Belle doesn’t move for hours, except to adjust herself in the bed. She doesn’t even take her clothes off that night, and after a long time, I think she might be asleep.

I don’t sleep. I hardly ever sleep because of the dreams, so instead I sit in the office connected to my bedroom, look over paperwork, and watch Belle on the monitor.

There’s a camera in her room, secreted in one of the stone walls. It’s equipped with night vision, and she’d have to be an expert to find it, but of course we have cameras in our prison cells.

Just because they’re not chained to a wall and sleeping on straw doesn’t mean we don’t keep track of them.

Belle isn’t all I watch. I watch her father, led out of the castle by a pack of guards. I have the sound turned off, but I can tell he’s begging, pleading with them, and I can just imagine what he’s saying: take me instead of her, I’m an old man, let my daughter go.

But it doesn’t work on my guards, and there are several of them and only one of him, so he’s got no choice. They push him into the back of an armored truck and take off toward Inversberg.

I told her — or, rather, I had my men tell her — that we’d let her father go. I’m at least as good as my word.

When my day’s work is done, I go to switch off the screen with Belle on it, but my hand lingers on the switch. She’s pretty even now, asleep in her clothes, in the ugly green of night vision.

Her ankles bound to her thighs, knees bent all the way, hands tied behind her back.

I’d grab her beautiful hair in one fist, watch her chest heave.

Nestle the tip of my cock at her entrance, feel her slick heat around me.

But I wouldn’t fuck her until she begged me, tied up and helpless. Desperate to finally come all over my cock…

I shake my head hard, flip the switch, and stand from my chair. My old leg injury protests, but just that ten-second fantasy has me hard as a rock for Belle, the thought of her surrender the most potent aphrodisiac I’ve felt in a long, long time.

She’s not colluding with the Petrovians. She’s not some kind of foreign agent or part of a sleeper cell. I’m not stupid enough to think that that particular bit of intelligence was about her.

But I’m keeping her, all the same.

* * *

The next day I have her brought to me, in my office. In the olden days I’d be sitting on a throne, in a throne room, wearing a crown, but this is a modern monarchy. I’ve got a sleek, modern computer screen sitting on a broad mahogany desk that just screams power.

“Leave us,” I bark at the guards.

They release her arms and go, not once questioning my decision or looking back at me. Good. They’ve all been trained well — lesson one is always Prince Julian doesn’t repeat himself.

Belle just stands there, in the center of the carpet in the massive office. Light streams in through the tall windows, highlighting the old, carved wooden beams, the gargoyles in the corners, and the fine workmanship of everything in this room.

She doesn’t say anything. Her hands are in fists at her sides, and she’s wearing the same thing she was wearing last night.

“Isabelle Marchand,” I intone, not standing from my desk.

A hundred years ago, she’d have fallen to her knees the moment she came into the room, back when my ancestors had real power. But now she doesn’t even nod her head, and I can’t make her.

“That’s your name, is it not?” I say, though it’s clear I’m giving a command, not asking a question.

She swallows, her delicate throat moving.

“Yes,” she says, her voice surprisingly solid.

“Good.”

Belle on her knees, in front of me, in fishnet stockings with nothing on top, hands bound behind her, both nipples clamped, the chain swinging between them—

I clear my throat.

“I’m pleased that you’ll at least acknowledge your own name,” I begin, hands knotted on the desk in front of me.

“You have no right to hold me,” she suddenly spits out, her eyes going wide, her face going pale. “I’m perfectly aware of my rights, and under article A, Section II of the people’s constitution of Gris—”

I stand suddenly, surprising even myself with the force of it.

Belle stops cold, her hands fists again, her heart beating so fast and hard that I can see the veins in her neck pulsing even from several feet away.

But she doesn’t back down. That fire in her eyes is still there, still burning as bright as it was the first moment I saw her.

I take one step, then two, moving slowly around the desk. I was born with a keen sense of how power should be wielded and used, and just from the look in Belle’s eyes right now, I can tell I’m right about her.

“You do not have those rights,” I say, keeping my voice low, soft, and commanding.

She doesn’t move. I step around the desk, slowly walk closer to her.

“Those rights apply to citizens,” I tell her. “And I have a feeling that we both know, Isabelle Marchand, that those rights are revoked when a citizen is charged with treason.”

I’m a foot away from her now, the full power of her glare directed at me.

“You have no evidence,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.

“We have all the evidence we need,” I counter, coming even closer. “We have intelligence that points directly at you, mademoiselle, and because of that I suggest you behave yourself while you’re our guest.”

“I’m not your guest, I’m your prisoner.”

“I don’t see why we need to make that distinction.”

I step closer. Now we’re nearly touching, and I’m towering over her.

Belle bent over a chair, hands tied, pussy dripping with her juices as I run the flat of my hand over the welts rising on her perfect ass, her gasp of pleasure as I take aim again…

“You don’t? I do,” she says. Now her voice is shaking, but she still doesn’t stop talking. “One means I can leave, and one means I have to stay here against my will.”

I take her chin in my hand. She doesn’t jerk her head away, just keeps staring me directly in the face.

“Then I suggest you get used to whichever one you prefer, Belle, because until further notice?”

She holds her breath, her whole body stiffening. My cock is rock-hard, and I’m praying that she doesn’t notice.

“You. Are. Mine.”