Tainted Kiss (Tainted Knights 1)

Kale had only said Jace was going to be joining us, but Gray was also there, as well as a huge blond guy who looked like he dead-lifted small SUVs for fun.

I recognized Harris Cutter easily. As the owner of First Bass, as well as being the son of legendary drummer Devlin Cutter, he was in the tabloids often. Even more so since he had gotten engaged to Lucy Thornton.

All four men were sexy as sin, but not one of them could hold my attention for more than a second before I was glancing back at Kale. My body melted just looking at the delicious drummer.

All those lingering doubts and fears about him were absent tonight. They seemed to have vanished with the kiss we’d had that morning. I was just happy to be with him and couldn’t bring myself to care about what might happen in the future.

As soon as we reached the guys, Lucy dropped my arm and curled up on her fiancé’s lap. He gave her a long, lingering kiss that had us all looking away. Holy shit, those two could have set off the sprinkler system with how hot they burned with that small kiss.

Jace stood, kissed Kin on the lips, then smiled at me. “It’s nice to see you again, Santana. I’m glad you could come tonight.”

I returned his smile. “Thanks. It’s good to see you, too.”

He turned to the guys still sitting behind him. “You remember Gray, and this is Kin’s stepbrother, Caleb.” The muscle monster gave me a smile that looked deceptively gentle

. “He’s harmless, but good to have around in case you need to break down a few walls.”

“Ha-fucking-ha,” Caleb grumbled, flipping Jace off.

I knew they were only joking around, but I didn’t doubt that, if Caleb got mad enough, he could Hulk out and tear the entire place down.

The other girls were already taking seats. Angie and Jenna took one of the empty couches across from Lucy, sitting close and having a whispered conversation, while Kin took a seat on Jace’s lap. Kassa sat on the arm of Gray’s couch. I didn’t miss the long look he gave her before he pinched her hip. With a small squeal, she smacked him on the back of the head, but they were both grinning.

That didn’t leave many options for Kale and me to sit. There was enough room between Gray and Caleb for one of us to sit and a spot beside Angie on that couch.

I was about to take the spot beside the little blonde, when Kale took my hand and pulled me toward the couch with the guys. Sitting in the middle, he pulled me onto his lap like it was the most natural thing to do.

Pink filled my cheeks for a moment. This was so intimate, and the other two girls were sitting on their guys’ laps like it was something they did all the time. They probably did. I, however, had never sat on a guy’s lap in my entire life, so this was all new to me.

Kale didn’t make me feel awkward, though. He wrapped one arm around my waist, cupping my hip with his hand and giving it a firm squeeze before his fingers relaxed. His other hand was on my knee, his fingers tapping along to the rhythm of the song that seemed quieter back in this corner.

He shifted after a minute, and I understood why when I felt his dick pressing into my hip. More pink filled my cheeks, but the heat in my face was no match for the inferno that was settling between my legs. He gave me a sexy wink, but otherwise acted like it was nothing at all as he turned his head to say something to Gray who had asked him a question.

After a few minutes of talking to the others, I got comfortable and even kicked off my heels.

“Hey, Santana.”

I lifted my head when Kin called my name. I had been engrossed in the conversation between Gray and Kale and had almost forgotten about the others around us.

“We’re going to do a girls’ night next Friday. Do you want to join us? It’s just going to be us, minus Kassa, and my other stepsister Carolina.”

I was blown away that she wanted to include me. I glanced from her to Kale, saw that he was waiting for me to answer, then turned back to Kin. Was he glad that I was going to hang out with his friend’s girlfriend? It was kind of sweet, and I wondered if he had asked her to include me.

“I’d love to,” I told her, then felt him relax at my answer. “Text me the details?”

“Great.” She grinned. “I’ll just snatch your digits out of Kale’s phone.”

ELEVEN

Kale

The night was turning out to be a success. It felt good to just hang out with my friends, and even better to have Santana there with me. I hadn’t gotten to do this much over the last year. There had been little time for friends outside of our weekly gig at First Bass.

I hadn’t been the only one who’d had to a get job when we first got to L.A. Cash and Sin had also gotten a second job to pay their ways. From the time Sin and I were fifteen, we’d worked, so it hadn’t been a hardship for either of us. Cash, on the other hand, had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His dad was some hotshot congressman, but when Cash had told him what he wanted to do with his life, the old man had given him an ultimatum—go to college, get a real job, follow him into politics or join the family business. Or, he was going to cut Cash off.

Cash hadn’t made it seem like it had been such a huge decision. He had left without a backward glance as far as I knew. Finding a job, however, had been a little more difficult for him. In the end, he’d started waiting tables and made some decent money doing it, but now he was living comfortably from the record deal we had signed with Petrova.

Jace might not have been born into money, but he and his sister had been adopted into it. Their adopted mother was the district attorney back in Bristol, Virginia. She was also Gray’s aunt and had raised him from the moment his mother had died. Alicia St. Charles had paid their rent upfront for them when we’d moved out to California, so they hadn’t needed to get an extra job to put food on the table while we had worked our one-year contract with Harris at First Bass. Of the five of us, Gray and Jace had the easiest life. Now. Their childhood had more than made up for it, though, in my opinion, and I wasn’t even a little jealous of either of them.