Once Upon A Time by Blair Babylon
Series: Runaway Princess: Flicka #1
Publication date: April 3rd, 2018
Synopsis (according to Goodreads):
When a real princess falls in love with a man who is definitely not a prince, a royal fairy tale turns dangerous.
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a beautiful princess, Flicka von Hannover, who lived an enchanted life. She jetted around Europe staging charity events with friends, had married a handsome prince in the most spectacular royal wedding of the 21st century, and should have lived happily ever after.
But then she found the handsome prince in bed with a duchess. And then a coffee shop barista. And then her own goddamn secretary.
Finally, the beautiful princess had had enough of the cheating prince, and she ran away.
Once she had stepped out of the royal fairy tale, life became grayer, grittier, and rougher. The prince didn't like that she had left and sent henchmen to take her back to the castle. Her worried royal brother sent people to look for her, too.
But the princess didn't want to be found. The princess got a job and made her own way in the world. Even cut off from everyone she knew, she was more resourceful than she had thought she might be. She did okay. From hiding, she sent legal separation papers and then divorce documents, but the prince wouldn't sign them. He said he wouldn't let her go. even in these modern times, the prince could lock the princess up in a dungeon of legal forms and provisions that she wouldn't be able to break out of. The prince wanted his princess back because he couldn't take his throne without her.
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Excerpt
Flicka's hands cramped from squeezing the life out of her little clutch purse.
Dieter stood behind Wulf, his face as grim as she felt.
He wasn't watching the clouds outside the windows or the closed door, however, like he always did.
His dove gray eyes were trained on her, locked on her face.
Between them, Flicka's brother Wulfram married the woman he was so in love with.
Flicka's serene smile never faltered. She was too much of a princess for that.
But his eyes--
She had thought of his eyes as just gray when she was a kid, but her perception had changed the year she'd turned eighteen.
They were too dark to be silvery.
They were the gray of dangerous storm clouds building on the horizon, ready to sweep down and overturn your life.
Every time he had touched her, her whole world had turned upside down. Everything she had thought was important in her life--music, revolution--had fallen away when his fingers had grazed her skin.
She had been twenty when he'd made love to her the first time.
Her very first time.
And it had been completely her idea.
And after that, she'd never gotten over him.
If she had been so uncultured to not remain still and serene at her brother's wedding, she would have shaken that thought out of her head.
Instead, like a chain of thoughts, it was replaced with moments from their year-long affair. She could feel the patchwork of it: a touch from the night she'd attended Christine Grimaldi's recital, a glance from his gray eyes on a day after she'd aced a performance at college, the way he moved in her one late night when she'd attended a charity benefit with a date but gone home with Dieter.
Every moment of their year together was at his fingertips.
He had insisted that they keep their relationship an absolute secret. No one knew at the time, and no one must ever know.
So Flicka went to charity and social events with other men.
Her dates picked her up in their cars driven by their chauffeurs, danced with her, talked with her, and drove her home for a comparatively chaste kiss.
Dieter squired her inside Kensington Palace without a twitch of emotion for her or them, even though he had been shadowing her all night from the walls, the balconies, and the front seats of the cars.
Once inside, his hands found her.
One time, she had been out with some duke or another to some event benefiting the impoverished children of somewhere, and the duke had been driven off in his limo into the night.
As soon as the door had shut on the Kensington Palace apartment that they shared for her protection, he had shoved her against the wall.
He whispered in her ear, "Out there, who are you?"
"Prinzessin Friederike Augusta," she whispered, trying not to smile too much.
"And in here?" he asked. "In my bed, whose are you?"
"Yours," Flicka whispered.
Dieter stood behind Wulf, his face as grim as she felt.
He wasn't watching the clouds outside the windows or the closed door, however, like he always did.
His dove gray eyes were trained on her, locked on her face.
Between them, Flicka's brother Wulfram married the woman he was so in love with.
Flicka's serene smile never faltered. She was too much of a princess for that.
But his eyes--
She had thought of his eyes as just gray when she was a kid, but her perception had changed the year she'd turned eighteen.
They were too dark to be silvery.
They were the gray of dangerous storm clouds building on the horizon, ready to sweep down and overturn your life.
Every time he had touched her, her whole world had turned upside down. Everything she had thought was important in her life--music, revolution--had fallen away when his fingers had grazed her skin.
She had been twenty when he'd made love to her the first time.
Her very first time.
And it had been completely her idea.
And after that, she'd never gotten over him.
If she had been so uncultured to not remain still and serene at her brother's wedding, she would have shaken that thought out of her head.
Instead, like a chain of thoughts, it was replaced with moments from their year-long affair. She could feel the patchwork of it: a touch from the night she'd attended Christine Grimaldi's recital, a glance from his gray eyes on a day after she'd aced a performance at college, the way he moved in her one late night when she'd attended a charity benefit with a date but gone home with Dieter.
Every moment of their year together was at his fingertips.
He had insisted that they keep their relationship an absolute secret. No one knew at the time, and no one must ever know.
So Flicka went to charity and social events with other men.
Her dates picked her up in their cars driven by their chauffeurs, danced with her, talked with her, and drove her home for a comparatively chaste kiss.
Dieter squired her inside Kensington Palace without a twitch of emotion for her or them, even though he had been shadowing her all night from the walls, the balconies, and the front seats of the cars.
Once inside, his hands found her.
One time, she had been out with some duke or another to some event benefiting the impoverished children of somewhere, and the duke had been driven off in his limo into the night.
As soon as the door had shut on the Kensington Palace apartment that they shared for her protection, he had shoved her against the wall.
He whispered in her ear, "Out there, who are you?"
"Prinzessin Friederike Augusta," she whispered, trying not to smile too much.
"And in here?" he asked. "In my bed, whose are you?"
"Yours," Flicka whispered.
About the Author:
Blair Babylon is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author who used to publish literary fiction. Because professional reviews of her other fiction usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex and too much interesting plot, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy, suspenseful romance.
