In A Faraway Land (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 3)

by Blair Babylon

  His hand stroked up her arm. “Sit facing me.”

  To do that, she had to straddle his hard thighs, and her slim skirt rode up to the tops of her legs.

  Dieter ran his hands up her legs like he was chasing the hem of her skirt. “Just as much as you want for now.” The rasp in his voice sounded like he was reminding himself more than her. “And I’ll stop. If you say your safeword, I’ll stop. You need a slow word, though.”

  “Slow?” she asked, getting lost in his hands stroking her thighs. The calluses on his palms were rough on her skin, almost scratching her. She held onto his shoulders and slid one hand over the heavy pectoral muscles of his chest, round under her fingers. The cotton shirt he wore was still crisp, and the buttons were hard knots under her palm.

  He said, “To slow down, to pause, but not stop. Choose one.”

  Flicka closed her eyes, shutting out the tiny townhouse, decorated in desert tan and dusty sage green, and the darkness beyond the horizontal blinds over the windows. His chest warmed her hand. “Abdicate.”

  He chuckled, a deep sound that thrummed in his chest under her palm. “Agreed. Abdicate means to slow down.”

  Whiskey-warm breath touched her neck. “What’s yours?”

  “I don’t need one,” he growled against her skin.

  “That’s the game,” she said.

  One of his hands curled over her backside, cupping her ass. The other slipped under her blouse in back and traveled slowly up her spine. He whispered, “Geneva,” near her throat.

  That—was interesting.

  Dieter’s hands and lips on her skin gathered all of her attention and held it, and she forgot to wonder why Geneva was a word that he wouldn’t want to say.

  Trembling started in her chest, somewhere below the whiskey fog.

  His hand pressed her backside, and he lifted his knees.

  She slid down his legs, closer to him.

  His chest pressed against her stomach and breasts, and his arms wrapped more tightly around her. He mouthed her neck, his breath humid and warm on her skin.

  He held her tightly against him, her panties against his fly, and he was hard between her legs. When he breathed, his pants nudged her clit through the thin cotton of her panties.

  The trembling turned to shaking, but she held on around his neck.

  He pulled back and kissed her mouth, his tongue warmly wrapping hers between their open lips.

  His hands tightened on her clothes, turning into fists.

  Dieter’s teeth scraped the skin where her neck met her shoulder, almost biting her. The nip hit a bruise under her skin there, and it hurt.

  The pain rattled through her, and the shaking in her bones broke through the thin fog of liquor.

  His hands felt too much like he was holding her down.

  His hot mouth was too near the back of her neck, where Pierre had bitten her and then held her down.

  And then Pierre’s hands had wrapped around her throat, and she couldn’t scratch them loose and she couldn’t breathe.

  Flicka cried out, “Invisible. Invisible! Stop, oh stop!”

  Dieter fell backward in the chair, his hands clutching her hips, and his gray eyes looked blank as he blinked.

  “Invisible,” Flicka sobbed.

  “I stopped,” Dieter panted. He stroked her hair. “I stopped. Are you okay?”

  Flicka shoved at his shoulders, pushing herself backward and off his legs. She tried to balance, but she stumbled, her feet slipping on the linoleum floor. Her knees crashed onto the hard floor, and she scurried backward.

  Dieter followed her down, kneeling beside her. His hands hovered in the air around her, not touching. “Flicka. Durchlauchtig. You’re all right. Stand up. Please stand up.”

  Water weighed in Flicka’s arms and legs and made her weak. “I can’t. Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m not. I’m not touching you.” His hands were open and grasping right in front of her face. “Come on. Stand up. You’re killing me. Stand up.”

  She forced her arm to push outward and touch his hand.

  He held her hand gently and lifted, directing her to her knees. “Come on.”

  She reached for his hands with her other one, and he raised her to her feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, never. Never with me, Durchlauchtig. You’re okay. We’ll figure this out. You need counseling. It’s not as easy as one drunken night.”

  Her legs shook under her, and she staggered to a chair. She pushed a hank of hair out of her face. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Good,” Dieter said. He crouched beside where she sat, still holding onto her hand. “You need counseling, not alcohol. We’ll find help for you.”

  “Yeah,” Flicka said. His words bounced around her unthinking brain. “Okay.”

  “Some of my friends in the special forces had seen terrible things, and counseling helped them. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than whiskey. I had to tell them that, too. Everyone tries whiskey first, and then counseling.”

  Flicka managed to smile a little at him.

  “There,” he said, and a little of the frantic energy left his eyes and shoulders. “Good. Just breathe. And then we’ll go to bed and I’ll tell you a story, and you’ll be okay, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, breathing more easily and wanting to be okay for him. “I’ll be all right.”

  It felt like a lie.

  New Life Skills

  Flicka von Hannover

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to.

  It was just all the dials and buttons and things.

  Flicka stared at the darned contraption, as Rae would have called it. She glanced up at Dieter, who was trying to be bland but the smug was showing through. “So you just put the clothes in there.”

  He opened a tiny drawer. “The soap powder goes here. It will beep when it’s done. When it beeps, you take the clothes out and put them in the dryer, which is the box on the top. This is just a small unit, meant for apartments. Usually, the machines are separate and sit side-by-side.”

  The machine swished. “So, the clothes just flop around in the water for a little while, and that’s what it calls clean?”

  “That’s how your housekeepers have always done it.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure they did something else. I’ve always had very good staff.”

  “They ironed or steamed the wrinkles out, probably.”

  “It’s going to be wrinkled?”

  “Probably not much. Your ‘costume’ felt like polyester and rayon.”

  “This is weird. I can’t believe you know how to do it.”

  Dieter laughed. “I do laundry all the time. I’ve been doing my own laundry since I was seventeen.”

  “You did your own laundry in the military?”

  “Of course.”

  She rounded on him. “Does Wulfie know how to do laundry?”

  “Absolutely. I remember his first weekend in the barracks. I had to show him where the soap went, too. In his defense, a lot of the conscripts didn’t know how to do their own laundry, but they learned.”

  She glared at the machine, willing it to clean her costume well. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to figure this out.”

  Dieter smirked at her. “Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to clean the bathroom. Wulfram learned how to scrub toilets in the military, too.”

  Sometimes, Flicka missed the princess life.

  Snooping and Regrets

  Flicka von Hannover

  I regretted snooping

  as soon as I saw the name.

  Dieter loaded Alina into a hired car to take her to the daycare while Flicka did just a few more things around the townhouse.

  Once the car turned the corner, she made a beeline for Dieter’s file folder he kept in the top drawer of their dresser.

  She’d tried to resist. She’d tried to refrain.

  But she just had to know, damn it.

  She tugged the drawer—damn thing stuck—and pulled out the manila folder w
ith a few sheets of paper inside.

  The Mirabaud passports were there, the Gretchen one that she had used and the one for Dieter under the name Raphael.

  Raphael.

  And another passport, a Swiss military one for official travel, expired the year before. That one had Dieter’s picture and listed his name as Dieter Schwarz.

  She set the passports aside.

  Just as she’d suspected, there was a birth certificate for Alina. He’d shown it to the daycare center when they’d enrolled her.

  The toddler girl’s name was Alina Sophie Mirabaud. Her father’s name was listed as Raphael, and her mother’s as Gretchen. Alina had been born in Chicago.

  Panic closed around Flicka’s heart.

  More papers filled the folder. A stapled stack was a divorce decree, a signed notice of the dissolution of the marriage of Gretchen Mirabaud, born Gretchen Muller, and Raphael Mirabaud.

  Raphael.

  There was even a Swiss birth certificate written in five languages for Raphael Mirabaud. It listed his birthday as October twenty-sixth, and Raphael was almost seven months younger than Dieter claimed he was.

  That asshole was a Scorpio, not a Virgo.

  Raphael.

  She said it out loud, trying it in her mouth, “Raphael.”

  It felt foreign. It felt wrong.

  It felt like Dieter Schwarz had been lying to her for over a decade, since she was a little girl.

  Flicka closed her eyes, shoved the folder back in the drawer, and slammed it shut.

  She wouldn’t believe the papers. Paperwork could be forged.

  Dieter wouldn’t lie to her.

  She resolved not to believe it at all, no matter what.

  At the Library

  Flicka von Hannover

  There were lots of little kids.

  It was weird.

  Dieter asked Flicka if she wanted to accompany him and Alina to a library program before they dropped Alina off at daycare for the evening.

  “A library program?” Flicka asked as she tucked herself into her costume, tying her shirt tightly under her boobs. “Like, isn’t she too young to check out books by herself? She can’t even read yet.”

  “It’s a children’s program,” Dieter said, buttoning his shirt over his broad chest. “Like they have in a creche back home.”

  “All right,” Flicka said, “if it’s more convenient.”

  At the library, they followed a herd of small tots leading their caretakers to a back room in the children’s section.

  The kids sat on the floor around a chair at the front, though Alina lingered near Dieter’s legs. The adults sat on chairs near the back. A lot of the adults knew each other and struck up conversations right away. Alina stood between Dieter’s legs, swaying and resting her tiny hands on his knees like she might catapult out of a starting gate.

  Flicka took the chair beside Dieter and watched the other women eye him.

  Dieter leaned down and spoke softly to Alina, encouraging her to sit with the other kids. The toddler shook her head, her blond hair swishing around her ears.

  Flicka listened and realized he was speaking the Swiss language Alemannic to her, not English.

  Weird.

  Well, no. It made sense. Gretchen had a Swiss passport. They probably spoke Alemannic at home to her.

  Dieter had had a wife and a family and a whole life without Flicka.

  They had missed a lot of each other’s lives in those two years, after their London fling.

  It was a disturbing thought.

  Flicka clutched her hands together and stared at her fingernails.

  She needed a manicure. They didn’t have money for such indulgences. Maybe she should buy some polish. The girls used to paint each other’s nails in the Le Rosey dorms when they couldn’t get to a city for a proper manicure. She knew how to paint her own nails. She wasn’t entirely helpless.

  Beside her, Dieter whispered to Alina. The baby looked up at him, searching his face with her pale green eyes, and took a few tentative steps toward the other children. She turned and looked back at him, her eyes wide on her tiny face.

  “Go on,” he told her, still in Alemannic.

  The woman next to Flicka asked, “Do you speak English?”

  “Oh, yes,” Flicka told her, careful to repress any accent she might have left over. “We all do.”

  “What language is he speaking to her?”

  “Alemannic,” Flicka told her. “It’s a Swiss dialect of German, but kind of different.”

  “That’s wonderful,” the woman said. “It’s great that she’ll be bilingual. It’s so useful. You have a beautiful family.”

  A slice cut across Flicka’s chest.

  To the woman, she smiled and said, “Thank you.”

  Flicka resumed watching the children and blinked hard, making sure nothing untoward happened around her tear ducts.

  Alina kept looking back, but she crouched with the other children and paid attention to the woman at the front.

  A librarian read a book to the assembled kids, asking them questions about it as she read. Some of the older kids shouted out answers. Alina seemed to follow along, looking at the woman and the other kids and clapping along when the other kids did.

  After the program, they left Alina at the daycare and went to work.

  As they walked through the dark and clanging lobby of the Monaco Casino, Dieter asked Flicka, “What did you think about the library program?”

  She paused, thinking, and said, “It was a nice room, and it’s a nice idea, to gather children together to read a book to them. When these children are ejected from their nurseries, separated from their staff of nannies, and sent to boarding school for kindergarten, they will be ready for the transition more than a child who stays in their nursery with only occasional trips to the zoo or something.”

  Dieter stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You didn’t go to library programs or anything like that?”

  “Oh, no. I had nannies to take care of me. My mother was around much more for me than she was for Wulfram and Constantin, until she got sick, of course. She read a book to me every day for at least a few minutes.”

  “So you never saw other children?”

  She smiled at him, uncomprehending. “I saw Wulfie when he was home from school.”

  “But he wasn’t a little girl.”

  She laughed. “He’ll be glad to know the distinction is obvious.”

  “But you should have played with other little girls.”

  Flicka shrugged. “I figured out how to do that when I was shipped off to Le Rosey.”

  “No wonder you ended up in Wulfram’s dormitory room every night.”

  “It was fine. I was fine.” She smiled up at him because no one needed to feel sorry for the poor little princess.

  Dieter ran his fingers down her arm. “I’m glad Wulfram was there for you. You deserved better.”

  She took a step backward. “I have to get to work. I’m supposed to be on the floor in five minutes. See you after work.”

  Gamblers thronged the casino, as always, rattling dice, clicking chips, and pulling the levers of flashing, blaring slot machines.

  Flicka wove between the rows, taking orders and delivering drinks, and trying not to think about how her life would have been different if she had grown up with a father like Dieter, who took his daughter to swimming lessons and library programs, read books to her in bed every night, and tucked her under the covers.

  Her nannies had done all that, and that was practically as good, right?

  Waitressing Is A Tough Job

  Flicka von Hannover

  I was really bad at waitressing.

  Flicka stood in front of the desk, looking around the room and wishing she were somewhere else, while the HR manager yelled at her.

  A dark stain discolored the dark brown carpet around her shoes and pointed a long tail toward the rickety desk.

  “You can’t talk to the patrons for minutes at a t
ime,” the guy yelled at her. “You need to get in there, get the order, and get it back to the bar. It should take ten seconds per customer at a table, tops. In three minutes, you should get orders from five customers, not one of them! No more of that negotiation or whatever you were doing out there. No more playing guessing games with your customers. Other customers are waiting, and they need to get drunk so they’ll lose more money to the house. Ten seconds with each patron! We’ve got to keep these damned lights on!”

  “Yes, sir,” Flicka said, retreating somewhere lonely inside. Nothing really mattered. No one really mattered.

  Nothing mattered except that she needed to make three hundred dollars in tips today to cover the bare essentials like Alina’s daycare, assuming that Dieter won about the same from his poker table. If he didn’t, then she needed more.

  “Look, you’ve gotten better with remembering who gets what. That’s improvement. I’m glad to see it. Now let’s improve this part, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, wondering if she had blinked recently. Grit crusted her eyes.

  “Now get out there and work those patrons. Get them drunk and stupid, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” She walked out of his office.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the hiring manager finger-comb his hair back from his face and throw back the dregs of a cup of coffee.

  As Flicka plodded out on the casino floor, blue-haired Conni sneered at her. Her crimson lipstick exaggerated her disdain for Flicka.

  Yeah, trust Conni to snatch any opportunity to make something worse.

  Flicka hit her tables fast. Every time she talked to a patron, a clock started counting down in her head: Ten, nine, eight—

  That hiring manager guy was standing in the shadows where the flashing lights didn’t reach, watching her.