The Prince's Captive Virgin

If what she said was true, if the old man was in fact dying, he had no interest in keeping him here to do just that. Yes, he wanted to make him an example. Yes, he wanted to reinforce his power, his hard line that he drew against all forms of entertainment media and the low, crawling worms who harassed and tormented their subjects simply for being famous, for being royal.

But, he had no interest in causing anyone’s death. Additionally, he had a feeling that this woman could be infinitely more useful. His seclusion was coming to an end, and while he would happily stay in the darkness forever, it could not be so.

The agreement he had signed with the viceroy had very definitive terms. And if Adam didn’t step in, an election would take place in the fall. So would go his bloodline, which had ruled Olympios for hundreds of years.

And, lost in his grief and pain though he’d been, he was not so lost that he would abandon all that his family line had built over the centuries.

But he needed another headline. One that extended beyond his scars, and a beautiful woman coming into public view by his side would add another dimension, another story, to the mix.

It was exactly what he needed, though he had not known it.

He would simply need the proper venue in which to use her.

He curled his hand into a fist and looked down at his marred skin. Sometimes, he was tempted to ask himself if he was overreacting. But then he was reminded. It was easy to be reminded. The reminders were all over his body.

At that moment, his phone rang, and he cursed. Because it was his friend—if that was the appropriate word—Prince Felipe Carrión de la Viña Cortez.

He punched the answer button on the phone and lifted it to his ear. “What do you want, Felipe?”

“And hello to you too,” came his friend’s lazy response. “I have Rafe on the line, as well, just so you know.”

“A conference call?” Adam asked. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

His hot-blooded friend had a reputation for causing international incidents, and it wouldn’t surprise Adam if he was involved in yet another scandal.

Truly, he, Felipe and Rafe could not be more different. Were it not for their friendships formed at a particularly strict boarding school, he doubted they would have two words to say to each other now.

But, Felipe and Rafe had kept him from receding completely into darkness over the past few years. And for that, he owed them. Or, at least, for that he didn’t growl at them every time one of them made contact.

“No trouble,” Felipe said. “However, I am planning a party. You see, it is the fiftieth anniversary of my father’s rule. And, likely the last he will see. Of course, I should like to invite you both.”

For the first time since getting on the line, Rafe spoke. “And are you allowing service animals at your event?”

Felipe laughed. “Perhaps, Rafe, it is time you found yourself a lovely partner to help lead you around.”

“As appealing as that is, I have yet to find a woman keen on playing the part of guide dog.”

Five years earlier Rafe had been blinded in an accident, and though Adam didn’t know the details, he suspected that a woman had been involved somehow. But, Rafe wasn’t the type to share the details of his life. Unlike Felipe and himself, Rafe was not royalty. He had not been born with money. Instead, he had become the protégé of an Italian businessman at a very young age.

That man had paid for Rafe’s schooling, and had gotten him a position at his company. Until Rafe’s accident. But, it was that accident that had propelled Rafe to the next level of his success. Now he was unquestionably one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Europe—royal blood or not.

But, whatever had happened, his friend had been completely changed by it. Adam understood.

Growing up, he and Felipe had been hellions. Utterly unconcerned with the state of their education, where Rafe had taken everything seriously. He had been there on borrowed money, and he had been incredibly conscious of that.

Adam and Felipe had spent most of their time pursuing women; Rafe had studied.

Now here they were. All a bit battle worn, except perhaps Felipe. Though, Adam always wondered about his seemingly carefree friend. In his experience, few people were actually carefree, and those that seemed the most dedicated to such facades often had the most structural damage beneath the surface.

“Now,” Felipe said, “I’m sure that isn’t true. Once a woman gets a look at the size of your...bank account, certainly she’s more than willing to fulfill whatever duties you might require.”

“Your confidence in me is astounding,” Rafe said.

“Well,” he continued, “you certainly possess more charm than our friend Adam.”

Adam gritted his teeth. “Regretfully, I doubt I will be able to attend your ball.”

“That,” Felipe said, “is expected. But unacceptable. The fact of the matter is I’m going to be ascending the throne of my country soon. My father might have walled us off, made us insular, but I don’t intend to keep it that way. I want to align myself with you, Adam, with your country, and with you, Rafe, and the industry that you could bring to Santa Milagro.

“I know you have been in exile for the past few years, Adam, but with your viceroy’s tenure coming to an end, and the recent sale of those photographs of yours to the tabloids, I think it’s time you took matters into your own hands. Your visage—such as it is—is going to filter out into the public soon enough. You might as well make an appearance along with it, Adam. Prove that you are not a coward.”

“I’m not,” he said, quickly losing patience with Felipe. “However, exposing myself in the public arena holds no appeal.”

“Certainly understandable. I’m sure if Rafe could hide away, he would do so, as well.”

Rafe laughed, but the sound held no humor. “I’m not disfigured. Only blind.”

“Mostly blind,” Felipe countered. “And anyway, what better way to take back the control. I know you despise the paparazzi for what they did to you. For what they did to your family. Are you going to let them have control of the story? Publish photographs of the Beast of Olympios and whatever headlines they wish to accompany it? No, come now, Adam. The man I knew in school would not allow such a thing.”

“And the man you used to know had a soul. Not to mention a face.”

“If not for yourself, do it for Ianthe.”

Had his friend been standing in front of him, Adam would have hit him for bringing his wife’s name into this. But, at the same time, he couldn’t deny he had a point. A point he had come to for himself already, but Felipe didn’t know that.

“Take your control back,” Felipe said. “Make this unveiling of your own making. Make Olympios yours again.”

This was it, he realized. His moment. The power play.

The precise way and place to use his beautiful captive.

“When is this party?”

“In just over a month,” Felipe said. “We can only hope my father holds on until then.”

Adam could tell that Felipe didn’t particularly hope any such thing. He knew that the two men had a complicated relationship, though he didn’t know the details. The three of them talked details as little as possible.

“I’ll be there,” Rafe said. “I have no reason not to go.”

“And you’ll bring a date?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I will,” Adam said, his voice soft.

“You?” Felipe asked, not bothering to disguise the surprise in his voice at all.

“Yes. I have a recent acquisition that I look very much forward to showing off.”

“Adam,” Felipe said, “what have you done?”

“Just the kind of thing that suits a beast.”

* * *

Belle was surprised when she was shown not to a dungeon but to an elegantly appointed bedroom with a four-poster bed covered by brocade curtains and festooned with pillows.

“I thought I was a prisoner?” She turned to ask the servant.

She’d been made to surrender her phone, but otherwise, everyone was being...nice to her. Well, everyone except the Prince himself. She doubted nice was a thing he did.

“There are enough rooms in the palace to keep even a prisoner comfortable,” the man said drily.

“You don’t approve of him,” she said. “Do you?”

He lifted a shoulder. “He does not require my approval. Neither does he take any heed of my disapproval.”

“Is he...is he crazy?” The disfigured man who had sought such destructive revenge on her father, and who had accepted her in trade could hardly be sane. Still, she felt like she needed to figure out exactly what she was dealing with.

He seemed to have a plan. A way he wanted to...use her to come back into the spotlight. She could only hope that plan meant there was a finite end to her sentence.

“He is not unaffected by the accident that caused those scars,” the man said carefully. “That is about all I can tell you.”

“Okay,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself, shivering, because suddenly she felt cold. She turned to face the window, the small, narrow notch giving her a slight view of city lights reflecting on the sea. “Has my father gone already?” She turned again, to find her companion gone.

For some reason, the withdrawal of the servant made her feel isolated. Utterly alone. A chill swept over her, bone deep and intense. She had agreed to stay here, with a potential madman, for an unknown amount of time. There was no one here to protect her. Her father was likely long gone, and really, there was nothing he could do for her. He had to go and seek out his treatment; he couldn’t stay behind.

She wondered if the Prince had even told him that she had traded places with him.

That thought made her stomach tighten. The thought that it was entirely possible no one would know she was here. She hadn’t told Tony where she was going, because she’d known he would try to stop her.

No, no one would have any idea she was locked up in a medieval castle. What if nobody ever looked for her?

No. She wouldn’t think of it like that. The way he had talked...he’d made it sound like he very much intended to be seen in public with her. Which meant her being here wouldn’t be a secret. But...

What would her father think? What would he do?

What would Tony do if he knew she was being held at some strange man’s castle? She tried to imagine Tony taking on Adam. Her boyfriend’s more...refined frame would be no match for Adam’s monstrous form.

Adam was...

She thought back to that moment when he’d stepped into the light. That hard, scarred face. His incredibly muscular body. She shivered.

Thinking of him made her heart pound, made her skin tingle. It was a strange sort of fear. One that coursed through her veins like fire.

One that felt almost not like fear at all.

She heard heavy footfalls, and realized she had left the door open, had left herself exposed. She moved quickly toward the entrance, intent on closing it tightly, on giving herself some security. But, she didn’t move quick enough.

There he was.

He was...she wasn’t sure she had ever seen a man so large. Six foot six, at least, broad and muscular. His face was even more shocking in the bright light of her bedchamber.

His dark eyes were watchful, and yet again, a window into how beautiful he might have been before he had been altered like this.

“Do I frighten you?” he asked.

“Isn’t that your intention?”

“Not specifically.”

He didn’t elaborate, though. Didn’t give her any idea of what he might be doing specifically. “So, do I go before a judge and jury? Or are you basically it?”

“This is my land. And I am the law of it.”

“In other words, you can do whatever you want.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. In other words.”

She drew herself up to her full height, ignoring the shiver that wound through her. “What exactly do you intend to do with me?” It took a lot of courage to ask that question, especially considering she didn’t know if she wanted the answer.

“I intend to make you pay,” he said, the promise on those dark words licking down her spine. “But first, I should like you to join me for dinner.”

“No,” she said, the denial moving quickly from her lips, before she had a chance to think better of it. “I don’t want to have dinner with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my jailer. Because I find you uncivilized.”

“And hideous,” he said, flashing her a slight smile, a brief glimpse of straight, white teeth, “I imagine.”

There was no good way to answer that. He was...hideous wasn’t the right word. Damaged. Terrifying. Compelling. But certainly not hideous.

“Show me anybody who wants to have dinner with the person keeping them captive,” she said, rather than responding to his previous statement.

“That’s the thing about being a captive,” he said, his tone dry. “Choice is typically quite limited.”

“What are you going to do if I refuse to go with you?” She planted her hands on her hips and took a step forward. She had to do this. She had to test him. Maybe he was a madman. Maybe he was going to go full Henry VIII on her. Off with her head, and all of that. Maybe he would do something even worse. But, until she tested the boundary, she wouldn’t know what manner of man she was dealing with.

“I will pick you up, put you over my shoulder and carry you down to dinner whether you want to go or not.”

“I don’t want to.”

Without missing a beat, he closed the distance between them, curved his arms around her waist and pulled her up off the ground, laying her over his shoulder. She was stunned. By his strength. By the ease at which he held her. By the heat of his body.

He was just...so very hot. And it burned her all over, even in places where they didn’t touch. He moved, and she wobbled, grabbing hold of his shoulder to keep from falling. Then he turned and carried her from the room.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE WAS LIKE fire in his arms. That was all he could think as he strode out of her chamber, her lithe body wiggling over his shoulder as he carried her down the hall.

He braced one hand on her lower back, gripping her calf with the other. It had been three years since he’d had his hands on a woman. And suddenly, he was conscious of every one of those years. He had been far too lost in the bleakness of it all to think of it in those terms until this moment.

He had not thought of being with a woman. Hadn’t thought of touching one. He had only been conscious of his bed being empty as far as it being empty of his wife. Not being empty in a way that meant it might need to be filled by someone else.

But now she was hot beneath his fingertips, smooth, and very much alive. So different from the last time he had touched a woman and found her cold, icy and lifeless.

He gritted his teeth, clipping his jaw down tight as he continued to cart his protesting captive down the stairs and toward the dining room.

“How dare you?” she shrieked, pounding one fist against his back.

“How dare I feed you?” He laughed. “I truly am a monster.”

“You could have sent me a crust of bread up to my room,” she continued to protest.

“Yes, but alternatively you can sit and eat with me, and you can have lamb.”

“Maybe I don’t want to eat a baby animal!”

“Are you a vegetarian?”

“No,” she said, sounding small, and slightly defeated in her response. “But still.”

“If you have serious issues eating small, fuzzy things, you can always indulge in the vegetables and the couscous. Plus, there will be cake.”

“I could have eaten that in my room,” she said, wiggling, that movement of her body against his sending a jolt of sensation through him. He ignored it.

“No, agape, you could not have, because it is not on offer.”

He stepped into the dining room, and set her down neatly in the chair next to his own. She looked up at him, her eyes wide. She truly was beautiful. Her dark hair was captured in a low ponytail, her blue eyes glittering in the dim light, distrustful, but nonetheless lovely. She had full lips, the kind he could vaguely remember enjoying back in the days when he had indulged in such pleasures.

Then, there was her body, which was pleasingly round in all the right places, as he had observed while carrying her from her room.

“What do you want from me?”

“I would like for you to eat. With the dramatics kept to a minimum.”

She frowned, her expression stormy. “You did not allow me to trade places with my father so that you could feed me.”

“No,” he said, “perhaps not. I allowed you to trade with your father because you asked me to allow it. And as I mentioned before, I thought, that just maybe you might be of more use to me than a dying man.”

She recoiled. So completely that it was nearly comical. “What sort of use?”

There was a time when a woman would have leaned in at such a suggestion, touched his hand, touched his arm, perhaps made things even more intimate by placing her hand on his thigh. But, those days had long since passed.

He let his eyes wander back to those beautiful rosy lips. And just for a moment, he imagined crushing his ruined mouth right up against them. Yes, she would most certainly take offense at that.

“Oh, anything I can think of. Propping up a wobbly desk, perhaps?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Be serious for a moment.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m always serious.” At least, he had been for the past few years. Until these past few moments.

But, other than his friends, who he communicated with primarily over the phone, he only ever talked to his stripped-down staff. To Fos, the man who had been his father’s right hand for as long as Adam could remember. And to Athena, his cook. Otherwise, the staff tended to rotate, and they kept out of his way.

Belle was one of the first new people he had spent any time with in longer than he could remember.

“Seriously deranged.” She sniffed.

A few moments later, Athena appeared, along with kitchen staff carrying trays. “Tonight,” she said, casting a swift glance over to Belle, “we have lamb with mint and yogurt, couscous and assorted vegetables. For dessert there is baklava.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Athena lingered.

Adam sighed heavily. “Have you something to say, Athena?”

“I don’t approve,” she said, her tone stiff.

“And I don’t care,” he returned. “Leave us.”

Athena cast him a sad glance, and then turned the same look onto Belle. Then she shook her head and walked out of the room.

“Neither of your servants approve of you,” Belle said, looking the food over critically.

“And my captive doesn’t seem to fear me,” he said. “I must be doing something wrong.”

“I came all the way from California to face you down and get my father out of your dungeon. If I was going to freak out, I would have done it already.” She tilted her chin upward, her expression mutinous. And a little bit too committed to defiance.

“We shall see. Eat.”

He took his own command, digging into the food with relish. He picked up one of the lamb shanks, gnawing it close to the bone. He became aware a moment later of Belle’s watchful gaze on him.

“What?” he asked.

“I assumed that... I assumed that royalty would have some sort of exemplary table manners. But, unless your customs are different here...”

He set the meat down onto his plate. “Are you determined to insult me at every turn? I served you dinner. I installed you in a very nice room. All things considered, I find you ungrateful.”

“I’m sorry—am I not expressing adequate gratitude for my imprisonment?”

“You are a prisoner of your own design. You could have left your father here.”

“Right. I could have left my father here to die.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Plenty of people would have. A great many people possess more self-interest than that.”

“My father raised me,” she said, conviction in her tone. “He’s all I have. And it might be easy for you to dismiss him as nothing more than a paparazzo, but he’s everything to me. And you didn’t even let me say goodbye to him.”

“I’m hardly going to keep you captive for the rest of your life,” he said. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“He’s sick,” she insisted. “He might die while I’m away.”

Adam felt an uncomfortable stab of conscience. He was not in the market for his conscience to make any kind of resurgence. Not now. “I truly hope that isn’t the case. However, he was well enough to sneak into my palace and collect photographs of me only a few weeks ago. Then he sold those photos and would do nothing to reclaim them. Tell me,” he said, “since you are so well versed in matters of popular culture, do you know exactly how I got my scars?”

She looked down, shaking her head.

“All it took was a relentless photographer harassing my driver on a night with poor driving conditions,” he said, his tone hard. “And in the end, damage was done that could not be undone.”

He didn’t see the point in bringing up Ianthe. If she didn’t know, he wasn’t going to discuss it. Not something so intensely personal. Not pain that belonged to him, and him alone, so unquestionably.

“I...” She looked away from him, and she had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t know. I didn’t. But, my father didn’t endanger you.”

“No,” he said, his tone dripping with condescension. “He only broke into my home and invaded my privacy.”

“He’s harmless,” she said. “I mean, I know that a lot of people don’t understand the paparazzi thing. And I guess it can be a little bit...intense.”

“They are nothing but leeches. Bottom-feeders who leech off the fame of those who have either talent or power.”

“Fine. But my father isn’t a leech. When my mother decided she didn’t want me he took care of me. He’s always taken care of me. And yes, he did it by taking pictures of celebrities. That’s what fed me, all of my life. But nobody else was going to feed me,” she said, her voice vibrating with conviction.

“There are plenty of other lines of work to be in.”

“Says the Prince who was born with his job. Other people have to work. And not only that, they have to work hard to get work in the first place.”

“Are you lecturing me on how hard life can be?” He sat back in his chair. “Excuse me while I get a pen and paper so that I can take notes.”

“I’m sorry about your accident. My father didn’t do that to you.”

“But he was intending to use my personal tragedy for his gain.” He laughed. “In fact, he has succeeded.”

“Yes,” she said, sputtering. “But it isn’t that simple. He isn’t doing it to hurt you. He needs help. He needed to be able to afford his treatments.”

“Your justifications are hardly going to impress me. There is absolutely nothing I hate more than the press. Particularly the kind of fake press your father is a part of. But, it is of no matter to me. There is nothing I can do to prevent the publication of those photographs. Believe me—I have tried. But, I have figured out a way to take control of the situation.”

“What’s that?” she asked, clearly skeptical.

“I have not appeared in public since my accident. That’s why those photographs are so valuable, you know. Because everybody’s curious. How badly am I disfigured?”

She blinked. “You haven’t been in public...at all.”

“No. I think I mentioned when we first met—”

“When you took me captive.”

“If you prefer. I think I mentioned that I have someone ruling in my stead. However, the time frame on our agreement is running out, and if I do not regain control of the country, a general election will result. And so it will be the end of the monarchy as we know it.” He looked at the little woman sitting across from him and twisting her hands in her lap. “I would have thought you would have done a bit of cursory research on me before you tore off to my kingdom and offered to become my prisoner.”