A Prince on Paper (Reluctant Royals #3)(13)

It was a hard lesson to unlearn even if she knew it wasn’t true. Ledi and Portia told her all the time that she deserved anything her heart desired. Maybe one day she would believe it.

As she pulled the door to the sauna open and was hit by a wall of steam, she somehow knew that he was in the small, dimly lit room. One of those flashes of déjà vu that the priestesses called Ingoka’s foresight and Naledi explained—something about patterns and synapses.

Again, with the small spaces. Again, with the too-damn-handsome-and-he-knew-it Liechtienbourgian. He was some kind of mythical creature, popping up whenever she was in distress to mess with her even more. Her fairy fuckboy.

Still, she was a bit shocked to find the long, pale expanse of him seated on the upper bench of the sauna, hunched forward and arms stretched so that his fingertips reached toward the bench below.

His head was dropped down, a mass of wild auburn, but it jerked up as the wooden door creakily announced her entry. She was met with ruddy cheeks and a sharp gaze that resonated within her private hollowness, like the sad moan of wind over the mouths of empty glass bottles.

She shivered, despite the heat, and despite the fact that it was only her imagination again. This was Prince Jo-Jo. What she’d read as sadness was probably disappointment that she wasn’t some conquest he’d invited for a tryst.

Then something in his gaze shifted as it traveled in two quick flicks, down to her toes and back up to her face. She’d barely made out the motion through the steam, but it passed over her like a flash of blue fire, burning away the confusion that had driven her from her friends and leaving her feeling stripped. He no longer looked somber, as he drew himself back up to a sitting position, and in fact seemed to be smirking.

See? Jo-Jo’s gonna Jo-Jo.

She fought the urge to pull her towel around herself. She’d been raised to be modest, and the hot-pink bikini she’d bought for a trip to Rockaway Beach was anything but—but this was Johan, who frequented nude beaches and wild parties. Her boy-cut bikini bottoms were unlikely to tempt him.

He reached beside him for the wooden bucket, and she heard the slosh of water as he pulled it closer to him, but her eyes were on his torso. If there was any tempting happening, she was the only one feeling it.

Much abs. Very six-pack.

He was all sinewy muscle, and though he moved with a lazy grace as he scooped up a cup of water, she knew that he could move quickly if he wanted to. He had when she’d burst into tears and he’d rushed to offer her his handkerchief.

She noticed a flash of silver at his neck, but the long chain was nestled in the surprisingly thick auburn hair on his chest, and she looked away instead of following the direction it pulled her gaze.

“Gudde jour, Nya,” he said.

“You remember my name now?” she asked, taking a step into the room. She felt like leaving would be giving in to him somehow, and Nya was tired of being controlled by the whims of spoiled men. He was the one who had behaved strangely on the plane. He could leave.

But it had been kind of fun, after the strangeness, when he’d made her laugh. She hadn’t expected such silliness from him—she hadn’t expected him to acknowledge her at all outside of trying to seduce her. She wouldn’t mind if they could talk like that again.

She took another step into the room, letting the door close behind her, and then flipped the hourglass nailed to the wall that would let her know when five minutes had passed. “I thought I was easy to forget.”

“I made a mnemonic device. N-Y-A.” He ladled water onto the heated stones, sending up a billow of steam. The moist heat enveloped her as she looked up at him.

“What does it stand for?” she asked. “Naughty young . . . antelope?”

He laughed, the dry, bright sound cutting through the steam, and she moved toward it. She allowed herself the pleasure of knowing she’d shocked him a little.

She stepped onto the lower bench, then pulled herself up to the top one, where it was hotter and not just because of the annoying man occupying the other half. She’d sweat away this agitation and anxiety that had settled in her, and Johan wouldn’t get in the way of that.

He sat beneath the dim lightbulb, and when she glanced at him she could see the rivulets of sweat that coursed their way over broad shoulders and that strange muscle some people had at the base of their necks.

“Antelope? No.” He placed the ladle down and stretched his legs forward, but didn’t volunteer anything else about his memory trick.

She tugged her towel under her thighs, protecting the skin from the hot wood. “Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t appreciate being called an antelope.”

“If I was going to give you a nickname it would be Sugar Bubble.” There was mischief in his voice, and in the way he glanced at her sidelong, almost like the name was something shared between them and not her flubbing her words. Inside jokes were intimate, like being cradled against his body had been. She wondered what his arms would feel like around her now, him in his tiny speedos and her in bikini. Luckily for Nya, they were in a room made expressly for awkward sweating.

“I guess I have to call you Jo-Jo,” she said.

When he spoke again, his words were stilted. “Please don’t call me that.”

She could barely keep up with this man, flirting one second and subdued the next, but she remembered the look in his eyes when she’d stepped into the sauna. Whatever had resonated between them then was in his voice now.