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
