I wrinkle my nose. “Does this look like Tijuana?”

Sebastian just chuckles. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “You just have to take it right.”

He grabs my hand, his large, warm fingers closing around mine. This is presumptuous, but I allow it out of curiosity. He pulls me over to the countertop, where I see several bottles of Patrón.

Sebastian pours us each a shot. I go to pick it up and he says, “Hold on.”

He takes my hand and turns it over, exposing my wrist. Then he brings his lips to the delicate flesh where my veins show blue beneath the skin. He kisses me there. It’s only a brief kiss, but I feel the fulness of his lips and the surprising heat of his mouth. It sends a shiver all the way up my arm. He looks at me with eyes that are large and dark, beneath heavy brows.

“Now the salt,” he says.

He picks up a shaker and sprinkles my wrist with salt. It clings to the spot where his lips touched.

“Like this,” Sebastian says.

He licks the salt off my wrist. His tongue is rough and hot. He takes the shot in one gulp, then bites a wedge of lime. Then he sets down his shot glass with a flourish.

“Try that,” he tells me.

We’re standing very close to each other in the hot kitchen. His method of taking a shot is ridiculous. But I can’t deny that my heart is thumping and I feel a strange compulsion to do exactly as he said. There’s a kind of elegance to his movements — I want to see if I can imitate it.

I take his hand, which is almost twice the size of mine. His fingers are outrageously long. I bet he could span two octaves on a piano.

I turn his hand over and see a smooth wrist, lean and brown, with tendons running up the forearm. I raise his wrist to my mouth and press my lips against his skin. I sprinkle salt on the damp patch. Then, looking Sebastian dead in the eyes, I run my tongue up his arm. I feel his flesh shiver, and I see the twitch of his jaw. I taste the burst of salt.

I take the shot, chasing it with lime. It still tastes awful, though admittedly not as bad as usual.

I’m wondering if I’d taste tequila on his mouth if I kissed Sebastian.

Of course, I’m not going to kiss him.

But I find my eyes lingering on his lips, which are full and finely shaped. I’ve never seen a man with a face like this. With his thick, dark curls all around his face, he reminds me of a saint in an oil painting.

He’s so unlike the boyeviks I usually see. At first that. made me disdainful. But now I find myself...intrigued.

“Do you want to dance?” Sebastian asks me.

There’s plenty of people grinding against each other in the living room. Grisha’s house is five stories stacked on top of each other. It’s in awful condition because he’s always throwing parties, and always pissing off his housekeeper so she quits and he has to hire another.