“Are you okay?” asked Tanner, turning me to him. “What happened?”
I just stared at him. Fresh tears were forming in my eyes.
“Tell me!” he said. “I’ll fix it!”
I shook my head. “It’s me,” I said bitterly. “You can’t fix me! I’m not right for this! They’re all looking at me and”—my voice hitched—“they’re all talking about me and I don’t want photos of me and it’s all wrong—”
He grabbed me and pulled me to him, burying my head in his chest. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He stroked my hair. “Charlotte, I am so, so sorry.”
I sobbed into his shirt. I wrapped my arms around his waist and that helped.
“I shouldn’t have taken you there,” he said. I still had my face buried between the comforting hardness of his pecs but, from the sound of his voice, he had his face in his palm. “I’m a selfish prick. Fellidicio’s was throwing you in at the deep end. I was just so proud of you.”
That should have made me feel better, but I couldn’t bear it. I lifted my head from his chest, his shirt wet from my tears. “Why?!” I yelled in his face.
He stared at me. I think that was the moment he realized just how deep my insecurities went and, for a second, I thought I’d lost him.
And then his jaw set and he sort of nodded, as if to say he accepted the challenge. “Because I’m in love with you,” he told me. “Because you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. Because I’ve known from the first time we spoke that you had to be mine, or I was going to spend the rest of my life regretting it.” He reached up and cupped my damp cheeks in his hands. “I am going to fix this. It won’t happen again. And I am going to hang onto you, no matter what. Understand?”
I thought for a second that I was going to start crying all over again. I nodded frantically and hurled myself at him. He let out a laugh of release as I pressed up against him, and then my lips were on his.
We kissed for long minutes as the limo sped on through the night. He pulled me fully into his lap and twisted me around so that I was sitting on him side-saddle and he could lean down and kiss me properly. At first, the kisses were soft. Then, when my tears had finally dried, the mood shifted. The kisses became open-mouthed and hungry, full of quickly growing need.
The dress was held up by two shoulder straps. I felt him push one of them down, taking the bra strap with it. I pulled away from him and looked out of the window in panic. We were speeding through the city, office buildings on both sides.
“Privacy glass,” Tanner said. “No one can see in. Not unless they have a flash right up against the window.”
He pushed the other strap down...and then kept pulling it, dragging the dress and bra down. I was bared almost down to my nipples.
“Here?” I asked. My eyes were dry now, but the switch to sex-mode was too fast for me. Tanner could go from zero to full speed in no time at all, but I needed time to warm up.
“Here,” Tanner said.
“What about….” I glanced towards the driver.
Tanner pressed a button and a solid partition rose between us and the driver.
I bit my lip. “But won’t he know why you’re doing that? Won’t he know that—”
Tanner nodded, smirking.
I felt the hot twist of something deep inside. The idea of doing it, right there in the limo, knowing that the driver knew damn well what we were getting up to...on the one hand, it seemed crazy, given what I’d just experienced. On the other, it seemed like the perfect antidote.
I was still sitting on his lap, twisted around to the side. He jerked the straps of my dress down further, dragging the fabric and the bra down past my breasts. My nipples just peeked over the top of the scarlet fabric and he pulled me to him, licking me, leaving the soft flesh hot and shining. I groaned and tangled my fingers in his hair. Ribbons of raw heat were shooting from my breasts straight down to my groin. Maybe I could go from zero to full speed faster than I thought.
Tanner’s hand slid down my body and then up my leg. Up my thigh. Up to the soft fabric of my panties. I caught my breath as his fingertips started rubbing my folds through the thin cloth...and then slid beneath it, teasing my opening. I eased my thighs apart just a little, panting.
Tanner jerked the dress lower and my breasts burst free completely. He started licking in circles around the hardening nipples, drawing a low groan from me. Down below, his fingertips were rubbing along the line of my lips, back and forth, brushing over my clit each time. Only the lightest of touches, but it had me squirming with anticipation. I could feel myself opening, moistening…
His fingers suddenly hooked around the front panel of my panties and tugged. There was the sound of something breaking and then I could feel cool air on my most sensitive flesh. I let out a cry of surprise. “Did—Did you just?”
He was smirking.
“Mr. Cole, did you just rip my knickers off?”
His fingers were immediately back on me and then—God—inside me. “I love it when you call them ‘knickers,’” he growled. One finger pushed deep, then hooked at just the right place, and I started to moan. His thumb began to circle my clit and my ass danced on his lap. Any worry I’d had about not being in the mood was long gone.
He eased me back a little, so that I was sitting right on the tips of his knees. Then he unfastened his belt and shoved his pants down, freeing his cock. It sprang upright. I stared at it as his fingers worked inside me.
“Sit astride me,” he said. I could hear the need in his voice.
I nodded. And then I changed my mind and sank to my knees on the limo floor, leaning over him.
“What are you—” But for once, I put my finger to his lips.
And then I lowered my head toward that thick length and took the head into my mouth. The feel of it was silken-smooth on my tongue and I could feel the hot throb of him—the aching need he had for me. I bathed him with slow swirls of my tongue, barely moving my mouth, letting the softness of my lips and the hot suction of my mouth take him closer. I wrapped one hand around the shaft and began to stroke—slowly at first, but getting faster and faster. My cheeks hollowed, sucking more, and I took him a little deeper. Then I glanced up at his face.
Immediately, he put his hands on my shoulders and guided me up and off him. “Enough!” he said, with so much urgency I gave a little smirk of my own. “Stop, or I’ll—” He shook his head. “Wow.” He was the most surprised I’d ever seen him. It felt good to have confounded him for a change.
He guided me to a crouch and I pulled my dress up my thighs and then up around my hips. I glanced out of the window and saw that there were people in the streets on either side of us. I really hoped he was right about the privacy glass.
I moved so that I was astride him, facing him, and got my knees up onto the seat on either side of him. Then I slowly lowered myself down until the shining head of his cock brushed against my wet lips.
Millimeter by millimeter, staring into his eyes, I sank down. I could feel the blunt, arrow-shaped head of him spreading me, opening me wider and wider and then plunging inside. I leaned in close to him, our faces almost touching, my eyes huge as I slowly impaled myself on him. All of the emotion of the evening was acting like a magnifier, making everything more intense. His hand came up to stroke my cheek and I could see in his face that he was having to hold back just as much as I was.
My breasts rubbed against his shirt and the soft fabric of his jacket as I eased myself up just a little and then sank down further. There was something deliciously filthy about being half-naked in the back of a moving limo. I could already feel the edges of a climax closing in on me, much faster than I would normally. When he took my breast in his free hand and started to slowly caress it, rubbing his thumb across the spit-wet nipple, I started to pant.
I opened my legs wider, my knees sliding on the leather seat, and more of that thick length filled me. I put my hands on his shoulders, supporting my weight, and they were as solid as roc
k. I leaned all the way forward as the limo went into a tunnel, lights strobing through the windows. And then, my mouth almost at his ear, I let out a long moan and pushed myself all the way down onto him.
Tanner caught his breath—he was as close as I was and part of me delighted in the fact I could do that to him. He closed his eyes for a second and then opened them again and nodded. He’d controlled himself. And suddenly, his hands were on my naked ass, guiding me upward.
As soon as I felt the hardness of him moving inside me, that silken steel gliding past my walls, I tipped over the edge. But even as I pressed my mouth to his ear, moaning my release, he started to move me faster. My climax slowed and extended, becoming one long wave of pleasure, as he drew me right up until he almost slipped from me entirely...and then brought me back down hard, right down to the root. I groaned as I was filled, twisting my hips around him, feeling my walls clutch and shudder around him, and he growled in response.
I sought his mouth with mine, desperate to feel him against me, and suddenly we were kissing, open-mouthed and panting, and his huge hands were drawing me up and slamming me down again and again and again, his thickness stretching me as it slid, gossamer-smooth, right up to my limits each time. I could feel his whole body tensing, could feel it building inside him, and my own climax was stretching on and on, making me thrash and buck atop him. “Yes,” I whispered, breaking the kiss. “Yes, let it go, Tanner.” I thought of how ready and naked he was inside me, primed like a weapon, and God, I wanted it. I reached down behind me, underneath us, and as he brought me down on him a final time I ran my fingertips over his full, heavy balls.
Tanner threw back his head and gave a loud cry. My orgasm rose to a peak and then broke over me, making me clutch him to me. I could feel him shooting, the spurts of him shockingly hot and so very deep inside me.
We stayed there with my head on his shoulder as the limo sped back to the mansion. I didn’t loosen my grip on him for a long time.
Chapter 8
The next morning, as we sat in the kitchen, I looked at Tanner and said, “We should look.”
“Look at what?” He sipped his tea and made a face. “What is this?”
“I thought I’d try you with Earl Gray. You were on English Breakfast before.”
“It tastes like someone dumped a bottle of perfume in it.”
I gave him a look. “Stop changing the subject. We need to look at it. You always check the gossip sites while you eat breakfast.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, and it’s a bad habit. Let’s stop.”
“We need to see how bad it is.” I reached for his phone.
He caught my wrist. “No. We don’t.” We stared at each other. “Charlotte, I don’t care what they say about you...about us. Fuck them.”
Part of me brightened. But that part that had kept me awake all night, worrying, didn’t buy it. This was my life, now—living in the public eye, worrying about everything I did. And I’d started off my new life with a PR disaster.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tanner said. There was a knock at the door and he stood, kissing me on the top of the head, and went to answer it.
I knew who it would be. When Maury walked in, I forced a smile onto my face. “Hi, Maury,” I said.
“Charlotte,” he said politely. Then, “We gotta get to this screen test, big guy. You all lorded up and ready to knock their socks off?”
Tanner turned to him. “Maurice,” he said in his best English accent. “Tell the driver that I will be with him momentarily.” And he turned and walked out, his nose in the air.
When he’d gone, Maury whistled. “Well, I gotta hand it to ya,” he told me. “Whatever time you had left between fucking him, you made him sound just like a Brit. Good job.”
I glowered at him.
“This, on the other hand,” said Maury, pulling out a tablet, “This is a fucking disaster.”
The tablet’s screen showed a gossip site with a whole series of pictures of me bursting out of the restaurant, sobbing. They had Tanner next to me, Tanner picking me up, Tanner carrying me down the stairs. And then pages of analysis: who was this mystery woman? Why was she crying? What was Tanner doing with someone like her?!
Maury paged through the updates. The first articles had been posted within minutes of the photos being taken—the wonders of the internet. Then, as the night had gone on, the “journalists” had uncovered more and more information. Like my name, and my home town, and my profession. They’d taken the least flattering photos from my Facebook page and included my Twitter handle, just in case anyone had anything they wanted to say to me.
Judging by the comments, I knew I was never going to want to check my Twitter account again. There were hundreds, and they ranged from “She’s weird,” or “She’s a psycho who claimed he touched her,” to endless comments about my shape. From there, they descended into full-on bile. There were several death threats, which would have sounded ridiculous and even funny a week before. It wasn’t funny when I read them.
“Do you want this?” Maury asked me. “Really?”
I shook my head. “But I want him,” I said, nearly in tears.
Maury leaned close. “You can’t have him. That’s not me saying that. That’s twenty million women from fifteen to fifty. They don’t want anyone to have their Tanner. But they’ll accept someone like Laura Pagonetti. They won’t accept you.”
I shook my head again. This was what I’d feared all along, but I didn’t want to believe it. We’d come too far.
Maury crouched down so that he was on my level, as if I was an errant child. “Look, I’m not stupid, kiddo. I know it’s not all you. Tanner was all over your photo on the internet. He was all ‘Her! I’ve gotta have her! Hire her!’ But then you flash your tits at him on a webcam—”
I looked at him, horrified. “You think that was deliberate?!”
“You get here and you’re all over him like a fly on shit. I get how it is. You see he has a thing for you and you jump into his bed, thinking you’ll get yourself a piece of that pie.”
My jaw dropped. “You think I want his money?!”
He cruelly imitated my accent. “Oh, gosh and bloody hell, darlin’. Of course you want his money. Everyone knows that. Not thinks; knows.”
I sat there in silence. I had no idea how to convince him he was wrong. More importantly, I realized, he was right in that everyone was going to assume I was a gold-digger. Everyone Tanner worked with, everyone we met at a party. Everyone.
Maury took a long breath, as if he was trying to control his temper. “You have to think about what’s best for Tanner and you,” he told me.
I knew what he was suggesting. I shook my head fiercely, trying not to cry.
“Be honest. You know this isn’t going to work. It’s time to be sensible.”
I pressed my lips hard together. I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry….
“Can you be sensible for me, Charlotte?”
I felt as if my heart was being ripped right out of me. I couldn’t bear to not be with Tanner. But I couldn’t imagine the life Maury described, either. Everyone screaming at me every time I was out in public, trying to get me to glance at them as they snapped a photo. The cruel comments. The endless suspicion over my motives. I couldn’t do it.
A tear rolled down my cheek.
I heard Tanner coming down the stairs. I knew that if he saw me like that, he’d panic and mess up the screen test. Everything we’d worked so hard for would be ruined. So I ran from the room and hid myself away in one of the restrooms. Through the door, I could hear Tanner asking where I was, frustrated because he wanted to say goodbye to me. Maury told him I was just fine, and had said to go ahead and leave and, eventually, Tanner relented and left.
I stood there for a long time, with my forehead resting against the restroom door. I already knew what I had to do. I just didn’t want to do it.
My ticket was dated for the next day. I called the airline and asked if they
could get me onto a flight that afternoon.
Chapter 9
Twenty-four hours later, I was sitting in a pub in London, not far from my mother’s house. I’d gone straight there from the airport, unable to face going back to my apartment. My mother had seen the newspapers that morning, of course. Tanner and I were international news. She’d hugged me, raged about men, and had only agreed to let me leave the house again when I got my best friend Jan to escort me.
Jan—blonde, Dutch and not afraid to speak her mind—was scrolling through my email for me. Someone had gotten hold of my email address and posted it on the gossip sites.
“Delete,” she said in her clipped, harsh tone. “Delete. Delete. Oh, God, disgusting. Delete. Some of these you should report to the police. It’s not okay that they be sending you this crap!”
I almost smiled. Jan’s English breaks down when she’s annoyed, which happens a lot. “No point,” I said. “They’re just jealous idiots, right?”
That was the mantra she’d been repeating for the last hour, since I’d called her up in tears. “Yes!” She thumped the table. “Just jealous idiots.”
We sat there in silence for a moment.
“I know it’s all a mess,” said Jan at last. “I know it feels spoiled. But you still have it. You were still with him for a week.”
“Not really a week. Only a few days. It could have been a week, if I hadn’t been so stupid.” Or maybe the stupid part had been stepping out from behind the wall, when Tanner had been working out. Getting into the hot tub with him. Daring to believe that I was worthy of being with someone like him.
“It was still good, right?” Jan asked. “And they can’t take that away from you.”
“No,” I echoed sadly. “They can’t take that away from me.”
She didn’t know the whole story. She didn’t know that I needed to get a pregnancy test, as soon as I could work up the courage. And that, if it was positive, my life was going to suddenly be a lot more complicated.
I sighed. “I keep thinking someone’s going to recognize me,” I said. “Even here.”
The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) Page 10