He starts to pull away and walk out of the room.
“No!” I sit up in bed and hold out a hand to stop him, then the room whirls dizzily. I grab my head and wince. Ugh, my head feels full of cotton and I’ve got a deep, thudding headache.
“Don’t go,” I still manage to grind out. And then, more plaintively than I’d probably prefer if I were feeling one hundred percent, “Don’t leave me alone.”
But I feel like crap, so even as I collapse back onto my pillow, I still hold out a wan hand. The scratches on my arm are looking better, the healing salve he rubbed on earlier doing its work. “Please. Stay.”
And then I lose the fight to hold up my arm and it drops to the bed, too.
He hesitates a moment in the doorway like he’s second-guessing himself but then he comes back to the bed and sits beside me. I nestle against his hip. He radiates warmth.
“You’re so warm. Lay down beside me?” I murmur. “I just need to get warm.” A shiver wracks its way down my spine.
“What we need is to get your fever down.”
Then he does the last thing my feverish brain expects. He leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead. Every muscle in my body relaxes at the contact of his lips against my overheated skin. It feels so right.
He moves to rise again and my hand shoots out, shackling his wrist. And then he kisses my hand. “I’ll be right back, beautiful rose. And if you’re a good girl and take your medicine, then I’ll stay with you through the night.”
“In bed with me?” I’m using the last of my energy to hold onto his wrist, but it feels like the most important thing in the world to wrest this promise from him before he goes.
“Maybe so.” Another whisper of a kiss to my forehead and then he’s gone, and the whole world seems like it's gone cold.
It feels like an hour before he finally returns, but he does come back. With a tall glass of water and a couple of pills.
I try to take the cup, but my strength almost immediately fails me and water sloshes out of the cup and onto my blanket. But he’s right there to grab the cup before I drop it completely.
“Here,” I’ve got it, he says calmly. Then he helps me sit up, cradling my back to tilt me up, and he lifts the rim of the glass to my lips.
“Take a sip first,” he murmurs, and I do. The water is cool, but it feels good slipping down my throat. When he holds out one pill, I obediently stick out my tongue without waiting for instruction. His lips curve up and I watch the edge of his mask thoughtfully as he places the pills on my tongue and then lifts the glass to my lips again.
This might be the closest I’ve ever been to him, just able to observe. Everything’s still slightly fuzzy through the haze of my fever and with the room lit only by the flickering fire in the fireplace. But still, I can see the fine hairs of his short beard on the half of his face that’s exposed, and his lips are full and yet somehow still manly. The skin around his eyes is smooth, young-looking, even though there are shadows there that make me think he’s rarely at ease.
I swallow but he doesn’t pull back and that’s when I realize he’s watching me just as carefully as I’m observing him. He lifts a hand and caresses it gently down the side of my face. “What am I going to do with you?” he whispers, but I have the feeling it’s more to himself than to me.
“Keep up your end of the bargain,” I whisper.
A smile crinkles his lips and he nods. That’s all the agreement I need as I slump against him. He’s so warm and I’m so cold. I’ve been so cold. I’ve been cold for so long. Longer than I even realized, I think.
But that’s the last thing I manage to think because sitting up and drinking down the pills took more out of me than I expected, and I’m soon drifting back off into the warm cocoon of sleep. Feeling safer than I ever have before in the Beast’s arms.
Fourteen
Beast
She fights a fever for days. I pace the floor, cursing myself. I forgot she was so weak, so fragile. Her beauty and brain are so strong, but their vessel is frail. Just like her mother.
I remember her father pacing the floor like this, wearing a tread into the carpet. Finding him in the lab with his head in his hands. He worked night and day for a cure. He never lost hope.
The second I saw her, I knew we were meant to be, he told me once of his wife, Isabella. With your success, son, you’ll have women throwing themselves at you. He placed a hand on my shoulder. Take my advice: wait. Wait for the one.
True love? I’d asked with a jaded smile. He was right; women did throw themselves at me. But only if they couldn’t get Adam’s attention. He always outshone me. Don’t tell me you believe in soulmates?
If by soulmates, you mean a woman made for you as you were for her, then yes. Dr. Laurel had been perfectly serious. A scientist who applied reason to everything but his relationship with the love of his life. True love does exist, son. And it’s worth the wait.
I press my head to the freezing glass, gritting my teeth against the cold. Winter has come with a vengeance. Below, in my rose garden, even the hardiest varieties are bowed under the weight of ice.
Daphne whimpers and I cross the room, kneeling by the bed to take her small hand. I check her forehead. The fever is breaking.
“Stay with me,” she whispers through parched lips. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t, sweetheart.” I hold a glass of water to her lips until she drinks. When she’s done I ferret out a jar of salve from my lab to smear over her chapped lips. Caring for her feels natural. Like everything in my life led to this moment.
For years I’ve burned with one purpose: revenge. It’s her father’s fault that I’m a Beast, too ugly and gruesome for anyone to love. Far from throwing themselves at me—if women ever saw me now, they’d run. Just like Daphne did.
And yet, I forgive her. How can I do anything else when she clings to me so trustingly? My heart was frozen as the winter earth, and her touch melts the bitter frost.
“I’m here, Daphne. I’m not going to leave you.”
Fifteen
Beauty
“Open for me, sweetheart.”
I glare at the masked man sitting across from me. He regards me steadily. He still hasn’t replaced my glasses but in the past few days, the slightly blurred angles and contours of his face, neck and hands have become familiar to me. For all the torment he’s dealt, he can be surprisingly gentle.
Even when his patient is increasingly grouchy. And mouthy.
“You know, I’m not a baby. I can feed myself.” I cross my arms over my chest.
He says nothing and proffers the soup spoon until it’s a millimeter from my lips. I sigh and open my mouth as instructed. Ugh, broth.
“Chicken soup? Again?” I settle back on the pillows as he scrapes the bowl for another tepid spoonful. “What I wouldn’t give for a cheeseburger.”
“You need to replenish your fluids and electrolytes.”
“Thank you, Dr. Obvious,” I mutter. His good brow raises. I curl my fingers into the blankets to keep from reaching up and touching his face. Not the first time I’ve had the urge.