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"Don’t tell me how to feel. I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to be careful. I want you to not take stupid risks with your life. I want." I broke off, struggling for words. "I want you to understand that it matters to me. That you matter to me. And seeing you hurt like this, knowing you were in that much danger... It kills."

He grabbed me into his arms with a hiss of pain. He didn’t seem to care as his mouth slammed onto mine. My gasp met his hiss, then there was just the feel of our lips fused together. Hard. Desperate. I knew what he was doing. He was cutting off my words before I said too much. I didn’t care. I needed to feel this, to feel him—alive and passionate in my arms.

I was careful as I lightly traced my hands up his shoulders to twine around his neck, just resting, not pulling, holding. His tongue plunged into my mouth like a marauder. He tilted me off balance both metaphorically and physically, and I found myself sprawled on the couch with Code on top of me. I looked up at him. His expression was hard. I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or passion. I must have asked him out loud.

“Passion,” he answered. “I need you, Katherine.”

“Then we do this slowly and carefully. I’m not finishing what some Russian mobster started.”

He huffed out a laugh.

I slowly pushed us up into a sitting position, brushing my hands over every piece of warm male flesh I could reach. Even injured, Code was the most breathtaking man I had ever seen. I knelt up, then pushed off the couch and held out my hands to him.

“I look that decrepit, huh?” he asked as he took my hands.

“I just want you to save your strength for the bedroom.” He allowed me to take a little bit of his weight as he came off the couch, then we walked to one of the two bedrooms. It was as nondescript as the rest of the place—dresser, nightstand, white metal blinds over the window and a queen bed with a wooden headboard.

Code let me continue to take the lead, which I was both surprised and grateful for. I was in a mood that I couldn’t quite interpret. I was still angry at the thought of him in so much danger, and I was also bone-deep scared. Not for what might be lurking around the next corner, but at the idea of him being hurt. In less than two weeks, he had become the center of my world, and I didn’t know how in the hell that had happened. Now I wanted to make love to him, not the other way around.

I settled my fingers over his belt buckle, and he stayed my hands.

“I don’t have another condom.”

“Before you, it’d been a couple of years, and I’ve been tested since. I’m on birth control,” I said, meeting his eyes.

“I was tested before retirement. I’m good.” His voice was equally solemn.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and bent to untie his boot. He couldn’t help the groan that escaped.

“Let me, you idiot.” I crouched down and had him out of his boots and socks in record time. When I looked up at him, his pupils were so wide, the color of his eyes looked emerald in the late afternoon light. “What?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t have to do that for me,” he whispered softly.

“And I didn’t have to do anything. I wanted to. I want to take care of you. Just for right now.” I pressed gently at his shoulders, so he went flat against the bed, then I finished unbuckling his belt, took it off, then slid down his jeans and briefs. I checked for wounds. There weren’t any. The only thing that looked to be hurting was his cock—it was all red and swollen. I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t laugh. Rule number one, never laugh at your man’s dick.

I stood up and tossed his clothes to the end of the bed.

“Now, you,” he whispered.

I liked how desperate he sounded. We were well-matched. I didn’t make him wait. I pulled off my clothes in short order. I wanted to be skin-to-skin as badly as he did.

He moved so that he sprawled across the bed and started pulling me down against him. “Katherine, you’re so beautiful. I can’t believe you’re here with me, and not with some Instagram star or something.”

“Influencer. They’re called Instagram Influencers. Most of them have the attention spans of a gnat, and I’m a decade too old for them to notice.”

“I can’t believe any man wouldn’t notice you.” Code cupped my breast and guided me higher so that my nipple was aligned with his lips. I waited, suspended on a tightrope of need. He caressed his thumb over the tip of my breast, and I whined in protest. “I want your mouth.”

He grinned. “Ask for it nicely.”

Oh, hell no.

I pulled out of his arms, careful not to jostle his ribs, but still strong enough to show that I was running this party.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Whatever the hell I want. I didn’t feel like asking nicely, but maybe you will.” I curled my fist around his cock, then slid the tip of my tongue from base to tip.

“Damn,” he wheezed out the word.