by Alyssa Cole
“No.”
“Good. Then I will let the local university know you’ll start there, and that you won’t be needing a dormitory.”
Tears gathered in her eyes at the memory. Her father had always made her feel small; she wasn’t used to how easily Johan made her feel big.
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet—the words had just squeaked by the lump of emotion in her throat.
“It’s a basic truth, no need to thank me for stating it,” he said.
She couldn’t quite accept Johan’s statement as truth, so she settled on the fact that it wasn’t a lie. It was a not-lie that Johan seemed to feel very strongly about, and his insistence on her worth made her feel happy even as she spoke of unhappy things.
“Everyone doesn’t see me as you do.” She knew that was presumptuous, but Johan had already clearly stated what he thought of her and she wasn’t going to be rude enough to second-guess him. “Everyone has it in their heads that I need to be protected. They think being me is a problem. You saw my grandmother.”
That poked at the bruise to her ego left by his reassurances that she was completely safe with him, but that was fine. She had a surprising new friend and that was enough for her.
Johan sighed. “Yes. She was being a bit overbearing, which is why I had to lie to her.”
When she glanced at him, he was looking straight ahead, his expression serene but unreadable.
“You said you didn’t lie to make people feel better.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t lie to make her feel better. I lied so that we could continue to be partners and get on with our day.”
Nya didn’t take her eyes from him. “What was the lie? Exactly?”
“That I would never debauch you.” He still had that bland look on his face, and even casually scratched his horse behind its ears.
“Wut?” The word came out like a lake toad’s croak.
“I don’t intend to debauch you,” Johan said, his voice even and cool, but not dismissive. “It would be a terrible idea, as ideas go, because, well, I’m me. But.”
“But?” Another croak.
He did look at her then, and though his words were cool, his gaze was warm—not from the summer sun, but from some inner source of heat that Nya could not bring herself to imagine, despite her propensity for dreaming impossible dreams. “If debauchery was what you wanted from me? I would do it. Thoroughly.”
That last word wasn’t one she’d used often when speaking English, and as she watched the way his mouth handled it—his tongue licking toward the roof of his mouth, the way his teeth pressed against his bottom lip—she wondered if it was on the list of world’s sexiest words, because she was suddenly thinking things she should not be. Like how it would feel for him to form those same three syllables against her lips. Or elsewhere.
Come to bed, and I’ll eat you up.
She stared at him, her mouth sealed shut by desire and possibility and delight, and he gave her that mischievous grin. “See? Not nice. Remember that, Sugar Bubble.”
There was a noise in the distance and they turned to see Likotsi and Fabiola on one horse, riding to catch up with them as they approached the palace.
“We got our pig!” Fabiola called out, pointing to the small—and now that they grew closer, squealing—creature she held in her arms as Likotsi handled the reins from behind.
“We got our sex goat!” Johan jiggled the rope tied to his saddle.
“Huh?” Fabiola asked, looking at Nya.
“Pardon?” Likotsi looked to Nya for explanation, too. “Sex? Goat?”
“You can explain,” Johan said to Nya, then trotted off toward the palace gate with their quarry.
He wasn’t nice.
And he’d offered up his debauching services. For a second time, if she counted their run-in on the plane.
Her mind had always been a fertile planting ground for fantasies, but she reluctantly salted that earth. She’d spent one nice day with Johan, but, on every other day, he was the type of man she had vowed to avoid. Yes, he was charming and likable and knew what to say, but she knew full well how those traits could be used against her.
Besides, what if her fantasy did become reality? She would just be a plaything for a man like Johan, and that wasn’t what she wanted or needed.
Friendship is enough, she reminded herself. She had so few friends. She would ignore the heat that had been in his gaze, and had pooled reciprocally in her belly.
Her horse stamped impatiently and turned its head to give her serious side-eye.
“Sorry,” she said, patting the horse’s neck gingerly.
Johan was a playboy, and offering to debauch women was what playboys did. She wouldn’t think about it again.
“Ignore him,” she said to Kotsi and Fabiola. “He’s just being weird.”
Chapter 6
The wedding of Prince Thabiso and Princess Naledi is today (check out our live feed and cover story), and our source in Thesolo claims that love is in the air! While Prince Lukas has been misbehaving back home, calling his future leadership abilities into question, rumors are circulating about Jo-Jo and a mystery woman being found in a compromising position—more than once! There is speculation that the woman is Nya Jerami (photo; back left; credit: InstaPhoto of Portia Hobbs), cousin of the bride! Could this reportedly demure former schoolteacher really be the woman to capture Jo-Jo’s heart?
—The Looking Glass Daily, Royal Beat
Johan tried to shake his strange mood as he prepared for the wedding ceremony in the private chamber in the temple. The last wedding he’d attended that he’d actually had some stake in had been Mamm’s. He was happy for his friends, but also fought thin tendrils of anxiety that bound his cheer.
“Are you nervous? Ball. Chain. Etcetera.”
“Why? We’re already married,” Thabiso said, adjusting the collar of his traditional jacket in the mirror. Outside, in the larger chamber, the other members of Thabiso’s wedding party laughed and talked amongst themselves. “We’re already living happily ever after, mate. This is just an excuse to rub it in everyone’s faces.”
“Have you not noticed that the prince is a bit overconfident?” Likotsi asked as she brushed Thabiso’s hands aside and adjusted the collar herself.
“Yes, but now you’ll be very married,” Johan said, not quite sure what he was getting at. He lifted his chin as Likotsi shifted her attention to him, making sure the suit he’d been gifted—slightly less ornate than Thabiso’s, and a blend of traditional tuxedo and modern Thesolo style—was in proper order.
“I want to be very married,” Thabiso said, then raised a brow at Johan. “Not everyone can live the eternal bachelor life. Even Likotsi has settled down.”
She shot him an annoyed look.
“I pride myself on doing what the average man can’t,” Johan said with a flippancy he didn’t really feel.
Now Likotsi’s pointed look was transferred to Johan, her eyes telling him that his hijinks weren’t appreciated.
“I’m glad you both have found happiness, meng ami.” Johan said before they left the room to be caught up in the whirlwind of a royal wedding. “Let’s go get you married again.”
Love was for brave fools and Johan was entirely too clever and too cowardly to succumb to it. Loneliness wasn’t exactly a jaunt down the Riviera, but at least he was in control of it. He didn’t allow himself to become attached to many people, which kept the fear of them being snatched away from him at manageable levels.
It was a perfectly reasonable way to live. It was necessary.
Still . . . he hadn’t stopped thinking of Nya’s pleasant shock when he’d admitted what he should not have admitted ever—that he would do anything she wished, including debauchery.
Especially debauchery.
He was off his game and his control had slipped, yet again; he was starting to worry that Nya emitted some kind of antibullshit wave that stripped him of his power of persuasion.
Kryptonite, indeed.<
br />
He’d enjoyed their day together. He was no stranger to physical attraction, clearly. That was one aspect of his persona that wasn’t made-up; even though Jo-Jo still felt like the introverted boy teased endlessly by his peers, he now presented a package that attracted a very different kind of teasing. He’d grown to appreciate how women and men responded to the idea of him, even if no one ever really saw past the surface. He liked sex, and he liked the people he had sex with, but he always returned to his solitary life of jet-setting and charities and, above all, watching out for Lukas.
But he’d wanted to stay out on that goat hunt with Nya. He’d wanted to listen to her talk about the genus and species of flowers, and he didn’t give a damn about flowers. He’d wanted to see her laugh and play with the shepherd children, and pick up tender chunks of roast goat and suck the juices from her fingers. He hadn’t wanted the day to end, and that was not a good thing.
Control.
Johan didn’t do attachment. He had his close friends, and his brother, and his stepfather. But there was a built-in distance with those people, no matter how dearly he loved them. He could pop in and see them, satisfy his selfish desire to be in their presence and see their smiling faces, and then run off without explanation because that was what they now expected from him.
Nya was different. Something about her made his whole body feel light and fluffy like buchtel, as if her sweetness was somehow transferred to him. Johan had never cared much for sweets before, but he suddenly had an insatiable craving, and it frightened him.
The wedding ceremony itself was a splashy affair, a melding of traditions from America and Thesolo. Portia had been ordained somewhere online and performed the American portion of the ceremony, funny and moving and full of all the love she felt for her friends, because Portia didn’t hide those things.
Johan was unable to stop glancing at Nya across the aisle from him, dressed in simple white linen that contrasted Naledi’s bright yellow gown. Tears streamed down her full cheeks, appled from her wide smile, and the joy radiating from her was palpable, as it had been when she’d spoken of the wedding on the jet. She caught his eye as she laughed at a joke Portia cracked about food delivery services, and Johan was struck by a thought that almost made him topple over in front of the audience: Is this how she would look at me as we exchanged vows?
No. He didn’t wonder things like that. He didn’t want things like that.
The rest of the ceremony had passed in a blur of affection and readings and dancing priestesses and joy. And now Johan was at the reception, drinking wine and wondering why Nya’s joyful face and shining eyes wouldn’t leave his mind.
He reminded himself of that again as he stood beside a dignitary from Zamunda, the wedding reception whirling around them. The twenty-piece band on the stage, with at least ten of those pieces being rhythm instruments, played a bass-heavy cover of a pop song that had been popular a couple of years before, and Johan tapped his foot in time.
“It is lovely, yes? This wedding?” Mawa, the Zamundan diplomat, asked. “Almost as lovely as the union of our king and queen all those years ago.”
“Quite lovely,” he said. “I hear the wedding of Njaza’s king last month was lovely as well.”
Mawa said nothing and when he looked at her she was nodding nervously. “Ah. Yes. Yes. Quite. Er . . . the bride was lovely! She’s from Thesolo, so Sanyu made a good match for his people.”
Njaza had a bit of a reputation, but Mawa’s reaction did not bode well for his upcoming visit, or Sanyu’s union.
“Did they seem happy?”
“Oh, look, there is my friend, the ambassador from Druk. I have not seen him in ages. Please excuse me!” Mawa executed a quick bow and rushed away toward the man dressed in the saffron robes of a monk.
That wasn’t suspicious at all.
He sidled closer to the next conversation, the group of men he’d been keeping an eye on since they’d settled in the space next to him and the ambassador. He’d found that when you offered the elite free drink, they usually talked about things that they shouldn’t. Johan had a feeling that’s why the rich were always celebrating something or someone with an open bar.
The group of men in the traditional garments of tribal elders sipped their drinks and spoke animatedly in Thesotho. The way they huddled together said they were speaking of things they didn’t want shared.
Johan wasn’t fluent by any means, but he made out “Alehk Jerami” and “bastard” and a few other curse words, which was good. No coups were being fomented in this corner of the ballroom. Then he heard “Nya” and “offense to Ingoka,” which was not good.
“She should not be here,” one man said, switching to English as the upper class in many countries often did. “It is said that she knew of his actions and did nothing.”
“How would she know?” The man next to him raised his dark gray brows. “She is simple, they say. That’s why he hid her away for so long, no?”
“I heard he kept her in a plastic bubble,” added another man.
“That was a film,” the first man said, rolling his eyes. “She worked at the orphanage in Lek Hemane.”
“Even if she wasn’t weak as a fledgling and silly as a fainting goat, no man would ruin himself with a traitor’s daughter,” the second man said, mouth pulled into a grimace.
Johan fumed as he considered all of the ways he could insert himself into the situation and defend her but causing a scene at Thabiso’s wedding was beyond the pale even for Bad Boy Jo-Jo—even if he wanted to kick each one of the men in the back of the knee for their rudeness.
Nya had told him how people thought of her, but Johan hadn’t realized the traits he liked in her could be seen through such a negative lens. She wasn’t weak or silly, but these men spoke as if it were a fact. He supposed to them it was one—that was how things worked. Someone said something with confidence, and then everyone assumed it to be true, and then it was true. That was how he’d become the playboy prince.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out quickly, hoping it was Lukas, but it was his stepfather. He made his way into a plant-lined alcove and accepted the call.
He hadn’t heard from his brother in days, and the nagging feeling that something was wrong and he didn’t know had been assailing him since he’d stepped off the plane.
“Is everything gutt, Forshett?” he asked, pulling at his collar, which seemed to tighten as the low-level panic that he’d been suppressing ballooned inside of him.
He hoped for the usual gutt from his stepfather to allay his fears, but the king sighed.
“It’s your brother,” Linus said gravely.
Johan’s knees almost gave out, and he leaned back against the wall as casually as he could muster. The corrugations of a reed tapestry pressed into his back, but he couldn’t force his body to move just yet.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice strained, a million awful scenarios of how Lukas could be lost to him running through his mind. The part of his brain that was always thinking ahead was going through contingencies for escaping the ballroom while in a full-blown panic, and coming up blank.
“He’s developed a bit of a wild streak,” Linus said, with normal levels of fatherly aggravation. “I just got a call from his school because he got into a fight with one of those American tech heirs.”
Johan waited, chest tight, then asked, “Does he have a concussion? What hospital is he at? Was he shot?”
The king made a startled noise. “What? No. He’s here at the castle, and not allowed to leave his quarters.”
Relief and annoyance danced through Johan’s veins and he slowly straightened. The fabric of his shirt stretched around his chest as he inhaled deeply. “He’s all right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call this all right,” Linus said.
“Forshett—” Johan slammed his mouth shut against the harshness of his tone, not allowing the fear still flowing through him to make him say something rash. He swallowed, though h
is mouth had gone dry. “You made me think he was hurt. Or worse.”
“I did no such thing,” the king said evenly. “I said, ‘It’s your brother.’ Be sensible, Jo-Jo. I thought you’d outgrown these outbursts.”
Johan almost threw his phone down to the ground. Did Linus really not remember? Because Johan did. He’d been in his dorm room, packing his weekend bag for his visit home with a knot of worry in his stomach when his cell phone had rang. C’est ihre mamm, Linus had said gravely.
He knew from experience that explaining to Linus how three words could send him spiraling into a panic would do no good, so he moved on.
“Why was he fighting?” Johan asked, grabbing at a lock of hair and twisting. All of his fights had been defensive, started by other boys who picked up on Johan’s perceived weakness—emotion. But Lukas wasn’t like Johan—Johan had made sure of that. He was sporty and well liked and didn’t spend all his time sighing about the state of the world and crying over imaginary people.
“It doesn’t matter why. We’re in the middle of a referendum and now he does this? Von Brausteins are known for strength, dexterity, and victory in battle, but this is boarding school, not war.” Linus sighed. “Have you spoken to him recently?”
“I’ve been busy,” Johan lied. If Linus didn’t know that Lukas was avoiding him, he wasn’t going to tell him. Handling his brother was one of the few things Linus saw as useful about Johan. It was one of the few things he saw as useful about himself. “I’ll try to reach him, but I’ll be home in a few days.”
“Yes, always gallivanting about,” Linus said.
“I’m an ambassador,” Johan replied stiffly. “Gallivanting is my job.”
Linus didn’t say anything.
“Has the press picked anything up about Lukas’s fight?” Johan didn’t feel like arguing, and was already figuring out how he could help spin this.
“I don’t think so,” Linus said, then paused. Johan heard the recalibration in that brief silence, and when his stepfather spoke again there was insinuation in his tone. “They have picked up some news about you in Thesolo, though. News that could be helpful.”