“Do you want compliments?” She assumed he got them all the time, but he had been so hesitant even when she’d wanted to give him a nickname. So sure she was going to insult him.

He glanced at her warily. “You’ve already complimented my eyelashes. That’s enough.”

“You’re very good with children,” she said. “You made them laugh today, and didn’t mind when they made fun of you.”

He nodded. “True. Though I didn’t appreciate the boy who said I looked like a yam.”

“You treat me as an equal,” she pressed on. “And I’m comfortable with you. I’ve never slept in a bed with a man before, and I should be nervous right now, but I know that you’re my friend and you won’t hurt me. I slept more soundly than I have in a very long time.”

The wariness didn’t leave his gaze, but he made a flustered exhalation that shifted the locks that had fallen over his eyes.

“I told you I wouldn’t debauch you unless you wanted me to. That’s baseline normal behavior, Nya. Honestly.”

Nya understood that his words weren’t meant to be seductive, weren’t a declaration of anything more than his role as a playboy prince, but she’d decided that in this dating simulation, she was a brave and adventurous girl. One who asked questions that might lead to more, and one who wondered—

“What would you do? If I was interested in being debauched?”

Just like that the wary amusement fled his eyes, burnt away by blue flash fire. It seemed he was thinking of schnitzel again.

“That depends,” he said, and he must have wanted schnitzel very badly because there was hunger in his tone, making his voice deep and sexy. “Have you ever been debauched before?”

“No,” she whispered, shifting under the duvet. “A man kissed me on one of my dates in New York, but I didn’t like it very much. It was . . . slimy. Like badly cooked okra.”

He shuddered. “You have quite a way with words.”

She laughed, though she hadn’t laughed after that kiss. She’d gone home, brushed her teeth for a very long time, and then deleted the dating app from her phone, freeing up more storage room for her games.

He looked down at her hand, and then at her face.

“Hmm,” he said. “In that case, I might . . .” He pierced her with his hungry look again as his hand hovered over hers on the bed between them. “May I?”

She nodded. She most certainly couldn’t speak. She hadn’t thought he would really—

“In that case, I might start with light debauchery.” Johan ran his fingertips over the back of her hand, a light caress that sent shivers racing up her arm, to her breasts, to her belly. He caressed again, this time tracing to the tips of her fingers before lacing his own through hers and lifting so their palms pressed together.

His heavy-lidded gaze was fixed on her as he softly kissed the pad of her pinky, and then her ring finger, his full lips warm and gentle. It should have been an innocent gesture, but paired with his cobalt stare, each touch of his mouth was like an electric shock. She was warm, so warm, and her breaths came slow and cautious, like one sudden gasp might distract him from the amazing things he was doing to her with his mouth.

He kissed his way to the whorl on her thumb, his mouth lingering there, then parting as he sucked gently—just enough to send a wave of scandalized pleasure through her body.

Oh goddess.

The next kiss landed on the palm of her hand, his breath hot and ticklish, and when his lips grazed her wrist she gasped, unable to contain it. He didn’t startle; he grinned. His stubble rasped against her skin as he did, and she pressed her thighs together against the sudden throb at their juncture.

Johan dragged his mouth down her forearm, so slowly that she thought he might stop at any moment, and her body teetered on the edge of panic that the pleasure might end.

He didn’t stop, though.

He edged closer to her on the bed, the better to debauch her, and when his lips landed on the bend of her elbow, he licked. It was a strong, sure motion, that lick. It told her many things at once, reminded her that he wasn’t a man who hesitated once he acted on his impulses.

“Oh my,” she breathed. Now she knew what that seemingly useless patch of skin had been made for—Johan’s mouth.

He was at her biceps now, tongue lightly tracing over her trembling muscles.

My whole body is trembling, she thought. He might lick me everywhere.

Her breath caught, and it seemed that he heard it because his torturously slow motions sped up a bit, intensified, as he charted a course for her throat. When he reached the curve of her shoulder, she felt the light graze of his teeth there, and then the sharp drag of enamel against her collarbone and up, deepening when he reached the notch where her neck and shoulder met and oh goddess she hadn’t known what she was asking for. If this was light debauchery, then she would surely die at mild.

He made a sound that was almost a groan as he lingered there. “You smell good, Sugar Bubble. Like dessert.”

She was trying to keep still despite the riot of sensation charging through her, but her hand flexed in his at those words that sounded so, so naughty when spoken against her skin, and Johan’s motion up her body stopped. He kissed her neck where his teeth had been, then exhaled, his breath cool against the heat left by his mouth.