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

of physical release, she hadn’t spent much time on pleasure in the past five years. This was overload. This was like going from the desert to an oasis.

He moved his hand from her waist to her rib cage. Her heart pounded against his hand.

Could he feel it?

He lifted his head. “You scared?”

She laughed. “No. Yes. Maybe. I haven’t done this in a while.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

“Yes.” She reached up and covered his hand with hers, brought it up over her breast. And nearly died when he rubbed his thumb over her nipple. Hot, tingling, her breast swelled, her nipple tightened.

“You’d better be, because I want you. I want you naked. I want to put my mouth all over you. I want to make you come, to hear you scream when you do. And I want to fuck you all night long, over and over again. So tell me now if you’re not ready.”

Good God Almighty. His words evoked images that made her melt all over, things she’d only dreamed about. Things only James had done to her.

For so long she’d been faithful to James. Faithful to the memory of their marriage, their life together, their love. She thought there was only going to be James. Forever.

But it was time. Time to let go, to give herself a chance to experience, if nothing else, sex again. It was time to push James aside, at least for a while.

“I’m ready for it, Clay. I need to be with you.”

He swooped her up into his arms—she felt weightless and so small next to him—and carried her down the hall and into the bedroom. He set her down on the soft carpet between the bed and the doorway. Tangy warm air billowed through the open doorway, wafting over her hot skin. Clay turned her toward the door and placed her back against his chest, then leaned down and brushed her hair to the side. He kissed the nape of her neck and drew the straps of her dress down her shoulders.

She shivered.

“You cold?”

She leaned against him and raised her arm to twine it around his neck. “No.”

His hands followed her straps, skimming along her skin. He stopped midway down her arms. “My hands are rough on your soft skin.”

“I like rough.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I think so. I don’t know, really. I just know I like the way your hands feel on me.”

He moved closer to her, wrapped his arms around her, his forearms resting just under her breasts. Her breath caught.

“I guess we’ll have to explore that together, then.”

She found it hard to breathe having him wrapped around her like this. “I guess we will.”

The thought of it thrilled her. James had always been tender, sweet in his lovemaking.

He’d never been rough with her. Not that it was a bad thing. But she would dishonor his memory because it would sound like a complaint. And she had no complaints. She’d loved her husband. Making love with James had been ten slices of heaven. He’d treated her like an angel every time he touched her.

She swore she’d no longer dwell on the past or on James.

Now she was ready for something a little different. She didn’t know why. Maybe because she could? She’d spent a long time deciding to go for this. This was her chance to explore. And oh, she wanted everything. Having Clay here with her, his body intimately pressed against her, his warm breath against her neck, was more than she had ever fantasized about.

She settled against him, felt the hard ridge of his erection against her butt, and shuddered, expectation ratcheting up both her nervousness and excitement.

“Are you sure you’re not cold? I can shut the door.”

She turned in his arms so she faced him. “Don’t. I like the breeze coming in. Everything is perfect.” She was almost afraid it was too perfect. Something was bound to go wrong and she didn’t want it to. She had thought about this moment for so long.

But then Clay kissed her, and all her worries melted away with the touch of his lips, the slide of his tongue, the masterful way he stroked her libido to fever pitch with his mouth.

He knocked her senses sideways and she was lost in him.

When he reached for the zipper on her dress, she began to tremble. But this time, he didn’t pause, didn’t question whether she was ready or not. This time, he wasn’t going to stop. Thankfully.

He drew the zipper partway down, then stepped back. She looked up at him, at the smoldering look of desire on his face—a look she’d never seen in a face that had grown so familiar to her over the years.

He reached again for the straps on her dress. This time, when he pulled the straps down her arms, the top of her dress went with them.

She should be nervous. She wasn’t. Not even when he bared her to the waist. She hadn’t worn a bra, didn’t need one, really, since the dress was so tight. She reached behind her and finished unzipping the dress. It fell to the floor and she stepped out of it, then kicked off her shoes.

Clay removed his shoes, then undid the button on his pants and drew the zipper down.

Only then did she start to feel those nervous butterflies fluttering in her stomach. She’d been with only one man her entire life. What if she really didn’t know how to . . . do this?

What if she was lousy at it? What if after they had sex Clay found her lacking? She’d be mortified.

But all thoughts of uncertainty fled when Clay began to unbutton his shirt, revealing a wide expanse of beautiful chest and flat, ridged stomach. He shrugged off the shirt and let his pants fall to the floor. He was so different from James—muscular where James had been lean and wiry. She hated that James kept entering her mind, but he’d been the only man in her life. Visions of him still swam