Claim to Fame (Aster Bay #4)

Chapter One

“It has to be you.”

Ethan Hart took a sip of his beer and considered the woman across the booth from him. AK Wild—Angie—was one of the most successful indie romance authors on the market. She also happened to be an old friend, so when she’d called him three years ago and asked for a favor, Ethan hadn’t been able to say no.

He hadn’t expected that favor to take on a life of its own.

“Why me?” he asked.

“Because you’re Slade Hardcastle! You’re the voice of all my books. Why should this one be any different?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her finger. “Weren’t you a dragon for Halloween in first grade?”

“No.”

“I distinctly remember a cardboard dragon head with construction paper flames. You were born to play this part.”

“I think that’s a bit of stretch,”

he said rolling his eyes.

“Don’t pretend you don’t love it. I’ve had three author friends contact me this week alone trying to get in touch with you for projects.”

“I turned those down,” he said.

“I know. You’re in demand, Ethan. And I demand you narrate this book.”

Ethan glanced at the excerpt Angie had handed him.

I unfurl my wings so that she may look upon them. The heat of her fingers as they trace the membrane sears through me, heating my blood. I need to claim her, to make her mine. To mark her as the dragon duke’s mate.

It was a departure from Angie’s typical medieval romances, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by the challenge of voicing a dragon...

No one back in Aster Bay knew Ethan Hart moonlighted as Slade Hardcastle, spicy romance audiobook narrator. It was his secret, and he intended to keep it that way. But with each new book he narrated, the risk of someone finding out about his alter ego grew.

“C’mon. What’s a few dragon shifter sex scenes between friends?”

A slow grin spread over Angie’s face. “Besides, who knew your talent for accents would be so useful outside of tormenting Mrs. Kemp during history class?”

Ethan threw his head back and laughed. “That was one time.”

“I’ll pay double your fee,”

Angie said.

“It’s not about the money.”

Though the money was nice. Ethan had been setting aside all his earnings from the audiobooks in a college fund for his granddaughter, Julie.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Ethan scraped his hand over his jaw. “It’s just me at the vineyard now, Ang. I bought Mom and Dad out last year so they could move into some fancy independent living facility in Florida.”

“That’s great.”

“It is. But the vineyard is their legacy, and they built that legacy on a wholesome image. Did you know my mom used to scoop ice cream in Sugar Grapes during the summers and that’s how she met my dad?”

“I did. They used to tell that story to anyone who would listen. If I didn’t write historicals, I’d work it into a book somehow,”

Angie said, leaning back in the booth.

“Everyone knows that story, and now Nuthatch Vineyard—a place built on the idea of family—has been taken over by a single guy in his forties.”

“You can’t honestly be telling me you’re worried about sullying the family business with my smutty books?”

Angie shot him a look that said he better think carefully about his answer.

“I love your smutty books. You know that.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know.”

He ran his hand over the short hair at the back of his neck and sighed. “I guess I worry about what would happen if word got out.”

“If people knew the guy who ran the small-town vineyard also narrated sexy audiobooks?”

“My parents will leave behind this amazing story, one I’m proud to tell to every person who comes through the vineyard. Someday it’s going to be my daughter, my granddaughter, telling that story.”

“And you’re not sure if you want them to tell the story of you narrating dragon shifter pleasure Doms from the old toolshed.”

“More or less.”

Angie considered this as she took a sip of her wine. “I don’t think your problem is the dragon shifters.”

“No? Then what’s my problem?”

he asked, grinning around his beer.

“Maybe you really are afraid of people finding out about your British alter ego and it affecting the vineyard. There’s a reason I write under a pen name, so I can’t judge you for that. But you’re full of secrets, Ethan Hart. I have to wonder, does anyone really know you?”

He didn’t know what to say. Slade Hardcastle was a mystery man with a gritty voice and a British accent, an enigma in the audiobook world since he didn’t have a social media presence and only narrated for one author. He was a figment of Ethan’s imagination, a cardboard cutout to conceal his true identity.

But he was also defined by the scandalous words he read, just as Ethan had been defined for much of his life by the scandals of his youth. More than that, his teenage indiscretions had been the only thing anyone in Aster Bay associated with his family for years. While he didn’t regret his decisions for a second, the last thing he wanted to do was have his private choices blow back on the people he loved...again. The last time Aster Bay sank its teeth into his private life, he’d lost everything. It was too big of a risk.

“Double your fee. Think about it.”

“I’ll think about it,”

he said, his voice inexplicably hoarse.

She tilted her head at him, the move so like the girl she’d been when they were kids growing up in their small Rhode Island town. “Why do you always want to meet here?”

“I don’t—”

“Every time you come to Boston, you want to meet in the same hotel bar. There’s a whole city out there, but it’s always here.”

Ethan pressed his lips together, narrowing his eyes at Angie and her too-shrewd stare. Her gaze flickered over him, and he knew she was taking in the exact same sight she’d seen each time he’d met her. The same craft beer, the same suit that always made him feel a little ridiculous, the same hotel bar with yet another Red Sox game playing on the television mounted on the wall.

“It’s tradition,”

he finally said.

It was true. It was all part of the ritual. Talk a little business, pretend he didn’t narrate the books as much for his own enjoyment as to help out an old friend, sip his beer and act like he gave a shit about the outcome of whatever game was on the screen, ignore the way his pulse jumped every time he heard heels clicking behind him on the parquet floors.

Because Angie wasn’t the only person he came to Boston to see.

Three years.

Eight meetings.

And his heart still raced at the mere idea of seeing her again—Hannah, the real reason he was in Boston.

The first time had been an accident. Or fate, depending on how you looked at it. He’d been in town to meet Angie and discuss the very first audiobook he recorded for her. He hadn’t intended to meet another woman—a woman who’d crawl under his skin like the heroines in the romances he narrated, entire clans of highlanders worshipping at their feet.

“You and your traditions,”

Angie said with a shake of her head. “Is that why Michael and I can never convince you to join us on Martha’s Vineyard?”

Ethan smiled, some of the tension easing from their shoulders. “No, that’s because your husband snores so loud it shakes the whole cottage. And Martha’s Vineyard is overrated.”

“I’m telling him you said that.”

“About his snoring? Go ahead.”

“No, about the Vineyard.”

“Excuse me, sir,”

the bartender said, setting another beer in front of Ethan. “From the woman at the end of the bar.”

He tilted his head towards the woman in question and Ethan’s heart hammered in his chest. How had he missed her coming in? “She said to give you this.”

Ethan accepted the small envelope from the bartender, the kind of miniature stationery used to house gift cards and the notes that came with pricey floral arrangements. He lifted the flap to reveal a black plastic key card to a room in the hotel, the number 714 scrawled across the back of the envelope in a familiar hand.

Angie leaned around the bartender, trying to get a good look at the woman in question. But Ethan knew she wouldn’t find her.

“Who’s it from?”

Angie asked, turning back to Ethan.

Ethan stood, buttoning his suit jacket and sliding the key card into his pocket. “A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

Angie cackled.

At the end of the bar, Hannah slid off her stool. The tall brunette hid behind oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap, but he’d know the upturned end of her nose, the width of her hips, accentuated by her fitted pencil skirt, and the plush round of her backside anywhere. She disappeared into the hall without a second look in his direction and his blood rushed in his ears.

She was the real reason he kept coming back to this hotel bar. Uncomplicated, funny, sexy as hell. Best of all, no expectations, no obligations, no way to disappoint each other.

“When are you going to settle down?”

Ethan glanced back at Angie. He’d almost forgotten she was still there. “Now you sound like my mother.”

“Come on, isn’t that what your whole speech was about? Wanting the wholesome life—a wife, the picket fence, and two-point-five kids?”

“How do you have point five of a kid?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Ethan sighed. “I don’t know, Ang. Maybe.”

What he didn’t say was yes, of course, he wanted all that. He’d wanted it since he was sixteen and his high school girlfriend got pregnant—and then promptly refused to marry him. But now, staring down the barrel of forty-five, it was time for him to admit to himself that maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy women settled down with. And if lately he wondered what it would be like, if he found his mind drifting to Hannah more than it should, well, that was hardly the point.

Angie grasped his forearm. “You’ll think about the dragon shifters?”

He pulled a few bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table. “Send me the book. I’ll do it.”

Hannah was already in the elevator when he emerged from the bar into the hotel lobby, and he slid into the car just before the doors closed. Inside, she stood beside him as though they were any two people riding in an elevator together. As though they hadn’t done this exact same dance eight times over the last three years.

“You grew a beard,”

she said, looking straight ahead at their reflection in the shiny metal of the elevator doors as they began to rise. “I like it.”

He ran his hand over the scruff on his jaw. “You changed your hair.”

Last time he’d seen her it had been shorter, falling around her shoulders. Now it hung down to the middle of her back, the ends curled in a way he imagined had taken a long time to get just right. “Looks good.”

“I’m glad you approve,”

she teased.

The elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor and she walked out ahead of him, shooting him a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. He let his eyes skate down the length of her body, taking time to appreciate the way her ass swayed as she walked. “Oh, I very much approve.”

She tossed her head back and laughed, the sound washing over him as they moved through the maze of hallways leading to her room. At the door to room 714, she paused, reaching for her purse.

“You were meeting that same woman last time I saw you,”

Hannah said, her face turned down towards her purse so he couldn’t catch her expression. “Should I be jealous?”

“Are you? Jealous?”

She didn’t answer, but her shoulders stiffened. He shouldn’t be so delighted by her response, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d spent the six months since the last time they saw each other trying to convince himself he wasn’t completely obsessed with this woman—after all, that was hardly part of the friends-with-benefits arrangement they had going. To think she felt even a fraction of the possessiveness towards him that he felt towards her was intoxicating.

Ethan moved behind her, coming close enough to smell the soft floral notes of her shampoo without actually touching her. He inhaled deeply, reveling in the familiar scent as it sparked a chain reaction of need through his body.

“She’s just an old friend,” he said.

Hannah nodded and continued to search through her purse, but her shoulders noticeably relaxed.

Removing the keycard from his pocket, he slid his arm around her side and held the card to the reader on the door. “Allow me.”

She pushed open the door and turned to face him, taking hold of the lapels of his suit jacket and walking backwards as she led him into her hotel room. “Oh, believe me, I’ll allow you to do a great many things before the night is over.”

As the door closed behind them with a soft snick, she took off her sunglasses and hat, tossing them on the side table in the entryway. Ethan snaked his arm around her lower back, pulling her hips against his and kissing her. She tasted like the citrus seltzers she favored, and though he couldn’t stand the stuff, mixed with the sweetness of her lips, her floral scent, and the plush give of her body against his, it was the best damn thing he’d tasted in months. She began to move away and he nipped at her lower lip, prompting her delighted giggle as she smoothed the lapels she’d held tightly in her fists only a moment before.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,”

she said, her eyes fixed on his chest.

Was he imagining things or did she seem like she’d been disappointed to think he might not make their rendezvous?

He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the soft curve of her cheek. “I wasn't sure either.”

He’d debated not going, even though he’d read her text a thousand times between the moment it arrived on his phone and walking into the bar.

“What changed?”

What hadn’t changed? His friends, one by one, had gotten married and moved on to lives that didn’t revolve around their weekly trivia and board game nights. His daughter and his best friend had made him a grandfather last year. He was about to turn forty-five and what did he have to show for it? A thriving business, a secret life as an audiobook narrator of deliciously filthy romance novels, a family and friends he loved...and a bed he slept in alone.

Most of the time it didn’t bother him, but lately he’d begun to wonder.

Maybe he’d become too emotionally invested in the romances he narrated. Or maybe...

“I wanted to see you.”

From the lift of her eyebrow he could tell she thought it was a line. Ethan dropped his lips to her neck, sliding his kiss along the column of her throat, the curve of her clavicle. She tilted her head to give him better access as his lips drifted lower, through the valley between her breasts, and he got to his knees at her feet.

She sighed dreamily and dug her hands into his hair. “I’m glad you came.”

He pressed a kiss to the swell of her belly through the silky fabric of her top, focusing on the softness of her skin as his fingers found the hem and slipped beneath to stroke the dip of her waist. “No one’s come yet, sweetheart, but give me a minute and we’ll change that.”

She exhaled a soft laugh and ran a hand down the side of his face, stroking his beard. He turned his face up to her, watching the thoughts flit behind her eyes as she studied the scruff on his jaw. What he wouldn’t give to know what she was thinking.

But that wasn’t what they did, him and Hannah. They didn’t talk about anything important, nothing worthy of talking about anyway. They teased and they bantered and they fucked until neither one of them had any space left for thoughts.

And then they said goodbye.

He didn’t even know what she did for a living, or why she was in Boston. Just like she didn’t know the answers to those questions about him. One night, three years ago, they’d both been in the same hotel bar, lonely and willing to take a chance on a one-night stand with a stranger. They'd only exchanged phone numbers because he insisted on her letting him know she’d gotten home okay the next day, even if he didn’t know where home was.

He skated his hands down the backs of her legs, took a firm hold of her ankle and lifted, guiding her to step out of her high heels. She ran her fingers through his beard, through the hair at the back of his neck, as he dragged his hands back up over the curve of her calf, the length of her thigh. He never broke eye contact as he slid the zipper on her skirt down, the fabric falling into a pool at her feet.

Ethan pressed his lips to the line where the waistband of her panties cut across the softness of her belly, where her skin was marked with iridescent waves, smooth beneath his tongue. He hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband and left a sucking kiss low on her stomach. “Say yes, Han,”

he rumbled against her.

Her fingers tightened in his hair, guiding his lips lower. “Yes.”

He hooked his hands around her thighs and urged her backwards until the backs of her legs hit the wingback chair in the corner of the room and she fell back onto its cushioned surface with a surprised laugh. Rising up on his knees, he captured her lips again, only stopping long enough to pull her top over her head. He skated his hands over her skin, soaking in the sight of Hannah reclined like a queen on her throne in her lacy bra and panty set.

“Ethan,”

she whined, gripping his hair again, guiding his face closer to where she wanted him.

He nipped at the soft inside of her thigh, loving the way she tensed at the sharp sting before relaxing deeper into the chair, her thighs falling open wider.

“Been thinking about this for weeks,”

he said, mostly to himself.

“This?”

“You,”

he corrected himself. He pulled her panties over her hips, down her legs, tossing them aside and hooking her legs over his shoulders as he settled between her thighs. With one finger, he stroked the length of her slit, a soft, reverent touch that had no place in their arrangement. “Are you as sweet as I remember?”

“Ethan—”

He licked a long, hot stripe up her center, pausing at the top to circle her clit with the tip of his tongue until it stiffened and grew plump against him.

“Better than I remember,”

he said before repeating the motion. A slow stroke followed by tight circles.

“Your beard,”

she gasped, her heels digging into his back.

Ethan hesitated, glancing up at her. “Say the word and I’ll shave it off right now.”

“Like hell you will.”

Her hips lifted towards his mouth. Impatient, needy, and so fucking gorgeous. “Do that again.”

So he did. Again and again as her hips chased his tongue. He watched her over the mound of dark curls at the apex of her thighs, studied every catch in her breathing, every look of wonder passing over her face when he wrapped his lips around her clit and sucked. He watched as she tore down the cups of her bra, plumping and squeezing her breasts when he slid a finger inside her heat, a second, a third.

She rode his hand as he licked and sucked and teased her orgasm to the surface. And when she came, he watched the sparks dance across her skin, saw the pleasure take shape low in her belly and burst with a startled gasp and wave after wave of shaking bliss. He gripped her thigh with his free hand, pulling her tight against his mouth as he licked her through the haze of her climax, urging her to grind against him, to use him to heighten every last aftershock.

This he could do. He didn’t know how to be both Slade Hardcastle and Ethan Hart, how to be someone’s partner, how to make a woman want to stay, but this—making Hannah come so hard she forgot to breathe—this he could do.

“Ethan.”

Her voice broke through his swirling thoughts, her fingers tugging his face away from the heaven between her legs. She smiled indulgently at him, her thumb skating over the wetness clinging to his lower lip. He captured that thumb between his teeth, tugging gently. “Take me to bed.”

He removed his clothing as she shed her bra and moved to the bed, sliding back until she rested against the headboard. Following her down, he watched with barely restrained need as she produced a condom from somewhere and slid the latex over his erection.

“I’ve been thinking about this for weeks too,”

she said as she pumped her hand over his length, slowly, like a promise.

“This?”

he asked, punching his hips forward into her touch.

She bit back a smile. “You.”

There was a sadness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. A softness he didn’t recognize. He reached up and cupped her jaw, guiding her lips to his. Moving over her, he covered her body with his own, watched in awe as she guided the flared tip of his cock to her entrance, as she parted to make room for him, to let him inside. Hooking one of her legs with his elbow and opening her up further, he gave her more of his weight. Their kisses turned desperate as he worked himself within her, angling his hips the way he knew she liked, burying himself in her again and again as if he could stay there.

This time, her orgasm was slow to gather, but he didn’t mind. He lost himself in the way she smiled at him, the soft moans and the breathy gasps, the feel of her stretching around him, the revelation that was being with her like this. For the next few hours, nothing mattered more than the gorgeous woman writhing beneath him as he hit the secret spot deep inside that made her shake.

“Come for me. Been waiting months to feel you come on my cock again.”

She slid a hand between them until her fingers found her clit and he leaned back to watch as she stroked herself in time to his thrusts. He wanted to memorize it, to remember every goosebump, every shockwave rolling through her body, to be able to close his eyes and play back the sight of her touching herself as he fucked her.

“That’s it,”

he purred as her inner muscles fluttered around him faster, tighter, warning of her impending release. “That’s my girl. Let me feel it, sweetheart. Take what’s yours.”

She arched off the bed, her legs going stiff, toes pointing, as she clamped down around him, drawing his own orgasm from him as hers took hold. He fell forward, resting his forehead against her chest as he drove into her once, twice, then froze, electricity shooting down his spine as he filled the condom. She smoothed the hair back from his forehead and he pressed his lips to her sternum.

“Missed you,” he said.

His chest ached with the words he was holding back. How he hadn’t been able to see another woman for the last year without wishing he was with her instead. How around six months ago, after the last time they’d gotten together, he’d stopped even trying. How many times he pulled up her number while he lay alone in his bed, wondering where she was, what she was doing. Wondering if he’d ever see her again.

“Missed you too,”

she said, and his heart swelled with foolish hope.

Once the condom was disposed of, he crawled back into bed beside her, gathering her against his chest. She snuggled down into him, her hips doing that happy little wiggle thing he was sure she didn’t realize she did.

“I’m glad you came.”

He arched an eyebrow at her and she shoved at his chest playfully, rolling her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’m glad you came to Boston.”

“Me too.”

He pressed a kiss to her hair, smoothed his hands over her back, and for a moment, let himself imagine how it would be if she was his. If he didn’t leave her each time wondering if he’d ever hear from her again, if he was an asshole for hoping he would—because hearing from Hannah meant she was still single. It meant she hadn’t found her happily ever after yet. While he loved being the man she called whenever she was in town, she deserved the whole fairytale, not just whatever they were.

But what if they were more? What if he could give her the fairytale—if they could give it to each other?

They hardly knew each other but what he did know, he liked. And there was no denying they were compatible. Relationships had been built on less.

“Hey, Han,”

he said into the fading light of the hotel room, careful to keep her face tucked against his chest so she couldn’t look at him for the next part. “What if we did this more often?”

“I'm not sure how much more often I’ll be in Boston this year.”

“No. I mean, what if we saw each other outside of this hotel? You could come to visit me and I could go see you. Fuck, I don’t even know where you live. What if we—”

She pulled away and sat up beside him, her brow furrowed and her face serious. Shit. He knew that look. “Ethan—”

“Never mind.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so his back was to her. Way to ruin it. “It was a stupid idea.”

“My life is…complicated at the moment. I’m working through some things—”

“You don’t have to explain. Really.”

He shot her what he hoped was a reassuring look over his shoulder. “Forget it.”

Her hand closed over his shoulder, and he placed his hand on top of hers. “I know everyone says this, but I promise you I mean it: it’s not you.”

Ethan knew a brush off when he heard one. “It’s fine, Han. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He forced his lips into the shape of a smile. “Blame it on the incredible sex.”

“You’re really alright?”

she asked.

This was not how this night ended, with this trepidation in her touch. He might not be able to erase the gnarled knot of ‘what if’s in his chest, but he could make sure neither of them thought about anything of significance for the rest of the night. That was what these meetings were supposed to be about anyway—pleasure, a chance to lose themselves in each other, no obligation. No midlife crisis making him look like a desperate jerk who changed the rules.

He spun around and pinned her to the mattress, dragging his lips across her eyelids, her cheekbone, down the slope of her nose. “I’ll be better after I make you come again.”

He tugged her nipple between his teeth on his slow slide down her body, drawing a startled yelp from her.

“If you want to talk about—”

“Nothing to talk about.”

He parted her thighs, kissing along the crease where her leg met her hip. “Unless you want me to tell you all the things I plan to do to you before the night is through.”

She shivered. “Yes, please.”

And then he made it his mission to erase every last thought from both their minds.