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

He chuckled. “Not a good idea to insult your personal trainer this morning. Not if you want pancakes for breakfast.”

He took her through the machines and again pushed her to her limits, though she found that severely below where she’d once been. It didn’t matter that she’d been part of the cause, unwilling to move out of a chair for months. She couldn’t help resenting it, how quickly she exhausted, the weakness of the left side. For some perverse reason, it underscored how handicapped she felt, even though this was something she knew she could change. She was biting back tears by the time she worked her way around to all the machines and found she could barely meet the minimum recommended reps.

It didn’t make it any easier that he held all the control, holding himself away from her like a damn animated piñata she couldn’t see, taunting her with his proximity.

“Sweetheart, you’re getting there. Here.” He guided her hands up to the triceps pull, even though her arms were shaking. “Hold on to these.”

“I can’t do any more. I’m—”

He closed his hands over hers, holding her grip, but instead of getting tougher with her, he bent to her throat to suck off the beads of sweat gathered in the tender pocket formed by her collarbone, right under her collar. Her rapid breath caught in her throat, and she let out a moan he answered by following the track down to her cleavage. The sports bra was tight, too tight. When he cupped her, she wanted to feel the callused palms against her female flesh. He answered her unspoken desire, pushing up the plastic band and letting it constrict over the curves, baring her nipples to the air.

“Oh, God . . .” He was fondling her, slow kneading, strokes and pinches of the nipple, as if he had all the time in the world. Her hands convulsed on the pulleys. How did he know to shift his attention from the weight of the curve, to tracing the shape, to teasing the nipple, and alternating the stimulation in myriad delicious ways, making her rock against him, gasp and groan at the torture? He didn’t have to say how much he adored her breasts. She felt it in every touch, in his heated attention to every inch of them, but then he spoke, making her crazier.

“I’d love to do breast bondage on you, sweetheart. Use rope to lift and squeeze these beauties, put a bar clamp on them so when I removed it you’d feel tingling through every nerve ending, make you come when the blood rushes back into the nipples. Get them pierced so I could keep you in jewels, tug on them whenever I want.”

The military didn’t allow body piercings. But that wasn’t a problem anymore, was it?

Though that brought a shot of pain, it was balanced by the image of what he was

suggesting. “I bet you like sparkling things, don’t you, Dana? I’d put you in diamonds, maybe some gorgeous emeralds, like your eyes.”

She tried to use her stomach muscles to lift her legs and wrap them around his hips, but she couldn’t do it without his help, and he wouldn’t let her get that close. “You want me to touch your pussy so bad, don’t you?”

“Please . . .” she whispered.

“I love your begging, but you don’t want it bad enough yet.” Adjusting her sports bra back over her breasts, he smoothed his palms over the aching nipples. Before she could say something nasty she was sure would get her into all the right sorts of trouble, he had her doing triceps pulls. Christ. Then hip abductions, the seam of her shorts rubbing against a very wet pussy. But she was using her other senses, and she noted that when he counted off for her, his voice had a tight note. When he went into the next room to get them some more water, the rhythm of his steps through the vibrations of the wood floor was uneven. She curled her lip in feline satisfaction.

“Your gait sounds a little off there, Captain. Hauling something heavy?”

Coming to her side, he helped her find the weight blocks and showed her where to put the pin for the next rep. As he did, he bumped her hip in warning, bouncing her off him a couple feet. “Keep it up, Sergeant.”

When she snorted, she heard his sexy, self-deprecating chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, I know.

You are. Behave and I’ll give you some water.”

The bottle had a straw, which he guided to her lips as he drew her close within his arm span. As his palm smoothed over the curve of her ass, he let her rest her hand on his bare chest, though she itched to drop her touch to explore straining denim. “Ready for another rep?”

“No.” She suppressed a sigh. “Everything’s harder. My joints hurt and my balance isn’t for shit. I feel like such a damned girl.” God, she was whining.

“You are a girl.” He gave the back of her head a quick stroke. A soldier’s reassurance, not a caress. A brisk gesture that said, You can do this. “You know, there’s a great yoga person who can help you improve your flexibility and balance. She’s a PT as well. We think Jon has the hots for her, so he could charm her into a discount rate.”

That should sound like a good idea, but instead it irritated her. She didn’t want to go through all this. She just wanted to be herself again, now. She chose not to respond, since she knew she would only sound waspish, but Peter wouldn’t let her get away with that.

He passed his thumb over her lips. “What’re you thinking, sweetheart?”

“I feel like giving up,” she confessed after a long moment, the truth of it shuddering through her. “I’m afraid to test my limits, see where they actually are. Maybe it’s better not to know. I’m not sure I can handle knowing. I know I’m chickenshit.”

She