BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Callie Pierce

  Cody didn’t think of himself as book smart. School had never been his favorite thing. That didn’t mean he was stupid. He could hear that there was a lot more to those words than Kyle’s girlfriend. He wondered if being stupid in love was what made her go bad before. Maybe that’s what was keeping her from getting wild now.

  “I went stupid over a girl once,” he said.

  She gave him a look of melodramatic shock. “Only once?”

  He laughed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, all right. I can be a little bit on the crazy-for-ladies side. But can you blame me? Women are just… nice.”

  “All women?”

  He shrugged and found himself wondering how honest he was supposed to be with this woman. Sure, Twitch knew her. Well, he had known her once upon a time. Did that matter now? She was talking more now than she had been back at the bar. Something was working. “Most women, if we are being up-front and honest about it. I like women. Sweet or sassy, skinny or thick. All of them have a certain kind of something that makes me want to see more.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ll just bet.”

  “Some more than others,” he said, bumping his shoulder against hers. “They are like cars.”

  “Women aren’t cars,” she interrupted.

  He nodded. “I know that. That’s why I said they are like them. It’s a metaphor or something. Just hear me out. Women are like cars. Some of them are all flash with no substance, nothing under the hood. Some might not seem like much at first, but they are real powerhouses. Then there are some that are a little of both.”

  “Is that supposed to be some kind of compliment, Mr. Bannik?”

  He stroked his hand down his chin. “I mean, if you want to take it that way, Ms. Mason.”

  They reached a street corner and came to a stop. Unexpectedly, she turned toward him. “All right. I can’t figure you out.”

  Cody wasn’t sure there was anything else she could have said that would have surprised him more. “What?”

  “I can’t figure you out,” she repeated, throwing her hands up in the air. “I mean, if you were an absolute creep you wouldn’t be here now, trying to help find Kyle. If you were just interested in getting into my pants—”

  “You’re wearing a skirt.”

  She frowned at him. “Fine. If you were just interested in getting under my skirt, you would have tried to get me to stay at the hotel with you and wait for my brother to come home. Maybe you would have come up with some line about taking my mind off things.”

  “Well.” He smirked and stepped forward, closing the small amount of distance between them. “If you want me to take your mind off things…”

  “Stop trying to be funny. It’s not working.”

  “Oh, ouch.”

  She poked a finger into his chest. “The truth is a painful thing. So how about you tell me what you want here.”

  She turned her head up until the glow from the overhead streetlight filled her face. For a moment, he was struck stupid. Her features looked sleek and catlike. Her eyes were long and slightly tilted near the corners, her nose and chin both ending in points. If she had pointed ears she would have looked like one of those elven babes in those sword-and-shield movies. He had never seen the appeal until this moment.

  “All right,” he said. He snaked his arms around her middle and hauled her close. Her eyes went wide and then narrowed.

  “I will,” he promised, “but I need you to pay attention because I am only going to say this once. You want to know what I’m about? It’s simple. I like your brother because he is the smartest little idiot I know. I want him safe and happy and all that shit you normally want for family. You? I just want you. I want to see that skin of yours get pink and sweaty with wild sex. I want to kiss you until you want to make nothing but bad decisions.”

  “I stopped making bad decisions a long time ago.”

  Her lips were so close to his that he could almost taste her breath. The scent of peppermint swept over him. It wasn’t the sharp scent of toothpaste, but it was close.

  “Well, that sucks.”

  He dipped his head at the same moment that she lifted hers. Her lips crushed against his with a wild fervor that he hadn’t expected, but was willing to drown in. Her hands came around his shoulders and cupped the back of his head, pulling him harder against her. She smoldered in his arms, like some kind of living flame. Her tongue was quick and clever as it dove into his mouth in exploration, retreated and dove again.

  He trailed his hands down her back to palm the curve of her backside. Cody struggled to remember a woman who had ever been so soft and warm in his arms. Desperately, he tried to think of a place where he could get her naked. He was just beginning to wonder if there was a counter inside the bank that he could plop her down on when she yanked her mouth away from his.

  “What is it?” he asked, looking around. “What’s wrong?”

  “This.” She motioned between them with one hand. The other was plastered on his chest, keeping him at arm’s length. “I can’t do this.”

  “Sure felt like you were doing it just fine.”

  “Mr. Bannik, I am aware that you are accustomed to women that give in to the minimum level of your charms at the slightest provocation. I’m not one of them.”

  Feeling a little stupid, he dropped his arms back to his sides. “All right.”

  She blinked, surprise making her flushed features go pale all over again. Clearly, she had expected him to put up some kind of fight.

  “All right?”

  He dragged a hand over his mouth, trying to clear his senses of her. “Yeah. Listen, I’m not going to lie. I want you. I think we’d be pretty fun together. But I’m not exactly turned-on by a woman telling me no.”

  Her smile was small and embarrassed. “I didn’t mean—”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got bigger things to worry about right this moment.”

  “Kyle,” she said as if she’d just remembered what they were doing out here. She pulled her phone out of a pocket he hadn’t even felt despite how up close and personal they had gotten. “Goddammit. It’s nearly three in the morning. Where is he?”

  He looked past her, out into the night and toward the old bypass that was just shy of being considered abandoned. As his thoughts came away from the fuzzy images of seeing Donna naked and purring, he could make out a few kids lounging between the cement columns.

  “I think he’s over there.”

  Her head whipped around so fast her hair nearly smacked him in the face. The locks hadn’t even settled into place before she was moving, making a beeline for the overpass. He followed in the wake of her movements. As the pair of them grew closer, he made out the dark blue hoodie that Kyle favored. He wasn’t lounging with the others; he was hanging from one of the beams like a monkey, a can of spray paint in one hand.

  “Kyle!” she barked.

  Everyone’s attention whipped in Donna’s direction. There were only three kids there, one girl and two boys. All of them were regular faces at the pool hall.

  “Donna?” Kyle asked. A moment after that: “Cody? What are you two doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” Donna put her hands on her hips. “Get down here, now.”

  “Oooooo,” one of the teens sang, his laughter filled with amusement. “Somebody’s in trouble.”

  “Shut up, Brian,” Kyle snapped out as he slowly climbed down. His head hung down low, and his shoulders were hunched. He looked like a recently kicked puppy. Kyle shoved his hands into the large pocket of his hoodie after shoving the paint can into his backpack. “Donna, I—”

  She held up one hand. “Don’t bother. We will talk in the car. Go.”

  When Kyle hesitated, she snapped it out a second time. Kyle muttered something under his breath but stomped off to the car. Cody watched him go.

  “Should I cling to the roof?” Cody smirked, already putting his hand in his pocket and wondering if Twitch or Hulk
would be better to call.

  She whirled on him. “How about you stay the hell away from Kyle?”

  He blinked. “Wait, what? I don’t understand. I thought…”

  “You thought what? That a single kiss in the middle of the underfunded part of town would mean that you could get away with this?”

  Cody had, on occasion, seen women get angry. It was bound to happen when he enjoyed their company as often as he did. He had been slapped, had a drink or two poured in his lap, and been called some pretty inventive names. One woman threatened to set him on fire and throw him off a bridge. None of that compared to the cold fury burning out of Donna’s pretty face.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She jabbed a finger into his chest hard enough that he wondered if there would be a bruise. He took a step back and held up his hands in surrender.

  “I can’t tell if you’re playing dumb because you think I am that stupid, or if you really are that stupid. Honestly, I’m leaning toward the latter.”

  “Donna, seriously, what the hell is wrong?”

  She used the same finger to gesture to the spot where Kyle had been painting. He followed the line she made in the air until he saw it. It was a tiger. Okay, it was half of a tiger, tearing its way out of the concrete. It was the same symbol that was plastered on Cody’s jacket and the jacket of every Wild Tiger in the area.

  “I am not an idiot. You aren’t just Kyle’s wannabe surrogate brother. You are trying to pull him into your little motorcycle club. You want to make him into a criminal.”

  Cody didn’t know what to say, partially because she was right. When Kyle grew up a little more he’d probably make a great member of the club. It wasn’t like Cody had asked the kid to go out and do something stupid. Apparently, Kyle had done that on his own initiative.

  “I didn’t ask him to do this,” Cody defended.

  “Do you have any idea what would happen if a cop had caught him doing this? Breaking the law while he is out on bail?”

  “I—”

  She didn’t let him finish. Her clipped and cool voice plowed over his response as if she could not care less what he was about to say. “He’s sixteen. He’s old enough that a judge could waive the ability to try him as a youth. This stupid stunt could carry over into adulthood. Do you know how hard it is for convicts, even of nonviolent crimes, to get a job that pays anything but minimum wage?”

  “Yeah,” he snapped back, finally getting angry, “I have a little bit of an idea.”

  It was apparently the exact wrong thing to say. She clapped her mouth shut and turned on her heel. He got the bleak pleasure of watching her walk away before she casually tossed over her shoulder, “I’ll just bet you do.”

  Chapter Seven

  Donna

  Donna was capable of ignoring Cody Bannik for about two weeks. Considering the size of her hometown of Carson, Nevada, and the persistence of Cody, that was a minor miracle. She threw herself into her new role as caregiver and out-of-office boss. One of those jobs was strikingly easier than the first.

  “Kyle,” she found herself saying one night, “how about we go to the movies? We could get pizza or something?”

  “No,” he’d snapped, like she had asked him to give up one of his less vital organs.

  Trying to figure out what was wrong with him was, in a word, tedious. She wanted to say that it was just typical teenage angst, but it felt like more than that. Kyle wasn’t a bad kid, she was sure of it, but he was spending as much time away from her as possible. Which took a pretty impressive amount of talent considering that the rent-by-the-week apartment they were sharing was smaller than the double-wide they had grown up in.

  More often than not, she was talking to him through the door. He came out to grab whatever food she had ordered from the steadily growing collection of takeout menus, only to ferret it back into his bedroom. He hadn’t snuck out again, but he had tried.

  She was loath to admit that it had been Cody who caught him.

  Donna had been sitting on the worn couch in the small living room with a half-eaten order of pad Thai sitting next to her laptop as she tried to get some late-night work in. A horror flick was playing on the television screen in lieu of office music. She could only assume the melodramatic screams of a busty coed as she ran away from a faceless villain masked the sounds of Kyle trying to escape the confines of the double-locked window.

  She had just been getting into the final fight scene where the hero figured out how to overcome the big bad scary thing when a knock had sounded on the sliding glass door. Donna had jumped hard enough to spill her evening wine over her pajama pants. Cody had been standing there, a surly-looking Kyle caught in one hand.

  “Hey,” he had said when she slid open the pane of thick glass, letting in the scent of chlorine from the year-round pool at the center of the complex. “I was just… passing by, and…”

  She’d raised her brow. “For a criminal, you are a terrible liar. Kyle, get to your room.”

  Kyle had straightened his shoulders, trying to show off how big and tall he was. Donna wasn’t particularly impressed. One the one hand, she wasn’t a very tall woman herself, and bigger and badder men than her little brother had tried to use their build to be intimidating. On the other, he was standing next to Cody, who had a way of looking intimidating just by breathing. Kyle wasn’t aware of his failure.

  “You aren’t my mother.”

  She’d snorted and shook her head. “You say that like it’s supposed to be a bad thing.”

  Kyle’s snort in response had been so similar to her own that she was reminded how much of their upbringing had been the same. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “Funny thing. I can. You don’t have to listen. I don’t have any superpower that compels you to do what I say. All I can hope, little brother, is that you are smart enough to understand that I am trying to keep you safe.”

  “Whatever,” he said as he pushed past her and stomped off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him hard enough to make the hotel-quality artwork on the walls shake.

  Cody waited a moment, quietly standing in the still-open doorway. “I’m sorry.”

  Donna could not bring herself to answer. Partly because the final screech of music was blaring out of the television as the bad guy was finally killed. Partly because she was getting to the point where she really didn’t know what to say. Donna wished it were that easy. One great big problem solved with a single action with no consequences to deal with. But there were always consequences, no matter what you did. Donna knew that better than most.

  “What are you sorry for, exactly?” she’d asked, wiping at the wine that had stained her pajama pants. It was a mild frustration since the pajamas were both silk and new. Still, it was the only problem she currently knew how to deal with.

  “For lying.” He stepped inside, sliding the door shut behind him. “I promised myself I was going to be honest with you. Twitch said you liked honesty.”

  She went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of club soda out of the pantry, pouring some onto a paper towel. Without looking at him, she began to blot the stain out. “I do. I’m surprised you still care what I like.”

  “Why? Because you yelled at me?”

  “I didn’t yell.”

  He nodded, shoving his hands inside of his jeans. “True. You very carefully snapped at me.”

  “Most men aren’t particularly fond of women who are willing to snap at them.”

  Cody took a step forward. She paused in her cleaning and looked up at him. He was a lot closer than she would have liked. She could feel the warmth coming off him in waves, the scent of his skin beneath the ever-present scent of oil and hard work. It was a strangely compelling musk.

  “Should I say that cliché about not being most men?” he asked.

  “You are.” She turned her gaze away from him and back to the red blotch on her hip. “I’ve known plenty of guys like you. Criminals that think they are doing
something wild and rebellious by slapping their ass on a bike and breaking the law. You think the rules of the world don’t apply to you. It’s a romantic thought, but it’s loaded with bullshit.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Shit, Donna, what happened to you?”

  Her head jerked up, and she was surprised to see the look of deep concern on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know I don’t have the great big college education that you do, but that doesn’t mean I am a complete idiot. I can tell when someone doesn’t like someone because they aren’t cool with it, and when it’s personal. That whole rant there was personal.”

  “It wasn’t a rant,” she growled, tossing the wet towel into the cheap trash bin. The wet spot on her pajama pants felt cool against her skin. She could only assume that she was so aware of it because he was so close.