BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Callie Pierce

  Those were Kyle’s eyes. Wait, didn’t Maverick have a big sister? Cody vaguely remembered the kid calling her the “kind of bitch you wanted on your side.” With the way she was glaring down at the deputy at the desk, Cody was inclined to agree with Kyle’s assessment. He decided to take a seat in one of the chairs. It creaked in protestation.

  “He’s sixteen,” she was saying. She had that rich kind of voice that would have been right at home on late-night radio or those old hotlines that came with numbers like 1-800-BUSTY. “He cannot be charged as an adult for these crimes.”

  “Ma’am, that’s not really—”

  “He’s a child.”

  “He committed a crime.” This was not the deputy talking. Sheriff Alvarez stepped out of his office and firmly closed the door behind him to take up a place at the deputy’s side. The meaning of the movement was not lost on Cody. He doubted it was lost on the classy lady either. Cody knew the sheriff well enough to know he didn’t like to be talked down to.

  “According to what?” she demanded. “He could not have been caught in the act, since your overzealous officers had to break into my parents’ house to arrest a sixteen-year-old boy.”

  “This is not the first time that he has been caught speeding.”

  “That was not my question,” she snapped, straightening her shoulders until she stood taller than Cody would have thought possible. “What is your evidence against my brother?”

  “He was picked out by a witness.”

  Her lips formed into a thin line. Oh, she didn’t like that at all. “A witness picked out my brother when he was breaking the law on a bike? That better be a damn good witness.”

  “I assure you that they are trustworthy. But if you want to act on your brother’s behalf—”

  “Damn right I do. This bail is ridiculous.” She slapped a manicured hand on the paperwork in front of her. “Twenty thousand dollars for speeding? Funny, I remember the max you could hold a child for that particular offense was three thousand.”

  “You’d know,” the deputy behind the desk muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman demanded as the sheriff shot his deputy a look that would have frozen a rampaging bull. It was a good look for a leader to have, even if that leader belonged to a group as pointless as the local sheriff’s department.

  “The judge believed that your brother was a flight risk due to his… friends.” The sheriff was doubly careful with his words. Cody was pretty sure he knew why.

  “Friends?” she asked. “What friends?”

  “I think he means me,” Cody supplied.

  Alvarez’s eyes flicked in Cody’s direction. The biker chose that moment to sit back in his chair hard enough to make it squeak all over again. The woman’s head whipped in his direction, making her short hair fan in all the shades of sunset, and the full power of her gaze bore down on him. A weaker man might have been intimidated, but Cody kind of liked it. He gave her a big grin and blew a kiss in her general direction.

  The deputy laughed, but she didn’t.

  “Who are you?” The tone of her voice insinuated that she made a lot of demands.

  Cody swung himself into a standing position. At six foot three, he towered over everyone here. He watched the woman eye him with the grim determination of someone who was looking to find a flaw. His pitch-dark hair was slung into a braid and ran nearly the length of his back. His skin had that vague olive complexion that came from mixing races. In his case a good deal of Shoshoni Indian and Dutch. He liked to think he got the best of both worlds.

  “I’m Cody Bannik. I’m one of your brother’s friends.”

  She settled a prim hand on the wide roundness of her hip. Her fingers looked especially pale against the dark fabric of her suit. “How old are you?”

  He bristled just a little. There was something about the way she said it, like the answer was a sin and she already knew it. “I’ll be thirty-two in—”

  “Then you are far too old to be my brother’s friend.” She turned her back on him in a clear dismissal.

  Cody liked women, and more often than not, women liked him. He was the big bad boy they could sow their wild oats with, and he was willing to let them. He wasn’t used to getting dismissed.

  “I’m here to bail out your brother.” Cody took a single step forward, closing the distance between them by half. He tucked his thumbs in the loops of his belt and stood up tall enough that the orange-and-black tiger patch on his vest seemed to dance. He jerked his chin up and let his face settle into unamused blankness. It was a move that had cowed even the rowdiest of drunk bikers. Her back was not impressed.

  “I’ve already done that,” she said coolly, not even bothering to look at him again. “Your assistance isn’t required. Thank you. Have a nice day.”

  “Ma’am,” the sheriff cut in before Cody could answer, “I feel like I need to explain to you that if your brother doesn’t show up for his court day, you will be forced to pay the entirety of the bail. I would hate to see a good woman like yourself lose a lot of money because her brother decided to do something… foolish.”

  “My brother will be staying with me,” the woman explained. “I will be taking him back to Baldwin and see that he comes back for trial.”

  There was a slight pause as everyone looked at one another. “Ma’am, Baldwin is across the California border.”

  Cody could see her desire to curse like an icy fire in her misty gray eyes. She didn’t. Cody wasn’t sure if that amused him or not. He sat and watched her try to pull herself together. She clearly didn’t like the rules being thrown at her.

  “I am assuming that he is not allowed to cross the border, even with me?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I’d be willing to let the rules slide if this had been his first offense, or maybe even his second. But this is his third, and we have got to take it seriously.”

  “I have to work.” She said work with the same reverent enthusiasm that some people talked about going to church. Rose pink colored her cheeks as she opened her arms wide in justification. “I will bring him back.”

  “I can take him,” Cody offered. “I’ll make sure he gets to his trial.”

  She did turn around now. Her chin was lifted defiantly. He wondered when the last time a woman had given him that particular look, if ever. It wasn’t the personally disgusted gaze of soccer moms who saw him riding around, or even the lustful looks of the ladies who wanted to get a little naughty. It was a look that said “You are the fly that I want to swat.” He was equal parts impressed and annoyed.

  “Cody, right?” she asked. She didn’t actually wait for an answer before she continued. “Listen, Cody. I don’t know how involved you are in my brother’s life. I don’t know if you are one of those creepy guys who hangs around with high school kids because you can’t get friends your own age, or if you think that you are somehow helping my brother become a better person with your… influence. Either way, it stops right now.”

  Cody was no longer impressed. He was annoyed and heading quickly into pissed off. His hands clenched at his sides, and he felt his own face getting warm with anger. “Listen, you—”

  She held up a single hand, neatly cutting him off. “No, thank you.”

  Was this woman for real? Was she just that confident in herself, or was she just oblivious? Maybe she was both. Yeah, Cody thought, she had to be both in order to treat him like that. He was a lieutenant in the Wild Tigers motorcycle club, not just some weirdo off the streets. He had earned exactly where he was.

  “Man, your brother is right about you. You really are a ball-busting bitch.”

  She shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the paperwork. Her hand was steady as she scrawled her elegant signature across the highlighted line at the bottom of the page and shoved the forms back at the officers, who looked equally stunned.

  “I’d like to get my brother now. We will find lodgings somewhere here in town so that he doesn’t leave.”

  “Yes,
ma’am,” the deputy said, surging up from his seat to wrangle up Kyle.

  She turned just enough to give Cody a sidelong glance. “Are you still here?”

  What bothered Cody most was that she wasn’t ugly. Normally when a woman was full of that much contempt her face would get all twisted up and she would look like a crazed witch when she snarled at a man. This woman didn’t. She kept her cool and just brushed him off with all the emotion of picking a piece of lint off her thousand-dollar suit.

  Had she been pulling this with someone else, anyone else, he would have admired her. Hell, he would have paid all the money in his pocket to see her swing that icy demeanor on the sheriff, or any one of the uptight forty-hour-a-week drones who were so proud of themselves. Shit, she probably was one of those drones. And he still wanted to kiss her senseless.

  Maybe that’s what she needed. A really good kiss. Make all that pretty plum lipstick she was wearing get all messed-up. Yeah, he decided, that’s why she was all uptight. She needed a little love. Cody was willing if she was.

  “Listen, Miss… is it Miss or Mrs.?” he asked. Not that it mattered. There had been plenty of lawfully wedded ladies who had wanted to jump on him for a dirty thrill.

  “Ms.,” she amended. “Ms. Mason.”

  Well, it was her brother’s last name too, so he was going to assume she wasn’t married. “Ms. Mason, I’m sorry. I think I’ve given you the wrong impression. It’s been a long night, and I wasn’t at my best when I came in here. I care about Kyle. He’s a good kid with a brash temper, and he tends to do things before he thinks them out. I came down here to help, but you’ve clearly got it under control.” He dropped his voice just a little and took another step forward. “I respect that in a woman.”

  He gave her his most charming smile. It had worked on plenty of ladies—why not her too? He looked down into her eyes, picking out flecks of golden brown among that misty green. For a moment, just a moment, he saw something flicker behind them before they went flat and empty.

  “Oh good,” she said snidely. “My life is complete because I have your respect.”

  The door opened and the deputy walked Kyle out. He looked tired, but no less worse for wear. His baggy black hoodie was an effort to hide the skinny, underdeveloped shape of his chest. Cody had done the same when he had been a kid, before he filled out. Kyle looked up at Cody and smiled, and then his eyes flicked over to his sister and all the color drained from his face.

  “Donna?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  Her cool flat gaze zeroed in on Kyle. Cody was pretty sure the kid winced. He couldn’t blame him.

  “I am here because of you,” she said, swinging her purse over her shoulder. “You are going to be staying with me until your trial.”

  “I am? Are we going to California?”

  “No,” she answered. “We are going to find a place to stay in town. We will stop by the house to let Mom and Dad know what is going on and what the terms of your release are. Then you are going to pack up what you need for the next couple of weeks.”

  “Then why is Cody here?”

  “That,” she hissed, “is an excellent question.”

  She put her hand on Kyle’s shoulder and steered him out of the jailhouse. She didn’t look at Cody; she didn’t even give Kyle a chance to do any more than wave sheepishly before she escorted him to that sleek car. Cody heard the purr of the engine before she screeched out of the parking lot.

  Chapter Three

  Donna

  The trailer was a little older and a little more faded than she remembered it, but everything else was the same. The cheap blue mailbox that had a hole in the top so the mail got wet every time it rained. Ugly garden gnomes that were tucked between an old weather-beaten outdoor chair in the small garden area that was more rock than plant life.

  “They didn’t have to call you,” Kyle said with all the sullenness that a teenager could muster.

  Donna navigated her BMW into the spot behind a beat-up Ford truck. “No, they didn’t have to call me. They could have just let you sit in jail until you had to go to court. That seems like the best possible scenario for this, doesn’t it?”

  “Man, why do you have to be like that?”

  “Like what?” She turned the car off and tilted her head to face her little brother. She remembered what it was like to be sixteen, even if the memory was distant. She had been just as difficult, maybe even a little more so.

  “Like, you talk to me like you already know what’s best.”

  She wanted to argue with that, but she couldn’t. Donna did know what was best for him. Or at least she knew what was better for him than racing bikes and getting caught up with the Wild Tigers like that Cody whatever-his-name-was. She knew exactly what people like that were like.

  “Kyle, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off like that. I just worry about you.” It was true, she realized. She wasn’t just here to keep her mother from hassling her at work. She wasn’t here out of some familial sense of loyalty. She was here because her brother was going down the same path that she hauled herself back from, and she wanted to help.

  He made a derisive snort and shoved his hands into the pouch-pocket at the front of his hoodie. Frustration came off him in waves. “Yeah, sure.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He gritted his teeth hard enough that she could see the line of his jaw through the softness of his fading baby fat. “It means you’ve been gone for ten years. You turned eighteen and you hightailed it out of here. You left us, you left me, and now what? You wanna come back here and pretend like you know what I’m like and what I’m going through?”

  She turned in her seat, thankful for the professional length of her skirt as she put her back against the car door and tucked her foot under one knee. He was angry. No, she mentally amended, he wasn’t just angry, he was pissed. She remembered that feeling too. Being pissed off could be a good thing. It could fuel the fire you needed to change, or it could drag you down and burn you up.

  “Does Mom still like to make up all the great things that she did before she had us?” she asked.

  “What?” He gave her a look like she had suddenly grown a second head.

  “Like, does she still claim to have been Miss Teen Nevada? Or that she almost went to the Olympics for gymnastics?”

  He snorted again, but this time there was as much humor in it as angst. “Yeah. It’s so stupid.”

  “And does she claim she could have been amazing if she hadn’t had kids?”

  “Oh yeah.” He shook his head. His hair, which was more brown than red, shook with the movement. “All the time. Like, last week, when I tried to show her the little two-stroke engine I was rebuilding? Like, all of a sudden she was talking about some hot millionaire racer dude she could have married.”

  “Yeah, she’s like that. Anytime anyone else is getting attention, suddenly she’s got to one-up them so that she gets the spotlight back on her. Does Dad still just nod his head and smile at her?”

  Kyle’s lips formed into a dark frown. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Get what?” she asked, keeping her voice all innocent.

  “They haven’t changed; you know what they are like. But that doesn’t mean that you know me.”

  She nodded. “You are right. I don’t know you. But I know a lot about what you are going through because, as the cliché goes, I’ve been there. But, if you give me the chance, I’d like to get to know you. We are going to be spending a lot of time together now.”

  “Oh good, I get my own after-school special.” He sounded pretty disgusted, but the effect was kind of ruined by the fact he was smirking.

  “On the plus side,” she shot back, “we are a lot prettier than that.”

  His lips tugged up in a grin. It wiped away the dark circles that had formed beneath his eyes. How long had it been since he got a decent night’s sleep? “You’re weird.”

  She placed a hand over her chest and let her eyes flutter dramaticall
y. “Forgive me. I just can’t help it. It runs in my family.”

  He laughed. Okay, it was more like a chuckle, but Donna would take it. He opened the door and slid out. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  Donna felt a brief flutter in her heart as she heard those words. It wasn’t a good flutter, like the kind she got when she’d first laid eyes on that Cody guy before she’d seen the leather vest that marked him as a criminal. It was the bad flutter, like the kind you got in the middle of the night when you realized you forgot to pay a bill.