Honor Bound by Joey Hill (speld decodable readers .txt) 📕

was truly thinking and feeling. Would he give her those if she asked, or did he think she couldn’t handle whatever they were? And was he right?

But he kept following her. Slow steps. Each time she stopped, he did as well, always a little closer to her, closing that distance, ratcheting up that tension. Her pulse elevated with the increase in heat, from him or her, she couldn’t tell. When she got to his bedroom, she turned at the foot of his bed. He hadn’t put the dress back on her, but he’d wrapped her in his suit coat. The hem of it brushed her thighs. Letting the jacket slip off her shoulders, she stepped out of her shoes. Then, after a brief hesitation, she turned her back to him and removed the thong, then the stockings, a slow slide of silk down quivering thighs.

He’d given her a safe word. Freedom. The implications of the word hit her, the word he’d chosen so randomly a lifetime ago. Under his restraint, she’d soared higher that night at The Zone than she ever had in her life. Until tonight. Or the next time they came together in this desperate-tender-rough-everything way they seemed to have.

She left the corset and collar on. They gave her the confidence to make a frightening choice, to say the word aloud.

“Peter.” She knew she’d whispered, because she couldn’t hear it, but the name echoed in her heart.

“I’m here, sweetheart.” He was, right in front of her, and she reached up, cupped his face.

Not as Master and slave in this moment, though it was there, a deep bond between them.

“You said, if I decided to stay, accepted that I was yours . . . you would make love to me in your bed.”

His hand was over hers, gripping hard. “I meant it.”

“So do I.” She hesitated as he pressed a kiss to her palm, her body already shuddering, anticipating the pleasure they’d bring each other. “I’m scared. I’ll probably stay scared and mad for a while. I want to trust you, but it will all take time, won’t it?”

“Yeah.” He slid his arms around her, hitched her up so her legs could curl around his hips, feel the arousal he pressed between her thighs. “A really, really long time.”

Her lips curved. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, Captain.”

“Yeah, we are, Sergeant. It all means the same. And I know how much you love wearing these”—his hand swept down the corset, came back to rest on the collar—“but for this, I want it to be skin to skin. I want you to know if it’s all stripped away, nothing but us, that I’ll be there for you, with you.”

She swallowed. Nodded. Then halted him by holding his hands for a minute. “Skin to skin, Peter. Please give me everything. Don’t be afraid I can’t take it. Stop holding back your emotions from me. I need to know I’m not made of glass. I need everything you are, too.”

His fingers gripped her harder, and she held her breath.

“I’ll try,” he said at last. Then he was unhooking the foundation garment. The sensation of being unwrapped, unbound by him, was as arousing as being laced into it. His hands made all the difference. Releasing the collar, he let it all fall away. With his palms he soothed the lines the tight fit of the corset had left. Then he lifted her off her feet, carried her around to the side of the bed and laid her down, stroking her face before he came down and covered her lips with his.

He was such a big man. She liked that, liked the aura of heat around him, liked the fact he didn’t mind when she reached up and traced where their lips joined. He kept kissing her as she explored his face, the curl of lashes, the lines across his forehead and around his eyes, his strong facial structure. Short, silken hair, just as she remembered.

Moving down to her breasts, he nursed the sore tips, aroused and soothed at once, until she was quivering, her hips rising in signal of what she needed. His palm slid along her thigh, teased her mound, but then he capitulated to the tug of her hands and lay down upon her, chest to thigh, letting her feel all of him. He’d stripped, so they were blissfully naked in each other’s arms. The curve of muscle along his back, the breadth of his shoulders and network of bone and muscle were there, accessible to her touch. The different texture of skin where the tattoo of PEACE followed his shoulders, the Don’tTread on Me flag against his impressive biceps. She traced the letters. P . . . E . . . A . . .

C . . . E. Her body was spinning slowly toward a climax, as strong and pleasurable as at the club, but so soft and easy at once. This was what peace was. The pleasure and time to do this, wrapped in a cocoon of darkness that was comforting, not frightening, because every chamber of her mind, her heart and her soul was filled with him.

He was hard and ready for her. When he slid in, she tilted up to meet him, an instinct as old as life itself, two coming together to be one. It brought a guttural sigh of pleasure from her lips and he made a similar noise against her ear. Fondling her neck, he followed the line of the hearing aid and stroked the shell of her ear. “Am I too heavy, sweetheart?”

His voice was throaty, thick.

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and breathing him in, pressing her face into his corded neck. Her heels slid over his taut buttocks, the rhythmic press and release, the matching sensation in her womb as he slid in, slid out, his movements powerful, but slow, cherishing. As he’d said, a natural skin-to-skin meeting, the need to be inside