Page 74 of A Taste like Sin
“No,” I say, surprising myself. “Not now. Tomorrow. Just let me have a few more hours of pretending
if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Trouble?” He brings my hand to his lips, pressing them along my knuckles. “Never.”
“Let’s just hope we aren’t interrupted this time,” I say. The way his jaw twitches is the only clue I
need to know I’ve said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry—”
“DON’T BE.” A HEART-STOPPING GRIMACE TWISTS HIS LIPS, PART FROWN, PART…SMILE? “MATEO IS,
let’s just say slow to warm to new people. He was always that way. But there is no malice in his
hostility.” He shrugs, his jaw softening a fraction. “In some aspects, he is like a child. Painfully
demanding, but affectionate to those who earn it. Though it seems he is more of the former around me
lately.”
“He made you trade him something to stay away from me,” I surmise, licking my lips. “Didn’t he?”
His head shoots up, cocked to the side. “It seems I didn’t give him enough.”
“Did you?” I press.
“Perhaps.” A muscle in his neck flutters, and he shakes his head. “Fine. I gave him control over a
facet of our mutual business arrangements. Let’s leave it at that.”
I look down, eyeing the table as an uncomfortable sensation floods my belly. Gratitude? “You didn’t
have to—”
“You don’t know Mateo,” he says over me. “It appears we both have complicated relationships with
our family members, ¿sí?”
“That sounds…relatable,” I admit, fighting to sound cordial.
“Pardon the cliché, but I would blame our upbringing,” Damien admits. “Our father was not an easy
man to live with. Mateo learned that more than most.”
“Oh?”
“What is a polite way to say… He favored corporal punishment.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Again, you do not have to be. It wasn’t a terrible life in a sense. I’m grateful for it.”
“H-How did you leave?”
A thoughtful grunt catches in his throat. “Our mother was American. So my brothers and I had dual
citizenship through her—making us technically citizens, not immigrants. The media tends to skew
some facts.” His cold, quick smile takes my breath away. A heartbeat later, it’s gone, smothered into a
