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Innocent in the beast's bed! When Belle Chamberlain offers to take her father's place as his prisoner, Prince Adam Katsaros strikes a deal. Deeply scarred by the accident that claimed his wife, Adam isolated himself in his forbidding castle. But Belle's innocent beauty could redeem his reputation as he reclaims his throne... He'll release her father if Belle poses as his mistress! Belle can neither deny nor resist her brooding captor! Adam's burning gaze awakens a newfound desire, and every touch brands Belle as his. His ruthlessness is legendary, unless Belle can tame the beast inside... From Harlequin Presents: Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds. Read all the Once Upon a Seduction... books: Book 1: The Prince's Captive Virgin Book 2: The Prince's Stolen Virgin Book 3: The Italian's Pregnant Prisoner Book 4: The Queen's Baby Scandal Book 5: Crowning His Convenient Princess
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1 primary bookOnce Upon a Seduction is a 1-book series first released in 2017 with contributions by Maisey Yates.
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Hard to believe this was published 2017...
“The Prince's Captive Virgin”.
A little island kingdom in Aegean Sea.
Prince Adam (wink wink) has been in a horrific traffic accident where he was disfuígured and his pregnant wife killed. Caused by the paparazzi.
Belle's (wink wink) father is a paparazzo and Belle thinks it's all right. Celebrities WANT to be photographed. If they didn't, they'd protect themselves better. If a person can walk in to your home and take photos of you, you obviously wanted that to happen, and selling these photos is “innocuous”.
The prince doesn't think this is OK.
So, Belle's father flies from LA to Mediterranean, walks in to the prince's home, takes photos of him and sends them to LA. The prince is angry and arrests the guy, for breaking and entering, and violating his privacy.
Belle, a college student, studying English literature (of course), finds money somewhere to pay for a plane ticket from LA to a small island in the Aegean Sea, and comes to rescue her dad from the awful monster, because dad is obviously deadly sick and in need of treatment, and that was why he came to take photos of this prince - to earn money to pay for the treatment.
Belle doesn't understand the concept of people getting imprisoned for breaking the law, especially when she doesn't think the crime should be a crime, and the criminal is sick and her dad. No, arresting criminals is “destructive revenge”.
So she suggests that the monster exchanges his prisoner to her instead. After all, her education is just a piece of paper to her, and she can easily sacrifice that to save her father's life.
Except that when the prince takes her offer she doesn't know what to do, because obviously the right thing would have been to give this entitled stupid American college student what she wants and ignore the law, so she will probably whine about how unfair it is through the book until she falls in love with the monster.
And, Belle has intimacy issues, because her mom left the family when Belle was 4. She doesn't want to become a “tempestuous, selfish creature driven by passions of flesh” like her mother, and also she is “accustomed with her space and independence”. She is still a virgin (of course she is) and has had only one boyfriend in her life (the current one), and he doesn't know she is in Europe.
Apparently, the prince doesn't give a crap about law either, because he accepts her offer. She is “uncommonly beautiful”, and he needs a pretty girlfriend, now when he has decided to become a real king, after having been recovering from the accident and loss of his wife and child for three years.
Anyway, just like in the movie, she is supposed to dine with him and she refuses, because “she finds him uncivilized”. And continues being a total a-hole, moping about him having taken her offer, because obviously she didn't really mean anything with it.
It is interesting how common this is in different The Beauty and the Beast retellings.
NOBODY forced your dad to commit a crime. He's a prisoner because he broke the law and got caught.
NOBODY asked you to offer to switch places. What somebody is asking is for you to honor the agreement YOU proposed.
YOU should have considered your precious freedom before you so callously offered to give it away. It wasn't he who took it away, it was you who gave it away. And now you want it back. Apparently your father's life isn't worth that.
I just wished he had told her
“Miss Chamberlain. I agreed to your request - and remember it was your request - because of two reasons. Firstly, your father is ill and in need of treatment, which he and his doctors have arranged to begin soon in America. Secondly, because I need a pretty girl on my side when I make my comeback to the publicity. If you fail in this job, you will not be a sufficient replacement to your father, and I will get him back. Make no mistake about that. But if you do your job well, there will be benefits for you. If you manage to convince the world of that you love me, and not just my status and money, I will see that your father's treatment is paid and that your education is paid. If you play your part badly, I won't be playing my part either.
What comes to you being my mistress in real life, you don't need to worry. I am still very much in love with my wife your father's colleagues took from me. You are beautiful, but she was beautiful, intelligent, kind, funny, she loved me, she made me laugh and she made an unfillable impression in my bed. I will be holding you as if I loved you, kissing you as if I loved you, flirting with you and giving you gifts, the way I have treated all my previous girlfriends, in public, but in private I doubt there will even be much interaction between us, and considering your attitude, I doubt there's even any wish for that. It might be rather lonely for you, but if you are interested in reading, I have a large library, and I can see you'll get a tutor so that you won't miss much of your lessons while you are paying for your father's crime.”
Oh, and she' 5'3 and he's 6'6 at least, and really muscular. A bit like Emilia Clarke and Jason Momoa. So... whose that slim, undamaged, 5'6 guy in the cover?