A Prince on Paper

by Alyssa Cole

  She shifted her body a bit, sliding up on the bed, and he gentled his touch until she had repositioned herself beneath his hand, exactly where she wanted him to touch her. She was a woman who knew what she wanted.

  She wants you.

  He increased the pressure, massaging deep circles over her clit as her fingernails dug into his shoulders and her moans feathered his lips.

  “That feels good,” she whispered. “You know exactly how to touch me. Can you—can you feel how wet I am?”

  Johan almost came right then because he knew she was saying these things for him. She’d asked him what he liked before, and she’d remembered, and now each time they came together she pushed herself further from her comfort zone.

  She was slick beneath his hand, and he adjusted it to slide his ring finger into her hot opening, groaning as she squeezed around him.

  “Yes. You’re wet and hot and tight, Nya.”

  She shuddered and thrust her hips up hard—she pushed herself because she liked dirty talk, too.

  He moved his mouth, kissing along her jawline and scraping his teeth along her neck. When one of her hands left his shoulder he barely noticed—until it slipped into the waistband of his sweatpants and gripped his cock lightly.

  “Does this feel good?” she asked as she began stroking him, her hand soft and warm.

  “Yes,” he choked out.

  “Tell me what you want me to do.” She nipped his ear—something he’d done to her before—and Johan shuddered hard.

  “Squeeze me as you stroke.”

  Her fingers flexed and then her grip firmed around his shaft. Her movement was jerky but there was no hesitation. “Like this?”

  “Yes, like that. Just like that, Nya.” His hips bucked as pleasure shot up his spine.

  “Oh goddess,” she moaned, her hand stilling as her back arched up off the bed and her channel clenched his fingers.

  Then her other hand came down to tug at the sweatpants, pushing them down to his knees. He leaned back a bit to give her space, and so he saw the way her gaze locked onto his erection.

  A slow smile spread across her face. “And now is where I will tell you that you are beautiful.”

  Johan felt himself actually flush at the compliment, and he made to retort but it was cut off by a groan as she resumed her motion without the impediment of fabric and elastic, her palm gliding smoothly up and down from the base to the head, her rhythm matching that of his own hand against her.

  After that, she didn’t talk anymore and neither did he. He couldn’t—all of his energy was focused on fighting the churning pressure for release in his balls and urging her toward her own orgasm.

  He pushed another finger inside of her, twisting his wrist as he thrust into her so that his thumb could massage her clit, and she broke without warning, her inner walls quaking around his fingers and her pleasure flowing over his knuckles.

  Her cries of pleasure bounced around the walls and high ceiling of his room, and her teeth pressed into his palm as she turned her mouth into his hand to muffle them, but Johan observed these things from a distance as his own orgasm smashed into him, hunching him over as he thrust into her hand.

  He collapsed onto the bed beside her, sweatpants still around his knees, cheeks hot, and hand tingling from where her teeth had grazed him. He’d always thought of her teeth as cute, endearing, but now each time she smiled he would remember the pleasant sharpness of them and her muffled cries.

  She stretched, making a sound suspiciously close to “hrim” as she did it, then nestled down against him. He looked at her, negligee bunched around her waist and braids fanned out on the pillow behind her.

  “You should sleep in my bed from now on,” he said because that was the first coherent thought that came to him. “You don’t have to knock or ask me. I want you here.”

  From now on. That sounded like a long time—it sounded like the future—but she was leaving and soon.

  She nodded.

  “It’s a very comfortable bed.” Her hand began to slip down his chest and over his abs. “How is your shower? Can we try that, too?”

  He scooped her up and was on his feet in what had to be some kind of record time.

  “Comme tu willst,” he said, kissing her temple just before he nudged the bathroom door open with his toe. He didn’t think about how his heart felt too large or his whole body ached for her. He focused on her body, and what he would do to give her pleasure again and again.

  For now, because now was the only time he was granting himself with her.

  Chapter 21

  Nya could feel people’s eyes on her as she walked through the lobby of the castle toward the car waiting to bring her to the crèche for a photo op with some children. It was the fifth school she’d visited after having grown tired of sitting around the castle—as much as she enjoyed the laughter, caresses, and caring that marked her time with Johan, she’d wanted to escape her father for a reason. She wouldn’t become an extension of or accessory for any man, even while pretending to be his fiancée.

  It was odd, how she’d grown used to life in Liechtienbourg so quickly. She liked the food. She liked the people she met in the street. She even liked the sound of the language, now that she’d heard it day in and day out for the past two weeks. The city was just small enough to make her feel comfortable, and not so large that she ever panicked and felt lost in a crowd. She felt . . . good. She felt just right, even now, without Johan at her side.

  Before she would have shrank away from the way people stared, but she met their gazes with a smile and a nod. She didn’t have to remind herself to hold her chin high or not to be afraid and it wasn’t just because of the two bodyguards flanking her or Greta at her side. Her clipped wings had started to grow back, and at least a few of the feathers were fire bright.

  She wondered if Johan passed her some of his overconfidence when he kissed her and touched her each night when she went to his bed. As much as she loved his hands and his mouth on her body, she enjoyed the actual sleeping just as much.

  Johan hugged her tightly as they slept, as if she were his protection from the evils of the world, and sometimes she woke up holding him in the same way. She’d never slept more soundly, and it hurt to think of what an empty bed would feel like once they called off their engagement, so she tried not to.

  She thought of the sun blinking out instead.

  Ahead of her, in the lobby of the crèche, a group of small children were assembled. As in the previous schools she’d visited, the children came from all ethnic backgrounds, the results of Liechtienbourg’s welcoming of refugees as well as its imperialist history.

  The three kids in the center, boys with skin from golden tan to dark brown, held up a sign with WËLLKOMM written in rainbow letters and the small handprints of the class’s children pressed around it on the white poster board.

  “Oh, aren’t they adorable?” Nya asked.

  “I suppose,” Greta said cheerily. “If you enjoy small cute animals that leave chaos in their wake.”

  Nya laughed. She knew the woman didn’t mean it in a bad way.

  “Wëllkomm!” the children called out, and she responded in the same way. She’d been practicing basic Liechtienbourgish in order to avoid being pelted by waffles, and because some part of her felt a connection to this weird little country that was so different from but also so similar to her own.

  She went about the routine that she had at every school—she took a tour of the classroom while chatting with the teachers and their support staff, then read a book to the children with her best Liechtienbourger accent. She read the same story every time, one she’d taken from Johan’s bedside bookshelf to practice her language. It was about an evil witch who learns to love the deer who keeps eating the medicinal herbs she plants in her garden.

  At the end of the reading, the children crowded around to take a photo, and Nya handed her phone to Greta. “Can you take a few for me?”

  Greta snapped the photos, and as
Nya hugged the children goodbye, a little girl with skin the same dark brown as Nya’s own held on for much longer than the others. She said something, but too low and with the gap-toothed lisp of a child, making it difficult for Nya to understand.

  Her teacher grinned. “She says that she asked her mamm if she can wear her hair in braids, too, because princesses have braids.”

  “Oh.” Nya’s heart filled with an unexpected joy, but also sadness. She hadn’t thought of this aspect of her and Johan’s soon-to-be breakup, which would make the headlines. She hadn’t thought of it really because, technically, Johan wasn’t a prince. But no one paid that much mind at this point—his reign as playboy prince was something so many people saw as just as valid as any other type of royalty. How many girls looked at Nya and saw their own princess potential in her? How many would be disappointed by this game she’d decided to play?

  “Well, whatever hairstyle you wear can be a princess hairstyle, because anyone can be a princess,” Nya said, knowing it was a bad reply, but completely at a loss for how to respond. Giving the child an affirmative was further into the realm of lying than she was willing to go.

  The girl just smiled, tightening the clamp of guilt around Nya.

  She patted the girl’s head and then stood, walking over to Greta.

  “Here you go,” Greta said as she handed back her phone. “We should get back to the castle.”

  She was giving Nya a strange look and when Nya looked at the phone, there was a message from Portia in view on the screen.

  Portia: Guys, I have to tell you about this new face mask I’m using. The main ingredient is SNAIL SLIME okay I know that sounds gross and I feel bad for the snails who died so my skin could glow, but my face is SO SOFT.

  “Oh, please excuse my friend,” she said.

  “Friend? What friend, I didn’t see anything.” Greta smiled but it looked forced. She appreciated the assistant’s lie, but she was clearly upset. Maybe Greta was a vegan?

  “Shall we return?”

  “We shall.”

  The rest of the ride back was spent in frigid silence from Greta, who apparently was a lover of all creatures great and small and now thought Nya was friends with unrepentant snail killers and would hold it against her.

  Nya frowned, then unlocked her phone to see if Johan had sent a message from the meeting he’d attended with Linus to make amends for punching the opposition leader. He hadn’t texted, but Hanjo had.

  The time for freedom from this outdated institution is near. I know you’ve doubted if what I’m doing is right, but I’m so lucky to have you by my side as I work to dismantle this oppressive system.<3

  She’d missed the message and would have to restart from the previous save point.

  This was the biggest difficulty of the game, which was relatively straightforward apart from the timing of the messages. It operated in the same way a real relationship did. How much time were you willing to put into it? How anxiously were you awaiting calls and texts from your beloved?

  This would be the fourth time she’d had to restart the game since she’d arrived. Once she’d started sleeping with Johan, she’d found it rude to creep off in the middle of the night to flirt with a virtual version of him. But she’d already spent too much money buying the ability to respond to old messages, and she simply didn’t have the desire to play anymore. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to keep playing her games, but this one felt creepy now. It felt like cheating.

  She closed the app without answering. She was done with One True Prince—she wouldn’t like it if Johan had some virtual version of the real-life her that he carried in his pocket. Maybe she would revisit Rognath instead.

  “Have you heard from Johan?” she asked Greta. She couldn’t help but remember his reaction when Greta had mentioned the opera that first day, and wondered if he was still unsure about going. It couldn’t be because he didn’t want to be seen with her, could it? Not after the last two weeks?

  “No.” The woman didn’t look at her.

  “Is there some reason you’re behaving rudely?” She had tolerated quite enough rudeness in her life.

  “Am I?” Greta asked. “I just didn’t want to talk to you, so I didn’t.”

  “Oh, um. I get that,” Nya said.

  “If you’d like me to talk, I can ask, what are your intentions toward Johan?”

  Nya paused. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

  “No, I suppose not. But I’ve been his assistant for years and I’ve never seen him like this. Ever.”

  Nya’s heart swelled in her chest. Maybe her dreams weren’t so foolish after all. Maybe—

  “I don’t want to think badly of you, and I’m not going to invade your privacy, but I have to tell you that he shouldn’t have his heart broken. It wouldn’t be fair, after all he’s been through. So you wanted to talk? Consider this a warning—if you’re up to something, stop being up to something.” Greta’s serious expression faded then, and she sat back in the seat with relief. “Ah, I’m so glad you asked me to talk. It’s good to have things in the open, jah? I’ve been working on this in counseling with my boyfriend, but it helps on the job, too!”

  “I don’t know why you think I would hurt him, but I appreciate you looking after his well-being,” Nya said. She didn’t know whether to be pissed off or elated or both.

  Greta’s phone rang then.

  “Oh, it’s Jo-Jo.”

  Nya looked at her phone and wondered why he hadn’t texted.

  “Hallo? Ah. Vraiment?” Greta had her serious expression on again, and for the next couple of minutes listened and nodded, then responded in rapid-fire Liechtienbourgish.

  Her gaze slid to Nya. “It seems that the evening papers are alleging that Johan has been embezzling money into an offshore account.”

  Nya frowned. “Johan wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  She didn’t think Johan was capable of anything so nefarious, but then again, her father had been doing the same. People would do a lot for money and power.

  Even participate in a fake romance to get people to vote for their family in a referendum.

  No.

  Nya felt anxiety swell in her chest, not at the idea of Johan using her, but at the possibility that she’d never be able to believe he wasn’t, he or any other man.

  “Of course, he wouldn’t,” Greta said. “Someone is clearly trying to smear his name.”

  “What will we do?”

  “We?” Greta raised a brow. “The plans for tonight have changed. Instead of the preshow PR meeting with you and Johan posing for photos, there will be a press conference where he explains what’s going on. No press for you tonight, since we can’t control what people will ask.”

  “That’s fine. I just want his name cleared.”

  “Right,” Greta said flatly, turning her attention to her phone. She hopped out of the car when they pulled up to the palace and Nya made her way back to her room to get ready for the opera.

  Something was nagging her about this situation. It was the same feeling she’d had when her father had been so kind and solicitous to Ledi, trying to win her to his side while plying her with tea he knew would hurt her. Nya hadn’t known for sure, but she’d suspected—and she’d been right.

  Nya had protected her cousin as best she could then, and she was stronger now. She would try to figure this out and protect Johan, too. It may have been nothing, and Nya wasn’t always sure what worries were real and which were plain fear after being told to ignore her own thoughts for her entire life, but she knew there was something more to this. She would think on it, and in the meantime, she would make sure Johan had a good night.

  Chapter 22

  As word spread, all of the other villagers sought Phokojoe out. He would turn into what they desired, and then lure them into his lair, but he found something even sadder than being lonely—that not just any human would do. Some spoke too much, or too little. Some made wild demands, and others hurled curses at him. He alw
ays released them after two weeks, and was always glad to see them go. There was one maiden in the village whom Phokojoe had rarely seen. She was kept locked up in the house of her father, who treated her like a rare and fragile flower. On the day she finally came to him, he waited to hear her desire, but instead she laid down a bowl of freshly cooked stew for him and then scurried back home. Phokojoe looked after her, sniffing the food warily. When he tasted it, it was the finest offering he’d ever received.

  —From Phokojoe the Trickster God

  The last time Johan had given a press conference of this scope was when pictures of his bare ass had shown up in newspapers. He’d explained how it was a private moment, and how he had shamed the people of Liechtienbourg with his bad decisions.

  Of course, he’d known a paparazzo was there. Why else would he be walking around bottomless? It was around Lukas’s thirteenth birthday, when the press had started to get more insistent about prying into the boy’s privacy. So Johan had given up his. And he felt more exposed now, forced to provide the information he’d managed to keep secret for so long.

  It was just more evidence that in this world of vultures, everything eventually became carrion.

  “Are you ready?” Greta whispered beside him, looking tense. She’d been acting a bit strangely since she’d returned from the school with Nya, but he assumed she was out of sorts from having someone rifling through their business affairs.

  Directly after the presser he had to survive Rusalka in the royal box. The referendum was in two days. Nya would leave him.

  He wasn’t ready for anything.

  He nodded and adjusted his bow tie.

  “Looking good, Jo-Jo!” That was Krebs, of course. Johan pointed at him. Winked. Tried to feel as carefree as he was acting.

  “This will be quick because the opera waits for no one, and Johan believes the arts are integral to society. We will begin by addressing the allegations that appeared in the daily papers today,” Greta said. “It has been alleged that Johan has been engaging in shady business practices, running a shell company to hide his funds from the taxpayers and increase his own wealth.”