The Piano Man Project Page 0,52

where she’d left off. Breathing carefully, she touched the trimmer against his Adam’s apple as he swallowed and wanted to follow every sweep of the razor with her mouth.

Hal’s hands still rested on her waist, warm through the thin cotton of her dress, and his thumbs started to stroke back and forth, as slow and easy as he’d told her to be with the razor.

‘How’s it looking?’ he asked as she swept it close to his ear and wanted to lick the hot skin there.

‘Really good, rock star. Really good.’ If only he knew. She turned the razor off and laid it down. ‘You’re probably done.’

He didn’t move his hands – in fact if anything, he held her down a little more firmly onto his lap.

‘Good. Now you need to run your hands over it to check it’s level.’

Honey swallowed hard, breathed shallowly, and lifted her hands up until she cradled his face between her palms. She couldn’t help herself; she closed her eyes and luxuriated in him as she learned his features with her fingers. The proud slant of his cheekbones, the contours of his jaw, all of the time aware of his fingers massaging her waist.

‘I think I did a pretty good job for a beginner,’ she said, opening her eyes again to watch his lips part on a low sigh. He sighed again, more audibly this time, and his hands slid from her waist to cup her backside, pulling her forward until there was no space between them.

‘And I think that’s probably the best shave I’ve ever had,’ he said, and then he slid his hands into her hair and kissed her; the hot, open-mouthed kiss that she’d been fantasising about for weeks.

‘Hal,’ she breathed his name into the heat of his mouth and let her arms slide around his neck. She wasn’t kissing him because Tash and Nell had suggested it; at that moment they never even entered her head. They couldn’t, because there was no room in her head for anyone but Hal as she threaded her fingers into the thick, dark silk of his hair, their bodies pressed together, banging heart against banging heart.

Hal was lost. He knew he had to call a halt, but the words wouldn’t come because Honey felt so damn good in his arms. He’d imagined how she’d feel a hundred times over, and she felt a million times better. Softer. Warmer. And responsive, so fucking responsive.

Over the last few weeks he’d told himself no over and over again when it came to Honey. No, I won’t answer when she knocks tonight. No, I won’t eat dinner with her. No, I won’t kiss her. He’d denied himself constantly, and then she’d pushed his buttons tonight and he’d opened the door and lost the battle. She smelled of strawberries and she sounded like he’d hurt her, and yet still she found it in herself to tell him how much she liked him, and she’d bought him a goddamn gift.

No became yes all too easily when she was around, and he held her close and let his resolve melt like ice cubes in an inferno.

‘I want you,’ he heard himself gasp. ‘I want you so fucking much.’

‘I’m yours,’ she whispered, dragging his t-shirt over his head. Honey was the first woman he’d touched since the accident, the first woman to touch him, and he only wished like hell that he could see the beauty of the girl on his lap. He knew she was beautiful, because his hands and his heart told him so. Yours, she’d said. She wasn’t, and she never could be, but right now he desperately wanted her to be.

Honey learned something from Hal that no other man had ever taught her; the art of taking it slow. The men she’d been involved with in her past had always rushed through the kissing part to get her clothes off. Not Hal. He took his time over kissing her, slow and searching, cradling her face between his hands as his lips moved over hers. Reverential, beyond intimate, the way every woman should be kissed and few were. His body was hot and hard against hers from shoulder to hip, moulded, perfectly fitted together, but at that moment his mouth was the centre of her world. Naked from the waist up, he more than lived up to her rock star nickname. He was incredible. Lean. Hard. Beautiful. Tattoos ran riot over his arms, dark marks of his misspent youth and impulsive