Текст книги "Inked Armour"

Автор книги: Helena Hunting

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

12
HAYDEN

Five days. That was how long the sleepover boycott lasted. Yet even with Tenley in my bed, I couldn’t shake the nightmares. They were worse than ever, but at least with her next to me the content of the dreams didn’t include her.

Something in me had snapped. The wall I’d erected had come crumbling down, and I couldn’t get it back up. All the things I never wanted to remember about my parents’ deaths were resurfacing with a clarity that woke me in the night, leaving me sweaty and shaking.

It was six in the morning. Tenley was asleep in my bed. I should have been there, too, but it was pointless when all I did was toss and turn. Instead, I sat on my couch in the living room. The Christmas tree Tenley and I had put up earlier in the week blinked cheerily from across the room. We’d decorated it together with the ornaments she brought over, and the predawn glow of the flashing white lights was a bitter counterpoint to my somber mood. My laptop was open on the coffee table. I’d been scanning the same articles over and over, looking for some seed of information. Anything to help make sense of the memories I couldn’t reshelve in the Do Not Enter section of my brain.

I couldn’t ignore them anymore; the memories had holes I wanted to fill. So much about that time was vague, except for the week prior to my parents’ murder. My actions then set the wheels in motion.

My mom knocked on the door to my bedroom. I shoved the porn mag under my covers and touched the mouse on my laptop. The banal essay I’d finished three days earlier for my Man and Society class popped up on the screen.

“You can come in.”

She poked her head in the door. “We’re on our way out.”

“Okay, cool. You look nice.” I said it not just to suck up, but because she did. She was wearing a red dress. Her dark hair was pulled up, away from the delicate features of her face.

“You don’t think it’s too much?”

“Did Dad say something?” Leave it to him to make her second-guess her choice minutes before they had to leave.

“No, no. I just wondered if I should have gone with black.”

“Red is better. Makes more of a statement.”

I grinned, and a genuine smile lit up her face as she smoothed her hands over the skirt. She was soft around the edges, the way a mom should be. Not like those over-liposuctioned Stepford types she’d be with tonight. Guaranteed they would all be in black, or some animal-print monstrosity. Thank Christ I was too old to be dragged out to those boring events.

“Are you guys gonna be late?”

“We’ll be back around midnight. No friends in the house while we’re gone.”

“Sure thing, Mom.”

“I’m serious, Hayden. No friends. Your father will sell that car, and you’ll be taking the bus until you can afford to buy your own.”

“Okay. No friends in the house. Promise,” I said to fend off the coming lecture.

“If you’re going out, lock the doors and be home by ten thirty. No later.”

“Sure. Have fun.” I hit a couple of keys on my laptop to make it look as if I needed to get back to work.

She glanced around my room. “I’d tell you to clean your room, but that would be pointless.”

Dad called for her from the bottom of the stairs, and her heels clipped on the hardwood floor as she turned to leave.

“Hayden?”

I looked up.

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Of course. I love you, too, Mom.”

My father called for her again, impatient this time.

I waited until the car pulled out of the driveway before I called Damen to pick me up. I’d lost the keys to my car two weeks ago when some chick I picked up puked all over the backseat. The keys would be mine again when I coughed up the cash for the detail job. While I waited for Damen to arrive, I downed half the mickey of vodka a girl from my part-time job had bought for me.

My dad had long ago locked up his liquor cabinet due to the number of times I’d raided it. I checked my wallet. I’d already burned through my paycheck and was down to my last ten bucks. I headed to my parents’ room and lifted the painting from the wall to access the safe hidden behind it.

I punched in the code and smiled as the release latch gave way. My mom’s best jewelry and my dad’s rainy-day money were stashed inside, along with some bank shit. I lifted a couple of twenties, shoved them in my wallet, and locked the safe. I only felt a little bad about taking the money. I’d put it back when I got paid at the end of the week.

“Look at you, Mission: Impossible,” Damen said from the doorway.

I dropped the painting on the floor. The corner of the frame dented the hardwood. “You scared the shit out of me! How the fuck did you get in here?”

“The front door. I knocked first.”

I frowned. My parents usually locked up when they went out. I hung the painting on the wall, tapping the edge until it was perfectly aligned. A scuff mark marred the edge of the frame that hit the floor. I rubbed at it, but the mark remained. Hopefully my dad wouldn’t notice.

“What the hell is that supposed to be, an angel of death?” Damen asked, eyeing the painting. It was an angel rendered in shades of red.

“Shut it. My mom painted it.”

“It’s pretty fucking weird.” He picked up a diamond earring my mom had left on the dresser, rolling it between his fingers.

I grabbed it out of his hand and put it back. “Don’t touch anything. My dad will notice if something’s been moved.”

“You need to chill out. Come on, the bitches are in the car.”

“Oh, yeah?” I scanned the room to make sure nothing else was out of place. “Who’d you bring this time?”

“Some randoms. Don’t worry, there’s one for you.”

I grinned. “Let’s roll.”

Damen grabbed the mickey from my hand and polished it off as we booked it down the stairs. I locked the door and checked the planter for the spare key before I followed him to the SUV parked down the street.

Damen was a few years older than me. He ran a tattoo shop call Art Addicts downtown where I got my eyebrow pierced. I’d gone back a few times with friends and discovered he had a side business of the less-than-legal persuasion. He had hookups and seemed to know a lot of skanky girls. Those traits made him an appealing acquaintance.

Some loser I didn’t know was sitting in the front seat, staring out the windshield. I opened the back door and a cloud of smoke poured out. Two guys who looked vaguely familiar were in the middle with a chick I’d seen at the tattoo shop squeezed between them. She looked at me and then over her shoulder at the two girls in the very back. I didn’t recognize either one. They both had on too much eye makeup. The fake blonde was busy hauling on a joint. The real blonde was putting on lip gloss. I climbed back between them.

“One of those is for me,” Damen said as he pulled away from the curb.

“Is that right?” I put an arm around both of them. “Which one is mine?”

“Me,” they said at the same time.

“I’ll just keep them entertained until you’re ready then, yeah?” I called up to the front.

“Not too entertained. I’m not into sloppy seconds.”

Music blared through the speaker system, making further conversation impossible. Not that talk was necessary.

It was twelve thirty by the time I got home. I was wasted. And high as a kite. My parents’ car wasn’t in the driveway so I assumed they weren’t home. I was wrong. They’d parked in the garage. My dad was sitting on the stairs when I came in, his tie loose around his neck, his shirt untucked, the top two buttons undone. He was calm. Which meant he was really fucking mad.

I heard the soft tread of feet coming down the hall from upstairs. “Is he home?”

My mom came into view at the top of the landing, her eyes red-rimmed. She’d been crying. She pulled her pale blue satin robe tight around her and came down the stairs, skirting my father, who still hadn’t moved.

“Oh, thank God! You have no idea how worried I was. I told you ten thirty. I was very explicit about that.” Her voice cracked.

It made me feel like shit, which was precisely the point. “I’m sorry, Mom. I lost track of time.”

“It’s after midnight! You have school in the morning! Where have you been? What happened to your neck?”

She was much shorter than me, especially without her heels, and she had to lift her head to meet my eyes. I couldn’t focus well; the combination of weed and booze made me logy and uncoordinated. She grabbed me by the chin and forced my head to the side. “Are those hickeys? What kind of girl are you spending your time with? You smell like a bar! I have had it, Hayden. What’s it going to take?” Her anger gave way to more tears and I just stood there, feeling like the asshole teenager I was.

“All right, Eleanor, I’ll take it from here.” Dad rose from the stairs and gently settled his hand on her shoulder.

She spun around and pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t! Don’t treat me like I’m too fragile to handle this. I birthed him.” She turned back to me. “I can deal with the holes in your face Hayden, but this”—she gestured to my neck—“I have a real problem with you spending time with girls who think this is appropriate. What if you get her pregnant? Then what are we going to do? I’m too young to be a grandmother! Not to mention the drinking and the drugs. And don’t try and deny it, Hayden. I’m not stupid. I know what that smell is!”

I shoved my hands in my pockets, weaving on my feet, and slurred, “I don’t think you’re stupid, Mom.”

My father shot me a look that should have made paint peel off the walls. “Eleanor, I agree. You have every right to be upset with him. However, this conversation would be better served in the morning, when he’s coherent.”

She seemed to realize he was right. With a graceful flourish, she lifted the hem of her robe and went back upstairs. Mischief, our black-and-white cat, who loathed me, wailed in my direction and followed her.

When the door to my parents’ bedroom slammed shut, my dad turned around. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but his fingers flexed and clenched repeatedly; his disappointment and exhaustion were obvious. I was wearing him out. He didn’t yell. He didn’t swear. He didn’t kick me out of the house. Any of that would have been preferable to what he said next.

“You better take a good long look at what you’re doing with your life, Son. The decisions you make now will have a direct impact on your future. If you’re not careful, you’re going to put your mother in an early grave. And if it’s just you and me? Well, I’m not sure either one of us will survive that.”

Less than a week later, they were dead.

“Hayden? What are you doing up so early?”

Tenley stood in the middle of the living room. Her hair was a tousled mess. She wore one of my long-sleeved, black shirts with shorts underneath. We still hadn’t had sex since she first came home. In the past eight days, the only thing we’d done was kiss. It was driving me fucking insane. And times like this, when I needed a distraction from the shit going on in my head, I wanted to say screw it and, well, screw her.

“I was just checking out some articles.”

“At seven in the morning? How long have you been up?”

“An hour maybe?”

Tenley crossed the room and dropped down beside me. She glanced at my open laptop on the coffee table. “Do you mind if I read it?”

“Go ahead.” I wanted her closer, so I moved her into my lap while she scanned the article. I wondered what the content looked like from her point of view. She clicked on the links I’d bookmarked. The related articles petered out when the case went cold.

“You’ve been looking at these a lot lately.”

“Yeah. But it doesn’t go anywhere, as you can see. I keep looking for something because there are things that just don’t fit, you know? There were problems with the evidence, but the articles don’t say anything about it.”

She tucked my hair behind my ear. I needed to get it cut.

“The lack of closure must be so horrible.”

I took her hands in mine and kissed her knuckles. “I want answers. I want it to make sense. There are images . . .” I shook my head against the memories. “And the smell—I think that was the worst part. For a long time I kept thinking it would fade, but it hasn’t. There’s so much I can’t remember very well. The night it happened is mostly a haze, up until I came home. Then it’s so fucking clear, it’s in hi def.”

Tenley’s smile was sad. “I know what you mean about the smells. Some parts of the crash are black holes, but others . . .” Goose bumps rose along her arms. “Scents trigger the worst memories.”

That was it exactly. Violent death had a distinctive odor. The residue was like a black smear on my life I couldn’t clear away, no matter how much time passed.

After a minute of silence when we were both wrapped up in shitty memories, Tenley kissed my temple. “I know talking about it is hard, but have you ever considered—”

“If you’re going to say therapy, you can stop right there. Nate’s been up my ass about it for years.”

She looked utterly taken aback. “You’ve never talked to anyone about this?”

“I’m talking to you.”

“I mean a professional.”

“What’s the point? I already know why I’m fucked up. I don’t need someone to tell me that for a hundred bucks an hour.”

“You’re not fucked up, Hayden.” I raised an eyebrow and she sighed. “It’s not about the why. It’s about finding ways to deal with what you went through, so it doesn’t rule your life. That’s the reason I’ve decided to attend a grief-counseling group.”

“What? When are you doing that?”

“There’s a group starting in January on campus. It’s been a year—it’s time.”

I smoothed my hands down her arms. “But you already dealt with things. Isn’t that what going back to Arden Hills was about?”

“It was the first step of many. The memorial service, while awful at the time, helped in some ways, and the estate has been taken care of. But the rest of it . . . I still harbor a lot of guilt. It’s going to take time for me to let go of that.”

The guilt I understood. That lecture from my dad played out in a constant loop some nights. If I’d made different choices, they might still be alive. If my parents hadn’t been so concerned about my sneaking out, they would have stayed at their function longer the night they died. Instead they came home early and were shot to death in their bed. While I was out getting wasted with Damen.

I regarded Tenley with skepticism. “Won’t talking about it just bring up all the crap?”

“Probably, yes. But I can’t just keep it all inside and let it fester.”

I didn’t comment. Seven years later I was still angry; still shut down in a lot of ways; still pushing boundaries.

“Anyway, that wasn’t where I was going with this. I’m not sure how cases like your parents’ work, but shouldn’t there be a file or something you can access? Maybe there are public records?”

“There might be. I’ve never looked into it.”

“Wouldn’t the local police have information?”

I scoffed. “Yeah, and they were superhelpful when all that shit went down. You’ve met that dick Cross. He’s the reason everything got fucked up in the first place.”

“There must have been other officers working the case, though. Maybe it’s worth looking into. It might give you some peace.”

Her argument made sense. Doing something proactive would be better than reading the same damn articles over and over, getting nowhere but deeper into my own head.

“Can we drop the subject?” I asked.

“Of course—I didn’t mean to push you. Do you want to talk about something else?”

She had one arm draped around my shoulder, her fingers gliding up and down the back of my neck, into my hairline. It felt good. Better than good, actually.

“I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

“Oh. Okay. Do you want some space? I can go back to my place—”

“No. I don’t want that, either.”

I pulled her closer and she shifted a little, her ass settling in the dip between my legs. My cock swelled, sensing the proximity of the Promised Land. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. Instead, the fingers of her free hand began tracing the ink on my arm. Starting at my wrist, she followed the vines to the bleeding heart into the bend of my elbow, where the flowers exploded into life.

She made no attempt to go beyond where the short-sleeve shirt ended. After our conversation in the car—where I pretty much threw a shit fit over her leaving and laid all my cards on the table—she hadn’t pushed for anything. She was more than happy to sit around my place without so much as a make-out session.

Even in bed she was all PG, wearing lots of clothing, avoiding positions that might encourage important-body-part contact. In the morning when I spooned with her and my stupid ass hard-on jabbed into her low back, or on the really great days when it nestled against the cleft of her ass, she didn’t press against it. It was driving me up the fucking wall. I had no idea where to draw the line, and the longer I waited, the more I wanted to tromp all over it. If she’d just start something, then I’d have the excuse I needed to keep going. That way I could have the connection I was desperate for, in the only way I knew how to get it.

I pulled her in tighter, my hand moving down to her bare upper thigh. Then I shifted my hips up, a furtive attempt at a little friction. Tenley’s fingers stilled and her head lifted from my chest. I met her questioning gaze with a forlorn one of my own. I should have asked Lisa what the fucking time frame was supposed to be. I had no clue.

Tenley’s fingers were on the move again. They drifted up my arm over my shoulder to my neck, skimming my jaw until they were no longer tracing tattoos, but the curve of my lip. I parted them and she took the invitation. Her thumb slipped inside my mouth. I bit down and sucked, feeling the smooth ridge of her nail and the warmth of her skin. Pulling free, she replaced her thumb with her lips, the softest brush of skin against skin. She kept coming back, kisses drawing out, becoming deeper.

When she slowly shifted around, giving me ample opportunity to stop her, I didn’t. Instead I urged her to part her legs and straddle me. That wet heat was only an inch away from where I needed it to be now, though fabric impeded direct contact. Tenley’s ass was like a magnet for my hands and they went there immediately, gripping the soft, pliant flesh.

My dick was so fucking ecstatic. If it had hands, it would have torn right through my scrubs, moved those pathetic shorts of hers aside, and dived right in. Instead it punched helplessly at the fabric, and I made a pained sound because my balls were so tight, they were on the verge of exploding.

When her hands glided down my chest to the hem of my shirt, I caught her wrists by reflex.

“This doesn’t have to lead to sex,” she said. “I could just make you feel good. Would you let me do that?”

My mouth worked independently of my brain, probably because all the blood in my body was currently pooled in the appendage all snug and cozy between Tenley’s legs. “I don’t know if—I want—”

“We’re adults, Hayden. We don’t have to stay stalled out in first gear forever. We can go as far as you’re comfortable with. You tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

As if it were that easy.

Our palms connected. Then she pressed her lips against the back of my hand. When I didn’t stop her, Tenley bit down on a knuckle and gave it a wet kiss. A promise of what was to come should I relent on my own inane restrictions.

She guided my hands to rest on her upper thighs, right below the hem of her shorts. Her mouth moved across my jaw until she reached my lips. Her tongue met mine in a leisurely sweep, over and over, until I was lulled into a sense of false security that we weren’t going to take this any further. Her fingers traveled up and down my forearms at the same languid pace, then went lower and dipped under the hem of my shirt. I stiffened.

“I just want to see you. I miss looking at you.” When she put it that way, it seemed like a reasonable request.

I raised my arms and she drew my shirt over my head. Tenley folded it neatly and set it on the arm of the couch. She started at my shoulders, smoothing her hands down my chest, over my stomach, and back up again. After that, her fingers went to work tracing my ink. Her exploration was slow to the point of painful, but I didn’t complain. Her touch was exactly what I needed; the thing I’d been denied for so long. I couldn’t remember why I thought it made sense to prolong the misery.

And then she went lower.

My grip tightened on her thighs.

She peeked up at me through her lashes. “You don’t want me to touch you? But you’re so hard.”

Talking about how hard I was did not help my resolve.

“Please? You’re like this all the time. It must be torture. I could make it better.”

I couldn’t deny the truth in what she said. I was always hard around her. It sucked to have perpetual blue balls.

She shifted forward, her hot, cotton-covered pussy settled right over my erection. She ground her hips in a slow circle. Her lips moved from my shoulder, up my neck to my ear, and she whispered, “I just want to touch.”

She brushed over the outline of my straining cock and I had no will to stop her. All I could think about was how good it would feel when it wasn’t my own shitty hand doing the work.

Her nails were longer than I’d ever seen them, the white tips filed in a gentle curve. As she released the tie on my scrubs, I watched with mind-numbing anticipation. I’d never before been this excited about a goddamn hand job. Once the tie was undone, Tenley’s hand slipped inside the waistband.

She grazed the head and I groaned, looking down at her wrist as it peeked out from the dark fabric. She hummed in approval as she followed the ridge and circled the steel ball. Her warm hand wrapped around the shaft and she freed my dick from my pants. I was so fucking ready to blow, the head was almost purple. Her thumb slid back and forth along the slit, which felt unfucking real.

“Look at you,” she murmured. “You need some relief, don’t you?”

An animalistic grunt was all I could manage.

Her free hand, which had been resting on my chest, joined the other one. She laced her fingers together, circling the shaft, her thumbs stacked on top of each other. The slow stroking started. My hips arched and I felt the abrasive brush of cotton against the head. Her oversize shirt was getting in the way, particularly of my view.

“Let go for a second,” I ground out.

“What?” She squeezed harder instead.

I tugged on the hem of her shirt and leaned in to kiss her neck. “I want this off.”

“Oh.”

She did as I asked, and I let out a strangled sound because she wasn’t touching me anymore. Then she shifted her hips and my erection was right between the cotton of her shorts and the bare flesh of her inner thigh, and, God, it was warm.

As soon as the shirt was off, her hands returned to their rightful place, and satin-smooth strands of her hair tickled my chest. I moved it out of the way and cupped her breasts, my thumbs sweeping over the tight nipples. I was rewarded with a soft sigh.

With one hand on my shoulder, she rose up on her knees and used the head of my cock to push her shorts to the side. Underneath were smooth satin panties, with a much more appealing texture than cotton. Her face was flushed as she looked down to watch her body move against me, the smooth steel ball of my piercing sliding right over where her clit was.

She maintained a steady rhythm, her body stiffening as she breathed out an expletive with the next aggressive shift of her hips. Having her grind herself all over me was enthralling, her breasts bouncing. I was at eye level with them so I leaned in and covered a pierced nipple with my mouth, flicking my tongue against the barbell. She gasped and bucked, gripping me tighter, moving faster. I held on to her hips as her movements became more frantic.

Her eyes flipped to mine, an emotion close to shock crossing her face, replaced with a bliss that verged on agony. “Oh, God.”

The sound that followed was the sexiest thing I ever heard. Her body shook as she arched forward; then she sagged against me, panting into my neck. Watching her come like a freight train left me hanging on the edge.

She mumbled something into my neck and her lips swept over to my mouth. Despite her release, her kiss was full of pent-up need and longing. She shimmied back off my lap, momentarily confusing me until she sank down on her knees between my legs.

A small part of my subconscious pointed out the lack of fairness. She only got a dry hump and I was going to get to watch my cock disappear between those pretty, full lips of hers. But I didn’t complain when she pulled my pants down my legs.

She wrapped one hand around the shaft, and her eyes never left mine as she leaned forward and swirled her soft, wet tongue around the head, then took it in her mouth. The last time she’d done this had been in a dimly lit parking garage.

I had replayed the hazy image in my head a million times, but nothing could have prepared me for the vision of a half-naked Tenley, in skimpy shorts, with my dick in her mouth. She hummed around me and my eyes rolled up. Tenley moved to work me from a different angle, the piercing clicking along her teeth. Her head moved down with her hand as she took as much of me in as she could.

That sight should go down in the annals of cocksucking history. I wanted to snap a picture of her and use it as my screen saver, especially when she sucked her way back up. Then her cheeks hollowed and she popped off. She pressed her tongue right over the steel ball on the underside of the head and licked up, as if it were an ice cream cone.

“Do you have any idea how hot you look?” I asked, my voice rough.

Her smile was full of smug satisfaction as her lips closed around me once again. She sank down until I could feel the back of her throat. I wrapped her hair around my wrist and cupped the back of her head, guiding her mouth. Her palm twisted on the up-stroke, lips reaching the ridge, tongue swirling around the tip and pressing into the slit.

“Christ.” I gritted my teeth.

As I got closer, my fingers involuntarily tightened in her hair. She looked up at me through thick lashes and hummed as I moved her faster over me, sending the vibrations straight through my shaft. This time on her way up she left a gap between her hand and her mouth, exposing an inch of slick, wet cock. I felt the click of steel against her teeth as she grazed the sensitive skin and tugged up on the barbell. I closed my eyes because the sight, with the sensation, would end this far sooner than I wanted. But it didn’t help. All my muscles tightened in response to the impending orgasm.

“I’m gonna come,” I warned.

I expected her to speed up, which I would have done, but she slowed down, fighting against my hand on the back of her head. I was so close, just teetering on the brink, but not going over. It was the best torture I ever had.

She slowly slid back up, her hand following close behind. Even though watching made it more difficult to hold back, it would have been a crime against the blow-job gods not to, and I kept my eyes trained on Tenley’s mouth. This time she came off completely.

Her fingers tightened in a viselike grip around the base of my shaft, and the palm of her other hand smoothed over the head. She pressed her thumb down over the tip, blocking the barrel of the gun. The pressure built as the sensation spiraled and spread.

“Hayden,” she said in a moany-breathy-sex voice I wanted more of. Her lips brushed back and forth over the piercing as she waited for a response.

“Yeah,” I groaned, my body shaking with impatience. I just wanted to come.

“Would you like to finish in my mouth?” she asked, all polite innocence.

“Fuck. Yes. Please.”

Her mouth closed around the head as her thumb slipped away and her grip on my shaft loosened.

“Jesus!” My head slammed back into the couch as I exploded; hot and violent and pulsing as she sucked and swallowed. When I finally stopped coming, she gently laid my used cock on my stomach. Then she leaned over and gave it an affectionate kiss and a pat, as if it were her pet. Which it kind of was.

“Don’t you feel better now?” Tenley asked as she rested her head on the inside of my thigh, her smile in no way masking her pride.

I ran my thumb tenderly over her swollen bottom lip. “That would be the understatement of a lifetime. Was that thing you did at the end something you picked up from that magazine you read?” One of those chick mags was always on her coffee table boasting of articles like “Endless Orgasms!” Maybe they weren’t so useless after all.

“No.”

I froze. “Where did you learn how to do that?” I should have been grateful my girlfriend went down on me and was awesome at it, but, no, I had to be a jealous ass and get all pissy with her.

Tenley just gave me a look. “From watching porn.”