“Look at what you do to me,” he groans, as if it’s an apology or perhaps like I’m torturing him.

“How about you fuck me to sleep,” I suggest, wanting nothing more than just that. “Make me forget it all.” My murmur pleads with him and in an instant, a yelp is ripped from me as he lifts me by my ass and sets me on the kitchen counter.

The sudden movement has my heart racing but the heat is all from the longing look in his steely blue gaze.

“Now that I can handle,” he says before capturing my lips with his. His touch is strong, unrelenting and easy to get lost in. With his right hand steady on my hip, his left roams up my shirt and lingers over the curve of my waist. I wrap my legs around his hips and press my feet against his ass so I can feel his hard length against my core.

I’m shameless as I grind against him. I only break the kiss to take a breath of cool air, but Cody doesn’t take the moment to pause. He continues his relentless touches, trailing his warm lips down my neck and kissing along every inch. My nipples pebble as a moan slips from my lips.

“Please,” I beg him. And that single word is his undoing.

“Not here,” he says as he lifts me into his arms and I cling to his broad frame while he takes me to his bed.

When he’s done with me, after fucking me until I scream his name and forcing my release from me, I thought he’d done exactly what I’d asked: to fuck me to sleep and make me forget it all. I thought he had, but he didn’t. Sleep eludes me and all I can see are the palest of blue eyes watching me from a memory in the dark night, judging and waiting.

Cody’s eyes close faster than mine and even though my lungs beg me to breathe in time with him, the sound of his inhales and exhales so soothing, I can’t fall asleep.

I can still feel him inside of me as I slip out of his bed. Leaving the warm sheets behind, I let out a small hum of satisfaction at the hint of pain and pleasure that lingers.

I’m quiet as I slip out, gathering a chair from the dining room and bringing it to the hall closet so I can have just one more look. Sitting cross-legged in the early morning on a hallway floor, plagued by insomnia, digging through a box of a lover’s darkest moments … that’s certainly not anything I ever thought I’d be striving toward. Yet here I am, obsessing over doing exactly that.

As I reach up to the box, my shirt lifting, I’m only vaguely aware of the floor creaking behind me. With my mind focused on the little boy in the photo labeled with the names of two brothers with their uncle, and what exactly each of those papers tells me about him and maybe little hints of what made Cody the man he is, it doesn’t register.