“What does the code of Hammurabi tell us about the class structure in Babylon?” Donna read from the handout that had been tucked between a few chapters of a very worn history book, “Make specific references to at least three of the laws back up your response.”
Kyle pillowed his forehead on the bar and crossed his arms like a wall of teen angst. “I don’t know. What does it matter?”
“It’s pretty important,” Cody spoke up, with a wooden spoon tucked in his golden hand. “I mean, the laws were the basis of Babylonian infrastructure.”
Donna raised her brow and tilted her head to the side out of curiosity. She reached for a glass of wine and took a slow sip before asking, “You know about ancient Mesopotamian law?”
Cody gave a wicked grin. It made her heart do an unexpected bounce inside of her chest. “My profession requires that I be very well-versed in laws.”
Donna rolled her eyes but found herself amused anyway. This whole evening would be a lot simpler if he wasn’t cute. Not just cute, she realized, but smart. There was something devastating about being a little of both. Add in a dash of dangerous, and he was the kind of cocktail that was bound to leave her a little heady. It was best not to dwell.
“Come on, Kyle, you know this.” Cody pushed a glass of cold root beer in Kyle’s direction.
“It tells us that they were really screwed-up,” Kyle said with his face still buried against his arms.
Donna cupped her chin with her hand, planting her elbow on the island. “I don’t think that answer is academically acceptable.”
“But it’s true.” He looked up, a mechanical pencil in one hand.
“Oh?” she baited him.
“I mean,” Kyle started as he fiddled with the pencil, his thumb clicking the top again and again until a long length of graphite was sticking out of the tip, and then slowly pushing it back in. “The code really covers how the really wealthy guys were pretty big about being treated with respect and stuff, right?”
“What do you mean?” Donna asked, watching Kyle mess with the pencil for the third time. She let him do it. The clicking might not have been her favorite sound, but if it helped Kyle think, more power to him. “I don’t understand.”
“Okay, like there is this one part, it talks about how much it cost a person if their slave got hurt. Like it breaks it all down, but in another part it talks about how if a son hits his dad, he gets his hand cut off. I mean, that’s not exactly fair, is it?”
“No, it’s not. But what does that tell us about the Babylonians?”
“Well, it tells us that they had slaves and that they were seen as lesser. I mean, there’s that whole eye for an eye thing where it pretty much says that if one dude hurts another dude’s eye, then the guy who got hurt can hurt a person just like he did. So like, if I stabbed Cody in the eye, he could stab me back and it would be fair, but if Cody was my slave…”
Cody glanced up from where he was hand-mashing potatoes. “I’m not? Are you paying me?”
“No,” Kyle said unapologetically, “but it’s not like I’m beating you for leaving lumps in my potatoes either.”
“How nice of you,” Donna drawled.
“But like, if he was my slave and Donna stabbed him in the eye, then she’d have to pay me half of what I paid for him. It’s nuts.”
Donna pushed the print out toward Kyle, who dutifully began using his pencil for something other than fiddling with it.
By the time history, math, and English homework was finished, dinner was very nearly ready. It smelled incredible. Cody ladled sauce over the fried pierogis and added a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese over the top.
“I’m going to have to spend an extra twenty minutes on the stationary bike just for smelling this,” Donna said as she pulled a plate toward her.
Kyle, who had already stuffed an entire potato-stuffed dumpling into his mouth, made a grateful sound. “Totally worth it.”
It was. The man had a gift. Donna allowed herself to enjoy an extra helping as they sat around playing an impromptu game of Chase the Ace.
“So,” Cody said partway through their third game, “you gonna tell us about this girl you’ve been seeing?”
Kyle’s cheeks flared a dark rose red. He looked down at his hoodie as if the overly worn pocket was vastly interesting. Donna didn’t know if now was quite the time to bring any of this up, but it was too late to go back now.
“The blonde?” she asked, passing out a single card to each of them. “I think I saw you with her at the pool hall.”
“I… yeah,” he finally said. “I mean, it’s not a big deal. She’s… she’s cool.”
“Yeah?” Donna prompted, lifting her card to see a nine staring back at her. She plopped it to the left and waited.
“What do you want to know?”
Cody held on to his card while Donna and Kyle passed. Kyle sighed as he saw the nine that Donna had given over to him. “Her name is Becky. She just moved here.”
“What’s she like?”
Kyle shrugged. “She’s nice.”
Cody and Donna exchanged a look. Nice is what you told someone when you didn’t want to talk about it. Nice was the same word that Donna had used to describe several of her high school boyfriends. It wasn’t going to do to push, and she knew it. He’d just pull away.
“All right,” Kyle said after the third round of cards. “I’m going to bed.”
“Night, Maverick,” Cody called as her little brother disappeared into his room.
Donna watched him go. There was a niggling feeling in that spot at the base of her neck, where one bad feeling was warring with another in such a way that she didn’t know exactly what was going on. Teenagers were secretive—that was some sort of social law. Sometimes they got into trouble too. But Kyle had always been a good kid when they were younger. Was it a girl who was pulling him down a bad path?
When his door closed, Donna shook her head. She’d be here. She’d help and hope he came around.
“You okay?” Cody’s voice broke through her thoughts. She looked up and saw the biker bad boy sitting across from her. Maybe her brother going down this path had nothing to do with a girl, and everything to do with his obvious hero worship of the tattooed man currently roosting across from her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”
He swung himself out of the seat in an easy way. She realized that she was very much alone with Cody. He stood there, looking like he stepped off the cover of a biker magazine. His thumbs were hooked in his belt loops.
“I’m going to do the dishes, and then I’ll head out.”
“Let me help,” she offered, feeling suddenly awkward. The easy feeling that had grown between them seemed to have walked out with her brother. “It’s the least I can do after that dinner.”
“It’s not a problem. Didn’t you want to get some time in at the little gym thing they’ve got here?”
“Well… yeah.” She was surprised he had remembered. He was always managing to surprise her somehow, whether it be his random knowledge about the ancient law, his obvious kindness, or his skills at cooking. She wanted him to just be the bad guy, the criminal on a bike who liked to beat people up for some other bad-guy criminal on a bike. It wasn’t so easy anymore.
He waved a tattooed hand at her. “Go on, you’ll have a nice clean kitchen when you get back.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, already taking a step toward her bedroom to change into some workout clothes.
“Well, you do want a man who cooks and cleans, right? Isn’t that what all you hard working women want?” He gave her a wink and set the water running in the sink with a careless flick of his hand. Another move and suds were beginning to bubble up on the water’s surface.
She rolled her eyes and walked to the bedroom, resolutely ignoring how good he would look with soapy arms.
# # #
The time at the gym did her good. Donna liked to work out. It had never been about having thinner thighs or a firm flat belly
. Genetics said that without serious time, dieting, and effort (not to mention a very persistent personal trainer), Donna would always have thighs that rubbed together when she walked. She was okay with that. They filled out her skirts better. She worked out so that she could think.
There was something about the sensation of blood pounding through her veins as she hit the second mile on the bike that helped her focus. She could pick apart her day and the problems currently irking her and piece them together. Donna invited it now.
Her first problem was Kyle. It seemed to be two steps forward, one step back with him. The hug he had given her made her feel like she was getting somewhere, but his resistance to talk about the girl that he obviously liked made her worry. She knew full well how much teenage love could mess with life.
Then there was Cody… and that was a completely different issue. She had to admit she liked him. Yes, he was a criminal and a bit of a womanizer, but clearly that’s not all he was. He knew ancient history and was smart enough to crack jokes about it. He could cook, and he wasn’t completely intimidated by her money. It also helped that he looked like a good girl’s bad-boy wet dream.
Around the fifth mile she felt her mind hit that point of clarity.
Kyle was going to keep secrets. That was perfectly normal. So long as he kept going to school and showed up at his hearing, there was no reason that he couldn’t have a private life. Building problems where there didn’t need to be any was borrowing trouble. Her historical issues were not necessarily her brother’s current ones. She filed that problem away as momentarily solved.
What made Cody truly intense was the fact that she was thinking of him as a forbidden thing. The mind (and body) always wanted what it couldn’t have. The fact of the matter was she could have it. He had offered himself to her several times. He was ready and willing. All right, fine. She’d take him up on the offer. She was an unattached adult with a healthy desire for companionship. She’d enjoy him and he would enjoy her and then they’d both move on. There, easily handled.
Now, how to approach it? She pondered it out as she went through a few cooldown stretches to keep her body from cramping up. She couldn’t just walk into her apartment and grab him by the crotch. Okay, she very well could. He may even enjoy it, but Donna enjoyed a little easy foreplay before getting to the more hands-on enjoyment.
Slowly, a plan formed in her mind.
When she got back, the kitchen was already clean. Cody had pulled the headband off his forehead and laid it neatly on the now scrubbed countertop. His hair was down. The length of it was nearly triple her own, falling like a wave of night and brushing the waistband of his jeans. She wondered if it was as silken as it looked. He was drying his hands on a cloth.
“Dinner was good,” she said, scrubbing a towel down her face.
“You said that already,” he answered, standing in the middle of the kitchen. “Twice.”
“It deserved it a third time.” She tugged her hair out of the short ponytail she had tossed it into. She knew he watched the short tumble of her hair in much the same way that she had just been watching him. It felt good to be watched. It felt good to be liked. When she could ignore the fact that he was a criminal, Donna liked Cody just fine.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” she told him.
“Should I go?” He shoved an outstretched thumb in the general direction of the front door.
He was giving her an out, and they both knew it. He could walk away right now and nothing would happen. She wasn’t an idiot. Donna knew damn well that if she let him stay, they were going to end up naked. Hell, that was half of her plan.
“Do you like horror movies?” she asked, picking the remote up off the living room table.
Confusion and curiosity mingled on his face. “I’ve been known to enjoy some bloodcurdling screams from time to time.”
“I’m a bit of a fan. There’s a marathon coming on in a few minutes if you want to join me.”
“Will you hold me when the scary parts happen?”
“That’s fair.” She tossed him a grin and the remote before she headed for the shower. She took her time. It wasn’t just that she wanted to be neat and clean for when she finally got naked all over again, but because she wanted him to think about her in the shower. Maybe he wasn’t, but she’d bet a decent amount of her savings that he was.
She also chose her loungewear carefully. She didn’t go with the oversize T-shirt and pajama pants that she preferred most evenings. Tonight, she pulled on a dark red satin top that she hadn’t been able to resist buying. At first it looked like a casual button-down business shirt, but when she pulled it on it clung to her breasts, and it would be easy to tell she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The matching shorts hit her midthigh, and would have been demure were it not for the slits that went nearly to her hips.
She gave herself a last look in the mirror, enjoying how rich the color looked against her skin, and then added a short dark satin robe over it to give the illusion of modesty.
“Perfect,” she told her reflection.
When she came out into the living room, he was perched comfortably on one side of the couch. He had tugged his hair into a long braid nearly as thick as her wrist. It swung over one shoulder so that he could lay his head against the back of the couch. He was tall enough that his head hung over the back in such a way that he could see her coming down the hallway. His eyes went wide, and his head jerked up.
She walked slowly around the couch and plopped down next to him, rather than on the far side of the couch.
“Comfy?” she asked as she pulled one of the throw pillows closer so that she could tuck it beneath her arm and stretch out, putting her legs across his lap.
He gave her a deadpan look. “You’re cute.”
“True,” she shot back.
He smiled and she laughed. The tension broke and he laid his hands over her bare ankles, sitting back once more.
The first movie was one she had seen plenty of times. Her gaze rested on the television as her mind wandered. He didn’t get up, but his hand didn’t venture any farther up her leg either. After their moment at the Deli, she was a little surprised, but happily so. If he wanted her to make the first move, she could provide.
She rested her palms on his shoulders as she swung one leg over his hips, mounting him right there on the couch. He went very, very still beneath her, but it didn’t matter; she could feel his body nearly vibrating with the tightness of a plucked string. His eyes went from their typical sapphire to a dark and stormy blue.
“Donna?” he asked. “Are you… sure?”
It surprised her. She had expected him to pounce on her at first opportunity. Now he seemed unsure.
“Why not? I want to, Cody. I’ve wanted to this past half a month, and now you are here and I am thinking this is a good idea.”
“I dunno,” he snipped back. “Maybe because you’ve been keeping me at arm’s length since you got here. Sometimes literally.”
Donna shrugged, lifting her weight from him as if to lever herself away. “Well, if you don’t want it…”
It was all he needed. She saw a flurry of emotion flicker across his face, dawning realization followed by frustration, and then finally lust.
“Are you sure?” he asked again. His voice came out as a low hungry growl. It pleased her that he wanted perfect understanding between them.
She closed the scant few inches left between them, pressing the mounds of her breasts to the flatness of his chest. “Oh yes.”
He made a deep sound, and then his mouth crashed against hers. It was both similar and different than the kiss that they had shared beneath the streetlight. This time she was ready for the potent smack of undeniable pleasure that swarmed through her senses. He tasted like sin, and she drank it down. Their mouths slid hungrily over one another, tongues delving wildly between lips until she wondered if she had ever been kissed with such thorough urgency.
He hauled her closer, as if by pulling h
er against him he could make their clothes melt away. With the heat that rose between them, Donna wouldn’t have been surprised if it actually happened. Her hips thrust forward against his groin, and the satin of her top bunched up, revealing a line of cream-colored skin.
Her fingers danced down the braid that he’d flung over his shoulder. It felt like warm silk against her palm as she undid the locks and let them fall down naturally.
“I love your hair,” she whispered, then seized his lower dip between her teeth. He made a guttural sound before slamming their lips together again. Her fingers slid down his bare arms until their hands locked together.
“Off,” he growled between the mating of their mouths. He gripped her nightshirt and ripped it down her back. She heard fabric tearing, the buttons popping off and spilling against the couch. Wildness filled her and bubbled out of her mouth in a heady chuckle as the fabric slithered away.
BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 36
