Tainted Bastard

by Terri Anne Browning

My breath suddenly felt trapped in my lungs, and all I could do was sit there and look at him with knowing eyes.

  His thumb brushed over my stampeding pulse, his jaw clenched as he hesitated for a minute before finally continuing. “Her hands were on me before I even knew what was going on. I couldn’t get her off me, and my body responded without my permission. She…” He blew out a harsh breath and shook his head. “That was my first time, and she stole it from me. For the next few weeks, she kept taking it from me too, and I didn’t know how to stop it. Didn’t know if I wanted to stop it because it felt good. I hated her, though. Always had, because she ruined my parents’ marriage. But she was hot, and she knew how to make me want her.”

  “Sin,” I whispered, unsure what to say but knowing he needed me to say something. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not telling you this because I expect you to tell me what happened to you. Fuck,” he groaned, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “I’ve never actually told anyone about it until tonight. Not even Gray or Kale know… But I saw something in your eyes earlier, and I recognized it because it lives inside of me too, sweet girl.”

  “I…I can’t,” I choked out. “I can’t talk about…that. But, yes, I know what it’s like to…to…have something stolen from you.”

  His fingers tightened around my flesh, and he lifted my hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything. I just wanted you to know I understand. You don’t have to be scared if I’m there to protect you, Roanna.”

  I shivered as his warm breath brushed over my skin. Then he was kissing my palm. His eyes met mine, and I felt something uncurl deep inside myself. “I-I’m not scared of you, Sin.”

  “Good.” His voice was deep, rough around the edges, but it warmed me from head to toe. “I don’t ever want you to be afraid of me, sweet girl.”

  Chapter 6

  Roanna

  I felt like a walking corpse the next morning as I crawled out of bed. All night, I’d tossed and turned, thinking about what Sin had confided in me.

  It wasn’t like I thought I was the only person on the planet ever to be sexually abused. It happened every single day; just thinking about it and being unable to do anything to save those victims tried to destroy my psyche. But the idea of someone hurting Sin, when he was barely older than I was when it happened to me, that was agony.

  I wanted to know more about his stepmother. Mostly, I just wanted to know where I could find her so I could stab her in the ovaries. But just as pressing was the need to know who saved him from his abuser. He said his two best friends didn’t know about the abuse, but did his mother or father save him?

  Or did he have to go through all of that on his own?

  Thinking of Sin as a young teenager, facing the adult who should be protecting him but was stealing something from him every day for as long as the abuse went on, helped my own nightmares fade the previous night. Replacing them was the man who’d saved me from a mob of drunks, scared and alone as he prayed for that bedroom door not to open…

  Groaning, I pushed my tangled hair back from my face and walked into the kitchen where Genesis and Aubree were already sitting having breakfast. Nearly blind from lack of sleep, I dropped down into the chair between my two friends and reached for Aubree’s huge mug of coffee.

  She grumbled something my fogged-up brain didn’t comprehend, but she didn’t attempt to take the cup of life-giving sustenance from me.

  “Rough night?” Genesis asked with a snicker.

  Draining the last drops from the mug, I set it on the table and pushed it away so I could fold my arms on the table to pillow my head. “Mm,” I hummed in agreement.

  “What time did the sinfully sexy Sin leave last night?”

  “Gen…” Aubree’s tone was full of warning.

  “About half an hour after you guys went to bed,” I told her, not giving in to Genesis’s teasing tone.

  “Ah, sorry, Ro. Did you have more bad dreams last night?” she asked with sincere concern.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, but I didn’t tell her they were different this time. I told my three soul sisters everything, but I wasn’t about to hurt Sin by spilling the secret he’d confided in me the night before.

  “Maybe it’s time to give therapy another try.”

  “Why?” I demanded without lifting my head. “So they can diagnose me with depression and anxiety? So they can medicate me and turn me into a zombie again? Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”

  I didn’t react well to any of the meds, and I’d tried plenty. One left me so nauseated I stayed in the bathroom for two days straight. Two other ones made me so agitated and irritable, I felt like I was turning into some rage monster who couldn’t even stand the sound of people breathing. Another one gave me insomnia, and for someone who didn’t like to sleep due to the dreams haunting her, I was on cloud nine for a few weeks. But then I crashed and burned from the lack of sleep and ended up in worse shape than I began.

  In the end, I told the doctors to go fuck themselves and their constant switching of meds that didn’t even work to alleviate my depression and anxiety in the first place. I was no one’s guinea pig, yet that was what I felt like they were turning me into.

  “You up to a workout later?” Aubree asked, changing the subject. “I need to work off all the pizza we’ve been eating lately.”

  I didn’t have the energy or brain power to walk to the elevator, but I grunted an affirmation anyway. We needed to stay in shape to keep up our image, and lying around vegging out and driving myself crazy thinking about Sin wasn’t going to keep my stomach flat and my ass popping.

  “Good, we can go about two. Grab a nap. I don’t want you falling asleep in the middle of the workout.”

  I flipped her off and stayed where I was. All I needed was a pot of coffee, and I’d be good to go.

  A few hours later, we walked into the gym just as London was leaving. My bassist soul sister lived and breathed the gym. Having suffered from an eating disorder most of her life, she fought her need to vomit up her meals with intense workouts that lasted for hours.

  “Hey!” She pushed her sweaty braid over her shoulder. “You’re right on time. I just saw three of the TK guys heading for the weights. Gray is looking mighty fine today, ladies. Mighty. Fine.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she looked at me. “And Sin looks particularly yummy.”

  My heart jumped at the thought of seeing Sin again. I tried to hide my excitement, but they all gave me knowing grins. Ugh, sometimes having them know me so well was a pain in the ass. But I loved them and knew my life would have been a hell of a lot different if they weren’t around.

  “They must have been here a while, though, because they were all drenched in sweat. And fuck, but they look good soaked like that.” With a grin and a wink, she headed for the parking lot. “Have fun, bitches. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  “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.
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br />   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 was 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.

  There weren’t many people I liked, period, so Kassa was definitely special.

  “Why aren’t we going upstairs?” Kassa asked as Gray shouldered his way toward the front of the crowd on the first floor.

  “I like being front and center,” he told her, a muscle in his jaw ticking.

  “Yeah, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t want Nate drooling all over Kassa,” Kale muttered to me with a laugh.

  I snorted, causing Gray to shoot me a glare, but I only lifted my brows in amusement. Silently daring him to call Kale out on it if it wasn’t true. He gritted his teeth together, and I lifted my beer to my lips in triumph.

  A line of security stood between the front row of people and the stage. I was glad to see the added precautions as Harris had promised. Cash told me there had also been changes made to the security team for Thursday nights, but I hadn’t come in to check them out for myself.

  “Kassa, over here!” Kin called when she spotted us headed that way.

  She and Jace were standing with Kin’s stepsisters, Angie and Carolina. Carolina was jailbait, and Angie was more often than not a bitch, so I didn’t converse with either of them much. Behind them, Angie’s twin brother stood with a determined look on his face as he spoke to Carolina.

  Kin’s family was weird, to say the least. Carolina was her stepsister from her dad’s current marriage. The teenager’s older sister, some chick named Georgia who looked a lot like her, was a raging psycho who wanted nothing more than her face splashed on the front of all the tabloids. Just like mommy dearest. Carolina might look like her sister, but from what I could tell, she was sweet and wanted nothing to do with her sibling or mother. Angie and Caleb were from Kin’s mother’s marriage before she died. The twins and Kin were tighter than most blood-related siblings I knew.

  The four stepsiblings were pretty close. Even though Carolina was young, they always included her in everything. But I was fairly sure at least one of the four didn’t think of the teen as another sister.

  Caleb bent to listen to something Carolina was saying so he could hear her over the dim roar of the crowd. As he came in closer, I watched his lids lower and his nostrils flare, as if he was breathing in her scent and savoring it. No one else seemed to notice the giant’s reaction, but then again, no one else was really looking. It wasn’t like Caleb was going to make a move on her anyway. What I knew of him told me he was way too honorable to try anything with a girl so young.

  Didn’t mean he didn’t want to, though. The longing in his eyes as she smiled up at him was eating at him, that much was clear.

  Kassa bumped into me as she stepped back from hugging Angie and Kin, but Gray’s hand was there to catch her before I could even try to steady her.

  “Crap. Sorry, Sin,” she said with a laugh, touching my arm. Like always, her thumb skimmed over the scars on my arm.

  I pulled away, not wanting to be reminded of the incident that led to so many changes in my life. I didn’t blame Kassa for any of it, though. It wasn’t her fault that stupid dog bit me. I just wondered how things would have ended up if the dog’s owners hadn’t been forced to pay the settlement in the lawsuit Kassa’s adoptive mother filed on behalf of my parents and me to cover my hospital bills.

  That settlement more than paid for my bills, and then some. Coming during a period when my father had been laid off from the factory, it felt like a godsend at the time. But never having had so much money in their lives, my parents didn’t seem to know how to act with all that cash suddenly at their disposal.

  Months later, Dad left
Mom for Brandi, who’d come sniffing within weeks of their getting the settlement check. Their divorce wrecked Mom. She went from having a devoted husband to a cheating ex whose new wife loved to taunt her with how young and beautiful she was. I hated Dad and Brandi for doing that to Mom, the sweetest and kindest person I’d ever known.

  Mom got sick, and she began to fade right before my eyes. She died when I was fifteen, and then I had to live with Dad and Brandi. Which, to them, was probably a good thing, because Dad’s half of the settlement was nearly gone, while Mom’s had still been substantial.

  Not even a month after I moved in with Dad, Brandi’s seduction started, and the nightmare that became my life for the next few months began.

  Kassa wrapping an arm around my waist pulled me back from the memories, and I kissed the top of her head before stepping away from her and drinking my beer. She gave me a sweet smile, and I winked just as the lights were turned down, announcing the start of the show.

  This close, I could see when each member took the stage, and I was waiting impatiently for Roanna. Peyton and Genesis were already there, but the other three were still off on the side of the stage. London and Aubree stood protectively beside Ro as she signed an autograph for some guy, who was leering down at her like she was a something sweet he wanted to devour.

  I moved toward them just as Aubree urged Roanna up onstage. As soon as she had her mic in hand, the lights came up, and she was suddenly the vibrant, confident rocker chick who made me want to hand over my soul to her.

  The cravings I’d fought for five weeks hit me hard. If she didn’t smile at me, I was going to lose my shit.

  I grunted, realizing I was turning into an obsessive dickhead, but finding it harder and harder to control with every moment spent near Roanna. Staying away had only made my hunger for her, this gnawing ache in my gut, intensify. I wanted to know how she’d been doing since that night we hung out at her place.

  Was she eating enough? She hadn’t even touched her dinner until I urged her to.