Free The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel) by Alison Kent

putting on a show, or reacting to being with her, or if he’d simply been having fun. But she also wondered if the spirited conversationalist was the man he’d been before prison, and the sulky emo mask he usually wore some kind of self-defense.
    She pulled to a stop at his curb, his building in the town’s historic warehouse district looming with dark disapproval as if the strict mores of the past still lingered and judged. They needn’t worry. She wasn’t going inside. That much she’d determined before they’d set off for home. As much as she liked him, there was something about him that was off, or wasn’t quite right, while still incredibly compelling. And as interested in him as she was, as curious to know him, as charmed, it was too soon to be alone with him and tempted.
    “I’m not coming up,” she finally told him, when he hadn’t moved to get out. When he hadn’t said a word in the two or three minutes since she’d parked. When he’d done nothing but look through the windshield where the street lamps caught every hint of moisture on the pavement and sparkled.
    “I didn’t ask you to,” he said at last, still facing forward, hunched a bit, his busy hands pressed between his knees. That left her a bit uneasy. His nervousness. How antsy he was. How out of sorts.
    “Then . . . good night, Will. Thank you for the evening—”
    “What do you want from me, Indiana?” he asked, his head turning slowly until the look in his eyes, so bottomless and dark as they stared into hers, had her heart rising to pound at the base of her throat.
    “I don’t want anything. Well, except for what I’ve hired you to do. With the cottage,” she said, her pulse making itself known throughout her body. “I mean, at the very least I’d like your friendship, but if for some reason we can’t be friends—”
    It was all she got out before his hand was in her hair, bringing her face to his, her mouth to his, her lips and tongue to his in such an act of desperation, she couldn’t find the strength to back away, or to say no, or to do anything but share in the devastatingly draining emotion.
    What was this man’s damage? What was he looking to her to fix or to make whole, or just to soothe because he couldn’t do it alone?
    He kissed her as if he were on fire, as if she could douse whatever it was burning him up. His hand at the back of her head was hot. The fingertips of the other, where they brushed her jaw, were sure to leave blisters on her skin. An obvious exaggeration, but oh, everything about this moment felt that way.
    She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Should she touch him? Should she leave them where they were, wrapped tightly around the wheel? Should she tuck them between her knees to keep from reaching for him? What was she supposed to do? She didn’t know what she was supposed to do because she didn’t know if this, from Will, was what she wanted.
    But she wasn’t unmoved, so she kissed him back, finally reaching up to grip his wrist, a grounding, an anchor, a solid reminder of where she was, because everything around her seemed too ethereal to grasp, and all she knew was Will. He smelled like rain on a dark night, rich and electric, a dangerous storm set to strike.
    He tasted like the wine he’d had with dinner, the bourbon he’d had after, the coffee he’d had with dessert. The barest hint of the cigarette he’d smoked while waiting for the valet to bring her car. It was the first time she’d ever seen him indulge, and the lingering hint of tobacco wasn’t unpleasant.
    His tongue made hers tingle, and the pressure of his lips, soft yet slightly chapped, started a sweet, exquisite tension building in her body. Oh, this was so unexpected, so beautifully, frightfully out of the blue. She didn’t know whether to revel in the sensation, or run far, far away.
    Before she had a chance to decide, and almost as quickly as he’d started, he stopped, releasing her mouth, then pulling his