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 W?LLKOMM 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.

“W?llkomm!” 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.