Tainted Bastard (Tainted Knights 4)

“More like, don’t do anything you would,” Aubree shot after her. “You dirty whore.”

“Or that!” she laughed, waving as she tossed her gym bag in her trunk.

The bliss of air conditioning after the heat outside made pleasure-filled goose bumps pop up on my arms. After a quick warm-up, I headed for the cardio area. I normally did a thirty-minute run before moving on to some of the other equipment. My standard routine usually revolved around equipment that would keep my stomach toned and my ass firm. I hated my big boobs, but I was a little in love with my bottom.

To get to the cardio, I had to pass the weights, and I tried my hardest not to look for Sin. It wasn’t until London had mentioned seeing him that I remembered he’d said he was going to the gym with his friends. I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him.

I saw Gray first. He was hard to miss, and with the impressive dead lift he was doing, most eyes were on him. Kale was close by, talking to some guy just as beefed up and sweaty as Gray was. I wasn’t sure I’d met him before, but he seemed slightly familiar to me.

As I drew nearer, I finally caught sight of Sin, and my racing heart plummeted to my toes. He was sitting on one of the benches, talking to some brunette with a killer body that I was fairly sure was eighty percent surgically enhanced. Her dark hair fell over one shoulder, her smile coy and enticing as Sin sat so close she might as well have been in his lap.

In that moment, I felt stupidly naïve.

There he was, flirting with some chick, when I’d been having daydreams about how he sat so protectively beside me the night before and held my hand. I thought that his confiding in me meant something special, that maybe I was important to him and he wanted me to know his darkest secrets. But seeing the way he was basically fucking the brunette with his eyes, I wa

s realizing that was far from why.

“Who is that cunt-faced bitch?” Genesis half snarled as she came up beside me.

Sin dipped his head, whispering something in the brunette’s ear that had her giggling, and I felt sick. Jealousy tried to eat at me, but I pushed down that green monster, reminding myself he was just like every other guy. All he wanted was to get laid, and I couldn’t even think about sex without breaking out in a cold sweat.

“What the fuck is he doing with Slutty McSlutbags?” Aubree seethed beside me. “I thought you two were—”

“You thought wrong,” I told her with a shrug, while on the inside, I was silently begging him to lift his head and look at me. To smile that smile I thought was mine alone and leave the brunette behind. I wanted him to walk over, take my hand the way he had the night before, and call me his “sweet girl.”

As we stood there, Sin got to his feet, and my breath hitched. He was going to do it. He was going to do exactly as I was pleading for him to do with my eyes alone.

But then he grasped the brunette’s hand and pulled her up beside him. Linking their fingers, he grabbed his gym bag at his feet and headed out the side exit. Not once did he look my way.

“He’s a bigger whore than you, Gen,” Aubree grumbled.

“Looks like it,” Genesis agreed. Turning to me, she put her hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry, Ro.”

Pushing down my hurt and disappointment, I gave her a small smile. “Don’t be. Sin is just a guy who helped us out of a bind. He’s no one special.”

Even if I’d hoped he would be.

Chapter 7

Sin

“Is this band as good as you guys?” Kassa asked as we walked into First Bass, her blond hair swishing over her shoulders.

Gray snorted. “They wish they were as good as us,” he told her, stepping protectively—and possessively—closer to her when a group of guys moved into our path.

“They’re pretty good,” Kale assured her. “It’s their vocalist who has the pull, though.”

I clenched my jaw, trying and failing to keep the flash of Roanna from flooding my head. For five weeks, I was able to keep away from First Bass. Every Thursday, I had to fight the urge to see her, making myself stay away so I wouldn’t be tempted to seek her out, talk my way into going to her apartment again.

Spilling more of my guts to her about my past.

I didn’t know why I told Roanna about Brandi in the first place. I never talked about her or the disaster she made out of my life before, during, and after she fucked me. No one but my dad knew the details of what went on with his ex-wife, and even then, he didn’t know everything. I couldn’t trust him to take my side when it came to that woman, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone else just how far I’d fallen with the woman who’d destroyed my mother’s self-esteem along with her marriage.

It felt so natural to talk to Roanna, to confide in her. And after seeing that darkness in her eyes, I knew she would understand. That she wouldn’t judge me.

But as soon as I left her place that night, I started to panic. She knew. She had new power over me that didn’t revolve around the pull of her mesmerizing voice or her beauty. Roanna was getting too close, and I needed to step back, put some distance between us until I had full control again.

I shouldn’t have come with Gray and Kassa tonight, not when I was already jonesing for a fix of my Roanna addiction, but Kassa called and asked me herself. If anyone else had asked, I would have been able to turn them down in a heartbeat. Kassa was different. We had some small, strange connection. It wasn’t that I wanted her or loved her the way I knew Gray did, but I liked her.