A Taste like Sin Read online

  “Why not?”

  “You still don’t understand me at all, do you?” He sounds so amused by the prospect. But maybe he’s wrong in this case.

  “Because you expect to gain something from every encounter,” I answer before he can say anything else. “To learn something. For your art—”

  “And I wonder how much I’ll learn about you via this delicate, single pearl. Do drop another por favor.”

  The air in my lungs escapes in a gasp. Damn it. That’s right. I’ve given him a victory already: one pearl lost. I’m suddenly aware of the remaining three balanced precariously on their respective positions.

  “Hmmm.” The floorboards protest as he stands.

  I imagine him swiping his fingers along his chin. Specks of dark liquid most likely coat the tips. Paint. I can even smell it, sharp and chemical, melding with the amalgam of scents that enhance his persona.

  Circling to my direction, he grasps where I suspect the tray of pearls to be. An array of soft clinking noises conjures an image of him fondling every round bead, looking for the perfect one. Despite the blindfold, I can almost see him as he finally raises his selection trapped between two fingers.

  “Shall I make a confession?” he muses. “It’s not every woman that I would allow to make demands of me. Flowers every day…”

  He’s referring to one of my delirious requests made in the aftermath of a world-altering betrayal.

  “Those were your terms,” I point out, fighting to keep every muscle still. “You said anything—”

  “And I meant that. But I am sure you love a good bargain as much as I do, and I believe it would only be fair if I were to make a request in return.”

  My body twitches in response to his deepening baritone.

  “So what do you say? I continue to send you your flowers. You perform a daily task of my request, and in return, you get to bargain something else from me.”

  “Like what?”

  “By now, I’m sure you know the answer.” He pauses for drama’s sake and then rasps, “Anything.”

  “Fine. Then whatever you’re planning for when you take my… I-I have to agree to it,” I propose in a rush. “You can’t force me to—”

  “I’ll do you one better; I’ll make you beg for it. Fair enough?” He waits for a reply that never escapes my throat. “As for now… I believe I am required to do something with my pearl.”

  Heat runs through me like a lance. His pearl. God, such a tiny object has never seemed so menacing.

  “Do I have your permission, Ms. Thorne?”

  He’s serious. If I say no, I have no doubt he’ll drop the pearl and leave—yet lord my fear over me in some way down the road. A man like him demands his payment. An eye for an eye.

  Always.

  “Y-Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I track a sudden series of movements coming from near the end of the pedestal.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I plan to do?”

  I nearly jump as his touch teases my lower lip yet again, urging me to open. “Y-Yes,” I murmur against his fingertips.

  “I feel a demonstration may be more…telling.” He sounds closer, his scent strong enough to taste. All of him. “So do I have your permission to utilize a pearl as I see fit?”

  “W-Wait.” I jolt upright, braced on my elbows. Distant pings allude to the fact that the other pearls have fallen, but I can’t even spare enough concern to truly despair. Damn, I almost wish he’d used the drug instead.

  There’s something about the idea of him hunched between my spread legs. I can hear every cadence in his breathing, slow and deliberate. Labored. He’s disguising just how much he wants to touch me, but his finger twitching against my tongue betrays him. I doubt he’s even aware of it. Wanting. This man can display the deepest emotions of others so easily.

  He has no clue how much he himself can give away.

  “And if I refuse?” I manage to whisper as my inner thighs twitch, aching to clamp together. “What if I say no?”

  “You won’t.” His accent thickens with confidence. “You’re too curious. Too daring for your own good. You want to know even more than I want to continue. So shall we both drop the pretense? This is what I plan to do with the goddamn pearl—”

  His fingers slip between my legs, pressing against sensitive flesh. I jump, clawing at his forearms, as the unmistakable shape of the pearl toys near my entrance, guided by his swiping thumb. One flick of his wrist nudges it farther. Another pushes it deeper.

  Explore, he said. The word he meant was invade.

  And there is no escape. The broadness of his callused palm captures me, but the pearl is a terrifying bit of leverage, probing with the right amount of pressure. Too small. I feel him more than it, easing inside me.

  And it is sin. Hell. He has me on a string, arching with every touch.

  “Let the world see you like this?” he growls, his voice dripping into my ear, easily overpowering the pathetic gasps escaping my throat.

  There’s a method to his madness. His finger caresses me first. Then the pearl strikes a tense ball of nerves, making every thought in my brain go haywire. Explode. Unravel.

  “Let them see you in the only way I cannot? Like hell. This is mine.” He quirks his thumb, making my spine contract, manipulated like a marionette. “Your heavy pants, mine to taste. Your wails of ecstasy, mine to hear.” He teases me with a second finger, spreading me open. “The tightening of every muscle just before you lose control, mine to feel. The scent of your arousal that lingers long after, mine to smell.”

  I can’t stop what he unleashes within my body. A torrent of fire robs me of everything but sight. Feel. Sensation.

  His taste is on my tongue, his mouth at my throat, his fingers inside me, thrusting so deep that it toes the edge of pain. Lust has a razor’s edge with him. Too sharp.

  He’ll cut me with it.

  Or kill me.

  But the prospect of death by his hand is alarmingly tempting. There’s no noise in this shadowy realm of pleasure. No secrets or lies to combat. The world fades as all the darkness gives way to blinding white. My brain separates from my body—all I know is that an unyielding strength supports me as I writhe through the tumult of ecstasy.

  Until it’s over.

  Reality inevitably descends and I find myself panting against a stranger. A stranger who’s murmuring into my ear, grated sinful things. “Wet for me… Dios mío.”

  He’s still touching me through the praises. Stroking. The pearl plays tag with the thickness of his finger. I’m full of him. Teased with his substitute. Full again.

  Over, and over, and over…

  “D-Damien.” Rippling muscle serves as my only anchor as I curl my fingers, nails drawn. Anything to retaliate. But my attempts just make his touch all the bolder.

  “You hold your breath when you’re on the verge of coming,” he grates against my throat. “So desperate for control. You don’t want to scream—it feels that damn good.”

  Heat fans my lower lip. Both of mine part. His come down to devour them whole. The thickness of his tongue is a disturbing contrast to his thumb. He times his strokes so both thrust into me at the same time. I’m overwhelmed. Empty. Bursting.

  “You don’t want to moan,” he grunts, drawing his mouth back. “So you bite your tongue. But I can’t stand your silence. I won’t coddle you. Shelter you. I can give to you, sweet girl. You only need to ask nicely.”

  Another kiss consumes any sound I might make. My hands leave his arms and move into his hair, grasping at the thick strands. He copies me, cupping my scalp, using it to deepen the contact between us. His teeth nip at my lip and the pain makes me reckless.

  Reckless enough to bite him back. Grip him back. Push back, urging him inside me. Harder. Deeper.

  Consequences no longer matter, neither do his calculated little plans.

  In this moment, I need him like I’ve needed nothing else.

  “Mr. Villa?”

&nb
sp; A heavy knock on the door feels too surreal, like a random moment from a nightmare. I ignore it first, swatting it away like a buzzing fly—but Damien goes rigid, his lips still on mine.

  Fury is palpable in the way he harshly exhales as he withdraws. “Meirda.”

  Just like that, I’m back in my body. Back in the real world. Arched on a pedestal with Damien Villa’s hand between my legs. He’s already sliding his fingers away, taking the pearl with them.

  It isn’t until another knock echoes off the walls that I realize I’m not hallucinating. We’ve been interrupted. Within seconds, the world is a serious, shadowy place again. And the man in front of me is someone to never underestimate.

  “You are to never disturb me,” he bellows in a thunderous tone that radiates throughout the room. “In fact, I don’t know whether or not to fire you—”

  “It’s urgent, sir,” Julio replies, sounding muffled, as if he’s speaking from behind the door, as calm as ever. “I apologize for the breach in protocol, but…I assumed you would want to hear it before Ms. Thorne had the chance to catch the news coverage.”

  News coverage? I undo the blindfold one-handed and blink, finding Damien scowling near the edge of the platform.

  “Get dressed,” he says before moving to the door.

  I slip from the mattress and stoop for my dress and panties. Hunched away from Damien, I slip it on over my head, but he’s already marching across the room, radiating rage with every thundering step.

  “Are you dressed?” he barks at me.

  I pull my coat on and fumble with the buttons. “Y-Yes.”

  He wrenches the door open, revealing Julio on the other end. The man leans toward him and murmurs into his ear.

  “I see,” Damien says, his tone degrees cooler. “Yes, I understand. You made the right call, as always.”

  Julio nods and presses something into Damien’s hand. “Sir,” he says before stepping back into the hall. He doesn’t go far, I suspect.

  “Juliana…” Damien extends his hand in my direction, revealing just what he’s holding: my cell phone. “Call your stepmother.”

  “Diane?” Nerves unfurl in my stomach as I approach him, feeling too uneasy to voice my suspicions out loud.

  Has my father made a more public plea this time? Accused me of being insane on national television? No, his reputation matters too much for such a stunt.

  Right?

  “What’s wrong?” I take the phone and glance at the screen. There are four missed calls from my father’s office and four more from Diane’s direct cell—all within the span of an hour.

  “Hello?” Diane picks up on the first ring. “Juliana?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, thank God! I told him to tell you sooner, but he didn’t want to worry you. And now I don’t know what we’re going to do. The doctors don’t—”

  “Slow down,” I urge. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

  “Your father is in the hospital,” she says. “He had a stroke. Juliana… It’s not good. Please come…”

  The phone falls from my grasp, sliding across the floor as the world dips in and out of focus. One minute, I’m standing; the next, I’m on my knees, supported only by a strong hand on my shoulder. Like an anchor, a gruff voice sinks through the chaos of my thoughts, tethering me to reality.

  “I’ll take you there,” Damien says, though I don’t even remember asking him to out loud, let alone saying anything. “I’ve got you.”

  Even now, whenever I picture Heyworth Thorne, it’s always as he was the day we met: a knight in shining armor, rescuing me from a nightmare. I’d been sedated that morning, three days after Simon’s attack. Lying tucked beneath the stale, stiff blankets of a hospital bed, draped in tubes and wires meant to monitor my vital signs, I never felt more alone. My mother and father hadn’t been to see me. Besides the police, doctors, and the average nurse, no one had.

  I think my case manager back then explained the fact away with some spiel about reducing stimulus to help me adjust.

  But I knew the truth they had been too polite to say: Leslie was dead. I wasn’t. And while the townspeople may have crowed their relief to the local papers, few of them could look me in the eye.

  Until he came, Heyworth Thorne. A pudgy, stout man with thinning brown hair, wearing a green suit that stretched at the middle. He stood tall despite the diminutive size, carrying himself like someone who mattered. Someone important.

  Asked to consult on my case by the local police chief himself, he entered my hospital room with little more than a teddy bear and a strained smile. There was something rare tucked into the corners of his mouth though: genuine concern.

  “Hello, Juliana,” he said, dropping the crisp, polite tone everyone else used around me. His was blunter. Honest. “I know that nothing I could say would ever be good enough, or empathetic enough…” He cleared his throat and nodded to my empty bedside table. “So would you prefer we skip the introductions and I smuggle you some ice cream from the parlor down the street?”

  The memory stings as I enter a different hospital room in the present day. God, I’ve always hated the crisp, antiseptic smell of the sterile environment. A chill seems to permeate the whole building—no different, no matter the state or year it’s in, apparently.

  The hushed, startled faces of everyone you pass are all the same: wide eyes, mouths contorted in pity. A hellscape of sympathy. Or perhaps an alternate reality serving as a gruesome juxtaposition to my memories.

  My father is lying in my old place, tubes snaking from his body to feed various beeping machines. He looks so old. A frail stranger buried beneath white blankets.

  “What happened?” I ask the room’s only other occupant.

  “Juliana.” Diane, my stepmother, rises from a chair near the bed and swipes at her eyes with the sleeve of her cream sweater. “It started the other day. He didn’t feel himself, enough that the doctor kept him overnight. Then this morning…” She shakes her head and buries her face in her hands. “Oh God, I don’t know what we’ll do if he doesn’t…”

  “I’ll be in the hallway,” Damien announces, releasing me as I step forward and throw my arms around Diane.

  It’s almost funny in a sense. I thought Simon and the horrors he put me through were the worst possible things I could face. I was wrong.

  Seeing Heyworth, a man I spent more than half of my life admiring, lifeless cuts me to the core. I despise all the lies, the deception, and the pain he put me through.

  But at the end of it all, he is still my father.

  And I don’t know if I can lose him for good.

  “Juliana?” Someone taps my shoulder, their voice a whisper. “Go home, dear.”

  “H-Huh?” I startle upright and blink to bring my surroundings into focus: a plain white room with linoleum floors and a sterile view of the city beyond a wide window. Heyworth’s hospital room. One glance at him, his eyes resolutely closed, and my body deflates. “I’m fine,” I murmur, returning to the position I was sleeping in, with my face resting on my forearm. “I’m just resting for a second.”

  As my eyes drift shut, the person beside me sighs. Diane. “Sweetie, it’s been two days.”

  I reopen my eyes and observe my body, contorted within an uncomfortable armchair. I’m still wearing my dress from Damien’s studio. Two days. It’s almost surreal, considering that in all that time—punctuated by a stream of doctors and nurses flooding in and out—my father’s condition hasn’t changed.

  His prognosis is grim. They were able to destroy the worst of the clots in his brain, but each professional consulted on his case seems unsure of the long-term damage. If he wakes up at all, he might not be the same man.

  It’s so selfish to feel the way I do. Annoyed. As though he got the last laugh. I’ll never learn the truth about him—or about Simon. But even as the thought unfurls, I cringe from it and reach for his hand, gripping it tight.

  “I’m fine,” I say, shrugging Diane off. “
He could wake up any minute. I need to be here—”

  “Juliana.” She doesn’t move. “You need to shower at least. And eat. And sleep. Think of what he would want? It certainly wouldn’t be for you to jeopardize your own health, worrying about him. Besides”—she clears her throat and darts her gaze toward the door—“your friend may want some rest as well.”

  My friend?

  Damien.

  A familiar shadow is hovering near the doorway—the same spot I suspect he’s periodically occupied during the past forty-eight hours. Not constantly, of course—but long enough.

  I can’t tell if Diane knows his identity or just doesn’t care. Her pained expression is fixated solely on me.

  “Please, darling.” She cups my cheek against her palm, her blue eyes watering, her blond hair damp. She must have left and showered while I was sleeping, only to return wearing a fresh sweater and slacks. “I’ll take over from here.”

  “Okay…” I’ve barely voiced the surrender when she takes my hand and helps me stand. Then she all but drags me to the door.

  “I’ll call you with any updates. I think you should take the day for yourself. Rest.”

  Rest. But how?

  “No.” I start to turn back. “I need to be here. I need to—”

  “I believe you have been exiled.” A firm hand captures mine before I can take another step, and its owner tugs me farther into the hall.

  “But—”

  “Dulce niña.” Lips tinged with the hint of cologne brush my earlobe. “I’ll bring you back later. But I encourage you to take her advice.”

  God, I can only imagine how I look to have warranted the raw concern in his voice. How I must smell.

  Surprisingly, Damien himself may give me an idea. Haggard. Even his blindfold can’t disguise the full extent of his exhaustion. Shadows paint the hollows and contours of his jawline, making his age more apparent than ever. Stray strands have escaped from his usually slick ponytail. Unfairly, the lack of polish only adds to his intrigue. A passing nurse can’t seem to take her eyes off him. At least until she glances at me and then shakes her head in pity.