Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  Dieter stirred in his sleep from where he had the airplane seat reclined as much as it would go, but it wasn’t quite a full recliner. His ankles and feet hung off the end of the footrest.

  “Dieter?” Flicka asked. “You awake?”

  “I am now.” He shifted in the seat and opened his storm-cloud gray eyes to smile at her. “That damn brother of yours could have sent his plane with the bedroom in it for us, but no, he sent the little plane with seats.”

  “You think he might be making a statement?” Flicka asked.

  “That he won’t be providing a bed for you and me on his plane? Yeah, I think that’s abundantly clear.”

  “I need to ask you a question,” Flicka said.

  Dieter moved her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Anything, my Durchlauchtig.”

  “I know this sounds weird, but I’ve been telling people that Alina was really my kid, that we got pregnant when I was twenty, and you adopted her because you and Gretchen couldn’t have kids and we didn’t want people to know that I’d had a child.”

  “That’s a good story,” Dieter said. “You might have saved her life.”

  Flicka bit her lip and then dove in. “It isn’t true, right?”

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “She’s your child, right?” Flicka asked. “I mean, yours and Gretchen’s, and what you said about getting drunk in a bar in Chicago? That’s the real story, right?”

  Dieter closed his eyes for a minute like he was counting to ten, then opened them to stare at her. “Flicka, my Durchlauchtig, you’ve never had a child. Alina is the result of a drunken one-night-stand with Gretchen in Chicago, and I married Gretchen because I thought that providing a family for the child was in her best interests. I was in the delivery room when Gretchen gave birth to her, and they put the baby Lo-Jack on Alina until I took her home. Biologically, she’s my child, but not yours.”

  She nodded. “Maxence confused me. He said I got fat that year, and it all sort of fits. My father would have insisted on something exactly like that.”

  “Yes, I mean, no,” Dieter said. “I saw you at Christmas in Chicago. You gained perhaps ten pounds in all the right places due to sticky toffee pudding, if I recall correctly what you blamed it on. I thought I would die of asphyxiation because I could not breathe when I looked at you.”

  “Okay. You’re right, I suppose.” Her heart hung in her chest, pulling. “I just told people that story so often over the last few weeks, and it kind of fit, that I was her real mother, you know?” Tears stung her eyes.

  “You are magnificent with Alina,” Dieter said, closing his eyes and making himself more comfortable in the reclining seat. His hand strayed over her stomach, which she imagined was beginning to thicken as some sort of little embryo divided and multiplied inside. “I wish you’d been her mother. You’ll be a wonderful biological mother, too, but you’ve been mothering Alina so well. She needs a good mother, a real one, not just a biological shadow that disappeared. She loves you so much. It’s okay to love her.”

  “The story was good, you know? It made sense.”

  “It was.”

  “And the timeline fit. And Alina’s eyes, her hair, the way she clung to me and I clung to her, everything fit. I just thought, maybe, I’d made myself forget what had happened, that it was the real story.”

  Dieter opened his eyes. “Flicka, do you want to adopt Alina?”

  “What?”

  “Her biological mother relinquished all her parental rights. She doesn’t have a mother in the legal sense. You could adopt her. Then, you’d be her real mother legally, as well as in her heart.”

  “I—I could, couldn’t I?”

  “She and I would be forever grateful.”

  “When Pierre said that I had no legal status because I was only her stepmother, it was insulting. I wanted to keep her, even though I knew she should go with Wulfie where she would be safe. But it felt wrong that I was, legally, nothing to her.”

  Dieter’s fingers stole up her arm, tickling. “If you want to, we can start the paperwork whenever you feel it’s right.”

  Flicka rested her head on the recliner’s pillow and stared up at the plane’s white ceiling. “Wulfie has a bunch of lawyers on retainer. We’ll ask him who’s good with adoption laws in the US.”

  His hand reached her shoulder, and suddenly he was standing in front of her seat, holding her fingers and dragging her up.

  “Whoa!” she said, laughing.

  He grabbed her around the waist, and his lips caught hers, kissing her.

  Flicka melted into the kiss. No adrenaline coursed in her blood, but excitement stirred in her, nevertheless. His other hand lifted her chin, and he nipped her throat.

  She whispered, “Dieter, Lieblingwächter, there are two ladies who are cabin staff, and they’re sleeping right up there.”

  “I know.” He raised his head, and gray fire snapped in his eyes. “Come on.”

  He led her toward the back of the plane.

  “What are you—”

  Dieter stopped, his eyes narrowing, and he surveyed the plane like he was examining it.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” he said, slowly. “Wulfram rented one plane a few months ago for a trip to L.A., but this is a different plane. It’s bigger, and he bought this one.” His voice became more confident. “It’s a different plane.”

  “Why? How come?”

  “No reason.” He wheeled her around and stuffed her into the plane’s tiny bathroom, a closet-sized space with a commode and a built-in sink.

  “Dieter, what are you—”

  He grabbed Flicka, spinning her around to face him. “Ever joined the mile-high club?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

  He sank his fingers into her hair, now past her shoulders, and tightened his hand into a fist. “Good. I get your first time for this, too.”

  Flicka’s legs weakened, and her breath was already quick in her chest. Dieter shoved the collar of her white shirt aside, and his lips were hot on her throat.

  Her head was spinning already, and she didn’t think that was turbulence. The sink pressed against her ass, a solid line against her backside. The flickering fluorescent light above the sink cast bluish light over everything, drawing aqua shadows on Dieter’s white shirt.

  He was grabbing at her clothes, pulling them apart and away from her skin, brushes of cloth that tickled her sensitive flesh.

  Dieter reached down to her knee, shoving her trousers down her legs, and stripped them off. He tossed them aside, crumpled on the side of the sink counter behind her, and ran his fingers through her panties.

  Flicka gasped, arching her back, as his fingertips stroked her.

  Dieter reached around and grabbed her ass, lifting her onto the sink, and braced his arm against the wall behind her as he kissed her, his tongue invading her mouth. He tasted a little of wine and whiskey, and the faint mint from when he’d brushed his teeth before they’d tried to sleep.

  This was Dieter Schwarz, this man made of muscle, testosterone, and male energy, the man who took her anywhere and everywhere he could. With his body hard between her thighs and his fingers stroking inside her, his thumb circling her clit, the memory of Raphael Mirabaud receded in Flicka’s head.

  She moaned, a sound in her throat that matched the airplane’s hum.

  “Be quiet,” Dieter growled against the pulse in her neck as he unhooked the waist of his pants. “Be quiet, or they’ll hear you. I don’t think I locked that door. They’ll open that door and see you here, spread open,” he drove into her, forcing himself within her, “with me inside you.”

  The way Dieter took her felt like when they had lived together in London: a little rough, a little dirty, and with an edge of danger in his every male, possessive, muscular stroke.

  She buried her face in his neck, trying to keep quiet and breathing in his warm, clean scent: the cinna
mon, musk, and spices of his cologne that he’d brought back from Geneva along with their clothes, and that clean, musky, male scent of him under it, the scent that drifted through their sheets at night or that she inhaled when he was crouched over her, protecting her.

  Flicka dug her nails into Dieter’s back as he stroked into her. Every grind of his hips spun sensation up her body, until she broke apart and the world turned to light.

  Schloss Southwestern

  Dieter Schwarz

  I knew I was going to get punched at some point.

  Directly after the plane flight, Dieter staggered into the kitchen of Schloss Southwestern, Wulfram von Hannover’s mansion in the southwestern US. Morning sunlight glared off the stainless steel kitchen appliances, checkering the white wall and kitchen table with white squares of laser light. He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the intense beams.

  The coffee pot was right where it always had been, just to the right when entering the house from the garage, and it was percolating and spitting cheerfully as it finished brewing a large pot.

  Out of deep habit, Dieter reached into the cabinet above the machine, retrieved a white mug from the three dozen or so up there, and poured himself a cup. The brew was a dark roast, bitter and burned, scented with skunk and forest fires in his mouth. Everything about it suited his mood.

  God, Dieter was tired. He hadn’t managed to catch up on sleep for weeks, since that terrible night in the warehouse in Geneva. He wasn’t even sure how many days had elapsed since then.

  Flicka had been hovering when the driver had dropped them off, fluttering around him like she thought she could protect him from Wulfram, so he’d shooed her into the house to go catch up with Rae, meet her newborn niece for the first time, and find Alina.

  Behind Dieter, the kitchen door clicked.

  He tried not to twitch, but exhaustion made him jumpy.

  When he looked over his shoulder, Wulfram von Hannover stood just inside the kitchen, his legs braced apart, his hands curled into fists at his sides. The black fatigues and black tee shirt he wore were an echo of their days together in the Swiss commando unit ARD-10, maybe a deliberate choice. Everything seemed like a signal from him just then.

  Sunlight glared on Wulf’s bright blond hair, which had gotten a little shaggy around his ears. Dieter rubbed the short beard that covered his chin. They’d all gotten a little shaggy over the last few months.

  Okay, Dieter resolved, Wulfram got one free punch and then Dieter would block any further attack. He wasn’t going to fight back unless Wulf got really out of hand.

  Dieter deserved that one shot.

  Wulfram said, “Rosamunde said you’d arrived.”

  Dieter set his mug on the counter and pushed it back near the coffee pot where it was less likely to spill or get broken in a fistfight. “Yeah. Flicka went upstairs.”

  “We should talk.”

  “I’m ready.” Dieter turned and braced his abs. He hoped the punch would be to the gut. He hated walking around with a black eye or a split lip.

  God, he hoped it wasn’t a nut shot. Dieter was going to have to block a nut shot.

  Dieter’s fists rose from his sides, ready to block a low punch, if that’s what it was going to be.

  Wulfram’s expression was impassive, as always, as if he had been carved from cold marble. He looked like he could have been a golden king, ruling from a large, silver, Hannover throne, his every proclamation instantly law.

  Wulf said, “My sister, Friederike Augusta, is a legal adult in charge of her faculties and fully capable of making her own decisions in life, including whom she shall marry. I do not have the authority to usurp her agency nor her human rights, no matter how long or much I was responsible for her during her childhood.”

  Dieter allowed his fists to lower a few inches. “That sounded rehearsed.”

  Wulf’s voice seemed more clipped than usual, more British. “We’ve been texting since she arrived at Schloss Marienburg. Some of her arguments were convincing, apt, and well-stated.”

  “So, you’re not angry?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “About the Raphael Mirabaud thing—”

  “We should not discuss that at all.”

  “When I met you, I was trying to leave that life behind, and Dieter Schwarz was my legal name. Because I was a minor when it all went down, they allowed me to have two legal names. It wasn’t really a lie.”

  “Yes, it was.” Wulf’s lips barely moved.

  “Okay, it was,” Dieter growled. “I should have told you. One of those nights when we were drunk off our asses in the barracks, I should have told you. One of those times when we were on a military transport plane, flying into a mission where things might have gone sideways, I should have told you. One of those days when we were sitting around Schloss Southwestern, discussing how to keep you alive on your next trip to Europe or New York, I should have told you.”

  Wulf had looked down at his feet, though he was still angry in that quiet, sniper rage of his that didn’t increase his heart rate or cause his hands to shake.

  “I should have told you a thousand times,” Dieter continued, “but you would have walked away, just like you did, because Raphael Mirabaud is poison. You would have seen me for the coward I was, the traitor to my family and the criminal who ratted out his friends, all to save a few girls I didn’t even know. They were innocents, Wulf. They were blameless. Somebody sold them to the Ilyins for a pittance, enough money for their families to eat for a few months or enough cash for a drunk to get trashed for a week, and they didn’t give a damn what happened to those poor girls, Wulf, those pathetic children. I gave up my family, my friends, my education, and my name for them, because no one else would save them.

  “I was given the name Dieter Schwarz, and I threw myself into being Dieter. I tried not to remember my sisters or my mother. I tried not to dream in French. I threw myself into the Swiss army and did everything they asked as hard as I could. I tried out for ARD-10 as soon as I was eligible, and I made sure I was the fittest soldier and the best sniper in my class. I showed them that I was willing to kill myself for the Confoederatio Helvetica and the ideal of alpine culture. I finished the alpine mountaineering course,” he unfurled his fingers from around the pin that had been in his pocket, “and gave the ribbon to Flicka because I loved her, and I wanted to give her the best of me.”

  Wulf’s pale eyebrows twitched down. “I remember that brooch. She wore it everywhere. She never said it was from you.”

  “I gave it to her for Christmas when we were together in London because it was everything that was Dieter Schwarz. It was nothing that was Raphael Mirabaud. I didn’t tell you I was Raphael Mirabaud because I was ashamed that I had been him. I hated his crimes. I hated his cowardice. I hated that he had participated in drug smuggling and gun running and money laundering and slavery.

  “I aspired to be Dieter Schwarz. I strove to be the guardian of the Alps. I told you who I wanted to be, and every time you and Flicka said my name, I turned into Dieter Schwarz. As much as I longed to be Dieter, my name in your mouths transformed me into him. When I was with you, I became Dieter Schwarz. I’m sorry that I never told you who I had been, but I was trying to be someone else, someone better, a man worthy of a woman like Flicka.”

  Wulf nodded. Pain lines creased around his eyes.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I’m not lying to you now when I tell you that I am Dieter Schwarz.”

  “All right,” Wulfram said. “I see.”

  They stood in silence, watching the sunlight, and neither of them spoke.

  After a minute, Dieter took a chance and retrieved his coffee cup to sip the dark brew. “I need your financial advice,” he said.

  “Oh?” One of Wulfram’s eyebrows twitched up, perhaps relieved at the change in subject.

  “I killed my father.”

  His eyebrow rose farther. “How Oedipal of you.”

  “And my mother has decided to releas
e our inheritances early. I’ll be receiving quite a lot of money, and I need help with what to do with it.”

  Wulfram smiled just the smallest bit. “So you will get your capital for Rogue Security and won’t give me the chance to invest.”

  “Afraid so.”

  Wulf outlined how to take possession of the inheritance in the form of stocks and bonds rather than cashing them first, which would mitigate the taxes that Dieter would surely pay. During the conversation, Wulfram strolled across the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, adding a spoon of sugar to it from the bowl in the cabinet before he sipped.

  “Okay, great,” Dieter said, trying to remember all the money stuff that Wulfram had said. “One more thing you should know.”

  “What’s that?” Wulf asked, his tone lighter, almost breathy with relief.

  “Flicka’s pregn—”

  Pain crashed into the side of his jaw before he’d quite finished the word.

  Dieter staggered backward, holding the side of his face. “Okay, I deserved that one, and nice uppercut, but—”

  Wulfram’s face had gone utterly still, expressionless, carved from pale-gold stone. He walked toward Dieter, fists in front of his chest and ready.

  He said, “Wulfram, I’m not going to let you—”

  The next blows to Dieter’s ribs and head battered him in quick succession, but Dieter was a commando with years more hand-to-hand combat training and experience than Wulfram. He blocked every strike with his forearms except the one to his ribs, and that glancing blow didn’t drive the wind from his lungs. “Wulf—”

  Wulfram reeled backward, breathing hard. “You didn’t. You damn well didn’t.”

  “It was part of her plan. She thought if she was pregnant by someone else, that Pierre would leave her alone.”

  “You impregnated her. You jumped at the chance, and you did that to her.”

  “I married her. I’ve dreamed of marrying her. I want to live the rest of my life with her and our children. You should see what an amazing mother she is to Alina.”