Blood & Bones: Ozzy (Blood Fury MC 9)

“Driver’s license?”

“Yeah,” he grunted as he stared at her long, slender fingers digging through her wallet. The nails weren’t super long and were no crazy-assed color like some of the sweet butts, either. Like Billie’s black painted nails. Or Crystal’s neon-colored ones. Sometimes every finger was a different color. It made Crys jerking him off seem like taking a trip on LSD while fucking a rainbow.

She slid her license and credit card across the counter toward him.

He ignored her credit card and picked up her license. The woman staring back at him in the picture on the plastic ID card looked exactly the same as the one standing before him even though the photo was two years old according to the date of issue.

Goddamn sexy as fuck, then and now.

He read her info. Shaylyn Diggs. Her address was in Boston. He did a quick figuring of her birthdate in his head. She was only two years younger than him.

An age where she was ripe but not rotten yet.

“Shaylyn,” he murmured.

“That’s me. But most people call me Shay.”

He never heard that name before but it kind of fit her now that he heard it. “That what you prefer?”

She jerked one slender shoulder up. “Either is fine.”

Fuck if he was falling into that trap again. “What d’you prefer?”

She blinked and the confusion that crossed her face was there and gone in a flash. “Shay. Since my mom called me Shaylyn whenever I was in trouble.”

He rolled his gaze from the top of her head down to her mid-section, the only part of her he could now see since the counter blocked the rest. Her tits were a bit smaller than what he preferred but he could live with the size. “Were you in trouble a lot?”

She tipped her face down and released a soft laugh. “No. But she preferred I go outside and play when all I wanted to do was stay inside to read a book instead. So, she was always on me about that.”

“How ‘bout now? You like to get in trouble now?”

Her expression sobered. “No, she passed a couple of years ago, but I wished she was still around to call me by my full first name. What I would do to hear it one more time.” She sighed.

She’d misunderstood him. Whether that was on purpose, he didn’t know, but he let it drop. Because hers was a childhood memory, while he was trying to build a future fantasy and if she figured that out, she might check-out before he even finished checking her in.

And he wasn’t done talking to Shaylyn Diggs yet.

He jiggled the computer mouse and woke up the sleeping screen. “Boston, huh? You born there?” She didn’t have the typical Boston accent. To his ears, she had no accent at all.

“I’ve only lived there for the last few years.”

“What made you move there?”

“A mistake.”

He glanced up and met her eyes. Her smile was still missing, her face unreadable and her body had stiffened somewhat.

“I appreciate you getting me in early. I’ll pay extra…” She raised her eyebrows and stared at him like she was waiting for something. Her eyes, almost as dark as her hair, dipped to his chest.

He wondered if he’d picked a shirt with a hole and his nipple was showing. He glanced down to check and it suddenly hit him that she was looking for a name tag. A normal fucking thing in a normal fucking motel. The Grove Inn certainly wasn’t normal.

But, Christ, sometimes he was as clueless as the fucking sweet butts. “Ozzy.”

“Ozzy,” she repeated. Her closed-lipped smile returned. “Like Ozzy Osbourne.”

“Yeah, but I’m much cooler.”

She dropped her head and laughed. Like she was trying to hide it.

“Don’t,” he said without meaning to.

She lifted her head. “Don’t what?”

“Hide your face when you laugh.”

Her smile flattened out. Christ, he was batting a thousand here. Every time she smiled or laughed, he destroyed it.

“I didn’t realize I did,” she said in a way he knew she was lying. She knew she did it but didn’t want to admit it. Or at least, talk about it.

But now he wanted to know why she hid when she was happy. Maybe she wasn’t hiding the fact she was happy, but was hiding something else.

He needed to keep his thoughts to himself or she was going to turn around and leave, thinking he was Norman Bates and The Grove Inn was the Bates Motel.

He propped her driver’s license on the keyboard and began to peck at the keys using his two index fingers, trying to type in her last name to search for her reservation.

Every time he tried to hit the D, his fat finger hit the F instead. By the third time, he released a searing, “Fuck!” then grimaced at letting that fly. “Fuck!” Christ. “Sorry.”

“Why? Is the computer system down?”