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

he hadn’t been ready, she might actually have thrown him off.

“Listen to me.” He trapped her head between his hands. “I don’t want to fuck you because you think you owe me. Or because you think it’ll make me help you. I’ll be doing that regardless.” His voice had gone so gravelly, he had to pause to clear his throat.

“I want you to want me back. I’ve wanted it from the first moment I saw you.”

She stared, the flush fading slowly from her cheeks. After an eon, she said, “You give the choice to . . . me? Truly?”

Rhio willed the trepidation, the vulnerability, not to show on his face. Women he’d had in plenty, but he’d always known they were with him of their own free will. “Truly. But I reserve the right to show you pleasure.” He gritted his teeth, knowing the risk had to be taken, that what happened in the next few moments would change his life in some

fundamental way. “Please.”

“I’ve heard there are men—” She broke off, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. “But you are a real man, Rhio, worthy to be a Shar. You are not weak.”

“There’s nothing weak about caring for your woman, about giving her joy, keeping her safe.”

He ploughed on before she could ask the question swimming in the sudden softness of her gaze. “Did you like kissing me, Dancer? I know it felt good when I sucked your pretty tits.”

The rosy flush returned. “But yes,” she whispered. “Did you like it?”

His chuckle came out more like a groan. “Fuck, yes! Here.” Taking each wrist in turn, he arranged her arms over her head. “Stay like that, all right?”

“What are you going to do?”

Rhio bared his teeth. “If my heart doesn’t give out, I’m going to pleasure you ’til you scream for me to fuck you. Close your eyes, love.”

For an endless moment, she stared into his face. Then, with a little sigh, she relaxed into the pillows, her lashes fluttering down.

Rhio reached down and grabbed his balls. Without giving himself time to reconsider, he pulled. Hard.

Even as he winced and shuddered, he couldn’t take his eyes off Dancer, spread out beneath him for their mutual pleasure. There wasn’t any doubt she didn’t really trust him, a man she barely knew. Why should she, after the life she’d led? But here she was, all courage and beauty, risking her pride as well as her life.

He’d never met a woman to match her. He hadn’t thought it possible.

Seven

Amae could hear his harsh breathing, smell the perfume of masculinity coming off his skin, something unique to Rhio—a combination of leather, cold metal and heated male.

She had no doubt she’d recognize it, anywhere, anytime, until the very end of her days.

When would that be? How soon?

“Stop thinking,” a voice rumbled in her ear.

Fingertips skated down the inside of her arm, traced the vulnerable arch of her armpit. On the sensitive skin, the sensation threatened to become an outright tickle. Amae squirmed.

Goose bumps sprang up in a rush behind that teasing touch.

Rhio chuckled, deep and raspy. Gods, if she wasn’t careful, she’d finish up addicted to the sound of his amusement, tempted to provoke it again and again so she could watch the dawn of that slow, beguiling smile. Such a serious man, Captain Rhiomard.

“Your skin’s so smooth. You don’t have body hair, even here.” Lips followed the finger, stubble prickling her skin. When he licked, she yelped, her eyes flying open to meet a purposeful slate gray gaze. “Keep them shut, Dancer, or I’ll use a blindfold.”

From behind the darkness of her eyelids, she murmured, “Is that an order, Cap’n?”

“Aye, that it is.”

A giggle bubbled in her throat. Amae’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian, the last of the Shar, never giggled. More than a little shocked, she spoke before she thought. “You’re the most fun I’ve ever had, Rhio.”

Silence. Then, “Ah, sweetheart.” Strange, he sounded so gruff.

The mattress dipped as his big body shifted over hers, overwhelming her, making her feel small and feminine. By the First Mother, what an astonishing sensation. Secure in her warrior heritage, she’d never feared any man physically. A diabloman like the Slave Master filled her with primitive, gut-wrenching terror, but that was Black Magick, evil and unknowable, something for which she had no defense.

Rhio nibbled up the side of her throat and she sighed. But when he kissed one corner of her mouth, then the other, she tensed. He’d said she didn’t know how to do this and it was true, damn him, she didn’t. The men Giral sent her to service weren’t interested in using her mouth for kissing.

“Do what I do,” he whispered into her mouth.

He kept it remorselessly tender, seducing her lick by lick, nibble by nibble. Oh, oh.

Floating in a warm sea of the senses, Amae did the only thing she could think of to anchor herself—she speared the fingers of one hand into his hair, grabbed the back of his neck with the other and hung on.

In self-defense, she followed his lead, sucking on his tongue, at first tentatively, then with growing confidence. Her whole body tingled, coils of heat growing at the base of her spine, spreading deep into her pelvis, her sex, so she was compelled to arch, to rub against his unyielding strength.

Rhio slid a caressing palm up and down her flanks and she purred into his mouth. This was what it must be like to be pampered. Gods, it was good!

His fingers reached her nipple. Tweaked. Arrows of liquid fire streaked from her breast to her sex. The soft folds were swollen, slicker than she’d ever been. Her clit pulsed with desire. There wasn’t a word for that part of the female anatomy in Trinitarian, but she knew what the foreign slave women called it. At least other cultures acknowledged its existence. Hardly daring to hope, she wondered if Rhio would too.

A final lick, a regretful grunt and he pulled his lips away. Her eyes fluttered open. Rhio’s face hung over hers,