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

There’d been some damage to her vocal cords, but if he hadn’t known, it would have passed as a sexy purr. The volume was a little low, the pronunciation slurred, as if she were sleepy. “That night. I want to be back there with you, so much. God. It was all so physical, and so much more than that. I ache when I think about you, Master.” She swallowed and became a smaller ball, as if compressing her thighs and the need there. “I’d rather dream about being with you forever, than live another single day, you know?”

She used his hand as a pillow, nestling down farther. With her other hand she splayed his fingers, ran them over her mouth, one at a time, slow, tasting, nuzzling. Peter felt his groin tighten, even as he was appalled at himself. She’s . . .

There’s nothing medically wrong with her, Peter. Christina’s admonition, her knowing look. Wow, he was slow on the uptake. But he was still warring with it, the need to nurture and yet take her over at once. Hold her close and spank her within an inch of her life for scaring him. Well, hell, there was time for both, wasn’t there?

Her brow was crinkling, mouth pressing together as if holding back emotion. “God, it smells like you, feels like you. The heat in your skin. Gram used to tell me I could have anything I wanted bad enough, do whatever I wanted to do.” A bitter chuckle. “That’s what we tell kids, don’t we? It gives them the courage to try. But what do we say when they end up like this? No ‘Be All You Can Be’ Army slogan now, hmm?”

Peter pressed his lips together. Taking his hand away, he bracketed her with an arm, leaned in until the heat of his breath touched her face and she lifted hers, startled at his proximity.

“It’s time to cut this shit out, Sergeant.”

She jerked up. He was quick enough she didn’t slam into his chin, but he didn’t go far.

Paling, she touched the front of his shirt, then moved to his arms, feeling the cant of his body over hers. “Peter? Oh, fucking hell, I thought . . .”

“Been talking to me a lot without me being here? Living in your own reality?” He caught one of her seeking hands, squeezed it a little harder than he wanted to.

“You can’t be here.” She snatched her hand back, retreated as much as the cushioning would allow, as if she was trying to burrow in truth. “You don’t want this.”

He kept her caged between his arms, made her feel the energy of his immovable

presence. When he brushed his lips against her cheek, he registered the satisfying ripple of reaction, the pant of her nervous breath. “Telling me what I want isn’t your job, Sergeant. That’s the problem you had the night we met. You tried to control the

uncontrollable.”

Her lip curled, but he smelled fear behind the sudden anger. “What’s my job, Captain?

School crossing guard? Airline pilot?”

“That’s self-pitying crap. There’s more than that out there. But for right now, you only have one job. Doing whatever I tell you to do. You’re going home with me.”

Shock flitted across her face, followed by desperation, warring between fury and frustration. Hope dodged in between, so ghostlike it broke his heart. But he also saw something else, a lick of lust, his order igniting something deeper and more primal in her, something that had made her surrender to him months ago. But now her fingers curled into tight balls, fighting him.

“Not much difference between my self-pity and your pity. You’re not taking me home like some kind of stray that needs your help. You don’t want an invalid.”

“No.” He answered with a calm he didn’t feel. “But that’s not what you are. There’s a difference between an invalid and a person who thinks she’s one.”

She shoved at him. He let her get out of the chair, but he noted she didn’t go far, swaying uncertainly. Damn if Christina wasn’t right. Dana had lived here for months, and yet she was barely familiar with her surroundings. When he rose and she lifted her face, he could tell she could gauge his height. Her senses were there. Just waiting for her to fucking use them. She’d said he didn’t want her. He noted she hadn’t said she didn’t want him or what he was offering.

“We had a deal, Sergeant, and I’m not letting you out of it,” he said sharply. He’d communicated in battle and on a busy manufacturing floor. He had no problem being heard by a woman with hearing aids. “You can’t see, or hear as well as you could before.

But you can smell, taste . . . touch. If you’ve been dreaming about me the way I’ve been dreaming about you, I know exactly what you’ve been thinking about. We’re going to start there.”

He caught her hand. Before she could pull away, he brought it to the front of his jeans, letting her touch wake to life the beast he hadn’t sated since he last saw her.

It shocked the hell out of her; he could tell that right off. She hadn’t been treated as a woman in a while, a woman from whom a man might demand things like this. A

hard-core submissive’s desire went beyond sex, into some deeper, psychological matters.

He’d use his knowledge of that unapologetically. Maybe knowing less about her

personally would help, because it would keep his focus on the one thing that might break her out of this self-imposed funk of hers. Then he could sate his overwhelming desire to give her the tenderness and comfort he had stored to overflowing in him, learn everything he wanted to know about her.

Her face was a study in mixed emotions, but the parted lips, the tension strumming in her body, told him she was reluctantly aroused. Surprised, he watched her sink down before him, her hands slipping to his upper thighs. Though