The sun sifted through the curtains and trickled over Adam as he lay in bed. It caught the copper in his hair like a child holding up a penny and cast his smooth skin, toned muscles, and angular contours into sharp relief. Had his companions been awake they would have found him very striking. As it was, they were tangled up in sheets, a shapely stocking clad leg visible here, the comely curve of a bosom exposed there, spent and fully embraced by sleep.

Adam sighed and opened his eyes slowly, squinting in the glare of the sun. His deep blue eyes shone like sapphires in the light before he grunted and turned his face away. He had a headache. He brought his hand to his temples and frowned. Why had they not yet invented a wine that could be ingested in large quantities without any unfortunate side effects the next day? What on Earth were all the vineyards and breweries up to? He thought briefly about who he could command to make such a thing when the Danish Duchess sharing his bed stretched and looked up at him.

"Good morning your highness," she murmured, shifting in bed to lay across his chest, running her fingers over his skin. Adam responded by bringing his hand down to her derriere and cupping it firmly.

"You've exhausted her," Duchess Alida said, looking down at her still slumbering lady-in-waiting with a smile, "She isn't used to a man with your virility."

"You should bring someone with far more stamina next time," Adam responded, a little shortly.

"Well," the duchess responded, frowning slightly, "I'm sure I made up for her shortcomings."

Adam sighed. The talking. He detested this aspect of amorous relations. All the talking. The flattery, the delicacies, the niceties. The talking it took to bed a woman, the talking during, the talking after they woke up. As soon as they opened their eyes in the morning they felt like they shared some kind of connection with him they wanted to explore. Why couldn't these women collect their stays and wigs after he was finished with them and see themselves out?

"You were fine Alexa," Adam answered. The duchess frowned further.

"Alida," she corrected.

"Fine," Adam said again, wondering how he could get this woman to attend to his morning needs before he dispensed with her and her full-chested lady in waiting. He brought his hand under her chin and turned her face upwards so that their eyes met.

"Don't pout," he said and she blinked slowly and dreamily as though his blue eyes cast some sort of spell over her. He tilted his head to the side like he was considering her, "Though it is an excellent way for you to show off those beautiful lips."

"Your highness is too kind," she mumbled, blushing. Adam moved so that his hardness was pressed against Alida's thigh.

"You are exceptionally skilled with those beautiful lips," he muttered, raising his eyebrows suggestively. The duchess smiled and began kissing his chest, his stomach, her lips moving steadily down his torso. Adam caught his breath and arched his head back as she took him in her mouth. The lady-in-waiting stirred and he reached over to take her bosom in his hand. She giggled and moved towards him, kissing him deeply while the duchess continued her work on his manhood. Adam pulled the lady-in-waiting away from his mouth by her hair and sat up slightly to take one of her pillowy breasts into his mouth, biting down hard. The lady-in-waiting gasped. She was beautiful, Adam thought dimly, wondering what her name was for a brief second before realizing he didn't care.

"I'm next," the lady-in-waiting whispered, glancing down at the movement under the sheets in the area of the prince's groin. Prince Adam smiled arrogantly. It was almost too easy.

Belle walked fluidly through the market square while reading her book. The townspeople admired her beauty and grace even as they scoffed at her eccentricity. She moved effortlessly through the town without so much as glancing up from her reading material, weaving through crowds and between various obstacles. The truth was it wasn't difficult. The town was small, predictable, imminently knowable. Every morning was the same since the morning that she'd come to this poor provincial town just after her mother died. Oh how she missed the hustle and bustle of Paris, the theatrics of a big city, the teaming humanity. As a girl she would walk out her front door and never know what was going to happen, but now the only place she found excitement was in her books.

She supposed, apathetically as she turned a page, that Gaston would turn up any moment. It was just about that time.

"Good morning Belle," a deep voice said, intruding upon her listless musings. Right on cue.

"Good morning Gaston," Belle responded, without looking up. Gaston snatched the book out of her hands and looked at it with disgust. Irritation swelled in her chest as Belle brought her hands to her hips. The truth was that physically she was attracted to Gaston just like any other girl in town. She despised this fact about herself but couldn't deny it. Belle found Gaston's broad shoulders, big muscles, and blue eyes appealing despite herself. What she did not find appealing, however, was Gaston's brutishness. Gaston turned her book sideways as though he were looking for crude drawings of nude women and Belle rolled her eyes.

"How can you read this?" he asked, "There are no pictures!"

"Well some people use their imagination," Belle responded, thinking that all of Gaston's muscles were in his biceps rather than his brain. Ever the gentleman, Gaston tossed her book into a mud puddle.

"Belle, it's time you got your head out of those books and paid attention to more important things, like me," Gaston told her. Belle frowned and retrieved her book from the mud, wiping it off on her apron and wondering how it was exactly Gaston had made it this far in life without being slapped.

"The whole town's talking about it," Gaston continued, "It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas…thinking?"

A man of the enlightenment Gaston wasn't. Belle glanced at the trio of Bimbettes that Gaston had bedded on countless occasions and wondered why he didn't make better use of his time by wooing them with his thoughts on how women shouldn't think. Word had it that Gaston was pursuing her because of her beauty, but Belle wasn't buying it. Gaston was a man who had never been told "no" by anyone, and so, naturally, he wanted what he couldn't have. His attraction to her stemmed not from an appreciation of her beauty, and certainly not admiration for her intelligence or personality, but rather that she was tantalizingly out of his reach. She knew this, though she doubted he had enough insight to realize it.

"Gaston you are positively primeval," Belle told him flatly.

"Why thank you Belle," Gaston responded with pride. Belle blinked. Yes, Gaston definitely didn't have much insight.

"What do you say we head over to the tavern and take a look at my trophies?" Gaston said, putting his arm around her presumptuously. She wiggled free of him and stepped away.

"Maybe some other time," she said, "I have to get home to help my father. Goodbye."

"That crazy old loon," crowed Lefou, Gaston's lackey, "He needs all the help he can get!"

Anger flashed through Belle and for a moment her vivid imagination allowed her to fantasize about chucking her book square in Gaston's face. Her natural grace and loveliness often obscured the fact that she had a temper, a formidable one.

"Don't talk about my father that way!" she snapped, "He's not crazy! He's a genius!"

These words were no sooner out of her mouth than a loud explosion came from the vicinity of her cottage. She gasped and ran towards her home, hoping her father hadn't hurt himself of set the house on fire. He was a good man and she loved him. She would defend him against anyone, protect him from anything. But she knew, as she ran over the cobblestone street to her home, that he was much changed by her mother's death. Once a successful merchant in the city, the loss of his beloved wife drove him to both the outskirts of his sanity and civilization, landing them in this one-horse town in the middle of nowhere. Maurice became obsessed with his odd inventions, tinkering alone in the basement endlessly while Belle saw to all the housework and looked after the old man. As Belle approached the basement doors and saw smoke billowing out, she allowed herself to contemplate, just for a second, what it would be like to be free from Gaston, this town, this provincial life.