In Shining Armor is book two of the Runaway Princess series and it picks up where book one left off, the aftermath of Flicka’s encounter with her horrible, soon-to-be ex-husband. She awakens hurting all over and it takes her a bit to remember what happened. While Blair Babylon does a pretty good job of recapping some of the things from Once Upon a Time you really need to read it first.

Dieter is working to arrange things so that they can get out of the country; no small feat since Flicka doesn’t have her passport. We also learn a bit more about Dieter in this one; he’s not exactly who he says he is.

Dieter would die to protect Flicka but it still hurts him to be lying to his best friend, Wulf, who is also Flick’s brother. He must lie because there is too much danger for Flicka if others know where she is; her ex-husband has said he will kill her if she won’t come back and live with him in Monaco.

This book is an adventure ride as well as a continuation of the love story between Flicka and Dieter. How they get out of the country, and then how they nearly don’t elude the bad guys, kept me on the edge of my seat during much of the story.

This is another wonderful story by Blair Babylon and I can’t wait for the next part to come out next month. The teaser for In A Faraway Land found at the end of In Shining Armor was the worst kind of teaser and made me want the next book even more than I already did.

As I said in my review of book one, I’m not a fan of cliffhangers. However, Blair Babylon’s writing is brilliant and she has never failed to publish the conclusion to a series once it has started. She also doesn’t take what should be one book and chop it into parts. Book one was over 300 pages long and this one is over 200.

I have no doubt that book three will be just as satisfying as the first two. This is one of those series that I can’t wait to know the end and yet I know I won’t want it to end. It’s a good thing that Blair already has several other stories planned out.

Reviews for Blair Babylon

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They spent many weeknight evenings like this, with Flicka warmly curled against Dieter’s side like a blond yellow Labrador retriever or with her hind paws in his lap, talking about sports and laughing at the worse rugby plays, football self-goals, and cricket sticky wickets.Tonight, she seemed twitchy as they watched, contemplating something.

Dieter sipped his beer. She would talk to him or she wouldn’t.

She might be mulling over a difficult piece of music, in which case Dieter would be no help at all.

He stroked her feet gently, her soft heels and pink-painted toenails, while he watched the television. Manchester United had put on a clinic, keeping the ball in the air so much that it seemed like the players were dancing ballet instead of running on the ground.

His hands strayed up to her smooth ankles, massaging, and back down to her insteps. Even her heels were satiny.

And larger, he noticed. They almost looked like grown-up feet.

Flicka jumped across the couch and straddled his legs.

Her fragile hands cradled his jaw.

Her silky blond hair fell from behind her shoulders, curling softly around Dieter’s face, curtaining them.

“Hey!” Dieter leaned sideways, peering around her and trying to get out from under her hair.

“Dieter—”

“I can’t see the telly.”

“Lieblingwächter.”

He leaned the other way, half-hanging over the arm of the couch, and brushed her hair aside. “Come on, Durchlauchtig. Manchester played a brill match today—”

Near his ear, Flicka breathed, “Make love to me.”

“What!” Dieter pressed himself back into the couch cushions, trying to mash himself through the upholstery to escape.

Her sparkling green eyes were right above him, and her hands really were holding his face so that he couldn’t turn away. She said, “I’ve been waiting for you for years—”

“Flicka, no. No, Durchlauchtig. I don’t think of you like that. You’re just a little girl. I couldn’t—”

“I am not a little girl.”

“You are! You’re my little Flicka, my Durchlauchtig, and you’re Wulf’s baby sister. If you were any younger, I’d have custody of you while Wulfram is in Chicago.”

“I’m twenty years old,” she said. “Twenty. Not seventeen, not eighteen. Twenty years old. The big two-oh.”

“Jesus, Flicka. If you had any idea how ridiculous that sounds—”

“—and I want to go to bed with you.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“I’ve had a crush on you for years.”

“A teenage crush. Flicka, I’m almost thirty. I’m not right for you. You’re just a little girl—”

“Look at me.”

“I am looking at you, Durchlauchtig. You’re just the same—”

To retreat farther from her, Dieter laid his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes, and he put his hands on her waist to tumble her off of his thighs.

Closing his eyes was the mistake.

Touching her made him realize it.

Dieter’s eyes remembered Flicka as a silly kid or gawky teen, composed of stabbing elbows and heels, too-large teeth, and braided blond hair.

But for a year or longer, his body had been responding to the adult woman she was, following the perfume she trailed as she walked through the apartment they shared.

His heart rate picked up when her warmth neared him.

When he massaged her feet, he’d been allowing his hands to drift upward to her ankles and calves, stroking her soft skin, rather than just holding her feet so she wouldn’t nail him in the nuts when she found something funny and kicked.

Every morning before they left the apartment, she asked him, “How do I look?”

The last year or so, he’d looked at her, his eyes following the swells and dips of her body and seeing the glowing light in her emerald green eyes, and he’d meant it when he said, “Beautiful, Durchlauchtig.”

His throat had closed sometimes, and those words had come out in a testosterone-laced growl.

He had not allowed himself to realize how physically he had been responding to her.

When his hands alighted on Flicka’s hips and stroked up to her waist, he traced the smooth, rounded hips of the woman on his lap.

He froze, unable to reconcile the womanly curves in his hands with the child in his mind.

Beside his ear, a woman’s alto voice whispered, “Make love to me.”

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