A Beautiful Evil by Kelly Keaton Read Free Book Online Page B

corner. Great. We were about to be sardines.
    I didn’t like crowds, didn’t like being pushed and squished and trapped. It made me angry and just a little bit panicky.
    I tripped on the sidewalk curb. Sebastian’s arm slipped around my waist and kept me from falling into the people in front of me. They shifted, and we became plastered against the wall of a storefront.
    Well, I was plastered against the storefront. Sebastian was plastered against my back. The entire front of his body was molded against me.
    Sebastian’s arms tightened around my waist. His head dipped until his mouth was close enough to my ear so I could hear him above the crowd. “Goddamn parades. Hold on. I’m getting us out of here.” And when he spoke, it seemed to drown out everything around me. “Don’t be afraid.”
    And then we were gone.
    Weightless.
    The ground at my feet suddenly disappeared along with everything else.
    A scream lodged in my throat, coming out broken and pathetic.
    And then we were sitting on a wide ledge. High above Jackson Square. Christ, he’d blinked me to—I gazed above me.
    Not just any ledge. Oh God, oh God, oh God .
    “It helps if you breathe.”
    “I think I might kill you,” I said in a near whisper.
    Sebastian’s shoulder bumped mine as he tried to hide his smile. “Well, you’ve got time, because we’ll be up here for an hour or so before I have enough power again to get us down. I didn’t think you’d be afraid of heights.”
    I glared at him. “I’m not afraid of heights. I am, apparently, afraid of disappearing from solid ground and then reappearing on a ledge.”
    I rubbed a hand down my face and then blew out a loud exhale, trying to calm my drumming pulse and letting my gaze settle over Jackson Square below.
    We sat on top of St. Louis Cathedral, on the ledge that went around the base of the tall middle steeple. Sebastian sat beside me, his legs swinging, leaning back against the steeple wall as though this was a usual perch.
    The breeze was chilly. Lights from the boats on the river gleamed and bobbed, and the square was filled with people. The brassy music from the parade wafted through the streets and mingled with the conversations below.
    Once I got over the shock, being up there was pretty damn cool—looking down on the world, the activity, the music, and yet separated from it in our own little world.
    “I knew you’d like this,” Sebastian said with quiet satisfaction.
    His head stayed back against the wall, but he turned it to meet my gaze. Humor swam in those gray eyes, but everything else about him was still. “You’re reading my emotions?”
    He shrugged and didn’t answer.
    “I take it you’ve come here before.”
    “More than once,” he said, staring out over the square.
    “Why did you kiss me that day?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Heat crept up my neck and into my face, but I didn’t look away from him because, as embarrassed as I was, I wanted to know the answer.
    His lips dipped into a wry smile, driving a deep crease into his cheek. One raven eyebrow lifted a bit higher than the other. The storm clouds in his eyes seemed to give way to a lighter shade of gray. “Why did you kiss me back?”
    Time suspended—a long, unforgiving, humiliating space that was filled by me looking like the world’s greatest dumbass as my mind floundered for something to say.
    Sebastian drew up one leg and turned more toward me, his shoulder pressing against the wall.
    What would he say? That he’d kissed me because I was there, lying on top of him at Gabonna’s, our faces so close, so why not? My stomach knotted. Please don’t let it be something like that .
    “I kissed you,” he began, his voice calm, blunt, and honest, “because you caught me off guard. Because that day, even if it was only just a few hours we spent together, I felt normal and understood with you. There are things I can sense and feel from people. That’s why I didn’t want to