Craving Absolution (4 page)

“
Farrah,” he said softly, refusing to move until I lifted my head to look at him. I tried to keep my expression neutral but must have been unsuccessful, because in the next moment he flipped the dead bolt and murmured, “Fuck it,” as he lifted me up and carried me toward my bedroom.

Farrah

Cody’s
lips never left mine as my back landed on the tangled sheets of my bed, and I squeaked in surprise when something dug into the back of my thigh.

“
What’s wrong?” He gasped as I tried to wiggle off the offending object, the breath from his words whispering across my skin as he moved his mouth over my jaw.

“
Stop!” I yelped, pulling my face away.

“
What?”

“
Move!” I groaned, pushing him to the side as I scooted up the bed. “There’s something digging into my ass.”

“
There’s going to be,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down.

“
Shut up!” I giggled, reaching under me to pull out . . . a high heel? How the hell did that get there?

“
Shit, Farrah. You’re a little piglet.”

He sounded surprised as he looked around my room
at the piles of laundry and miscellaneous junk that cluttered the floor. My face burned in embarrassment as I shrugged my shoulders and flopped back down on the bed.

“
Tomorrow’s laundry day,” I grumbled, throwing my forearm over my face. What the hell had I been thinking, letting him into my room?

T
he bed dipped down and Cody straddled me on his knees, pulling my arm away to look at me.

“
We’re cleaning this shit up tomorrow,” he told me with a smile, then ran his hands up my belly until he was cupping my small breasts in his hands.

“
Cleaning is not an aphrodisiac, you lunatic,” I huffed, retreating into my protective sarcasm as I rested my hands lightly on his thighs. Holy shit, the guy worked out.

“
You’re right, sweetheart, it really isn’t,” he whispered, leaning down until our faces were just millimeters apart. “But waking up with you in the morning
is
.”

H
e ran his tongue across my bottom lip, completely distracting me from the conversation we were having, and I gasped as his fingers found my nipples and gently squeezed. Good Lord, it was like he knew exactly what to do to make me come unglued. We were both breathing heavily as the kiss grew frenzied, and I almost missed it when he began to pull the thin straps of my tank top off my shoulders. Almost.

The straps had reached the middle of my arms before sanity crept in, and
I reached up to grasp the shirt at my collarbone as he began to drag it down. We played tug-of-war for a moment, a silent argument that didn’t affect our kiss at all until he abruptly pulled away from me.

“
What are you doing?” He leaned back until he was practically sitting on my hips, panting as he frowned at me.

Instead of explaining myself, I silently reached for my underwear, pressing my hands between his thighs as I pushed them down as far as I could.
If I could just get him to the good stuff, we’d be in the clear. A guy couldn’t resist a chick with no underwear, right? He didn’t move a muscle above me, and I didn’t meet his eyes as I tilted my hips, trying in vain to push them off the rest of the way.

“
Farrah, baby, talk to me.”

“
I don’t want to take my shirt off.” I focused on his throat, unable to meet his eyes as I continued to tug at my underwear. All he had to do was shift just a little and I’d have them off . . .

His hand was gentle but firm as he
tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes as he mumbled, “What’s going on?”

“
You don’t want to take it off. Trust me on this. Can we just drop it?” I asked in exasperation, my hands moving from my hips to the button on his jeans. Maybe if I could get to the goods underneath, he’d forget the shirt. He was as hard as a rock underneath, and I couldn’t help but get sidetracked, taking a small detour down the front of his zipper, causing him to suck in a harsh breath before he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. Access denied.

“
I
do
want to take it off,” he answered darkly. “I want those tits. I’ve been dying to see how much of them I can fit in my mouth.”

My jaw dropped in surprise, and I opened and closed it a few times before clenching it in frustration
as I stared him down. He didn’t seem to be changing his mind, and I debated putting a kibosh on the whole thing, but only for a moment. I’d never been more turned on in my life, and the thought of walking away was inconceivable. I didn’t want to lose the chance of seeing him naked, especially because I had a feeling it would be a one-time deal.

“
Fine,” I said with a huff, relaxing my body onto the bed as my stomach clenched hard with anxiety. He was going to do it—take off what little armor I was wearing—and he was going to regret it, but there was no changing his mind. There was a reason I’d stopped wearing bikinis, choosing instead to wear pinup-style one pieces. I tried to catalog my swimsuit collection in my head to focus on anything but where I was and what was about to happen, but it didn’t work. Once I’d given the okay, he released my wrists and swiftly pulled the shirt up and over my head.

I couldn
’t watch. I didn’t want to see his reaction.

My eyes were shut tight
and my hands in tight fists as his fingers traced lightly over my torso.

“
Look at me,” he whispered urgently, his tone relaxing me enough to look into his eyes. “Ladybugs . . . and a daisy?”

I nodded once, my throat tight with tears as he moved from one
tattoo to the next with soft touches.

A
few years ago, I’d had an accident—at least, that was what Callie and I had told the skeptical doctors. The truth? My mother had watched while her repulsive boyfriend beat me bloody and then proceeded to burn me with his cigar. Thankfully, I’d gone in and out of consciousness during the ordeal, so I only had vague memories. The scars, however, were not as easily forgotten. There were eleven in all, mostly scattered across my ribs, with a few on my breasts and one low on my belly.

It must have been a pretty long cigar.

I never knew what spooked them, why they’d hauled ass out of the house and left me in the middle of the living room next to the broken coffee table. It didn’t matter. I was just thankful that after the last burn—the one right above my underwear line—he’d crawled off of me instead of pulling down my pants to inflict even more damage.

I lay there
quietly while Cody ran his fingers over the small ladybug-covered scars peppering my body, and sobbed once in relief when he leaned down and swiped the daisy covering the scar two inches above my pubic bone with his tongue.

“
Don’t ever hide from me again,” he murmured into my skin, his eyes meeting mine. “I’m all in, Farrah. There’s nothing about you that would turn me off, okay?”

“
Okay.” I sniffled, nodding my head.

“
Not sure how this is going to turn out,” he told me seriously, causing my body to still. “But I’ve been covered in your vomit, and I still want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. That has to mean something.”

“
You just used the word
vomit
in a sentence and made it sound romantic,” I replied with a shy grin. “I guess that means I’m all in too.”

He wore a wide smile as he reached behind his neck with one
hand, contorting his body to pull his shirt over his head and one arm, leaving it to dangle on his injured shoulder for a moment before he met my eyes and let it drop.

The
scar from his bullet wound wasn’t as bad as I’d envisioned, about twice the size of one of mine, but the reality of why it was there had my stomach clenching. It was so close,
too
close
to where his heart beat heavy with adrenalin and arousal. It could have turned out so much worse. I couldn’t stop the impulse that had me leaning up to caress the red skin lightly with my lips, and before I could pull away, I felt his hand tangle in the back of my hair to hold me in place.

“
I’m sorry,” he murmured quietly into the top of my hair. “If I could get rid of it, I would. I know it brings up bad memories.”

I was startled by his comment, instantly remembering the day Echo was shot. Honestly, I hadn
’t even been thinking about that horrible day; relief that Cody was safe and there with me overpowered any lingering memories of what had been the worst day of my life. I leaned my head against his chest, a mixture of guilt over my lack of reaction and relief that I hadn’t reacted warring inside me as I breathed him in. Relief won.

“
I don’t want to think about it. Okay?” I told him quietly, kissing his chest. “I’m not really into threesomes. There’s no room for him here.”

I held my body still, waiting for his re
ply. Would he think I was a bitch for making light of it? Making flippant comments and poorly timed jokes was the way I made it through uncomfortable and painful situations, and speaking of Echo with Cody fell into both of those categories. I’d loved Echo, of course I had, but he died three years ago. At some point, after the downward spiral and subsequent come-to-Jesus meeting I’d had with Gram, I had to let him go. Whatever happened or didn’t happen with Cody had to be completely separate from Echo.

I was cringing inside, waiting for him to call me out on my remark
when he surprised me, using his hold in my hair to jerk my face up to meet his. I tried to read his expression, but didn’t have the chance because his lips were on mine immediately, biting and sucking at them with an urgency that hadn’t been there before. I kept my eyes open, reveling in the way his eyebrows drew down in the middle as if he was concentrating solely on me.

Just as my eyes began to grow heavy, my breath coming out in pants as
his hands tightened in my hair, he pulled his lips from mine and let go of me completely.

Cody’s
eyes never left mine as he slid back off the bed and stood up, pulling his jeans, boots, and socks off before placing his hand between my breasts to push me back on the bed. Then he broke the connection to grab my underwear in both hands and yank them down my legs. I only had a second of self-consciousness about my pronounced hipbones and bony knees before he spoke, reassuring me with two words.

“
Holy hell.” He groaned when he realized that my legs weren’t the only thing I waxed. “You’re going to kill me.”

“
You’re lucky, I just had my appointment last week. If you would have come here sooner . . .” I shook my head in mock seriousness and giggled as his face lit up with humor.

What was this guy doing to me? I wasn
’t a giggler. Ever.

He growled and pounced on me as I howled with laughter, and I felt as if I were floating. Sex had never been fun for me before. It wasn
’t that I’d never liked it, but with every other guy I’d been with, I hadn’t felt comfortable enough to let my guard down. It was serious business, sometimes frantic, other times slow and sultry, but never once in the years I’d been having sex had it ever been fun.

A
s I tried to crab walk away from him, he caught me by swooping down to pull my nipple into his mouth, and we both groaned as my back arched off the bed. I wrapped my hands around the back of his head, my knees gripping his sides as he moved back and forth, alternately kissing and sucking, pausing occasionally to detour to one of my ladybugs. Then he met my eyes with a wicked grin and leaned down to suck as much of my breast as he could into his mouth as his fingers slid between my legs.

The dual sensations had me scrambling as I tried to decide which to focus on, but as his fingers slid into me and his mouth popped off my breast, the decision was made.

“Condoms?” he asked desperately as his thumb started circling my clit while his fingers pumped slowly in and out.

Could your
eyes
really
roll back into your head, or did they just feel that way? I couldn’t figure out why he was bothering me as I chased my orgasm. Didn’t he see I was busy?

“
Condoms, Ladybug. Where are your condoms?”

I looked at him stupidly for a moment as his hand went still,
then finally figured out what he was yapping about.

“
I don’t have any.”

“
What?” he practically yelled.

“
Shut it!” I whispered back, afraid he was going to have Gram storming over from her apartment for the second time that night. “I don’t have any! I don’t have sex.”

“
W-what?” he sputtered as he wiggled his fingers inside me. “My fingers would beg to differ, sweetheart.”

“
I haven’t had sex in over a year,” I mumbled back. “Drunken hookups are pretty much nonexistent when you aren’t partying anymore.”

“
Goddamn it.” He groaned, dropping his forehead to my chest. “I haven’t had sex in fucking
months
.”

“
Oh, poor you,” I said sarcastically, the thought of him having sex with anyone else pissing me right the hell off.