Helena Hunting: Inked Armour

Her eyes narrowed in a sexy, sinister way. “Like hell.”

She was going to be a firecracker tonight, if I let her. She let go of my hair and pushed on my shoulders until I was reclined in the chair, then climbed up to straddle me. Hot and wet met hard and ready. I grabbed her hips and kept her from moving.

“Hayden,” she groaned.

Her ponytail flared out over her shoulder, the nipple shield barely visible through the cascade. She was my ultimate temptation, gorgeous and willing and so full of fire. It would be so easy to just slip inside, but I slowed things down.

“I need you. Please.” She kissed me, all soft and sweet.

“You think it’s different for me?”

“Then take me, for fuck’s sake!”

I laughed and she bit my lip, but she was smiling and she melted right into me, as if she understood.

There would never be another one of these firsts: Tenley’s first finished back piece, and the first time I’d ever put something so significant on someone I loved. It was pretty damn momentous. So I was going to savor this experience. And she let me.

We were as close as we could get, fused in every way. In the years between loss and living, I’d forgotten what it was like to love. I didn’t know how it felt to be whole, to be present in my own life.

Then Tenley came along and made me aware of everything I’d been missing but was too afraid to acknowledge. Just as she’d been running, so had I, but I was past that now. I had closure—but more than that, I had her. Tenley was the inception, my new beginning, the rebirth I’d been striving for. She embodied the phoenix embedded in my skin, rising from the ashes to start again.

In this, we were marked by one another. It went far beyond ink on skin. It went right down to the soul.

In this life, for as long as we had, we would be each other’s armor.