Inked Armour

25 HAYDEN

It was noon before I opened my eyes the next day. Tenley was slow to wake up and even slower to get moving. As she tried to sit up, she cringed and moaned, then flopped back down. She rolled over on her stomach, her face mashed into the pillow.

“What hurts?” The hood of my car was no soft place to get it on.

“My lower back,” she mumbled from under her veil of hair.

I threw the covers off and leaned over. I checked for bruising, then ran my thumbs down her spine. When I reached her tailbone, Tenley made a sound of displeasure.

“Right here?” I asked, putting a little pressure on the spot.

“Mm, and my hips are stiff.” She blew her hair out of her face.

“Let me make it better.” I started rubbing, and little sounds of approval escaped her when I hit a particularly sore spot. TK jumped up on the bed and started sniffing around, her nose bumping up against my leg. Sometimes we had to lock her out of the room when we were having sex because TK sat at the end of the bed and meowed at us otherwise. It was creepy and distracting as hell. Especially when Tenley started laughing.

Now, TK climbed right up on Tenley’s back and started to knead, getting in on the action. Then she head-butted my hand and plunked herself down right where I was massaging.

Tenley peeked over her shoulder. “It looks like your other kitty is jealous.”

“It’s not like she doesn’t get enough attention.”

I picked TK up before she started in with the claws and lay back down beside Tenley, settling TK on my chest. She nuzzled right in, rubbing the top of her head under my chin, purring up a storm. “How’s your back feeling now?”

“Okay. A couple painkillers should take care of it if it’s still bothering me later.” Tenley closed her eyes again.

I had other questions—about her use of medication, about what Cross and Miller had said to her last night, about Chris’s asinine yet brilliant idea for a New Year’s getaway—but all of those could wait.

“Tenley?”

“Hmm?”

I kissed the tip of her nose. “Do you want to open the rest of our presents?”

Her eyes popped open. “Oh my God! Of course!”

She rolled out of bed and sprang to her feet. In the next heartbeat she disappeared, dropping to the floor. I leaned over, not quite sure what had happened. Her hands appeared at the edge of the mattress as she hoisted herself up, coming nose to nose with me.

“Soooo,” she said, “I guess I haven’t fully recovered from that workout last night.”

I swung my legs around and slipped my hands under her arms. She muttered something about being okay, which was a load of crap because she wobbled like a foal, using my shoulders for support.

“We need to try out different positions,” I said to her boobs, which were right in my face.

“Right now?” Tenley’s voice became a sultry whisper.

I looked up. Her eyes were focused on my stupid dick, which couldn’t get with the program and deflate.

“Uh, no, kitten. We should put a hold on that until the staying-upright thing is less of a problem.”

She pouted, but I wasn’t about to cave. It was already after noon on our first Christmas together. I wanted to open presents while drinking coffee and eating the cupcakes I’d found hidden in the fridge last night.

When she no longer needed me for support, I rolled off the bed and rooted around in my dresser, yanking on a pair of festive pajama pants.

Tenley was still living out of an overnight bag when she came over, which needed to change. I’d cleared a section in my closet for her and she had a few things hanging in there, but no comfy lounging gear. I grabbed a pair of boxers for her and my STRYKER hoodie. She covered up all that sexy, bare skin, which made it easier to focus, and we left the bedroom.

After coffee was brewed and poured—Tenley making hers undrinkable with a shitload of sugar and cream—we sat down and exchanged the gifts under the tree. It was the first time in the past seven years that I’d actually looked forward to the holiday.

I passed the first gift to Tenley. She pulled the red-and-white-striped bow off the top and stuck it to her head with a cheeky grin. TK batted at the springy tendrils of ribbon as Tenley removed them from the box as well. Eyes bright with anticipation, with her fingernail she cut through the tape sealing the box. “Did you wrap this?”

“Yeah.”

She paused to kiss me. “You’re pretty incredible, you know that? This is a professional wrap job. You could start a side business.”

“I’ll get right on that.” I smiled as she attempted to unwrap the box without ripping the paper. She gave up halfway through and tore into it. I’d put forth some serious effort to make the presents look good. Every single gift had bows and ribbon and all that frilly crap on it. Even the tiny ones. Her excitement made it worth it.

Tenley tossed the torn wrapping into the wastebasket I’d set up beside the coffee table. She opened the box, folding back the tissue paper. A black hoodie sat inside. Tenley traced the skull-and-crossbones cupcake emblazoned in white over the left side of the chest. She read the lettering that arched above and below in a tattoo-inspired font.

“Does that say . . .” She lift the hoodie out of the box to get a better look.

“It’s supposed to be a joke.” Sort of. Not really. “I like the way mine looks on you and you’re always hijacking it, so I thought I’d get you your own. This one is your size.” I was doing that rambling shit again.

“Oh. So the PROPERTY OF HAYDEN STRYKER inscription is the joke part?”

“You should check out the back,” I replied, avoiding the question because it was not, in fact, the joke part.

She turned it over to find STRYKER in red lettering with gold piping across the back. It was about more than just liking the way my hoodie looked on her. I also liked the way my name looked across her back and chest. I would never admit, not in a million years, that I’d fantasized about inking my name on her somewhere. The crease at the inside of her thigh was definitely a favored option in my imagination. That way I’d see it every time I went down on her.

Until now, I’d never understood why people put someone else’s name on their body. It wasn’t erasable. Even laser was a painful and not-always-effective method of removing such mistakes. Memorial tattoos made sense, though. I’d even put one on Cassie, though we’d argued over the placement for weeks before I folded.

I could respect those guys who came in and had their kid enshrined on their back or chest or biceps. I figured it was a way for them to cement their role as a parent. But tattooing the name of a significant other on my body had always seemed ludicrous. Jamie’s LISA tattoo—across his lower abdomen no less—had baffled the shit out of me. Not so much anymore.

Other than Tenley, I hadn’t been inside anyone whom I wanted to refer to as significant. She’d changed that. After she left, I’d been ready to put a pin-up version of her on my ribs. I still wanted to, but for less desperate reasons. I also wanted it in a much more visible location. It wasn’t much different from putting her name on me.

She traced the perimeter of the S in STRYKER.

“I thought you might like wearing it at school. You know, when you have class and stuff.” That way, those guys she worked with wouldn’t have to question whether we were still together.

“Stuff, as in group meetings?”

“Sure.” I tried to come off as nonchalant.

“So the inscription on the front, would you say it’s more of warning than a joke?”

I gave her a sheepish smile. “I thought you’d prefer it to hickeys.”

I smoothed my thumb across her neck where only a faint pink mark remained from last night. A couple of tiny, almost unnoticeable lines on her bottom lip were the only other reminders of the damage I’d inflicted.

“Aren’t you sweet,” she drawled.

“You don’t like it?” My stomach did a weird flip thing.

“No. I love it. It’s perfect—much better than a hickey.” She leaned in and kissed me. “But there are less conspicuous, more sensitive places for you to suck on than my neck.”

“Is that right?” I nibbled her bottom lip.

“Mm.”

“Maybe later we could perform a thorough exploration of those locations,” I suggested.

“Maybe.”

She extricated herself from my arms and sashayed over to the tree. She got down on her hands and knees, ass in the air, and rooted around until she came up with a handful of presents. We spent the next hour opening gifts and tossing TK’s new catnip mice around. The last present I opened was the third of the three pictures Lisa had taken of Tenley.

This one wasn’t as revealing as the first one I’d opened, but it was the most provocative. Tenley was in profile, her features obscured by shadow, her fingers at her lips. She was wearing a camisole covered in cupcakes, and her pert nipple showed through the tight, sheer fabric. The clincher was the lack of panties, made even sexier by the garterless, lace-edged thigh highs. A slight twist in her torso caused the light to hit the cupcake tattoo but blacked out that perfect slit between her thighs.

My intention had been to thank her by kissing her. That didn’t quite happen, and we didn’t make it to the bedroom. However, I did manage to find a new position that didn’t put as much strain on her hips.

By four in the afternoon we’d finished with presents, a shower, and a meal and were vegging on the couch. My phone had rung half a dozen times already, as had Tenley’s, but we were both avoiding the calls. Until Tenley and I talked about New Year’s options, I wasn’t having the conversation with Lisa.

We were in the middle of watching an action flick when Tenley sighed and shifted around, rubbing her legs together. “I need to do something.”

“Why don’t we go out? We could go for a walk, get some fresh air.”

She hopped off the couch and headed for the bedroom, taking the hoodie with her. I stayed put because seeing her naked would be a deterrent to going out. We needed to do something other than have sex, even though it was a way to keep our minds off the difficult stuff. While I waited, I busied myself with organizing the presents under the tree.

She came back out a few minutes later with her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. She was wearing purple jeans that were so fitted they looked painted on and the STRYKER hoodie.

“You like?” She did a little twirl.

“Yeah. I like.” I nodded dumbly, completely rethinking my previous rationale for leaving the condo.

“Are you planning to go out like that?”

I ran a hand over my chest. “You don’t think I should?” The white T-shirt was so thin, she could see my body art and my nipple rings through it.

“Feel free, but I’m thinking if you get a hard-on, it might be difficult to hide.” Tenley gestured at my pajama pants.

I looked down. I already had an obvious semi. “Point taken.”

I changed quickly. When I came back out, Tenley was sprawled on the floor, and TK was perched on her knees batting at a string with a bell tied to the end.

“I have an idea,” Tenley said.

“What’s that?”

“You said you wanted to work on shading this week, right? What if we started now?” She looked hopeful and a little nervous.

“Are you sure you’re up for something like that today?”

“I think so.” She set TK on the floor and used the coffee table to pull herself up. “Yesterday was difficult for both of us, and I need some kind of . . . release? And I think this might help.”

I weighed the options. If I worked on her shoulders it would be less painful, and we could stop anytime. There’d be no pressure to get through a certain amount of color, and we’d have no interruptions since the shop would be empty. It could be cathartic. But it could go the other way, too. It was hard to tell which was more likely. “I don’t know . . .”

“Please? I promise I’ll tell you if I think it’s too much. We could go down to the shop for a bit. If I feel at all like it’s not going to be okay, we can just go for a walk.”

With no pressure in the request, I gave in. There was no way to know unless I gave it a shot. “We could try.”

“Really?” She threw her arms around my neck, her excitement contagious. I hadn’t worked on her since before she’d left for Arden Hills. Getting her back in my chair might be good for both of us.

“But I say when I think you’ve had enough.”

“Of course. And if I don’t think I can handle it before that, I’ll ask you to stop.”

She kissed me, her tongue pressing forward to tangle with mine, and I wondered if we would ever lose this unquenchable need for each other. I hoped not.