“I knew that when you turned into a zombie,” he replied, brushing my hair gently from my face. “I didn’t know what was going on and you were spouting off nasty shit, so I just reacted. It won’t happen again, Ladybug. You come first, always.”

“Please don’t leave me alone with them again,” I asked in a shaky voice.

His nostrils flared, his eyes filled with remorse. “I won’t, baby, I promise.”

He climbed off me and reached for my hand as he sat up against the headboard. He leaned over and grabbed a condom from the nightstand, somehow opening it with his teeth and rolling it down his length with one hand. We held hands as I scooted over to rest my ass on his thighs, and eventually his other hand rose to cup the side of my face.

“Things aren’t always going to be easy, Ladybug,” he told me quietly, our eyes meeting in the dark room. “I’m going to screw up and you’re going to piss me off. Stop trying to walk away. Stop trying to push me out. I’m not going anywhere, okay? I don’t want to be anywhere but right here.” He let go of me to maneuver my body, and soon he slid inside me until we were fully connected. Then he stopped.

His fingers slid into my hair to hold me in place as I wrapped my hands around the sides of his neck. “I need you to fight for yourself, baby,” he whispered against my lips. “I need you to fight for us.”

“I’ll try,” I replied. Then I began to move.

I pulled myself up and dropped back down, over and over until my thighs burned. His hands were everywhere—sliding down my back to grip my ass, wrapping around my waist, cupping my breasts, gripping my hair. They didn’t stay in one place for long; just when I’d start leaning into what he was doing, he’d stop and start somewhere else.

When we were both sweaty, our breathing fast and heavy, he reached up and grabbed my hand, pulling it between us.

“Get yourself off.” He was panting, his eyes wild. “I want to watch.”

I was too far gone to feel any sort of self-consciousness, and immediately started rubbing my clit in small circles, my orgasm rushing in within minutes. I couldn’t stop the moans that poured from my throat, and barely heard his words as he talked dirty in my ear.

When the orgasm finally ebbed away, I could no longer continue riding him. My body was boneless as I slumped against his chest, my arms barely able to hold on as he flipped me onto my back.

“I love you, Farrah,” he said into my shoulder. His face was buried in my neck as he raised my hips and thrust hard a few more times, finally coming with a low grunt.

It wasn’t the first or the last time that Cody would completely derail my plans, but whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen.

Chapter 12

Farrah

“What about this one?” Cody asked, running his fingers across the script tattoo on the side of my right thigh. “All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”

“Did you ever read Roald Dahl books in school?” I asked.

“Sure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“Right. This tattoo’s from Matilda. I loved that book growing up. Her parents sucked too.”

He ran his tongue over the letters. “You like to read?”

“I love it, always have. We didn’t have a TV when I was a kid, but I could always check out books from the library at school. That’s probably why I have such an addiction to them now.”

“Me too. I haven’t had time to read in a while, though,” he replied.

“I always read, I feel weird if I haven’t read in a while, like jittery and shit. The only time I wasn’t reading a bunch was when I was drinking all the time. It’s hard to read when you can’t focus on the words.”

“Not too drunk to get tattoos, though, huh?”

God, the smirk on his face killed me.

“Never too drunk for that,” I joked, “as long as you can find a tattoo guy that doesn’t give a shit.”

“How many are there? Maybe I should count them,” he mumbled against my skin, running his lips across the tattoo again.

“Twenty.” I laughed as his face lifted in surprise. “I have ten ladybugs, though, and my flower.”

The mood in my bedroom turned somber as my last sentence sank in. We’d been lying in bed for hours, dozing and talking. We were both trying to keep things simple, coming down from our earlier fight, but the reminder of my scars was like a bucket of cold water thrown over our bodies as we relaxed in our afterglow.

“I wish I could have killed him for you,” he told me seriously, resting his chin on my belly.

“Well, thankfully that ship has sailed.”

“How long was he with your mom?” he asked nonchalantly. His hands had started trailing over my tattoos again, but he couldn’t hide the tension in his shoulders.

“They got together when I was twelve.” I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to forget everything that had happened before I’d been taken in by Callie, but I found myself speaking anyway. “At first it was okay. My mom was always a junkie, ya know? So when I was little, there were all of these tweakers in and out of the house. It freaked me out. When she got with Gator, that shit stopped, and I was fucking relieved.”

Cody kissed my hip and moved himself up the bed to lie next to me, gently pulling me on top of him, our bodies aligning from toes to chest.

“Keep going,” he said.