Текст книги "Inked Armour"
Автор книги: Helena Hunting
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
The warm buffer of medication had yet to set in, allowing fear to spill over. Joke or not, so much about the situation was too hard to manage.
“Tenley?”
Lost in my fears, I wrapped his tie around my hand, staring at the pin-up girl as she slipped over my fist. “What if Lisa’s serious?”
“She’s not. At least not for New Year’s. A Vegas wedding is right up Lisa’s alley, but it’s not going to happen right away.”
Driving might seem like a good solution, but everyone else would still get on a plane. What if we arrived in Vegas only to find they hadn’t made it?
“Talk to me, Tenley.”
I looked up, pleading with him to understand. “I can’t go through that again. Losing all these people? It would kill me.”
“I know. That’s why we’d drive.”
“But everyone else would fly!” I gripped Hayden’s hand tighter to keep my shaking under control. “I can’t ask them to put their lives on hold just because I can’t get on a plane. I don’t know if I’ll ever get past this fear.” I shuddered. “I only lost consciousness briefly after the plane went down.”
“You– What? I don’t understand.”
“When I came to, the plane had crashed and it was on fire. I found Connor when I was trying to escape. He was dead. Half of his face was crushed. It’s the last memory I have of him—and it still haunts my nightmares. You’re asking me to entertain the same scenario. Tell me how I’m supposed to deal with that.”
The color drained from Hayden’s face. I still hadn’t told him some things because talking about it hurt too much. “Shit. I’m so sorry. I wish I could take those memories away for you.”
Enveloped in his protective embrace, I sagged against him, drained of energy. I locked my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, desperate for the closeness, the connection. He held me for the longest time and I absorbed the comfort like a sponge.
His chin rested on top of my head. I felt the periodic bob of his throat as he swallowed, the rise and fall of his chest, the constant, rhythmic beat of his heart. I pressed my lips to his neck. Hayden dropped his head and kissed me. Fear had a way of inspiring need. My lips parted, welcoming him in.
A quiet knock at the door broke the spell. Lisa’s apprehensive voice came from the other side: “Tenley? Hayden?”
Hayden pressed his forehead against mine. “Give us a minute,” he called out, and then dropped to a whisper. “I’m taking you home soon.”
“Please? I need you tonight.”
He pressed one final kiss to my lips and helped me down from the vanity. When I had my bearings, he opened the door.
Lisa threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry. I was caught up in the excitement. I didn’t think.”
I held on to her, feeling the burden of her sadness, hating that I couldn’t enjoy her spontaneity. “You don’t have to apologize. I overreacted.”
Hayden took my hand and we walked through the dining room. The table had been cleared and everything returned to order. We went into the living room, where everyone had congregated. No one made a fuss, and Hayden pulled me into his lap in an oversize reading chair.
20
TENLEY
“Ready to go?” Hayden whispered after gifts had been exchanged.
“Please,” I said, draining what was left of the tea I’d been drinking. Everything was an uncomplicated haze, now that the medication had set in. When we got home, I could lose myself in him. He dropped a lingering kiss on my shoulder, following with his teeth, the promise of intimacy an undeniable lure.
“Tenley and I are gonna roll out.”
“You’re not staying the night?” Cassie asked, clearly disappointed.
“TK’s by herself,” Hayden said, his hands on my waist as I stood. The room shifted with the movement, the medication making me feel weightless.
Hayden packed all the gifts into the box we’d brought. He helped me into my coat, and I used the bench as a seat to put on my shoes, since I was too unsteady to stand. I didn’t track the hugs and good-byes because my mind was elsewhere.
Hayden led me to the car and unlocked the door. “I’m sorry today wasn’t easier.” The words spiraled out in ghostly tendrils, disappearing in the cold air.
“You were with me. That made it better.” I grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him close.
His body came flush against mine as his lips parted, and we took up where we’d left off in the bathroom. His hands went to my hips, his erection insistent against my stomach. “I need to get you home.”
“I want to be home,” I said, feeling for the door handle.
Hayden helped me in and shut me inside the frigid car. He adjusted himself as he strode around the front, his intentions as clear as mine. The presents were unceremoniously tossed in the backseat.
“I should have warmed up the car first,” he said as he turned the engine over.
“It gets warm fast enough.” I pulled my legs up and rubbed them through the thin nylon.
He shifted the car into gear, gunning it as soon as he was on the street. Unable to keep my hands off him, I put my palm on his knee. He glanced down but didn’t say anything. I moved higher, up along his thigh. The muscles in his leg tensed.
Hayden sucked in a breath as I grazed his erection. “What are you doing?”
“Touching you.” I reached for his belt, sliding the leather through the buckle, unclasping it, and flicking the button open.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Can’t you multitask?”
“That depends on the tasks involved.”
I slipped my hand into his pants, fingering the warm steel ball at the head. Hayden gripped the steering wheel tightly.
He whispered a low “Fuck.” His eyes flicked to me. “We should have left earlier.”
The blinker came on and he made several turns, taking us deeper into a subdivision while I freed him from his pants and continued stroking.
“Hold on,” Hayden gritted through clenched teeth as he wrenched the wheel and the car turned sharply. He eased off the gas and pulled into a short driveway before hitting the brakes with a jolt. His labored breathing was drowned out by the loud whir of a garage door opening.
“Where are we?”
“This is the place I’m working on with Nate.”
“No one lives here?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
He pulled into the garage. Once the car was inside, the door closed.
Hayden cut the engine and the headlights died, submerging us in darkness. We groped blindly in the inky black, hands searching each other out, mouths connecting. His tongue pushed past my lips, and I hastily unfastened my seat belt so I could get closer. We were a mass of tangled limbs, pulling and pushing as we tried to bridge the space between us.
I was pressed against the passenger door, legs spread out, one hand on the dash, the other gripping the headrest. Hayden hovered over me, halfway across the center console, contorted in an uncomfortable position he didn’t seem to mind. He sought the edge of my dress, his hand snaking up my thigh, reaching the lace edge of my thigh highs.
Then he stopped. His hand slapped at the ceiling and the interior light came on. I blinked, adjusting to the sudden brightness.
“How the fuck did I miss these?”
“I put them on just before we left, while you were getting the presents together.”
“Sneaky, sexy woman.”
He ran his finger under the pink strap of the garter, all the way up to the satin between my legs. His knuckle grazed my clit. I arched into the touch and threw my head back, slamming it against the window.
“Shit. Are you okay?” His hand stayed between my legs, but he looked conflicted as he scanned my body and his eyes rose to mine. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this here. I don’t have my key to get in the house. I should take you home.”
The day had been too heavy and I wanted Hayden to erase it. “I don’t want to wait until we get home. I want you to fuck me now.”
After a moment’s hesitation he fumbled with the lever on my seat and I went crashing back. The box of presents behind me toppled over, spilling its contents onto the floor.
“Dammit.” He reached out to try to stop them.
“Leave it.” I gripped his chin in my hand, my need gaining urgency.
He sucked on my bottom lip and tried to straddle me, but he couldn’t fit his legs in the space between the seat and the dash. He grunted when he smacked his head on the ceiling.
“There’s not enough room,” he lamented, shoving the skirt of my dress up to my waist.
“Maybe we should use the hood.”
He froze. “Excuse me?”
“There’s plenty of space there.” I gestured toward the broad expanse of black metal, remembering the time he mentioned using the location, before I’d gone back to Arden Hills.
“I was kind of joking about that,” he rasped.
“No, you weren’t.”
He was out of the car before I could react and wrenched opened my door. The interior light cast his face in shadow, making his smile almost sinister as he leaned on the frame.
“Get out of the car, kitten.”
21
HAYDEN
Tenley smiled with satisfaction as her glassy eyes met mine. For a second I reevaluated the whole idea, then Tenley pushed my boxers out of the way and leaned in. My dick was conveniently located at the same level as her face.
She ran her tongue over the slit.
“Mother of– You really have no fucking idea—”
“No fucking idea about what?” She did it again.
“What you do to me. All day you’ve been in this dress, looking so sweet and innocent. Then you start with the hand job, and the garters, and now this. How am I supposed to say no to you?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
She wrapped her lips around me. The wet warmth of her mouth was a welcome contrast to the cool air in the garage. It wasn’t as frigid in here as it was outside, but it was cold enough that my balls wanted to climb up inside my body.
She let out a needy sigh as her tongue swirled around the head, and I gripped the doorframe. As her mouth moved over me, I was aware this was a colossally bad idea. She might’ve been the one to suggest it, but today had been emotional and it made her unstable. Plus she was medicated.
A better boyfriend would have put a stop to this and taken her home. I was not that boyfriend. Instead, I planned to do the one thing I could to alleviate her pain, even if the location lacked romance.
I pressed my fingers into the hinge of her jaw, easing her off. “I want that mouth up here.”
She came willingly, her arms winding around my neck. I bent to kiss her, tongues twining as I pulled her away from the car and closed the door. The interior light cast a pale glow over the hood.
Small, high-pitched noises came from Tenley as she tried to wrap herself around me. I gripped her thighs and hoisted her up, depositing her on the hood of the car. Her dress bunched around her waist, the flowing fabric creating a barrier. I sifted through the layers until the sexy garters came into view.
Tenley’s sigh of relief echoed my own, the thin satin of her panties the only thing impeding immediate entrance. I wanted to touch all of her. I wanted her naked and spread out, but it was too cold. The dress would have to stay on, until we got home.
I rocked my hips, achieving the friction we were both looking for. She loosened my tie and popped the first few buttons on my shirt. But she was too frantic, and her hands too unsteady, to get through them all. She gave up and found the hem instead, her palm going under and up to rest over my heart.
“I can’t lose you. I need you so much, it hurts.” Her voice was high, reedy.
“It’s the same for me.”
Countless times since her return I’d woken in the night after one of the dreams, searching the bed for her warm body. Each time I found her, the promise of her constancy eased the fear. Tonight was no different. We were both looking for a way to ground ourselves in the present.
My hand traveled up her leg, over the thigh highs and lace trim, past the sexy expanse of bare skin. I slipped a finger under the garter strap and followed it to her panties, going under the elastic.
“Please, Hayden,” she whispered.
In one smooth stroke I pushed two fingers inside. Tenley’s head fell back, legs sliding off my hips. She propped herself on her arms, the pale light spilling over the contours of her delicate face. Desperation was behind her desire, and I understood the feeling only too well. I twisted my fingers, adding another. Tenley lifted her hips, her body arching. She drew one leg up, her heel coming to rest on my thigh. It slid down.
“Just put it on the car.”
Her leg quivered and goose bumps flashed across her skin. She was closer than I thought.
“But the paint . . . ,” she panted as I thrust harder and faster, rubbing her clit with my palm.
“Screw the paint.”
She grabbed on to my tie with one hand, reaching for her heel with the other. It dropped to the floor with a low thud. The other followed immediately after.
Tenley put one foot on the hood, but her nylons provided no traction. She stretched her leg up, her heel coming to rest on my shoulder. I leaned against the car as her other shin hit my forearm. She was sex and innocence, a vision in cream and pale pink, spread out on black steel.
Her teeth were clenched, the muscles in her jaw tight. I curled my fingers, and her eyes fluttered shut as she gripped my tie tighter. It bit into my neck painfully so I leaned in closer.
“Come, goddamnit,” I demanded, wanting her release so I could get mine.
She shook her head and moaned. “I can’t. I’m so close, oh, God . . .”
“I’m not fucking you until you do,” I threatened, not sure if I could follow through with the asinine declaration.
Tenley’s eyes flipped open, her lips a hair’s breadth away from mine. The emotions that clouded her half-glazed eyes were brutally intense.
I brought my lips to her ear. “Please, kitten, I need to see you come.”
She released my tie and almost set me off-balance. Her cold palm came to rest against my nape. She tilted her head giving me access to her throat. I dropped my head and kissed her neck, grazing with my teeth.
“Do that again—please.” Her voice was pained. “Harder,” she said, when my teeth pressed against the silken skin, and she bucked against my fingers.
I complied, because she was right there. She cried out, her voice echoing in the garage as her body trembled with the force of her orgasm. Then she went limp; the leg propped against my shoulder slid down into the crook of my arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, bringing my mouth to hers.
The kiss started off slow, but as Tenley regained control of herself, the intensity increased.
With shaky anticipation I grabbed my cock, pushed her panties out of the way, and dragged the head down her slit. My body was being lit up from the inside, a meteor shooting through space, heading for impact. I should have been making love to her tonight, sweet and slow. But I couldn’t control the need to own her body if I couldn’t have the most important part of her yet.
“I need—” I thrust with more force than I meant to, and Tenley let out a shocked gasp. I kissed her penitently. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her nose brushing mine. “I love you in me.”
I wanted to tell her I loved her. I wanted to hear the same from her. All the things I couldn’t say kept me bound and gagged, breaking me in ways I hadn’t expected.
I cradled the back of her head in my hand as I moved, gaining momentum with each thrust. I braced one knee on the hood, my other thigh pressed against the wheel well. The metal protested and the steel caved beneath my knee, but I kept going. I could feel it coming; the tightness in the pit of my stomach became an ache as I finally surrendered and the orgasm slammed through me.
“Fuck,” I groaned. “I love the way you feel.”
Her mouth fell open as she came, too, quaking and shuddering. Two tears slipped over her temples and disappeared into her hair-line. I stilled as more pooled in the corners of her eyes.
“Shit.” I brushed them away, but new ones followed. “Kitten? Did I hurt you?”
I started to pull out, but her leg tightened around my waist. Her hands clasped behind my back to draw me in. “Stay in me, please. Don’t go.”
We remained that way until the cold began to register. When Tenley shivered and her skin pebbled, I eased out of her, pulling her dress down. My now-limp dick went back in my pants before I helped her off the hood.
Her makeup was smudged under her eyes, her cheeks blotchy, her hair a wild mess. After I fixed her up as best as I could, which wasn’t very good, I opened the passenger door. The interior light flashed brighter, highlighting the damage I’d inflicted on my car. Besides the dent from my knee, several scratches in the paint were obvious.
“Oh my God, Hayden, the hood!” Tenley exclaimed in wide-eyed horror.
I helped her into her seat and buckled her in. “No big deal. Easy enough to fix.”
I closed her door and hit the code on the garage before getting into the car and backing out into the driveway. I checked to make sure the alarm was armed before we left. Tenley’s legs were tucked under her when I got back in; she was rolling the cupcake charm over her lips.
“What’s up, kitten? You okay? Anything sore?”
She reached over and ran her fingers through my hair. “I don’t know if I would have survived today without you,” she said quietly.
“You would have found a way to get through it.”
“I’m not so sure. Maybe.”
What I’d just done came crashing down around me. I should have stopped her in the car. Or pulled over, gotten her off, and then taken her back to my place to finish the job. She meant more than a hard fuck in a cold garage.
“Hayden?”
“I should get you home. You look tired.” I started to put the car in gear.
Tenley put her hand over mine to stop me. “Are you upset with me? Did I say something wrong?”
I didn’t know what to tell her without making her feel shittier. Admitting I felt guilty for being an asshole boyfriend wouldn’t go over well.
“You haven’t said or done anything wrong. I shouldn’t have stopped here.”
“Is it about the car?”
“What? No. Fuck the car. It’s just metal and an engine.”
“It was your dad’s—”
“It’s not the car, Tenley.” I kissed the tips of her fingers. They were cold. I noted the smudges of dirt on the sleeves of her ivory coat. She’d kept it on the entire time.
“Then what?”
Tenley disengaged her seat belt and leaned across the console as if she wanted to climb into my lap. I wouldn’t have stopped her if she had. That’s when I realized what the real issue was. It had little to do with the location, or the car, or how unstable Tenley was. The sex had done nothing to ease the ache in her, or me. If anything, we were both needier now than before. Which made sense. The gratification had only been physical; it hadn’t been the connection both of us craved. The emotional piece had been missing.
“Let’s go home.” I tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Hayden, I—”
A new tension was in the car, the weight of unspoken words heavy in the air. I waited for her to continue, but she seemed to deflate. She kissed me and dropped back into her seat. The click of her seat belt sounded like a shotgun blast in the silence.
“Okay. Let’s go home.”
22
HAYDEN
We were four blocks from home when we hit a sobriety checkpoint. Normally this wouldn’t have posed a problem. The two drinks I’d had this afternoon were long out of my system. There’d been plenty of time, food, and activity to dilute their effects. However, my frame of mind was shit. Getting it on in semipublic locations had never before been an issue, but pushing it on Tenley in her emotional state left me feeling hollow. Not to mention that Tenley looked a right mess.
She was curled up in the passenger seat, legs pulled up under her, her dress fanning out to cover her calves and feet. She had reclined the seat so she was almost prone, lying on her side, facing me. Her eyes were closed, her mouth lax, her breathing slow and deep. She’d fallen asleep. Which should have made me feel better, but meant that I’d worn her out.
When the car came to a stop, Tenley sat up, blinking blearily. She glanced out the windshield at the flashing lights of the cop cars lining the street.
“What’s going on? Was there an accident?”
“They’re just doing a drunk check.”
“Oh.”
She adjusted her seat back into a sitting position but she didn’t relax. She rubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, leaving a mascara smear on the pale fabric. Unable to keep still, she wiped at the mark on her sleeve. Eventually she gave up and stared out the window as the line of cars moved forward. As the flashing lights got closer, Tenley became edgier.
I stretched my arm across her seat and burrowed through her hair, resting my palm on the back of her neck. “You might want to grab a tissue from the glove box. Your mascara ran a little.”
I was seriously downplaying it. She looked like a Tim Burton movie character. Not ideal, considering we were about to chat with the cops, but I didn’t want to stress her out more. She did as I suggested, rooting around in the glove compartment for the small packet of travel tissues I kept there. She withdrew a row of condoms. Fuckity-Fuckerson.
We’d only used condoms the first couple of times, before we had the awkward discussion about safety and previous partners and all that shit. Awkward for me, anyway, because of my dodgy past. I’d evaded providing any details at the time, and she’d trusted me enough to take my word. That conversation alone told me a lot about the limitations of her experience.
“They’re probably expired,” I said.
I fought the urge to throw them out the window—they weren’t something I wanted to explain on an already shitty night.
Tenley squinted at the tiny date pressed into the foil square. “They’re good for another six months.” She tossed them at me and they hit me in the shoulder, falling between my seat and the center console.
“I forgot I even had them.”
“Is there anything else in here you may have forgotten about?” she asked sharply.
“Like what?” I glanced at her as she rifled through the glove box, surprised by her tone.
Her lips were pursed in a tight line. “Oh, I don’t know. A stack of random girls’ numbers? A little black book? Maybe a pair of trophy panties.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No black book, then? Oh, of course not, you didn’t do repeat offenses. Aside from Sienna, right? Silly me. I forgot.”
She was snippy, which was totally unlike her. Tenley wasn’t petty, and she never used my past against me.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad?” She found the tissues and pulled one out with too much force, tearing it in half.
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly flummoxed. “But you sound like you’re pissed and I’m not sure what I did. Those condoms have been there since before I met you. I’m serious when I say I forgot about them. And I’m not so fucked up that I’d keep trophies of a previous partner’s underwear.”
“That’s reassuring.” She swiped under her eyes, black smudges appearing on the white tissue.
“What’s the deal? Where is this coming from?”
“It’s nothing. It’s been a long day. I’m tired.”
Her shoulders sagged and she dabbed at her eyes. She was hiding that she was crying. There was way more to this than she was letting on.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, pulling up another car length.
Only a few cars were in front of me now, and I worried we were gearing up for a fight. I wasn’t all that keen on getting into a verbal battle, especially with her so fragile and me already feeling like a huge dick. Add some police officers into the mix, and I was looking at a veritable shit show. I was fully aware of the stereotype I perpetuated, especially if Tenley ended up in tears. With the way she looked right now they’d think she was a victim of abuse, emotional or otherwise.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Today’s been hard.”
“You don’t need to apologize. I know today’s been difficult. I just want to know why you’re so upset so I can do something to help.”
I kneaded the back of her neck. Her shoulders tensed so I backed off. She was silent for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer.
Then in a tiny, shamed voice she whispered, “I found a box of condoms in Connor’s car when I was cleaning it out last week.”
Hearing his name in this context inspired the sensation of spiders crawling all over me. “In the douche mobile?”
Another car passed through the police barricade.
She nodded.
Talking about Connor like this made me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, but I’d set aside my self-doubt if she’d confide in me. I was desperate to understand where she was at right now.
“I’m sorry. I’m not seeing how that would be a problem,” I replied, confused.
From the pictures I’d seen of him, he was a jockish, polo-wearing Boy Scout, so it made sense he’d want to be prepared. If she and I still needed to use condoms, I’d be wearing them as a belt.
“There were four missing.”
“Maybe he kept them in his wallet?”
It was a reasonable thing to do, though four seemed like overkill. Yet the first night I went over to Tenley’s, I brought three. And back then, I’d been avoiding that scenario.
“I’ve been getting the shot for years,” she said. “I went on it pretty much right after we started dating because Connor hated condoms and I didn’t want to take any chances. There was never a reason for him to need them.”
My stomach bottomed out as what she was telling me hit. I thought back to those photo albums I’d gone through, and that period of time when Connor was absent from the pictures. There had to be a story there I didn’t know. Had her insecurities and second thoughts originated there?
“There has to be a reasonable explanation.”
“I’ll never know what it was, though, will I?” She wrapped her arms around her waist, folding in on herself.
From the way she was shutting down, she had already formulated her own hypothesis—the worst one possible. To discover this after he was gone was fucked up. Since she couldn’t know for sure, those doubts would linger forever, tainting his memory. While I felt threatened by him, I didn’t want him demonized.
It was better for him to be enshrined in her past. Because finding out that he might have been fucking someone else led to one truth: all that death might have been avoidable if she’d known.
“Maybe they belonged to a buddy? Chris used to leave his all over the place. He got Jamie in a world of shit once when Lisa found a box stashed under the passenger seat of the Beetle.”
“Maybe,” Tenley replied, but obviously she didn’t believe it.
We moved forward again. Only one more car was in front of us.
“There was never anyone else when you were gone,” I said, seeking to reassure her that I would never do that to her. This information explained so much about her past reactions, particularly to Sienna.
“I know that.” She wiped at her eyes with a fresh tissue, leaving new mascara smudges behind.
“The thought of being with someone other than you made me feel sick.” I smoothed my palm down her back, along the ridges of her spine. “It still does.”
The car in front of us pulled through the barricade. I moved forward, annoyed at the interruption to our heavy conversation. My headlights washed over the officer inspecting the cars, and I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white.
“Son of a bitch.”
Just when I thought my night couldn’t get any worse.
