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

be so self-reliant can break when she’s pushed hard enough. When she thinks she’s all alone.”

“She had you.”

“There’s a difference between that, and having someone who’s close to her heart, someone who knows her heart, to help her heal. That is what I got from your letters, Captain Winston. I think you know her heart, by instinct if not experience. I honestly feel that all that Dana needs is someone with a key to her. I don’t think she’s in a deep depression, the kind that they treat with chemicals. She’s angry a lot, and anger means passion. Apathy and indifference are much worse signs. If you can get to her, and she puts half the energy to getting out of her chair that she dedicates to staying in it, she’ll do as much as she ever planned to do, and probably more. All she needs is someone to help her find herself again. Once she does that, the rest—learning new skills,

rehabilitation—it’s all waiting for her. I expect you’ll help her through that, but if you need guidance, I’m always willing to point you in the right direction.”

She rose as abruptly as she’d done everything else, a woman of decisive action. Peter expected she’d been a hell of a field nurse. “All right, then. She’s all yours. Unless you come and get me next door, you won’t be disturbed until tomorrow morning.”

“But—” Sudden panic invaded him.

Christina reached out, took his hand in an unexpected reassurance, her brisk voice gentling. “There’s nothing medically wrong with her, Peter. Except for the fact she barely eats or moves out of that chair, she’s as healthy as you are. And she knows enough about her handicaps to let you know before you take a misstep. You’ll be fine.”

She withdrew her touch and straightened. “Be what you know she needs you to be. Kick her ass into gear again. She doesn’t need any pity. She’s had way too much of that. I’m going to go grocery shopping now, but I’ll be back in a while. Trial by fire. I understand that’s your specialty.”

Giving him one more direct look, she put the box quietly inside Dana’s door, retrieved purse and keys from her own unit, and headed down the walkway to her car.

She doesn’t need any pity. Jesus. He understood that, but all he wanted to do was scoop Dana up, rock her in his lap and tell her he was going to take care of everything. He was still wrestling with it when he stepped into her unit, made his way through a bland front room and functional kitchen, to the back den where Christina had indicated she spent most of her daylight hours.

When he stepped into the room, his conflicting emotions swamped him.

Except for what was filtering through the sheer panels, there was no light. It made it a soft, sad atmosphere, adding to what vibrated from the woman curled up on an oversized recliner. Since she appeared to be staring toward the window, he suspected she had some sense of the light, or perhaps she felt the sun’s heat. Though it was afternoon, she wore pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt that swallowed her. She looked clean and showered, however. Since she still kept her hair short, the filtered light gleamed off the slender tube that wound around the shell of her ear to hold the hearing aid in place.

She’d turned into a mole. Burrowing down in her clothes, her recliner, her featureless home, digging a hole to bury herself here. Jesus Christ. Christina was right. He didn’t need a shrink’s license to understand the less-than-subtle message.

I wish I’d died, rather than having to face this alone.

In that revelation, pity got shoved to the side by something much stronger in him. Anger.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t at her, or that it might be misplaced. He’d use it.

There was plenty of room for him on the recliner, so he settled his hip there, his thigh close to the tips of her bare brown toes. They were painted deep burgundy. That had to be Christina’s doing. Laying his palm over them, he closed his hand instinctively over the small, cold digits, passing his thumb over her sole.

Her head lifted and turned toward him, the light from the window showing him more of her face. The sightless eyes wrenched his gut, made him want to weep. As Jon had said, they’d done their best to repair the extensive scarring in her face, but it would take time for the surgical scars to heal and disappear. She would never again have the fresh, sculpted beauty she’d had that night, replaced by a hard, tortured thinness. But as much as that and the lack of vision in her eyes concerned him, it was the lack of fire that bothered him most. Her gaze wasn’t merely sightless, but also lifeless.

No. Christina had said she had passion, anger. That fire was only dormant. He would accept nothing less. Know her heart by instinct. He was no Prince Charming, but he’d spent a great deal of his sexually mature years learning to uncover a woman’s inner sensuality and fan it to a raging inferno. For a submissive, that reaction was so closely linked to her soul, both had to be ignited to give her everything she needed. So maybe he did have the key. Because from their one night together, he knew what kind of

submissive she was.

Reaching out, he slid his palm to the side of her face. As she had at the airport, she tilted her head into it, her eyes closing. No matter the scars, her sweet mouth, the curve of her cheek, her slim neck, they were all the same. Tracing her lips with his thumb, he teased them open to caress her teeth, graze her tongue. She tasted him with the tip of it, and he saw a lethargic desire flicker across her face.

“I keep dreaming about you.” Her voice was a bit raspy.