He Wanted Me Pregnant!
The Curvy Voice Coach
and the
Billionaire Actor
by Victoria Wessex
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© Copyright Victoria Wessex 2014
The right of Victoria Wessex to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.
Cover characters are models. Images licensed from (and copyright remains with) the photographers/owners as follows: Couple: Killion Group Inc., Background - Luna Marina / Depositphotos
This book contains explicit material and is for adults only. All characters portrayed are intended to be over 18 years of age, even where not explicitly stated.
This story exists in a world of fantasy. Always practice safer sex and keep your play safe, sane and consensual.
Also by Victoria Wessex on Kindle
He Wanted Me Pregnant…
The British Nanny and her Billionaire Employer
The Lawyer and the Outlaw Biker
The Stewardess and the Billionaire CEO
The Intern and the Senator
The Maid and the Billionaire Prince
The Cocktail Waitress and the Card Shark
The Lady and the Pirate I and II
The Nurse and the Soldier
The Curvy Waitress and the Billionaire French Count
The Curvy Vet and the Billionaire Cowboy
The Reporter and the Billionaire Scottish Wolf Lord
Blurbs and free extract at the end of this book!
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Chapter 1
It started with tea.
I have a routine and it begins with tea and toast at 7.40am; a quiet twenty minutes to get my head together before I get ready for work. I am not a morning person. I need that twenty minutes, and the only thing I’m good for at that time in the morning is paging through Facebook looking at pictures of cats dressed as Darth Vader.
That morning, though, when I opened my laptop, there was an email in my inbox that I couldn’t ignore. The subject line said Offer of Work and that overruled everything, even the question of jam or marmalade? I clicked and tried to focus my bleary eyes.
Hi Charlotte,
I am Maurice Venk, agent for the actor Tanner Cole.
I dropped my toast. Tanner Cole?
I was suddenly wide awake.
Thirteen years ago, Tanner had exploded onto the world’s cinema screens in the alien invasion movie The End of the World. A fresh-faced, dark-haired twenty year-old, he’d grabbed everyone’s attention as the Special Forces soldier who’d single-handedly saved the planet from aliens. Then he’d done it again in The End of the World II.
Over the years, he’d made the transition from big-name actor to power player. He produced some of his own movies these days and, at thirty-three, he had the pick of the parts. Whether he was playing a secret agent or an archeologist, a father battling to save his children from a volcano or a loose cannon cop trying to bring down a drugs cartel, everyone loved him. Women loved his soft, dark hair that always seemed to be slightly tousled. They gushed on Twitter about his intense, gray eyes and the way he brooded and smoldered. And men wanted to be him because of the women...and because of the stories.
Oh, the stories. Tanner and the starlet in the pool at some party. Tanner seducing the woman sent to interview him for one of the gossip magazines. Tanner with the “new rat pack,” drinking Vegas dry. Tanner in a strip club, throwing wads of money into the air until it fluttered down like snow and leaving with six strippers. Tanner the skirt-chasing rogue.
Exactly the sort of guy women were crazy about, because he was a “bad boy.” I’ve never understood that. Why would you want a man who was always breaking the rules and doing crazy things and probably looking over your shoulder towards his next conquest? Who thought he knew what you wanted...needed better than you did? Probably because women thought they could “change them.” I shook my head forlornly. Wouldn’t they be better off with someone...sensible? Like Tim, the IT guy I’d had a date with...oh, six months ago or so. He was sensible, and kind, and seemed eager, and I didn’t really care at all that he was an inch or two shorter than me. There was nothing wrong with him, and it was just bad luck that things had sort of fizzled out. Right?
I looked at the jam. It was already getting perilously close to its use-by date and I was barely halfway through it. That’s what happens when there’s only one of you in the apartment.
Maybe it was time to try that dating site again.
I pushed the thought out of my mind. Why was Tanner Cole’s agent sending me an email?
I dropped a fresh slice of bread into the toaster and leaned over the table to read on.
He’s asked me to contact you to discuss you coaching him in a British accent. You’re probably too busy but, if you are available, we need to do a Skype call at noon today PST.
Was this a joke? Some friend winding me up? It didn’t sound like a joke, though. It wasn’t trying to flatter me and sucker me into something. In fact, the email was sort of terse. And what was with the “Charlotte?” Why not “Miss Portingwood?”
I took a walk around the kitchen—given the size of my apartment, it wasn’t a long walk—while I thought.
The voice coaching part wasn’t weird. Voice coaching is what I do. I have a thing for voices—breaking them down and analyzing them, then helping their owners to build them back up again into the voice they want. I’ve helped businessmen from rural Britain flatten out their vowels so they could cozy up to politicians without sounding like a country bumpkin. I’ve helped a Korean property magnate soften his accent to give him an advantage in the West. I even once helped a nervous guy develop the strong, resonant voice he felt he needed to propose. She said yes, too.
Would the world be a better place if no one cared how we spoke, as long as we could all understand each other? Hell yeah. I’d sign up for that world in a heartbeat. But as long as people make judgments about whether to do business with you, or whether to give you a mortgage, or even whether to marry you, based on your voice, there’ll be a place for people like me.
A small place. A niche. I wasn’t exactly drowning in work and London’s an expensive place to live. I did some voiceovers for commercials and that helped, but things were still tight. Part of me wished I’d been born a hundred years ago, when every young lady was sent for elocution lessons. I would have been rolling in cash.
I’d split up with my last boyfriend almost a year ago. The last time I’d been on a date—a fairly disastrous night involving a banker, vodka and an eventual confession from him that he was married—had been four months ago. Not good. But not surprising, to me. I don’t have the sort of body men go for: too big, too solid...too much of me.
I think that’s why I veered off into voice work when everyone else from my theater school headed for the screen and the stage. My voice is the one part
of me that’s right—there was a time when the Portingwoods were quite a wealthy family. I went to a good school and then a ladies’ college that prided itself in being about a thousand years old. That left me with what we call a cut-glass British accent. When people hear it on a commercial they think I’m some sort of minor royal, probably living in a mansion, and that’s much better than the truth. Because the truth is that my dad upped and left, taking the money with him, and my mother and I ended up struggling to make ends meet. So I’m proud of my voice. It’s one of the few things I have left. Also, it’s good to hide behind. I can sit in the privacy of a recording studio and, from my voice, men can picture me as some sort of blonde, slender vixen with a tiny waist and elegant, upturned little breasts. And that’s much better than the truth.
The toast popped up and I grabbed it, then slumped back down into my chair and stared at the screen again. The voice coaching part wasn’t weird. Even the part about teaching an American actor to do a British accent wasn’t so weird. I’d done that a few times, helping some minor US TV stars sound like medieval lords when they took parts in one of those dragons n’ swords shows. But this wasn’t some minor TV star. This was Tanner Cole, pretty much the most famous and certainly the richest actor on the planet. If he was coming to Britain to film some movie and needed to sound convincing, there must be about a million people more experienced than me who could coach him. Why would he want me? And why would he want a video call with me?
My stomach lurched at the thought. I was perfectly happy sheltering—okay, hiding—in the sound booth in a recording studio, or in my apartment with a client who was focused only on my voice. For some reason, Tanner or his agent wanted to see me. And they were going to be used to stick-thin actresses. Eek!
Maybe I should just say I’m busy.
I checked my bank account online and winced.
Probably nothing would come of this anyway. Probably Tanner’s agent was just shopping around and had emailed lots of voice coaches. But I certainly couldn’t afford to turn it down.
I sent back an email saying noon would be just fine, thank you. And then I looked up PST and figured out that they were eight hours behind me, probably in Los Angeles, and that the call would be at eight in the evening, my time.
***
All that day, as I sat helping a middle manager to speak with authority, I thought of Tanner Cole. Tanner the hero, who always seemed to either have his shirt torn open or have stripped down to a vest. Tanner the ladies’ man, arm around some twig of a starlet, a martini in his other hand. Tanner the billionaire.
The idea of us working together wasn’t so much unbelievable as completely ridiculous.
That evening, I told myself again that this is not actually going to happen. It would be a quick Skype call and probably Tanner wouldn’t even be there, just his agent. He’d ask me about my experience, decide it wasn’t enough and find someone more suitable. I told myself all this...and then I spent two hours choosing clothes and getting ready.
I settled on a white blouse that did a good job of concealing my boobs. A pair of dark, baggy pants managed to hide most of my curves below the waist and I figured they’d only see my top half anyway. I tonged my long auburn hair into ringlets. I even dug out the good make-up, the stuff I only used when I had a date (I tried not to notice that it was almost untouched). Was it because it was him, not just an actor worth a cool billion dollars but him, with his shoulders that seemed twice as broad as my whole frame and his full pecs stretching out the front of his shirt? That elegantly-sculpted nose, that darkly-penetrating gaze….
Wait, was I trying to impress him?!
I mentally slapped myself. Get a grip, Charlotte! He’s not going to be interested in you! And, God, I wouldn’t want him to be! He was a jerk, an extremely good-looking, woman-chasing jerk. I didn’t go for jerks. I went for men who knew how to behave, men who were chivalrous and proper and….
Men who didn’t exist, anymore.
It had started in high school, when I’d first started to be teased about my body. I’d retreated into historical romances, surrounding myself with a cast of heroes who’d spirit the poor young servant girl away to a better life. It didn’t matter that my parents were wealthy in those days. In my mind, I was the servant girl in need of rescue.
As I got older, it seemed more and more sensible. Why was it okay to dump a girl via a text message, when even asking her out on a date used to require an elaborately-crafted love poem written with a quill? Modern men just didn’t measure up: that was the problem. I hid behind the excuse and only agreed to blind dates set up by well-meaning friends when I couldn’t put them off any longer. I convinced myself I was happy in my little fantasy world, where a man would ride a hundred miles just to deliver a gift to a woman. Not—I winced—break her heart by asking her to the college ball as a joke and then laughing about it to all his friends.
So I kept reading. Old manners books. Magazines for men from the Victorian era, with articles on how to woo a lady in between the “shocking” photos of women in just their corsets. Journals of real-life lords—men who’d had a butler and hounds and a carriage. I knew real men weren’t interested in me, so I built up the perfect fantasy one in my mind and dreamed of him riding up and whisking me off on his horse, taking me out of the city and into the country where he’d make love to me in a meadow.
It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. I hid the books away and never showed them to anyone. But I still ached for my gentleman hero, just the same.
***
With an hour to go, I sat on the couch watching one of his old movies—for research, I told myself, so that I could check his accent. It wasn’t my usual sort of thing. I mean, I’d watched Tanner Cole movies—they were hard to avoid. But I preferred something more cerebral, maybe based on a book. I especially hated the romantic threads of Tanner Cole movies. He and the heroine always wound up together, however many earthquakes, wars and revolutions got in the way. Real life wasn’t like that.
What I heard, as a professional, was a bass American drawl, about as far from the clipped, regimented British accent as it’s possible to get. What I heard as a woman was something different. I heard rocks grinding together, coated with honey. A warm voice, one that entered through your ears and did funny things to your brain. A voice that could tell you everything was going to be okay, and you’d believe it, but could just as easily say get your clothes off, and you’d obey.
I blushed. I mean, not that he’d say that to me, but I was starting—grudgingly—to understand his appeal.
Five minutes to go. I adjusted the laptop screen for the twentieth time and then sat back in my chair. Then I realized that when I went to answer the call, I was going to have to lean right forward to click the mouse and the first thing they’d see would be a shot straight down my blouse. Not good. So I found the option for “automatically answer all calls” and checked the box. There. Now when they called, I’d be sitting there waiting for them, legs demurely crossed in my chair.
Two minutes to go. One minute. I held my breath….
Nothing happened.
Okay, fine. Well, obviously their watches were a few minutes out. No big deal.
Five minutes past eight. Were they just running late? Maybe I was being silly. Five minutes was nothing.
Ten minutes late. Fifteen. Okay, that was rude. Fifteen minutes was definitely rude, right? I triple-checked that Los Angeles was eight hours behind London. Yep.
At half-past eight I let out a long moan of anger at being stupid enough to think that they’d actually bother to call. They’d obviously found someone better and not bothered to tell me.
I stomped off and did what I always did when I’m annoyed: I took a bath. Not a long one, because I didn’t want to turn into prune-girl, but deep and hot and full of scented oil. I lay back until only my face broke the surface and sighed.
And thought about Tanner Cole.
I didn’t deliberately think of him. He just sort of slid in there,
like the way he tended to slide across floors while firing a gun in each hand. Or the way he slid a gleaming red Ferrari to a halt, popping the door open and grabbing the hand of the heroine, and saying something like, “Come with me! I can protect you!” And then I’d jump in beside him and we’d blast off into the sunset in a shriek of tires and a cloud of smoke….
I stretched my legs out in the tub. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t even the kind of movie I liked. I liked intelligent movies with lots of long, pensive glances between the doomed lovers and classical music on the soundtrack. And yet I found myself thinking of something more along the lines of a Tanner Cole blockbuster.
After he’d single-handedly brought down the human traffickers and unmasked the android who’d replaced the President—or whatever—he’d take me off to a hotel. Some dangerous place in Tijuana where men pulled the corks out of tequila bottles with their teeth and spat them across the room before taking a slug. And after dancing salsa with me—or tango or whatever they dance in Mexico—he’d rent a room and carry me upstairs….
I slid a hand down my body.
And in the hotel room there’d be white sheets (unfeasibly clean for such a down-market hotel) and soft pillows and he’d lay me down, and somehow I wouldn’t feel big. He was so big that he’d make me feel small—delicate, even. And he’d strip my dress from my body, easing it down over my breasts, kissing his way down between them. Then over my hips, my body pale in the moonlight and the neon sign outside the window, and he’d toss the dress into the corner and climb between my legs….
My fingers started to stroke faster. I hadn’t even been aware of them starting to move.
Wait, what am I doing? Tanner Cole’s all muscley and loud and he probably wouldn’t even have shaved and...I don’t want that. Do I?
His cock—which I imagined as enormous—slowly rubbing along my lower lips. I’d be wet for him, of course, ready for him. He’d ease my thighs apart and I’d flower open for him, a soft moan escaping my lips—
The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) Page 1