Page 52 of Claim to Fame

“You’re not kissing Baz.”

“Maybe Sabrina would share—”

She broke off on a startled giggle as he pressed his lips to hers. She melted against him, opening to his kiss as her hands wound into his hair. As he kissed her, the knots in his chest that had appeared when she arrived in Aster Bay slowly loosened, replaced by the restless need to hold her closer, to kiss her harder, to nip at her throat until she admitted she hated this distance between them as much as he did.

She doesn’t want more. She said as much in Boston.

So much had changed in the last week. Surely now, after the last few days…

But had anything really changed at all? He knew she was afraid of clowns, what she did for a living, how it felt to kiss her on the sidewalk in his small town and not care who saw them—but she hadn’t opened up to him. Not really. She was still keeping him at arm’s length. He just wished he knew why.

He pressed his lips to her ear, dragging the lobe between his teeth. “Tell me something real, Han,” he begged.

She tilted her head, allowing him better access to her throat, and stammered, lust drunk, “I—I don’t—”

“Anything, sweetheart. Tell me anything.” His hands slid under the hem of her shirt, fingertips digging into the soft skin of her lower back, as his lips moved down the long line of her neck. “Please.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Tell me something real, Han.”

There was a pleading in Ethan’s tone that Hannah didn’t recognize, a desperation, like he needed her to peel away the layers guarding her heart as much as he needed to touch her.

She tilted her head as his lips skated over her throat, her head spinning from the sudden proximity. The citrus and pine scent of him and the movement of his hands on the bare skin at her lower back muddled her senses.

She couldn’t think straight with him so close, with the hard length of him pressing against her belly and his mouth on her skin. How was a person supposed to think when Ethan Hart was doing his best to make her come undone?

“I don’t know if I want to be an actress anymore.”

His mouth stilled in an open mouth kiss along her collarbone and her heart pounded in her chest. She hadn’t intended to say that. She wasn’t even sure if she meant it, except… How much easier would her life be if she never again had to worry about random people snapping her picture on sidewalk cafes? If she didn’t have to constantly be torn between her recovery and her career?

One of his hands slid down and gripped her backside, squeezing, as if he was rewarding her for the confession, urging her to continue. “What do you want?” he whispered, his lips ghosting over the tops of her breasts through her shirt.

“I don’t know.” The staticky feeling in her brain intensified as she tried to wade through the tumult in her mind. Was she really ready to walk away from everything she’d worked so hard for, the hard-won success she’d poured everything into? And if she didn’t, if she chose to continue on the endless cycle of auditioning and performing, of offering herself up for inspection and criticism day after day, could she maintain her recovery? Did she actually have a choice at all?

Tears pressed at the back of her eyes and she squeezed them shut. She didn’t want to crynow, for Christ’s sake.

He murmured sounds of comfort as he pulled her close, his mouth at her waist, hands gripping her sides as he lowered himself in front of her. “That’s alright. You don’t need to know.”

She pushed his hair back from his forehead, raking her nails across his scalp. “I want this time with you,” she said, her voice raw and cracking. He looked up at her, his lips on her belly and hands sliding down to cup her ass again. She may not know what she wanted from her career, what came next, but she knew one thing with certainty. “I want you to know me.”

His forehead rested against her and she cradled his head in her hands. When he met her eyes again, there was a determination there she hadn’t seen before. “What about this, sweetheart? Do you want this?” he asked, his fingers slipping under the waistband of her jeans.

“Yes.”

His nostrils flared, eyes darkening, and he held her gaze as he undid the button and zipper. He tugged her jeans and panties down in one pull, gently circling her ankle to help her step out of them. Even though they’d done this so many times before, there was something different about being there, in his kitchen, trading secrets, their half-cooked dinner cooling in the pan on the stove. It was profoundly personal in a way their hotel meetings never had been, in a way none of her previous relationships had ever been.

Ethan dragged his nose along the crease of her thigh, across her mound, and down the other side, breathing her in. “Do you trust me?”

“I trust you.”

He bit the sensitive flesh at the inside of her thigh and she yelped in surprise. “Then let me see you.”

She hesitated for a moment, not sure what he meant. At last, she pulled her shirt over her head, letting it fall in the pile with her jeans on the floor. Her bra followed. Ethan’s hands skated up her back, curled around her sides and cupped her breasts, his thumbs teasing the hard peaks of her nipples.

“Let’s play a game,” he said.

An incredulous laugh burst from her lips. “Now?”

---