Page 87 of At Midnight

He shook his newspaper to straighten it and grumbled, “I look like a banker instead of a soldier.”

“I think it looks amazing.”

His smilewarmed as he looked up at her. “All right, then I’ll keep it, too.”

Flicka turned back in her seat.

Alina had taken to sitting with Flicka when she could, probably because Flicka was with her so much. It was a little distressing that she didn’t want to sit with Raphael, though. He was her father. Flicka was just kind of a babysitter.

No, she wasn’t.

Flicka was now Alina’s stepmother.

Well,that was interesting.

It wasn’t every day that one went from being the princess in the story to being the stepmother.

Flicka wondered if she would have to turn evil, and then she wondered just how much of a change that would be, anyway. She knew she’d always been a trifle willful and spoiled. “Evil” probably wouldn’t be a stretch for her.

Valerian was walking down the aisle of the plane towardthem, clutching the backs of the seats during the minor turbulence.

He nodded at Flicka, and she smiled sunnily and nodded in return even though he had always made shivers crawl up her spine. He looked like an older version of Raphael, even suggesting that Raphael was going to be a stunning silver fox someday, and yet something in Valerian was intrinsically so different.

Raphael had never givenher scared chills like that; not when she’d met him as a kid, not when he had peeled too-aggressive dates off of her as a teenager, and not when he’d been so astonishingly dominant in London that she’d been ready to do absolutely anything for him—even kneel on the floor at his feet, naked, while he pet her hair and stroked her breasts, sometimes for hours before he’d done whatever else he’d likedto her.

A different kind of shiver ran through Flicka, and she crossed her legs. Her clit was throbbing between her thighs at the memory.

Behind her, Valerian said to Raphael, “You have a meeting tonight to discuss the next shipment.”

Raphael said, “I understand.”

Even their voices were similar, but for their age difference.

The newspaper rattled again as Valerian walked back toward the frontof the plane.

Flicka held Alina’s hand and didn’t want to know what the hell that was about.