Helena Hunting - Inked Armour

“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.”

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.