Page 68 of A Taste like Sin

I close my eyes as the full extent of his promise resonates. No more fear. No night terrors. No Simon.

“And if I refuse?” I wonder, daring to open my eyes again. He’s still here, alarmingly intent. This isn’t

a dream. Painfully real, his heat assaults my skin, awakening parts of me I’ve felt stir only at his

touch. His whim.

“I don’t think you will,” he says, confident. “In fact, I think you might enjoy this conquest more than

the first.”

I draw in a ragged breath at the memory. The slickness of his skin. The friction between us. The way

the world faded, reduced to him alone.

“I should have you sussed by now. In fact, sex should have concluded my interest in you,” he adds, the

grit in his tone drawing me from my thoughts. “And yet, at every damn turn, you…confound me.”

Confound? I bite my lip against a retort. I’m sure he has no trouble sensing my emotions regardless.

My chest is heaving against the barely-there barrier of my clothing, my breaths fanning the air.

“I’m reckless with you,” he adds as warm breath nudges my throat, alluding to just how close he is

now. “You make me…impulsive when I should have a steadying hand. And you know damn well what

I mean.”

He stills right when another gained inch would press him against me—yet he’s near enough for me to

inhale his scent and exhale resolve.

“Do I?”

“Sí.” Rare tension sows ripples through his polished baritone. “I expected you quivering and fearful

beneath me. Maybe then I could draw the real woman lurking behind the polished façade. I’d make

her talk to me.”

His hands smooth up my spine from behind, locking me into place. With only a thin bit of fabric as a

shield, my body is his plaything. Trembling. Alight. Ignoring my commands to run.

“I’m tired of being afraid, Mr. Villa,” I say.

“As if you ever were. Last night, I realized the truth.”

I stiffen as his lips ghost the side of my throat, beneath my ratty hair.

“I’ve been sending you the wrong flower, Ms. Thorne. You’re no rose—you’re a vine. You grow

there in the midst of the weeds, your stem slightly crooked, your petals lacking the uniform nature of

all the other flowers. At a glance, you look like the rest. But if someone were to feel…”

He performs that very action as the words leave his throat, sliding his hands up my back, cinching the