The Piano Man Project (17 page)

‘I like it too,’ she said simply, no longer sure if she meant she liked shaving his beard or she liked the feel of his hand on her backside. ‘It’s hard to reach the other side of your head from here, the cord isn’t long enough. Do you think you can twist around?’ She cast a critical eye over the small space.

‘I could. Or would it be easier if you …’ He reached out and put his hands on her waist to move her to stand in front of him, then pulled her closer so she had to straddle his knees. ‘Maybe you could sit here?’

Honey held the trimmer away from them for fear of doing him damage, because her whole body felt like it was shaking with awareness of his. Hal’s hands were still on her waist, and he applied gentle pressure, just enough to encourage her down until her backside hit his knees.

‘Better?’ he said, low and teasing.

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

‘Finish the job then,’ he said, and turned his head for her to carry on 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 nature. There was an edge to him, a seam of danger that ran through him. Don’t get too close unless you’re prepared to risk it all. If Honey had to sum him up in one word, she’d call him lethal.

‘Remember to breathe, baby,’ he murmured, tipping her head back in his hands to slide his open mouth down her neck, kissing the dip between her collarbones. His fingers were unpicking the small buttons down the front of her dress. Remembering to breathe was harder than it ought to be when he eased her dress down to her waist and then slid his hands up her ribcage. She heard him groan as he dipped his head and moved his mouth over the slopes of her breasts, his hands warm over the lace of her bra, stroking her nipples into peaks with the pads of his thumbs.

So this is what it’s supposed to feel like
, she thought, as Hal reached behind her and unclipped her bra. There was something in the way he held her, in the way he cupped her and lowered his dark lashes when he kissed her that somehow brought a lump to her throat. She stroked her hands over his hair when he mouthed her nipples, watching the slow slide of his tongue and the almost holy expression on his face. She’d never seen him look that way before, and it was deeply moving, insanely erotic.

‘Please, Hal,’ she said, stroking his shoulders until he raised his head again and kissed her, this time hard and hungry. If she’d thought his kiss special up to then, this kiss sent her reeling. He clamped her against him until the skin of his abdomen welded to hers, one hand tangled in her hair, the other on her neck, her breasts, sliding up her thighs beneath her dress.

‘Let it be you,’ she whispered, ‘I want it to be you.’ Rocking on him, she wanted everything he had to give her and found herself closer than she’d ever been before – to orgasm or love, she wasn’t quite sure.

Her words tumbled into his mouth as his fingers grazed the lace edge of her knickers. ‘Let it be you,’ she’d said, ‘I want it to be you.’ In his whole life Hal had never wanted a woman more. He was so hard it was painful, and he could almost feel her heat through the lace of her underwear. It seemed that size thirteen was his definition of perfect, and the heady power of being wanted, of feeling like a man again was a hard drug to kick.

‘Honey,’ he whispered, slowing down their kiss because he never wanted it to end. ‘Stop me.’

‘No way,’ she smiled against his lips, her fingers working the top button of his jeans. He could tell that she didn’t think he was serious, and he could hardly blame her. He’d stripped her and he’d kissed her like a man on death row. She was shaking in his arms, and there was nothing on earth he wanted more than to slide his fingers inside her underwear and give her what she needed.

‘Honey,’ he said, moving his hand out of her dress and easing his head back. ‘I can’t do this.’

He felt her stiffen and knew she’d registered that he was serious this time, and for the first time in his life he was glad he couldn’t see, because he didn’t have to witness the hurt that had to be written all over her face.

‘You can, please …’ She clung to him, her mouth on his ear as he rocked her in his arms. ‘Let me in, Hal. I want you so much …’ she whispered, stroking his back. Her breasts were pressed flat against his body, and his hands ached to hold them again. It would be so, so easy to let her in, but she wouldn’t like what she found if he did.

He dipped his head and buried his face in her neck, drinking in her scent and then pushing her gently back in his lap.

‘This can’t happen, Honey. I’m sorry, it just can’t.’

Frustration crackled from her like electricity. ‘It can. It already is. You want me, Hal, I can feel it in you here,’ she touched his mouth, ‘and here,’ she lowered her fingers to his chest, ‘and here,’ she dropped her hand down again and he caught it before she could reach his crotch. It pained him to know that the only way to make this any easier on her was to lie.

‘Right now, maybe. But I won’t want you afterwards, and then where will we be? It’s just ten minutes of madness, Honey, because I’m lonely and you’re desperate.’ He felt her sharp intake of breath and knew his words had wounded her. ‘Put your dress back on and go home. You’ll thank me in the morning.’

He heard her cry, felt her stumble as she backed away from him and hated himself.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said, low and unsteadily. ‘I won’t thank you in the morning, because I’m done with you.’

He hauled himself up in the tiny bathroom and followed her along his hallway. ‘I’m done with your anger, and your fury, and your … your throwing me the occasional bone …’ she heaved a breath in, upset.

‘You know what, Hal? If you were a woman, they’d call you a prick tease. You’re a horrible, hateful man who gets a kick out of blowing hot and cold just to keep me dangling.’

She sounded surprised by her own word choice and as unhinged as he felt. He stood still in his hallway, feeling wretched as she stamped out of his flat and slammed the door behind her.

Operation snog-Hal’s-face-off is over. I hate him.

Honey slammed her way around the shop with her mobile in her hand, stabbing her fingers at the screen as she group-texted Nell and Tash. She’d woken up as angry as when she’d gone to sleep, angrier, if possible. The morning had dawned as grey as her mood, and she’d seriously considered kicking his door as she’d left the house bundled up in her boots and raincoat. What was this to him? A game, something he did to entertain himself? What kind of man did that make him? He might be sexy as sin but she was mad as hell with him. He’d given her a bad case of sexual frustration, and it infuriated her to death that he seemed to be the only cure for her ailment.

Her phone pinged in her hand, and Tash’s name popped up.

Project Piano-Man is back on then?

Honey huffed and texted her straight back.
No. No piano men, and no revolting hot neighbours. No men full stop. I’m done.

After a few moments, her phone pinged again.

So you’re saying we need to look for a lady pianist instead …?

Honey laughed under her breath, despite her bad mood. Trust Tash to have a smart answer for everything.

‘Honey dear, can you help me with this? It’s heavy.’ Glancing up, Honey shoved her phone into her pocket and took off across the shop towards the doors.

‘Lucille, what are you doing?’ She took the heavy box from Lucille’s arms. ‘You should have called me to pick this up, it weighs a ton.’ Honey staggered to the counter with the taped-up brown box in her arms. ‘Where’s it come from, anyway? There weren’t any deliveries outside when I arrived ten minutes ago.’

‘You must have missed it, it was right there,’ Lucille said, putting the glasses on from the golden chain around her neck and peering at it. The neatly sealed box didn’t offer up clues in the way of labels or addressees.

Honey shrugged. ‘Must be a donation. The door was open though, they could have brought it in.’ She reached for the envelope opener in the drawer beneath the counter, and just as she was about to slit it open, Lucille put a hand on her arm.

‘What if it’s alive?’ Lucille said. ‘A mother donated her teenage son’s pet snake to a charity shop once, I read it in the newspaper.’

‘No air holes,’ Honey said, surveying the box. Lucille looked at it sniffily.

‘Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.’

Honey slid the blade beneath the tape and ripped it open, unfolding the flaps of the box for them both to peer inside. After a few seconds Honey started to laugh. Lucille reached inside and pulled out one of the many pairs of handcuffs, all fluffy and in every shade of the rainbow. The accompanying unsigned note simply said that they were a gift for the residents to use in further protests and wished them every success with their campaign to save the home.

‘How bizarre,’ Honey murmured. ‘There must be thirty pairs in here.’

Mimi and Billy wandered in at that moment and gazed into the box alongside Lucille.

‘Ooh I say, darling!’ Billy said, rubbing his hands together with glee. ‘That’s a rather racy way to start the morning. I’ll take four please,’ he waggled his eyebrows at Honey. ‘No eating the keys this time please, Honeysuckle. We don’t want Mimi being left in a compromising position.’

‘They’re not for sale,’ Honey said. ‘They just arrived from a mystery donor to support the campaign.’

‘Very timely,’ Mimi said. ‘We decided amongst us in the home last night that one of us should be chained to the railings at all times. Or until it goes dark, in any case.’

‘Every day?’ Honey said, surprised. It was a big ask of people with a median age of eighty-six.

Mimi, Lucille and Billy nodded staunchly.

‘Sort of like a prisoner’s hunger strike, if you will,’ Billy said. ‘Except Patrick’s going to supply us with a packed lunch.’

‘So nothing like a hunger strike at all, really then,’ Honey laughed. ‘I think it’s a great idea. The press could really latch on to something like that.’

‘It was my idea,’ Mimi preened. ‘So I’ll go first. Honey, call Old Don’s son at the paper and get them down here.’

Billy picked up a neon green pair of handcuffs and dangled them in the air. ‘Can I do the honours, my love?’