Page 53 of Claim to Fame

The corner of his mouth twitched as though he was trying not to smile. “Now.”

“What kind of game?”

“You tell me things I don’t know about you and I’ll lick this pretty pussy the way you like.” He pinched her nipples between his thumb and forefinger and she sucked in a breath, fascinated by the way his pupils blew wide at the sound. “But if you stop, I stop.”

“What?”

“You want to come, Hannah? Then tell me all the things you couldn’t for the last three years.” He pressed a kiss to the crease of her thigh and hip, his tongue dragging along the line but stopping short of where she needed him. “Let’s see how many times I can make you come before you run out of secrets.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

Liar.

And he knew it.

He tsked, twisting her nipple hard enough that she gasped at the bright burst of pleasure pain blooming beneath his touch.

“I never wanted to be famous.”

As the words rushed out of her, his touch gentled, pinpricks of heat blooming across her breasts. He smiled wickedly and let one hand drift down to her ass, tilting her hips towards him as he dipped his tongue between her folds. He looked up at her, his eyebrow arched, tongue torturously close to giving her the relief she needed, and waited.

“I wanted to sing and act with my friends, but I never thought anyone would know who I was outside of the theater.”

He lapped at her in slow, deliberate licks designed to drive her out of her mind with need and she knew if he stopped, she’d cry in desperation. She gripped his hair and let the words tumble out, how she hadn’t known what to do with the press, the first time someone had photographed her in line at the grocery store and that picture ended up on the late-night talk show circuit. When he sucked her clit into his mouth, sparks went off behind her eyes and she told him about the time she had gone to dinner with Jackson, how it was meant to be a simple public appearance to confirm the rumors of their (fake) relationship, how the next morningThe Today Showran a story analyzing the contents of her dinner plate.

“It wasn’t supposed to be about me,” she whimpered as he slipped two fingers inside her, slowly driving her closer and closer to the precipice of her orgasm. “It was supposed to be about him.”

Ethan dragged his teeth over her clit and sucked hard, shoving her off that precipice until she tumbled headfirst into a climax that hit her like a punch to her sternum. She was still quivering with the intensity of it when he began curling his fingers again, pressing on that soft spot on her front wall.

“It should have been about you,” he insisted, his eyes locked on hers. “What you needed. What you wanted.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that it had been, in a way—the exchange of her public self for the ability to pull herself from the depths of a disorder that had controlled her private life for over a decade. It had been an easy decision, and one she would make again, even knowing what she now knew: that she couldn’t casually and quietly go about her life while the whole world thought she was dating a pop star. That the person the public saw would have very little resemblance to the person she was.

But she wasn’t ready to tell him that. Even now. How could she tell him the ways she had hurt herself, the damage she had done? How could she explain the sticky shame of it that still coated her skin, that she was afraid she’d never fully shake?

“When I was a child, I wanted to be a ballet dancer,” she said instead.

He hesitated for a moment, as if deciding if he would allow this change of subject. His eyes skimmed over the swollen place between her legs and his tongue darted out to swipe at his lips.

“I took my first class when I was five,” she continued, her fingers gliding down the side of his face and over his beard. “Even at five I was behind. There were girls there who had started when they were two, barely old enough to walk.”

His eyes darted between hers, brow drawn low as he listened. And she waited to see if this story would suffice. She watched him debate with himself, the knowledge she was avoiding telling him something wrinkling his forehead and tightening his jaw.

At last, he leaned forward again, latching his mouth onto her with a ferocity that startled her. She fell back against the counter, hands gripping his head as he worked her clit fast and hard. “Oh God,” she whimpered, her climax already taking hold.

And then he stopped.

“Keep talking.” The vibration of his voice thrummed through her. “You stop, I stop.”

So she told him about being the only girl who had to order a size large leotard, about the other girls making fun of her wide feet, about the way her ballet teacher had poked at her belly with the end of her walking stick and recommended she try fasting. With each new confession, his pressure intensified.

She told him about the boy on the playground who called her Dumbo, the gym teacher who left copies of fitness magazines in her locker in high school, the prom date who ditched her when he saw she was wearing shapewear under her dress.

She came with a sharp cry, her knees giving way. But he caught her with an arm around her waist, his mouth latched onto her and mercilessly working her to a new, sharper peak.

“Ethan,” she panted.

“You stop, I stop,” he repeated. A challenge.