He started to move, slowly getting a feeling for the strange angle when she shoved her hips against him.
“You’re being gentle again.”
“Well, if we weren’t in the worst seat ever…”
She pulled herself away from him with another growl and reached beside him. With one quick movement, his seat was reclined all the way back. She pounced onto his lap before he could breathe and pushed him back inside of her womanhood.
“Now,” she said, holding herself still. “Do it.”
He did. He gripped her hips and levered himself into her from beneath, pushing deep over and over again. Her breasts, bare and nearly glowing in the afternoon light, bounced with every thrust.
“More,” she cried out. “Give me more!”
He pulled her closer to his lap, tugging until she was leaning over him. He pumped faster, harder into her body, feeling the wetness drip across his length. She cradled her head against his shoulder, and he felt her breath against his skin.
“Yes, Cody. Oh, God yes, just like that. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
The mantra of her commands made his head spin. He held her tight against him and pounded into her with enough speed and force to make her expensive car shake. The tips of her breasts caressed his chest, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. His palm gripped her backside, pulling her tight so that his thrusts became short, fierce twitches.
She gave him no warning of her orgasm, but he knew when it came over her. Her body shivered on top of his, the muscles of her thighs gripping him tighter. She pushed herself into him as if guiding him to just the right place. Her mewls grew to a fevered pitch, and then her hips jerked on top of his lap with unrepentant pleasure. His own body moved in response, losing all sense of skill and rhythm, desperate to feel the release that she had stoked.
“Yes, ohhh yes,” she gasped out, her lips brushing against his neck. It was the last straw. He pushed himself deep inside of her, feeling the last spasms of her own peak, and spilled.
For a long moment, they just stayed there, his body nested inside of hers, and the sun beat down around them. He felt her shift, and he expected her to pull away, but she laid a single kiss on his lips.
“Thank you.”
He hadn’t known exactly what he expected to say after her reaction last night, but gratitude certainly hadn’t been it. In truth, once the endorphins of sex started to ebb away he had pretty much expected her to get mad all over again. The kiss and the thanks, however, were far more appreciated. He wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her closer so that he could lay a few of his own kisses on her lips, neck, and the tops of her breasts.
“You are very welcome.”
She laughed and waved him off, but there was affection in the dismissal. He wondered if she realized that. With more skill than he could have managed, she shimmied back into her jeans and leaned back against the car door, stretching across the space between them so that her feet were nestled in his lap.
“I can’t get pregnant,” she said.
Cody was far too relaxed to feel the confusion that he ought to. All he could manage was a slight turn of his head until he could watch her tuck her breasts back into her top. It was a good sight.
“I’m sorry… what?”
She glanced over at him and then reached into her purse. He remembered that she carried half of her life in that purse. She pulled out a travel-sized hairbrush and dragged it through her hair, setting it to rights. “I’m on birth control. I can’t get pregnant.”
He realized he hadn’t even been worried about it. That was enough of a shock that he fumbled for the lever she had worked so expertly a few minutes ago. The chair popped upward, bringing him with it. It wasn’t that he was wanting to saddle either of them with offspring. He’d seen plenty of young people back on the reservation who’d had children before they were ready and ruined lives over it. This wasn’t that. It was the fact that he hadn’t even had the worry. Cody had been so invested in just being with her that the consequences had not even made an appearance in his mind.
“Oh,” was all he could say.
“It’s not personal.” She stretched her toes out. He found himself wondering where her shoes had gone. She’d been wearing them, he was sure of it. Where they were now, he couldn’t say. “I just don’t want to be pregnant again. Not right now, maybe never. I haven’t decided yet.”
It wasn’t what she said. If she didn’t want a kid, he wasn’t going to push. She certainly had enough on her plate, and so did he. It was the way she said it. Her voice was soft and gentle as if she were speaking to a memory rather than to him. He placed his hands over her ankles, rubbing his thumb up and down the lowest part of her leg.
“I got pregnant in high school. I was sixteen years old and absolutely certain I was in love. He was a lot like you. A bad boy with a killer smile and a way with words that had me forgetting which way was north.”
“That can happen when you are young.”
She blew out a breath and plopped the brush back in her purse. “That’s true enough. It happened and I didn’t know what to think about it. I saw this whole line of my life stretched out before me for the next eighteen years, minimum. I knew what my dad would do. He’d try to make it all better even though he was disappointed. My mom would have flipped out and flat out told me I was a disappointment. The guy offered to pay for things. God, I was almost grateful to him for that because I had no clue how I was going to pay for anything.”
He squeezed her toes between his hands. “You were grateful for any help at all.”
She laid her head back through the open window until the sun shimmered down on her brow. “Yeah, I was. I didn’t take it. I got pretty mad about it later. I mean, I couldn’t get rid of the kid. I wasn’t willing to. Not that it’s a bad thing, just… just not for me. Besides, by the time I realized, it was too damn late.”
It wasn’t easy to picture Donna Mason being young and unsure. It was, however, easy to picture her trying to shoulder it all on her own, even back then.
“What did you do?”
“I went to the church for the first and last time in my life. St. Andrew’s over on Peachtree?” she said, making a vague gesture back toward town. “My parents thought I had run away, but the convent there let me stay so that I could have the baby. It was… well, it was a weird experience, is what it was. Are you Christian?” she asked suddenly.
“I grew up on a Native American reservation. There isn’t a lot of love for the religion of Abraham there.”
The smile that tilted her lips did not quite reach her eyes, but it softened her face a little. “Fair enough. I don’t exactly know what I believe, but I appreciate what they did for me then. I went there, I had the baby, and I gave it up. I think they all hoped I’d repent and become a nun.”
“I’m really happy you didn’t, though I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t still check you out while you were in all that…” He waved one hand over his chest.
“The nun’s habit? Oh, well, I had one. They had me dressed up like one of them so that Father Lawrence wouldn’t think anything of it. He was a buffoon anyway. There’s a part of me that doesn’t wonder if they kept me there just to spite him.”
“He was that bad?”
“Oh, he was sanctimonious as hell.” She laughed now, an honest, true laugh that made him feel warm. The sun was probably helping with that, but she made it better.
“It was brave of you.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged and lifted her head up so that she was looking at him. “I dunno. Sometimes it feels like it was brave, some days it feels more like I was just running away from everything because I was a coward. Maybe I was both. Can you be both?”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t see why not. I think that—” His phone rang, the sound of Johnny Cash wafting up from somewhere in the car. “That’s Kyle.”
She sat up then, suddenly alert. Her storm-colored eyes darted. “Where’s the phone?”
“I think it’s slid between the seat and the console.” He tried to slip his fingers between the space but found they were too large. “Could you?”
She motioned his hand away. “Push the seat back. Use the lever. All the way.”
It was on the fourth ring that she finally pulled it out of the void that existed in the spaces of compact cars. She held it up with triumph and then passed it to him.
“Kyle? Where are you?”
“I’m at Hilltop.”
Hilltop was the wealthy neighborhood in Carson. Million-dollar homes were clustered together in a few cul-de-sacs in protective circles. Cody was only passingly familiar with it. Most of the upper class didn’t need to buy guns.
“What the hell were you doing there?”
“Hanging out with some Preston kids,” Kyle said like it was no big deal. “But I don’t have a ride and I need you to come pick me up.”
Cody frowned, wondering what Kyle was doing with the private-school children of the Carson elite. If he was hanging out with a bunch of people from the upper middle class, how did no one have a car? Something wasn’t quite adding up.
“We’re coming to get you.”
“We?”
“Your sister and me. We’ve been driving around looking for you.”
“What the hell? How did she even find out?”
“The school called. Tell me where you are exactly. We’ll come get you.”
“Whatever.” Kyle sounded like a petulant ten-year-old, but he gave them an address anyway.
“Stay there,” Cody instructed as he jotted the address down onto a napkin that Donna slipped him. He hung up before Kyle could say anything else. He didn’t want to hear any explanations or excuses. He slid the phone into his pocket. Donna was already shoving the key into the ignition.
“He’s at—”
“I heard. I—”
This time it was her phone going off. She glanced at the dashboard where some fancy hookup let her see who was calling where other people saw what station the radio was on. It simply said “Dad.”
“Crap,” she grumped, flopping back in her seat and not answering the phone. She tilted her head ever so slightly in Cody’s direction. “So, do you wanna go to a barbecue?”
Chapter Fourteen
Donna
It was easy to spot her family’s home, even when they were half a block away. Someone had tied a series of balloons to the old mailbox. They dipped and spun in the air in three different shades of blue. At least seven cars were lined up on either side of the street, but Donna knew that most of the partygoers were residents of the park and wouldn’t be driving in.
Cody navigated his car into one of the few spots available and shifted into park. They’d had to swing by his place and get his four-door because her two-seater wouldn’t have fit Kyle and the extra stuff. It was a fair trade, but it made them look more like a couple than she would have liked.
“Everyone ready?” he asked.
Cody had changed into a loose collared shirt and a nice pair of jeans and cowboy boots. Donna had to admit he looked good. No, she amended, not just good. He looked like he belonged on a hot cowboy poster.
“Sure.” Kyle was sitting in the backseat, tucked between several buckets of cookies and a couple of bottles of wine. He did not look happy. In fact, he looked tired, angry, and dirty. The dirty came from the fact that the left side of his face was smeared in dirt. How it happened and why had been a short discussion, where all Kyle would say was that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Donna hadn’t been willing to push, mostly because she knew that on Kyle’s phone were incriminating photos about her relationship with Cody.
“Yeah,” Donna said.
“Don’t everyone sound excited.” Cody shook his head, making his long fall of pitch-black hair sway back and forth. “It’s not like we aren’t getting free food and good company.”
Neither Kyle nor Donna responded. Kyle because he was being a very angry teenager, and Donna because she wasn’t so sure about the second part. Most of these people she didn’t know or hadn’t known for many years. What would they think about her showing up with Cody, the town enforcer?
“There’s my girl!”
Robert Mason came down the steps wearing the ugliest “Kiss the Chef” apron she had ever seen. It flapped as he crossed the short span of yard between the trailer and the line of cars already parked up and down the street. Apparently, Liz Mason had not been lying when she’d spoken of a list.
“Hi, Dad.”
His beefy arms came around her in a great big hug. He smelled of meat and ivory soap. It was a nice combination. He gave her a squeeze and then stepped back to look down at her with shining eyes.
“You look so pretty, little girl,” he said, his voice nearly cracking. He cleared his throat and turned his attention to Kyle.
Donna didn’t particularly want to look at Kyle, but she knew what her father saw. The teenage boy looked two days past sleep, and his signature hoodie had a large smear of dirt going down one arm. Donna had offered to take him home to change, but Kyle got surly about it.
“Well, look at you,” their dad said, his voice booming with pride. “Forgot how tall you are. Gonna be my height soon enough. What happened to your jacket?”
“It’s a hoodie,” Kyle snapped, as if the distinction was very important. He looked down so that his hair covered his face.
“Well, all right, but what happened to it?”
Kyle shrugged, making the dirty fabric tent up with the motion. He shoved his hands into the front pocket with enough force to send a puff of drying dust into the air. “Fell.”
Robert’s big watery eyes filled with concern. He put a big hand on Kyle’s shoulder and looked him over. Donna could clearly see what her father thought. “I fell” was boy code for “I got into a fight.” Donna didn’t think that Kyle had been fighting. There were no bruises that she could see, but she still didn’t know what her brother had been doing in the upper-class district of Carson.
“You sure you’re—”
“I said I fell.” Kyle yanked his shoulder out of Robert’s grasp. “I’m going to go get something to drink.”
Her father’s face began to fall, and Donna felt a short-lived desire to throttle Kyle for his attitude. “He’s fine,” she said, stepping in to put some balm on the moment. “We just didn’t have time to go home and change after picking up dessert and wine.”
“Yeah, well, all right,” Robert said, the smile no longer reaching his eyes. He watched the back of Kyle as the teenager dashed past twenty or so other party guests and into the trailer. “So long as he’s okay.”
“He’s a little grumpy that he’s not going to see a concert tomorrow,” Cody explained, stepping forward and offering his hand. “Don’t take it personally.”
Understanding softened her dad’s features. He shoved his hand against Cody’s and gave it a good hearty shake. “He’s really partial to his music. Likes to listen all day long and half into the night. I got him some fancy headphones last year, saved up for a whole month. They connect right up to his computer. No wires or anything. He can walk all through the house without missing it. We’ve met before, right? Sorry if I don’t remember. My memory isn’t as great as it used to be.”
“I’m Cody, sir. Cody Bannik. I run the auto shop that Kyle works at.”
“Ah! I remember now. How is he doing there?”
Cody didn’t even hesitate. “He’s a smart kid, and he catches on fast. He could do anything he puts his mind to.”
That look of pride had her father’s shoulders squaring again. “Thank you, that’s good of you to say.”
“It’s the truth.” Cody motioned to the covered carport, which had been cleared of its usual half-dead truck. A grill was set up toward the back, but it was a series of plastic picnic tables decorated with plaid tablecloths that took up most of the space. Someone had put out a couple of vases, with dollar-store flowers poking out. It looked po
sitively cheerful. “You’ve done a fine spread here.”
“Well, I figured we rarely get Donna out here, and Kyle needs family.”
“He does,” Cody agreed.
“Well, well. Cody Bannik, is that you?”
Liz Mason waltzed out of her home, wearing a pair of teal culottes that danced with every step and a spaghetti-strap shirt with sparkles around the neckline. Her eye shadow matched the culottes. Her big blonde hair had been styled into a high pouf and was held in place with a gallon of hair spray. The scent of it followed her as she meandered over and gave Cody a hug that lasted a couple of seconds too long.
BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 43
