Some people walked among the crowd, their hands lightly floating among the purses and packs as they collected small items.
Everyone was perfectly polite, and Flicka said, “Bonjour,” to several people when they greeted her as they passed. It was still Geneva, after all.
Thebars blared music: tech house, rock, and an odd country and electronica mix. Overly muscular men stood in the doorways, handing out flyers to some of the chattering people and glaring at others.
Smoke wafted among the pedestrians—the harsh fumes of tobacco, the skunk of pot, and the occasional, more chemical puff. She tried not to breathe too much in, especially of the latter stuff. The asphaltitself seemed to exude the smell of stale beer.
She had nothing the pickpockets nor the prostitutes wanted, and Dieter’s glare above her head kept anyone more dangerous at bay. With that black leather jacket straining over his burly chest and arms and his scruffy blond hair and beard, he looked particularly intimidating. Flicka stayed close to him as they bumped and nudged through the throngof people that pressed together on the sidewalk, just a few hours after sunset.
Dieter dodged into a building on a corner of an intersection where horns blared and music screamed from bars on the street. Flicka shadowed him.
Inside, a bored man was swiping up on his phone and said, “Seventy euros for an hour or a hundred euros for the night, and if she steals your wallet, we’re not responsible.”
Oh Lord, he thought— “I’m not—”
Dieter stepped in front of her and counted out bills. “I understand. The night, thank you.”
Oh, right.It was better that the guy didn’t look at Flicka too closely, anyway.
Yeah, this was a good neighborhood if one wanted to avoid the police.
Flicka did not ask Dieter how he knew about the neighborhood, where to park, and the direct route to a hotel that askedno questions. Raphael Mirabaud had probably known this area quite well.
They climbed a steep, spiral staircase to a room on the fourth floor that overlooked the swirling crowd below. Dieter walked behind her, one hand resting on her lower back.
The room was tiny and held a double bed and a dresser topped with a television. With the windows closed, even the music blasting from the bars was barelyaudible. Those pre-war buildings had been built of stone and real plaster, and they insulated sound exceptionally well.
Flicka turned. “He thought I was a—”
Dieter assured her, “He didn’t even look at you. A guy came in off the street with a woman, and he made an assumption that probably holds up nine times out of ten around here.”
She smiled at him. “Let me take a shower first, and you canjudge whether he was wrong or not.”
His smile turned sultry, and he stepped closer to her. “Why wait until you getoutof the shower, my sweet, naughty lady of the night?”
He stripped the clothes off of her, practically ripping the silk ball gown that she’d lived in for two days since she’d escaped from the Prince’s Winter Ball.
Beads clattered on the floor, but Flicka didn’t care. That stupid,black dress was the last thing Pierre had seen her in. She never wanted to wear it again. She never wanted toseeit again. It had been chosen for the Princess of Monaco, not for her.
She stood in her bra, panties, and high-heeled pumps in the cool room, and Dieter’s gaze devoured her bare skin. He growled, “God, you’re beautiful.”
She reached to push the jacket off Dieter’s shoulders and hesitated.In that black leather, with his black tee shirt and slacks, his hair mussed and his golden beard scruffy on his jaw, Dieter looked rougher than he ever had before, except perhaps for when he’d come back to their London flat after an operation with his former ARD-10 colleagues. She ran her hands up his broad pectoral muscles and down over the ripples of his abs under the soft cotton of histee shirt.
He didn’t look like someone else, though. He sure as hell didn’t look like Raphael Mirabaud, son of a high-caste, Swiss banking family. He looked more and more like Dieter Schwarz, the mercenary. Even the light in his gray eyes suggested the spark of violence.
If anyone could keep Flicka safe, this rough, dangerous version of Dieter could.
He took her face in his hand, running histhumb over her chin and jaw, and bent his head.
His lips were less gentle when he kissed her. He pushed her up against the wall and opened her mouth with his, sucking and biting her lips and forcing his tongue against hers.
Flicka shoved his jacket off his shoulders, and he shucked the rest of his clothes, breaking off the ravaging kiss only to strip his tee shirt off over his head.
He crowdedher toward the small bathroom, grabbing her—his hands rubbing and massaging her back and ass—and spinning them both around several times before they navigated the narrow doorway. Flicka turned on the water in the shower while he chewed on the back of her neck from behind, holding her breasts in his hands and tormenting her by pinching her nipples, until the water warmed enough for them to getin.
The green-tiled shower stall was barely big enough for them, and their skin slipped together while he soaped her and washed her hair with the tiny bottles on a high shelf by the showerhead. Soap and lavender scented the steam. She did her best to wash him but he kept grabbing her, shoving her against the wall, and kissing her hard in the hot water.
After a while, they must have been cleanenough, because Dieter steered her out of the shower and to the bed, where he pressed her into the stiff mattress and plowed into her, taking her hard with one knee on the mattress and one foot on the floor for leverage. Flicka gasped as he took her, holding onto his shoulders as he grunted and growled, “You’re mine now. No one will take you again. I don’t care where we have to go or how we haveto live, but you’re mine, now and forever.”
