Claiming His Princess Read online

  “Get up,” he growls, his voice deep, rough, and a little scratchy. It’s the voice of a man used to being obeyed.

  It can’t be…

  “Release my father,” I say, willing my voice not to shake.

  “Your father’s a fool and a traitor,” the man says. “Get up before I decide you are as well.”

  “My father’s an old man who needs proper medical care,” I fight back.

  He can also be a fool sometimes, I think.

  Silence. More silence.

  And I give in.

  I finally dart my eyes to the side, look at the man who’s still towering over me, so close he could step on me, and the sight sends a shockwave through my body.

  It’s him.

  The prince.

  I’ve never seen a picture, of course, at least not one taken since he was a teenager. No one has, the royal family has made sure of that.

  But I’ve heard the rumors, read the stories about him, and there’s zero doubt in my mind that the hulking, brooding, scarred man looking down at me is Julian of Griskold.

  It’s a bad angle, his face in shadow, his hair falling down around his jaw, but I’m positive I’m right. I can just barely make out the long white scar running from his forehead, to his chin, and over his neck.

  It’s ugly. It looks like it hurt, and my toes clench involuntarily in my shoes as I grit my teeth together even harder, determined not to react.

  Even from here, lying on the floor looking up at him, I can tell he’s powerfully built: broad-shouldered even in his official jacket, the blue cloth hugging his biceps, his powerful chest.

  There’s even a bulge in his trousers, and it must a trick of the light and the angle I’m at, but it’s absolutely—

  “Get her off the floor,” he says, and turns on his heel before I can finish my thought.

  Instantly, I’m surrounded by guards again, and they grab me roughly by the arms, nearly jerking them from my shoulder sockets. My phone clatters to the floor, and someone scoops it up instantly, tucks it in his pocket.

  “I expect that back,” I spit, but the guards pull my hands behind my back, shoving me so hard I can barely stay on my own two feet.

  Ahead, Prince Julian is disappearing through a door in the wall, shoving it open and striding through. The door swings shut behind him, and then I’m whirled around.

  “What, you thought you were going with him? Think again,” a man says. “We’ve got a different place for traitors.”

  “I want to see my father,” I say, teeth still clenched.

  I’m bracing for something — for being smacked around or tossed to the floor again — but besides the rough grips on my arms, they aren’t actually hurting me.

  “We all want something we can’t have,” the man says, and then turns his head, talking to someone else. “Put her in room three.”

  Chapter Four

  Julian

  I’m not talking until I see him,” she says, arms stubbornly crossed over her chest.

  Across the table from her, the captain of the guard and one of the top men in Griskold’s security forces tap their pens against the metal surface, lean back.

  “Mademoiselle, we’ve been over this already,” the guard captain, Pierre, says calmly. “Your father is also currently being questioned, and the faster that both of you cooperate, the faster we can let you see him, the faster we can make sure that his medical necessities are taken care of…”

  He’s already had his medicine, by the way. We want him talking, not dead, but she doesn’t know that.

  The other man, Jean-Luc, leans forward.

  “We don’t suspect you of anything but wanting to help your father,” he says, his voice radiating warmth and sincerity. I’m sure he’s practiced that a million times. “But if you’re hiding something that you know about him, this could go from you walking out of here tonight a free woman to… well…”

  A heavy silence falls over the interrogation room, and behind the one-way glass, I frown, crossing my arms.

  He’s lying to her. I know that he is, the captain knows he is, and judging by the ferocious sparkle in Mademoiselle Marchand’s eyes, she knows it, too.

  “I don’t know anything because he hasn’t done anything,” she says, her voice deadly and quiet. “He’s an opinionated citizen who thinks the monarchy should be done away because it’s an institution that’s a hundred years out of date. Luckily, Griskoldian citizens have rights that include free speech, so wanting a different type of government isn’t against the law.”

  She folds her hands in front of her on the table, glaring, eyes still flashing. They did search her, but she’s wearing the same thing she was when she came into the palace: tight jeans, heels, and a blouse that’s almost low-cut.

  From this angle I can just barely see the tantalizing rise and fall of her breasts, and despite myself, my eyes are glued there. I’m practically willing a button to pop off, but it doesn’t work.

  What would she look like tied to my bed?

  Hands over her head, spreader bar between her legs.

  I could undo every button with my teeth as she panted for breath, feel her sweet submission with every rise and fall of her chest…

  I turn away from the window abruptly, pace the small observation room, hands clenched, and try to drive the fantasy out of my head. I think about butterflies, kittens, puppies.

  What she’d sound like when she moaned with a gag in her mouth.

  How pretty her perfect ass would be as red welts rose up across it…

  “You know what is against the law?” Jean-Luc says, quietly. “Colluding with foreign agents to assassinate the king.”

  “What?”

  She looks genuinely surprised, confused, looks from him to Pierre and back.

  Then she laughs.

  “You’ve got something wrong,” she says. “Look. My father does a lot of hanging out in pubs, and probably too much running his mouth, but he’s not colluding with anyone. The man could barely collude with his cable company to get an upgrade package earlier this week, it’s completely ludicrous to think that he’s—”

  “Not him, Miss Marchand,” Jean-Luc says quietly.

  She blinks at them, hands still spread on the table in front of her.

  “Then why am I here?” she finally says.

  “Because we’ve got evidence that you’re colluding with foreign agents,” Pierre says.

  She goes perfectly still for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth. Then she frowns, her brow furrowing, and narrows her eyes.

  “No, you don’t,” she says.

  Both men just sit back in their chairs expectantly, like they’re waiting to get her confession or something, though I’m pretty sure she’s not about to give anything up.

  They’re not bluffing. Not exactly, because recent intelligence has come to light that Petrovinsk has a sleeper agent on the inside. A woman, which is unusual, and a few reports have made us think that she might even be a Griskold native who was somehow turned.

  That’s all the reports say, of course. There’s no description of the woman, nothing about who she is or where she lives. Pierre and Jean-Luc are just trying to scare her into giving up anything she does know, but as the beautiful Miss Marchand flounders, looking from face to face, trying to find a sign that they’re bluffing, I put both hands on the sill of the one-way glass window, thinking.

  This means that legally, I don’t have to let her go.

  I could make her stay here, in the castle. With me.

  The thought sparks something deep inside me. I’ve had plenty of women over the years, even since I came back looking like this, but none of them made me feel quite the pull that she’s exerting over me right now.

  Those women were already submissive, already practically mewling at my feet. They couldn’t wait to be tied up and spanked, bound and gagged, teased and denied again and again until they begged me to let them come.

  But this girl is different. I can tell by the fi
re in her eyes that she won’t be so easy.

  I’m going to need to break Belle Marchand.

  And she’s going to love every second of it.

  Chapter Five

  Belle

  Stop,” the guard barks. “Here.”

  I halt, in the middle of a stone hallway, in front of a big wooden door. My heart is hammering, but my hands are free, and I hold my chin up high, just to show these men that they don’t scare me.

  Even though they do. Even though I’m being held prisoner by a beast and his guards despite the fact that I haven’t done anything wrong.

  One of them steps forward and unlocks the door with a huge skeleton key, the iron clanking hollowly in the wood, and the door swings open.

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding, relieved for the first time all day.

  It’s a bedroom, not a cell. It’s plain and simple, sure, but given the rumors I’ve heard about the prince and the castle, I was afraid that I’d be chained to a wall and sleeping on the straw-covered floor.

  “In,” the guard growls, and I step over the threshold.

  I’m still nervous — no, terrified — but I feel slightly better. I feel like I might actually be able to sleep for a few minutes tonight, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to let me pee without demanding that I let them watch me go.

  “You’ll be staying here,” he says, his voice still rough. “Clothes will be brought. Meals will be brought. There’s a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower through that door.”

  I take a few more steps into the room. I’m still pretty sure that they have no right to be holding me like this, and I’m nearly positive they have absolutely no proof that I’m the spy they’re claiming that I am, but at least I’m not chained up tonight.

  “Any questions?” he barks.

  “Can I have visitors?”

  “No.”

  “I want proof that you’ve let my father go.”

  “You’ve got the prince’s word.”

  “No, I’ve got you telling me what the prince said. The prince himself hasn’t said a thing.”

  The guard frowns at me, his face barely moving. He looks at me for a long, long time, like he’s reconsidering letting me stay in this bedroom and taking me down to the dungeons instead.

  “Your father will be returned to his home,” he says, and that ends the discussion.

  He spins on his heel, turning his back, and I look frantically around the room, trying to think of something, anything else to say, because I don’t want to be shut in this room alone.

  “Wait!” I yelp.

  He turns.

  “There’s nothing to do in here,” I say, letting my voice lower so I sound meeker, pleading. “Can’t I at least have a book or something?”

  The guards all look at each other. One shrugs, then the other shrugs, and finally the third looks back at me.

  “We’ll see,” he says gruffly.

  And before I know it, they’re through the door, the heavy metal key clinking in the lock again, and I’m alone in this cold, plain bedroom.

  I just get in the bed. I don’t know what else to do, so I curl up right in the middle with the lights off and wish I were somewhere else.

  Like my own bed, for instance. Like anywhere but here, in this cold, horrible castle with this cold, horrible man.

  At least they agreed to let my father go. All I can do now is hope that they follow through with their promise, because I’m pretty sure I’ve done everything I can on that front. I came here, I raised hell until… well, until I ended up in a bedroom that’s not mine, locked away for God only knows how long.

  They can’t keep you indefinitely, I tell myself. There are laws, citizens have rights, your father knows people who’ll organize, start protests and hire lawyers, demand to see evidence that what they’re saying is true…

  But it’s not comforting. Not at all, because I also know that for certain crimes — treason among them — the rules are different.

  I don’t know how this happened. I mean, I can follow back the steps that led me here, but I’m too tired, shocked, and drained to understand how those things added up to me being kept prisoner in this room with no real explanation.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do about the rest of my life, how anyone can explain this to my friends, who’ll run the bookstore while I’m gone. I was in such a panic when I left that I can’t even remember whether I locked the front door, so for all I know it’s being ransacked by hoodlums right now.

  And despite all that, I can’t quite get Prince Julian out of my head. As much as I want this to all be a bad nightmare, I keep thinking about the hard lines of his face as he looked down at me, on the floor. The scar that runs down his neck.

  His one bad eye. It should make him ugly, but… it doesn’t. It makes him look commanding, serious, in charge. The kind of man who says something and expects obedience, no matter what.

  I don’t know what kind of obedience. I don’t let myself go down that path. Not right now. Instead I breathe deep. I try to make my mind stop spinning out of control. I try to make a plan.

  And after hours and hours, I think I finally fall asleep.

  Chapter Six

  Julian

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.