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

her. Her belly fluttered. He’d never looked at her with . . . interest.

“Let’s sit over here.” Leading her to a concrete flower planter, he pulled her down beside him on the edge. The brief touch tingled long after he let go.

Not a direct route to BART or parking or restaurants, the plaza wasn’t terribly crowded for a Friday evening. At the far entrance, a homeless man sat on a blanket with his dog.

Couples dallied as they decided where to go for the evening, but no one was in earshot long enough to eavesdrop. She suddenly felt alone with him. Ford Connelly. It was almost too much to take in. He still wore his suit and tie from the office, an overcoat to ward off the chill. She was his direct report. Even if they were the upper echelons of Caprice management, the rules about dalliances with your boss still applied.

Steam wafted from the cup as he drank. He licked whipped cream from his lips, his gaze all over her, her eyes, cheeks, mouth, throat. God, how she’d missed a man’s attentions.

How he tasted, even how he smelled up close. Ford was spicy and sensual laced with hot chocolate.

“So, you’ve got until Monday,” he said, “to do anything you want, totally worry free.

What are your plans for the weekend?”

She curled her fingers in her palm. “I can’t stop worrying until it’s over and I know the outcome.”

After a brief pause, he blinked. “Until you know otherwise, why not assume everything is situation normal?”

She laughed. “For me, situation normal is worrying.”

“You’re gorgeous when you laugh.”

Versus not being gorgeous any other time? Thoughts like that were the bane of her existence. She never accepted a simple compliment without analyzing what it meant. Yet she needed Ford’s compliment to warm her insides. “Thank you.”

He took a longer-than-usual second to let his eyes roam her face again, the look heating her straight through. She’d worked for him for three years, respected and admired him, but never entertained a single sexual thought. He was off-limits. Until tonight. Like the lights of a Christmas tree blinking on, he suddenly lit up everything around her, inside her.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, a grin deepening the cleft in his chin. “If you forced yourself not to worry and did something you’ve never done before, what would it be?”

Have sex with you. She blushed at the thought.

He laid the backs of his fingers to her cheek. “You really have to tell me that one.”

She laughed again, then zipped her lips. “My secret.”

“Spoilsport. I know it was something nasty.”

She was treading unsafe waters with him. They’d definitely edged into sexual banter. Her heart fluttered, then her pulse kicked up, beating right down to the tips of her fingers.

God, the things she’d missed in her quest to be the most well-behaved celebrity. She’d missed this, opening up to a sexy man, the thrill of just being with him.

Suddenly she didn’t want to let it go. “It was very naughty. That’s why I can’t tell you.”

Unless he begged to know. Go on, beg, please. She couldn’t believe her boldness, yet sitting beside him made her feel more alive than she had in twenty years. She couldn’t stop now.

“All right. Let’s step down from very naughty to slightly naughty. Tell me something slightly naughty you’d like to do.”

She’d had so many fantasies before she learned that if you thought them, you could accidentally let them happen. With dire consequences. Sometimes those fantasies still came to her in dreams. Dirty, filthy, seductive, provocative, tantalizing dreams that left her crawling in her own skin when she woke.

“You’re making me nuts, woman.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“It’s written all over your face.”

It was written inside her coat where her breasts felt achy, her nipples hard and sensitive.

“Tell me one of those dirty thoughts,” he murmured, low, sexy, touching her with just his voice.

“It would shock you.” She wondered if Ford Connelly could be shocked. Nothing ruffled him in any situation or meeting she’d attended with him.

“Try me.”

God, she truly wanted to. Everything had changed. When her gynecologist found the polyp, her world tilted, then turned upside down. Next week they could find she had cancer. She could die having done nothing with her life. No children to carry on her legacy, no husband or lover, no lasting effect. She would simply be gone. She had wealth and fame, but she’d been too afraid to reach out and grab life with gusto.

Ford was offering her a taste of it even if it was only telling him a fantasy.

She skipped slightly naughty and went straight to wild. “Two men,” she whispered.

He tipped his head to the left like a dog who’d picked up on the most interesting sound.

Then he held up two fingers and raised one brow.

She nodded. “I want two men to make me their complete focus, their mission to give me total pleasure.”

The homeless man gathered up his blanket and dog, people rushed to and fro, cars honked, laughter burst across the plaza from a group of office workers heading to the restaurants on the piers. But for all the noise and activity, she felt cocooned with Ford, the sparkle of the night’s first stars overhead.

“I want an orgasm from the inside out, from a man’s cock deep in me.” She couldn’t believe the words came out of her mouth. Yet she wouldn’t, couldn’t take them back. Her life had been about denial, of rich food, fun times, and hot sex. She’d made a mistake years ago, and she’d denied herself ever since.

She would stop denying right now.

Ford swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding up, down. Then his hazel eyes darkened to full-on green, and he grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet. “Done,” he said, a slight flare to his nostrils like a fine racehorse getting ready to run flat out. “Your wish is my command.”

Oh, God.

Three

Sophia looked at him with wide eyes. “It’s just a fantasy. I don’t actually expect to do