BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Callie Pierce

  There were certain men who had a presence to them. Their nearness made a woman aware of her body in such a way that he didn’t even need to touch her to get the proverbial engine purring. Cody, she had known from the very beginning, was one of them. There were only two ways to deal with those kind of men. You either ignored them, or you took them for a drive to get them out of the system. Once the body’s curiosity was satiated, life could go back to normal.

  Donna was more than willing to just ignore Cody, but it wasn’t easy since he kept showing up in her life.

  “Is this about the kiss?” he had asked.

  God, that kiss. It hadn’t just been good. It had been phenomenal. The curl of his fingers against her body and the taste of him making her head go light. The kiss had been the paragon of its kind. Donna wanted to bottle up the sensation for her memories.

  With more passion than grace she had shooed him out. Even now, as she stood at the small bit of counter space that her rental had provided for her, pouring herself an evening glass of wine, she felt herself flush in memory of the way their mouths had felt against one another.

  “Donna?”

  She jumped, nearly spilling her wine. It would not do to spill two nights in a row. Kyle was standing there looking dark around the eyes. Had he lost weight these past few weeks? Maybe, or maybe she was just so used to seeing him in oversized hoodies that seeing him in a T-shirt was a little jarring.

  “Yeah?”

  “I finished my homework.”

  After his first little foray into the late night, Donna had not only grounded Kyle, she had laid down the law. She got confirmation texts every time he went to class. She knew what homework he brought home, and she made sure all of it was done. It had seemed like a good idea when she had been furious about him sneaking out. Now it felt like she was the warden and he was the inmate. It was not her favorite feeling.

  “Can I see it?”

  He held up several sheets of paper and a printout. She spread it out in front of her. The handwriting was terrible, but the answers were all correct.

  “You’re smart,” she said easily.

  He dipped his head and jerked one shoulder into the air dismissively. “Whatever.”

  She was quiet as she shuffled the papers back together. “Intelligence isn’t something to say ‘whatever’ to.”

  He made a tch sound as he clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I just repeat what they tell me.”

  She looked him over for a moment. The dark rings around his eyes made them look more blue than the hazel that she knew they were. There was a slight red tinge from lack of sleep. He was skinny, she realized, not just small.

  “Did you eat tonight?”

  “Some leftover Chinese,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “I’m sorry I don’t cook.”

  His lips quirked. “My sister? Admitting to something she can’t do?”

  She rolled her eyes but found herself smiling anyway. It felt good to hear him joke rather than some passive-aggressive comment. “I tend to overfocus on one thing while something else burns. Sue me. You are far better off with takeout.”

  He glanced out the sliding glass window. “Cody can cook.”

  She followed the line of his gaze. Across the span of the parking lot she could see a vehicle with the solid outline of a lone occupant. At first glance it could have been anyone. At a second glance, she knew that it was Cody watching the apartment.

  “Jesus, is he always out there?” she asked.

  “Ever since I snuck out.” The bitterness in Kyle’s voice was thick enough to walk on.

  Donna frowned. She wasn’t entirely sure that she liked a criminal sitting outside of her rental apartment, waiting for her little brother to sneak out of his temporary bedroom window. Still, she thought as her memories wandered to the evening before, she could hardly fault his usefulness.

  “I see,” she finally answered. She wandered over to the window and looked out. She couldn’t quite see the glitter of his blue eyes staring at her, but she could almost feel it. She shivered.

  “Is there something going on between you two?”

  She turned away from the window. “What?”

  “I mean, you two snap at each other a lot. Like… a lot, a lot.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and walked away from the window, out of the line of Cody’s sight. “I’m pretty sure that you shouldn’t be associating arguing with interest. That’s not healthy.”

  “I’m pretty sure that you just avoided answering my question.”

  “See, I told you that you were smart.”

  He mimicked her stance by crossing his arms and standing there with his feet shoulder-width apart.

  “We kissed.” She released her arms and ran her hand through her short auburn locks. “It was stupid and unexpected.”

  “So, do you like him?”

  “No,” she answered firmly, picking up her glass. “It was a fluke that happened in a moment of stress.”

  “He’s not a bad guy, you know.” Kyle plopped down on one of the barstools at the island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. “I know that you just want to think that he’s a criminal, but there is more to him than that.”

  One carefully plucked eyebrow danced up her pale forehead. “You want to explain that to me again?”

  “Can I have some of that?” he asked, pointing to the wine.

  “You’re sixteen.”

  “They can drink wine in Italy at sixteen.”

  “Weird, I didn’t realize we were in Italy.”

  “You’re snarky.”

  “True.”

  “So I can’t have any?”

  She frowned. “If you make it through the next month and get to your court date without giving me a heart attack, I’ll take you to Italy and you can have wine.”

  He gave her a dubious look. “For real?”

  She nodded. “For real. I’ve been meaning to take a vacation anyway. Why not to Italy? I mean, we will have to get you a passport and everything.”

  “Can I still get a passport if I have a record?”

  “According to US Code Classification Table 2714, so long as your charges are not drug-related or you’re not currently serving time, you can get a passport.”

  Kyle blinked at her slowly. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Because I got a passport a few years ago.” She took a long sip of her wine and eyed him carefully. If she could dangle something that he wanted in front of him, like a trip to Italy and a glass of wine, she would do that to keep him doing what needed to be done. Sure, some people saw that as bribery, but the fact was people bribed themselves every day. They could eat that cheeseburger if they did an extra couple of miles on their treadmill. They could buy that pretty jacket if they did an hour or two of overtime. Done right, rewarding yourself for doing something was a pretty healthy way of achieving your goals.

  “You really mean it? You’ll take me to Italy?”

  She held her hand out to him. “I promise.”

  He eyed her extended hand dubiously. “Mom makes a lot of promises.”

  “As you were more than willing to tell me last night… I’m not Mom.”

  The flicker of shame made his eyes go dark. For a moment, he stood there looking at her hand like he couldn’t quite believe that it was there. Slowly he extended his own and clapped their palms together for a firm shake. After that he dropped her hand like it was made of fire.

  “Don’t piss out on me,” he said, stomping past her and into his bedroom.

  Yet again Donna was swamped with the feeling that she was going about this all wrong.

  And why not? She wasn’t anyone’s mother. She’d never been a caretaker before. No one succeeded the first time they tried something. Her first company had been vested in research. Not scientific, but businesses. She would gather people around to ask them if they wanted to buy a product and what it would take for them to like it. Donna hadn’t really u
nderstood how to handle the many facets of running her own business, and it had crashed.

  She did not have the time or the opportunity to crash when it came to Kyle. It wasn’t like she had another brother, and he really didn’t have another chance.

  She did not, as her brother put it, have the time to piss out on him. Not that Donna really understood what that meant.

  With that in mind, Donna wandered over to the fridge to find something to snack on while she watched a late-night movie. There wasn’t much, she had to admit. It was a collection of paper cartons and takeout boxes. It wasn’t a healthy arrangement. Back home there were twenty restaurants within walking distance of her place. And two-thirds of them delivered until eleven at night. She’d never had a problem getting variety there. But Carson wasn’t exactly known for its culinary diversity.

  According to Kyle, Cody could cook. She wasn’t sure what she thought of that. Okay, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Men who could cook were hot. Maybe it was the idea of slapping traditional gender roles in the face, or maybe it was the fact that Donna worked an average of fifty-five hours a week, but the idea of coming home to a guy who knew how to put a meal on the table so there was one thing less for her to worry about in her day was pretty much a must in Donna’s estimations.

  Not that she was actually looking for a boyfriend or anything. Even if she was, the fact that Cody had a criminal record would be enough to keep him out of the running.

  She sighed and shut the fridge door again. She didn’t need the extra carbs in her diet anyway.

  Her phone buzzed, letting her know that she had a new e-mail. Donna read it as she plopped herself down on the couch to enjoy a quiet evening. It was a daily update from Cadence, her secretary, letting her know how the company was doing without Donna. While it was filled with a generous amount of information, it could have been simplified by a simple “things are going well, we’ve got things covered.” Donna had mixed feelings about that.

  She liked to be needed. Then again, who didn’t? Maybe Donna liked it a little more than most, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to compare a mental scale of needs and desires. She enjoyed what it felt like to fix a problem and see a situation work out for the best. Maybe that was her issue with Kyle. She was bashing her head against a problem, and nothing seemed to be changing.

  With a sigh, Donna popped open her laptop and typed up a response, which she had no doubt would work its way around the office in some kind of memo. After she hit Send, Donna flipped on the television to find something to watch. She settled on a drama that focused on the relationships between parents and children. The irony was not lost on her.

  She was just nodding off when she felt the heat of his hands on her. Cody’s fingers were callused from his work around the body shop. Dimly, she mused that there was something delectably perverse about working in a place called a “body shop.” He skimmed his hand over the bare inch of her belly that was exposed between her pajama pants and the matching top.

  “What are you doing?” she asked drowsily.

  “You,” was his impertinent reply.

  She should have demanded how he got in here or told him to get lost. She didn’t. All Donna could think about was the glorious way his mouth had felt against hers, and how good it might feel in other places.

  As if he could read her mind, his clever hands slid up her body, disrupting the cloth she wore. His lips made a hungry line from her neck to the swells of her breasts. When he closed his mouth over one exposed nipple, she cried out and writhed beneath him.

  “More,” she growled, reaching out for him. “Give me more.”

  He seemed too far away. The more she tried to reach for him, the harder it seemed to hold him. He always seemed just out of reach. Yet she could still feel his mouth making a rhapsody out of her lust.

  “Cody? Where are you?”

  “Here,” he whispered as her pajama pants slipped away. Had he done that? She couldn’t remember when his hands had moved. When his mouth slid lower down her body, she couldn’t bring herself to care when it happened.

  She undulated beneath him, hungry to feel more. The satin caress of his lips pressed against her body, and she tried not to whimper. The first flick of his tongue had her breathing hard; the second had that slick sensation of ecstasy building. It was all happening so quick, too quick. She just needed a little bit more.

  When her phone buzzed again, she jerked up. The throw blanket that had been wrapped around her fluttered down. It hadn’t been real, she realized. Guilt and need warred inside of her.

  She glanced over the end of the couch and toward the parking lot. She could just barely make out the outline of his car. For a moment, just a moment, she thought about going out there and finishing up her dream.

  “Oh no,” she whispered to herself. “Bad idea.”

  She flicked off the television and folded the blanket up. She did not look out the window again, because she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she wouldn’t be able to talk herself out of it a second time.

  Chapter Eight

  Cody

  “Goddammit.” Cody cursed as the second clip for the Camaro’s air filter box broke between his fingers. He glanced down and watched the broken pieces slip down inside the engine block, and sighed. This was getting ridiculous. When a few drops of blood followed the pieces down, he decided that it was time to take a break. It was not the first time that morning something so simple had been too much for him to take care of.

  “You okay, buddy?” a gruff six-pack-a-day voice called out from the next bay over.

  “Yeah, Uncle Gary, I’m cool.” Cody waved his hand to show the blood that was making a red line through the grease on his fingers and puddling in the cup of his palm. “Just cut my hand. I’m gonna wash up. Is it cool if I take an early lunch?”

  Cody didn’t actually need to ask his uncle if he could take a break. They were partners at the body shop, fifty-fifty. They didn’t have to ask one another if they could go on break or take the day off, but they both did anyway. Cody liked to think it was because they were family, but Gary said it was just common courtesy. There was a chance they could both be right.

  Gary Bannik stood up and gave the clock in the shape of Bettie Page a long look. It had less to do with the shapely pin-up girl smiling down like some angel of a bygone era and more to do with the fact that Uncle Gary refused to get himself the glasses he sorely needed.

  “It’s eleven fifteen.” Uncle Gary shoved a nearly black cloth in the front of his equally dark work overalls. His eyebrows, which looked as thick and fuzzy as caterpillars, danced up his forehead. “Can’t say that is much in the way of ‘early, seein’ as how you came in at six.”

  Cody heard the unasked question and stretched until a few of the vertebrae in his back popped. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  Uncle Gary, who had injured one eye in an accident years before Cody was born, rolled his good eye in the general direction of his nephew. The other stayed firmly in place, looking like a brown marble floating on top of a glass of milk. His smile was slow and knowing. “New lady in your life?”

  Cody shook his head and made for the wash sink. He used his foot to hit the floor pedal to start up the wash. It took a while for the water to get warm. “Been watching over Kyle, making sure he doesn’t go and do something stupid.”

  “That boys suffers from shit parents,” Uncle Gary said solemnly. He wandered slowly away from the VW Bug he had been working on and leaned his prodigious bulk against the wall next to the sink. “His momma’s been shit since she popped out of her momma, but his daddy went to hell when he laid eyes on that woman.”

  For some reason, it never dawned on Cody that his uncle might know a thing or two about the Masons’ life. “Didn’t you go to school with them?”

  “Oh yeah,” Uncle Gary answered, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a thick cigar. He didn’t smoke anymore—he hadn’t since around the same time he’d injured his eye—but he still carried around a stogi
e out of habit. He wound it around between his fingers as he thought back. “That was many damn years ago now. Back when this was a warehouse and not an auto shop. Lizzy, she was a handful way back then. She liked to be wild and angry and cause problems. Lots of talk about who she was and who she ran with. Might be they say the same things about Kyle nowadays.” He tucked the stogie in his mouth, his lips wrapping familiarly around it.

  Cody nodded. That sounded like her. It also sounded a little bit like Donna. “What about his sister?”

  “Donna?” Uncle Gary asked, his caterpillar brows knitted to form a single line as he frowned. “I haven’t seen that girl since… shit… since I was still working at the diner. I was a good dishwasher. Could flip a burger too.”