Page 13 of Claim to Fame

But Hannah was not okay.

Her apartment was no longer safe.

“Mom, I have to go,” she said, sinking onto the couch, still staring at the photograph, so unlike the sun-soaked images of the women in Bora Bora with Jackson. They didn’t have cellulite on their thighs. She zoomed in on the image, blowing up the offending appendage until it took up the entire screen.

“Why don’t you come home for a few days?” her mom asked. “We could get lunch at that little bistro you like on Main Street.”

No, they could not get lunch at that little bistro, because the second Hannah showed up, the place would be overrun with photographers.

“I can’t do that,” she said. She set her phone on the coffee table and clasped her hands in her lap, as though that could stop them from shaking.

She couldn’t stay in her apartment. And she couldn’t go home to her parents. She couldn’t go anywhere.

Where the hell was she supposed to go?

And why wasn’t Jackson answering his phone? How could he do this to her?

Outside, a car horn blared and she startled, shrinking further away from the windows.

“Honey, we’re worried about you. We’re not sure you should be alone right now.”

Because the photographers had taken a picture of her in her pajamas. Because there were already hundreds of comments with words like “cow” and “disgusting” filling the screen beneath her picture. Because this was exactly the kind of thing that would have sent her into a weeks-long binge/restrict cycle only a short time ago.

She forced a deep breath into her lungs and blew it back out the way her therapist had taught her.

“I won’t be. I’m going to get out of the City for a while,” she said.

“Oh, that’s great. Hank, she’s going to leave the City!” her mom shouted.

“I have to go now, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She ended the call and slid onto the floor, ducking down behind the couch, as though that could protect her from the white noise slowly flooding her brain, the strange out-of-body sense overtaking her. She sent off a quick text to Liv.

Hannah:Alright. I’ll go. How do I get to Rhode Island?

Then she curled into a ball on her living room floor, opening her audiobook app and letting the low, soothing voice of Slade Hardcastle wash over her.

FromThe Lady’s Knightsby A K Wild, narrated by Slade Hardcastle

Lady Windtorn was unaccustomed to such attention. Her handmaidens had tsked and tittered behind their hands at the ample spread of their lady’s backside. “Such a shame she is so gluttonous,” they’d say when they thought she could not hear.

But she had heard.

A lady should be petite,” they’d say. “A lady should be docile.”

But Lady Windtorn was done being docile, and she had never been petite. If her alleged gluttony offended, then she would make herself the most offensive. Then, at least, she would not be forced to marry a man for the protection his name offered despite his distaste for her. If her fiancé could bed a serving girl the night of their betrothal ball without a care for discretion, then she could make herself unmarriageable.

That is how Lady Windtorn found herself one night the subject of the most enthusiastic affection she had ever experienced. These were no handmaidens who had laid her out on their refectory table, and her undressing had not been the perfunctory work of someone paid to worry more about the garments than their owner.

No, when Lady Windtorn lay back on the hard wood and allowed herself to be admired, it was under the gaze of a throng of knights. Sturdily built, war weary men who had no use for petite, docile creatures. Men who reveled in her softness, who devoted themselves wholly to her pleasure. Men who were happy to watch, to share, if it meant their lady was all the more satisfied for it. Men who followed the command of one alone, Sir Llewellyn, and he had made his command quite plain: they were to tend to their lady’s every need.

Let them call me gluttonous, she thought as she took Sir Llewellyn between her thighs.

“You needn’t fear, my lady,” the towering knight said as he worked himself into her heat. “You are ours now. I will protect you.”

Chapter Four

“Do you wear glasses?”

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