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 stogie 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.”
Cody nodded. His uncle was master of the odd jobs and hadn’t even started learning how to be a mechanic until the middle of his life. He’d been a Navy officer first, wanting to see the world as most young men do when they are young and grew up in the middle of nowhere. When he’d come back, Uncle Gary had taken turns working at half the stores up and down Main Street. Never been fired, so far as Cody knew, just had a habit of wandering to the next thing. As far as Cody could tell, Gary Bannik could do just about anything and everything, and most of it fairly well.
Gary plucked the cigar from his mouth and shook his head. “Donna, though, I didn’t know her well. Rumor was that she was headin’ down the same path as her momma before she got fed up with it all and lit on up out of here.”
Another piece to the puzzle, Cody thought as he pumped some lava soap into his hands and gave them a good hard scrub. Bits and pieces of stone rubbed across his callused palms, working the layer of grease off in a pitch-colored lather. The cut on his finger stung as he did it, and the bleeding started all over again. There was a first-aid kit around here somewhere, he was sure. Besides, tending to himself gave him time to think.
It wasn’t just that Donna didn’t want to go back to being the wild girl that she had once been, he thought as he started pawing through one shelf after another. It was that she didn’t want to end up like her mother. It was the story of a hundred thousand other women, but when it came to Donna he couldn’t blame her. Elizabeth Mason was a pain in the ass.
“She’s watching over Kyle.” Cody took his foot off the pedal and let the faucet go dry as he wiped his hands off on a fairly clean towel. He reached for the first-aid kit, but his uncle slapped his hand away and tugged it off the shelf.
“I thought you were doing that,” Uncle Gary said as he opened the kit and pulled out one of the fingertip Band-Aids. He used his stogie to point toward one of the barstools they kept s
cattered around the shop for slow afternoons. Cody found himself smirking as he got his finger bandaged up like he was five years old again. Uncle Gary was a good man, and soft about helping Cody out.
“We’ve both got a vested interest.” Cody cleared his throat.
Uncle Gary’s good eye roamed over Cody in the wise fashion of older men. “She was pretty back then, if I remember correctly.”
“She’s hot stuff now. But she’s not interested in me.”
Uncle Cody laughed, and the sound boomed through the shop. “Is that what your problem is, nephew? You so used to women pawing all over you and throwing their titties in yo’ face that you don’t know what to do when a lady isn’t impressed?”
Cody felt his cheeks flush. “I can’t remember the last time a woman threw their tits in my face.”
“All right. Whatever you say. Go on, get out of here and bring me back an Italian sub when you wander on back.” Uncle Gary plopped his cigar back into his pocket with a wistful sigh and brushed his hand through the air as if clearing it of dust. “Go on, get.”
Cody gave his uncle a bemused salute and wandered out of the shop.
# # #
It was a nice day for Nevada. The sun, a relatively familiar sight around here, was high overhead, and it couldn’t have been more than seventy-two degrees. There was just enough cloud cover to keep it from getting too hot, but it didn’t look like there was going to be rain either. Rain, he thought, wouldn’t be a terrible thing, but it would be hard to walk around in.
There weren’t a great many shops down Main Street. The body shop took up one corner near the very end. The Deli, as it was creatively called, was all the way down at the other. There were a handful of other businesses in between: a fashion boutique, a salon, a dentist, and so on. Most of the places had been around for a while. Carson City was just small enough to have that close-knit feel that most other places didn’t have, but it was getting bigger and bigger every day. Some people hated it, but Cody? He liked to see the changes, the slipping from one thing into another. He watched as a real-estate agent showed a young couple into one of the empty storefronts. He found himself wondering what they might do. He liked to daydream; usually it calmed him. Not today. Today he felt a need to wander, so he did. Cody took the chance to stretch his legs and get Donna out of his mind.
It was her damn fault he kept messing things up at work. He kept finding his brain wandering toward her. Not just the way her breasts pushed up against her suit tops, or how she had looked in those silk pajama pants with wine soaking into them. He wasn’t even focused on the way she kissed… though good goddamn, that woman could lay down a kiss. It was more than that.
Donna Mason was a force of nature. She could look like a billion dollars while she wore a cheap dollar-store robe. He had watched her, during those nights he spent parked out in his old Chevy, as she wandered around the apartment. The sliding glass doors gave him an excellent view of the living area.
Sure, he probably should have asked if it was all right, but he’d known exactly what she would say.
Donna blamed him for Kyle going bad. Maybe Cody had a little to do with it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was pulling Kyle along. Cody knew it was up to him to figure out what and how he could handle it.
That’s what the good guy did, right?
Was that what he was trying to be? A good guy? He just barely kept himself from snorting. He’d never thought of himself as anything but Cody. Not really good and not really bad. Sure, the law and him weren’t what you might call friends, but what did that really matter? He did what he had to do to keep himself going and tried not to screw up too bad. It wasn’t a terrible way to go about life.
His phone went off and Cody glanced down at the screen. Speak of the demon—it was Kyle.
My sister can’t cook, the message said. Please save me from another night of takeout.
Cody laughed out loud, causing several heads to turn in his general direction. Some of the looks said plainly that they didn’t think he had any right to laugh. One lady, her arms heavy with shopping bags, even crossed the street and shot him a full-on glower. He thought that was a bit dramatic. Sure, when he wasn’t running the shop he was an enforcer for the Wild Tigers. He even had the jacket to prove it. The title wasn’t half as impressive as it sounded. All it really meant was that, from time to time, their boss sent him out to bash some heads together. He didn’t sit in for meetings, he rarely went on gun runs, and he never made decisions for the club. He just got to play muscle when it was needed. The gun that he’d bought many ages ago was gathering dust in a safe back at his place.
Being a criminal wasn’t nearly as interesting as all the television shows made it out to be, especially when someone ran the club with the no BS standards that the boss did. It made Cody’s job easy enough that he had to work the auto shop to make ends meet.
Anyway, what did he care if people saw him as good or bad? It was not as if he was running for office or anything. No reason anyone would have to go through his closet and poke around for skeletons. He was just a man trying to live life.
Then he saw her, and he remembered exactly why he was beginning to care.
At first, he didn’t recognize Donna Mason sitting at one of the little glass-top tables the Deli used for patio seating. For one thing, she was wearing jeans, rather than one of her snappy business suits. For another her hair wasn’t styled or primped, or whatever it was they were calling it now. It simply sat around her face in a series of natural asymmetrical curls.
Her long legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle, showing off a pair of strappy shoes that left her feet playfully bare. Her toes wiggled just a little as she stared at her computer screen, her toenails as manicured as her fingers. He’d never understood the appeal of feet until that moment. For a woman who kept herself as covered up as Donna did, getting a little glimpse of her toes made him wonder what everything else looked like.
Though, if he was being honest, he’d been wondering about the “everything else” since day one.
For a moment, she wasn’t aware of him. Her eyes were focused on her laptop. Her lower lip was seized between her teeth as she puzzled something out. He watched her as she read and reread a line on her screen, her eyes dancing back and forth. The perfectly plucked lines of her brows gathered together in frustration. Then her lips formed an O of understanding, and she clacked away on the keys with enough enthusiasm that he could hear her typing from halfway across the street.
She was so caught up in her work that she didn’t even notice him walking up. With her problem solved, she popped out of her chair and wandered into the Deli. Cody thought she was either very trusting or very distracted to leave her laptop sitting out here. Since trusting was not a word that he would use to describe Donna, he was going to have to settle for the latter. Then again, maybe she had the kind of money that she was okay throwing it out there for anyone to have.
He caught a glimpse of what glimmered on her screen as he walked by, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. If he had been pressed, Cody would have called it a spreadsheet—he used plenty of those at the body shop for ordering and business—but it was the most complex-looking spreadsheet that he had ever seen. Besides, what was on the computer wasn’t nearly as interesting to look at as the woman that owned it.
She was standing in line, her arms crossed over her chest. The sunlight was hitting her hair just right to bring out the red hue in it. When he stepped up behind her, he could smell the honey-and-lilac scent of some frilly shampoo. Of course she had expensive shampoo. She had expensive everything. He bet the jeans she wore were some exclusive brand that washed them in some factory to make them look worn.
She ordered the crab roll special and a coffee large enough to drown in.
“You know,” Cody said, stepping up next to her, “that much caffeine is bad for you.”
She jumped enough that she nearly dropped her wallet. Cody had a short moment to en
joy the way she scrambled to look like she wasn’t bothered as she fumbled for her credit card. It was as black and shiny as he assumed it would be. Her fingers shook as she handed it over to the cashier. It was interesting to see her so… frazzled. There was even a blush on her cheeks. Was he finally having an effect on her?
“You don’t want to be around me unless I’ve had about a gallon of it,” she fired back. It didn’t quite have the heat of her usual snappishness, and her lips were curled into a smile. Maybe the problem he had seen her solve had left her in good spirits. Maybe seeing him was putting her in good spirits.
“You’re in a good mood,” he said companionably.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
He stepped closer to her, his arm brushing hers as he put in his own order for a steak-and-cheese sub, and an Italian to go.
It wasn’t until he handed over the cash for the order that he realized the girl behind the counter was smiling at him. It wasn’t the professional smile of a person who clocked in to wear an apron. It was the genuine grin of an interested woman. Her big brown eyes were sparkling hopefully.
BAD INFLUENCE: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 9