By the time I got back to the apartment, another hour had gone by, but when I opened the door, I was glad I had taken the extra time. Jace was sitting in the living room with Kin and Kassa, watching a movie. Kassa shot me a smile while the other two barely lifted their heads as I walked in.
“Harris wants us to do a song tonight,” Jace informed me as I headed for my room.
“No problem. I’ll let the other guys know,” I called over my shoulder, already pulling my phone out to text Cash, Sin, and Kale.
After hitting send, I found a good place in my room to stash the ring I had bought for Kassa. She wouldn’t snoop around in my room, but I didn’t want to take the chance of her finding it before I had everything set. After tossing my phone onto the bed, I took a shower and then headed into the kitchen for something to eat.
Kassa was standing at the sink, washing off some freshly sliced fruit. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Jace and Kin were still in the living room, I moved up behind her and wrapped my arms around her small waist.
She mewled softly and leaned back against me as I bent to kiss her neck. “You were gone longer than you promised,” she chided, pushing a piece of fruit into my mouth.
“I had a few things I needed to take care of myself, baby.” I kissed her neck again and stepped back, my body already responding to the way she was rubbing her ass against my cock. Much more of that and I was going to fuck her right there against the kitchen sink.
“Hmm,” she said with a twist of her lips before grinning up at me. “I guess I forgive you.”
I stole a quick kiss before going to the fridge and pulling out the fixings for a sandwich. “You want one, or you going to gorge on fruit?”
“I’ll share my fruit if you fix me a sandwich,” she offered in that sweet voice I loved so damn much.
“Anything for you, baby.”
She finished washing her fruit and came over to watch me make our sandwiches. “So…”
I lifted my gaze from what I was doing and found Kassa biting her lip, her gaze going over my shoulder to the kitchen door then back to me as if she were waiting for someone to burst through the door and start shooting. “So?”
“I was just wondering if we were going to tell Jace … or anyone else.”
I put the butter knife back into the mayo jar and wiped my hands on the dish towel she had left on the counter. Pulling her in close, I kissed her lips, taking my time, not caring who the fuck saw us. “Maybe you should tell me what you want to do about that, Kas,” I told her as I pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “Because I’ll do whatever you want to do. If you want me to go in there and tell your brother right now, I will. If you want me to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself while we’re out with friends, I’ll do that too.”
She melte
d against me, her arms snaking around my waist as she leaned her head on my chest. “Would you be upset if I said I wanted to hold on to what we had last night and not share it with anyone else right now?”
I tipped her head up so I could see her face. “Is that what you want?”
She hesitated for a moment and then nodded.
“Then that’s what we’ll do, baby. I just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy. So happy I feel like I could burst right now.” She stroked her fingers over the stubble on my chin. “Which is why I don’t want other people fucking that up.”
“Hey, I understand. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with Jace on this yet anyway.” I kissed the tip of her nose then rubbed my cheek against hers, making her gasp as I touched my tongue to the spot just under her jaw that I knew made goose bumps pop up along her entire body. “But whenever you want that to change, Kas, just say the words. I’ll face him and anyone else who runs their fucking mouth. Because me and you, we’re forever, baby.”
TWENTY SEVEN
Kassa
I was seriously not a fan of the tour bus. I hadn’t ever gotten motion sickness before, but it seemed like riding down the highway at seventy miles an hour on a bus that was basically our home for nine weeks wasn’t my stomach’s favorite mode of transportation. From the very first day we had left Los Angeles, I had been taking motion sickness tablets daily just so I wasn’t throwing up constantly in the bathroom.
Seven weeks into the tour and the motion sickness was only getting worse. It was to the point that I didn’t have to be on the bus for the nausea to hit me. Alicia had told me to try sucking on peppermint to help, and so far, that had been working. More often than not, I was sucking on a piece of the sweet peppermint candy Gray, Jace, and the other guys bought me every time we stopped to fill up the bus with gas.
I hated having an upset stomach. It was the worst feeling in the world, but it seemed to become a part of my daily life. I might have thought it was morning sickness, but I had gotten my period right on time, just like always. When I had seen the smear of blood, I had been disappointed, but when I told Gray that we were in the clear, he had been so relieved that I had almost felt bad for feeling that way. From his reaction, I got the feeling that having kids was pretty low on his life plan, which kind of made me sad. I wanted to be a mom someday. We hadn’t talked about it though, and every time I had tried to mention it before I had found out I wasn’t pregnant, he had freaked out.
Tonight’s stop on the tour was Miami, and it was supposed to be one of the more important stops. Not because of fans, although Tainted Knights had gained a huge following over the last seven weeks, but because Petrova, the guy who ran Petrova Inc. had a house there and was throwing a huge party. I didn’t want to go, but Travis told Gray that he had to because Petrova ran the record label the band was signed with, and he wouldn’t go without me.
There were half-naked women running around everywhere, not just out by the pool. Booze and drugs seemed to be flowing freely, and there were music artists from every genre chasing after all three. Gray, Sin, and Kale parked their asses on a long couch out by the pool, already talking to a few of the guys from the band they had opened for earlier that night. Cash and Jace were off doing their own thing, and I was bored out of my mind on top of being nauseated. I felt out of place because I wasn’t smoking weed or snorting coke with some of the other girlfriends of a few of the other artists, and I wasn’t drinking because my stomach seemed to fucking hate me.
Gray and the other guys seemed to be having fun, so I tried to as well if for no other reason than to show Gray I could handle this new world of his. I chatted with a few of the sober people and the ones who weren’t high out of their minds, but they were few and far between. Emmie would have probably blown a gasket at all the drugs lying around. She had given the guys—and even myself—more than one lecture about getting into the drug scene and fucking up their careers.