The Piano Man Project Page 0,70

pleasuring Hal as it had been about being pleasured herself. It had to be a two-way street.

He shook his head, trailing his lips over her jaw. ‘Shh. Relax.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, pent up with longing to take his shirt off.

Smoothing his hand down the length of her body, Hal let his fingers come to rest over the silk of her knickers, and then slid under the material to cup her.

‘Yes, you can,’ he said, his hand warm and still and heavy. ‘It’s just you and me. Open your legs.’

‘I don’t think I can do this,’ Honey said, feeling her body tense even as his fingers started a slow massage. Hal smooched the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

‘Let me touch you the way you want to be touched, Honey,’ he whispered, covering her mouth with his as his fingers began to move. To explore. To stroke. ‘Let me do this for you, baby,’ he said, opening her slickness with his fingers, taking her small gasps into his mouth, breathing encouragements and endearments back into hers.

For a second Honey stopped thinking about sex, or about pleasing him, because the things he was doing to her took away every last thought and replaced them with sensation. This was good. So very, very good, and it made her want all he could give her.

‘Change your mind, Hal,’ she murmured. ‘Take your clothes off and stay with me tonight. I can feel how much you want to.’

He stopped what he was doing.

‘Do you want me to do this for you or not?’ he said, changing down the gears from raw Hal to in-control Hal again.

‘I don’t think I can do it unless you’re naked,’ she said. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t want to because, er, hello?’ she skimmed her hand over his swollen crotch.

‘You asked for this,’ he said. ‘You asked me to come here and make you orgasm. We were well on the way for a minute back there, and then this. What is it with you? You get something, you always want more. Lie to me, Hal. Tell me you’re turned on, Hal.’

‘Were you lying?’ she asked, hoping he hadn’t been.

He drew in an exasperated breath and extracted his hand from her knickers. ‘A man tells you you’re beautiful when he has his hand down your pants. Go with it. He probably means it.’

‘So you were lying, or you weren’t? Which is it?’ It suddenly felt important to know, because if he’d been faking it he was world class.

‘Honey. Can you just stop this? I’ll say this one more time, because we seem to have a communication failure. Take off your underwear and spread your legs, and I’ll crawl between them and give you what you want. I’ll lie to you. I’ll make it so good for you that you won’t remember your own name, let alone mine. But you need to be really clear on this. We are not going to fuck. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever.’

And with that, any hope of saving the situation left the building. Honey reached for her dressing gown on the bottom of the bed and pulled it tightly around her body.

‘Was it something I said?’ Hal muttered, reaching for his wine and knocking it back.

‘Just go, Hal. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different with you than with other men.’ She stood up. ‘My mistake.’

He threw his hands up in the air. ‘Have it your own way.’

‘I will. With someone else.’

‘Good luck with that,’ he said, sauntering down her hallway and opening the front door.

‘I won’t kiss you goodnight,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t let you,’ she shot back.

‘Goodnight, Honeysuckle,’ he said, as he opened his own door. ‘Sweet dreams, baby.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Honey didn’t have sweet dreams. Instead, she finished the wine and tossed and turned all night in a temper, while across the hallway Hal drank himself into a whisky-induced stupor on the sofa.

Headaches, lazy mornings and bad moods were the order of the weekend on both sides of the lobby, and Honey wasn’t impressed to find herself out of milk for a much-needed coffee.

‘I’m going to the shops,’ she yelled as she closed her door, her cross-body bag slung over her denim jacket, and her hair dragged back. ‘And I don’t care if you need anything, because I’m not your bloody servant!’

‘Try not to bring any random men home with you,’ he shouted back.

‘I will if I bloody well want to,’ she shouted back. ‘I’m sure they’d all be a damn