Page 118 of Happily Ever After

“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 wheneveryou 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 differentplane.”

“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 hishand 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 lightabove 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 ranhis 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.

ThiswasDieter 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 thepulse 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 cinnamon, musk, and spices of his cologne that he’d brought back from Geneva along with their clothes, and that clean, musky, male scent ofhimunder it, the scent that drifted through their sheets at night or that she inhaled when he was crouched over her, protectingher.

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.