Of Beast and Beauty Read Online Free PDF

Needle’s gentle touch, her hands like birds alighting on my head, my shoulder, my cheek, communicating concern with every cool brush across my skin, calmed me more. She was only fifteen, but her touch reminded me of my mama’s. I let her stay, when I’d sent every other companion away.
     
    I’m surprised to find I want her now. I would very much like to have Needle’s slim fingers under mine, making the signs for “Calm down” and “We’ll sort this out.” I didn’t think I was afraid of anything, but now I am.
    I’m afraid.
     
    My fingers tremble as I touch the torn flesh at my shoulder. I don’t feel the poison yet, but I could. At any moment. I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. I don’t want to die. Not like this. It’s not fair! I’ve lived with Death hovering on my shoulder my entire life, but I never—
    “Should I carry you, Princess?” The soldier’s hand warms the small of my back. My spine ripples as I twist away. His touch is foreign, unexpected, too strange after the night I’ve had.
     
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t …” The soldier clears his throat. “I was wounded as well.”
     
    “You were?”
     
    “The Monstrous tore the skin at my leg.” He sounds younger than he did before. Scared.
     
    I reach out, brushing his shoulder with my hand, surprised to find that my arm is parallel to the ground. The soldier is nearly my size, shorter only by a bit. “Thank you. For helping me.”
     
    “Please, don’t thank me.” His hand finds the small of my back again, settling over the knobby bones of my spine. The warmth of him—cooler than the Monstrous but warmer than me, in my sweat-damp clothes—heats my hips. My stomach. My chest. “It was a privilege to defend the life of our queen.”
     
    “I’m not—” Before I realize what’s happening, soft, hot skin presses against my half-open mouth. I flinch, but the soldier’s hand at my back holds me still as his lips move against mine, as his tongue flicks out, bidding a cautious hello.
     
    A kiss. This is a kiss. It is … slipperier than I’d imagined. His tongue is …
     
    A tongue ? Who would have thought?
     
    A part of me wants to laugh at this soldier and the jabs of the slick muscle invading my mouth, but another part of me is … fluttering.
    Something stirs inside me. Something urges me to tilt my head and move my lips, to dart my own tongue out—quick as a wink—for a taste.
     
    Salty. Sweet. Hint of cabbage. Something familiar in the midst of all the unfamiliar feelings that are making my skin warm and my insides as hot as the Monstrous man’s flesh.
     
    I pull back, heart beating too fast. “We should go to the cells. The monster might have revealed the cure.”
     
    “We should, but if we die tonight, I—”
     
    “No one’s going to die,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
    “Come with me.” I start down the path, but stop after only a few steps. I’ve never been to the cells. I’ve never dared go that deep into the city proper.
     
    I hold out a hand. “Guide me. Hurry.”
     
    “Yes, my lady.” A second later, his arm is under mine. It’s strong and densely muscled, but the bare skin at his wrist is as soft as all the skin I’ve felt in my life. Much, much softer than mine. This soldier is a whole citizen of Yuan.
     
    So why did he kiss me? A tainted girl, too tall and too wide, with skin peeling from the chest down in a frustrated attempt to reveal the scales
    that lurk beneath the surface? I’m obviously not sufficiently tainted to be sent to the Banished camp, but even the slightest sign of mutation is reviled. From what I’ve overheard, a whole citizen would rather die than marry someone with Monstrous features, no matter how mildly they might manifest.
     
    He’s hardly thinking marriage. He’s thinking he’s going to die and yours might be the final lips he encounters .
     
    The thought banishes the last of the tingling sensation from my body, expelling it like a