky.

  The air was thinner as he gasped, forgetting how to breathe.

  She lowered her face, her full lips nearing his.

  “Durchlauchtig,” he begged her.

  He wasn’t sure what he was begging for.

  She brushed her lips across his in the lightest of kisses.

  Her silken lips on his mouth broke his will.

  Dieter’s hands slid up her arms. One hand cupped the back of her neck and pressed her lips closer.

  He opened his mouth, and her tongue slid between his lips.

  Her tiny gasp ignited a fire in his veins, and his heart pounded harder in his chest.

  He grabbed her with his other arm around her waist and spun, whirling her beneath him on the couch.

  The sweetness in her mouth tasted like mint, and he shoved his hand under her pajama top to touch the skin over her ribs. Her skin’s softness was velvet under his palm and fingers.

  Her arms wound around his neck, holding his mouth on hers. He broke off and bent to run his mouth over her neck, breathing in her feminine scent and something like roses, and he pushed her back to run his teeth over her neck.

  Her throat moved under his mouth. A sexy hum vibrated the skin under his lips.

  Her moan thrummed through him.

  Dieter wanted himself in her mouth and her pussy and her ass. He wanted to devour her and bury himself in her until he was gone. He wanted his come on her skin and inside her until every cell of her was awash with him.

  He was a roaring tidal wave of passion and possessiveness, wanting to drag her under and drown her in himself.

  He’d never been so fascinated with anything or anyone in his life. It felt like obsession. It felt like insanity ripping him apart.

  It
felt like his world shattered, and he and she were both someone else.

  Dieter pushed himself up on his arms. “Flicka—”

  She grabbed his shirt and hauled him down to her mouth again, and he was lost.

  Dieter shoved himself to standing and picked her up in his arms. He strode for his bedroom, kicking the damn door out of his way as he raced to the bed.

  He stripped off her clothes and his, and he worshipped every inch of her skin with his eyes, his hands, and his mouth.

  The woman in his bed was utterly a stranger to him, even though her name felt familiar in his mouth as he whispered to her.

  A thought assailed him, which shocked him because he hadn’t managed a logical thought since she’d moved to touch him. He asked her, “Have you done this before?”

  “No,” she whimpered, struggling underneath him.

  Ice slithered down his spine, but his body was nearly out of his control. “You went to boarding school.”

  “I didn’t want to, not in the dorms,” she said, her voice low in her throat. “I didn’t like any of the guys like that. I didn’t like the pressure, so I didn’t.”

  No, he didn’t want to hurt her. No matter how gentle he might try to be, her first time would hurt. Dieter had seen other guys in the shower and women’s gasps and grins too many times to think that he was anywhere near average, and he knew he shouldn’t be anyone’s first. He liked to drive women senseless the first time he was with them, until they screamed his name from insane pleasure.

  He didn’t want to hurt a woman at all.

  Especially Flicka.

  He slid his hands under her arms and lifted her to kneeling.

  Flicka’s startlingly green eyes widened. “What are you—”

  He grabbed the back of her head, gathered her silky hair in his fist, and held his thick, long cock in his hand, shoving it against her lips.

  She gasped and flinched, but he drove himself into her face, holding her and thrusting into her mouth.

  Flicka opened her lips further, bracing her hands on his hips and sucking him into the heat of her mouth and throat.