The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (4 page)

My eyelids slowly descended and I dreamed.

***

I was reclining on a chaise-longue while a male slave clad in not much more than some criss-cross leather belts fed me peeled grapes. The sun was blazing overhead, but another slave was fanning me just so and the cool breeze made it bearable. Below my private box, the rest of the coliseum bayed for blood.

Tannis Colius strode into the arena. Criminal. Rebel. Leader of the slave uprising. And still, the sight of him made me catch my breath. Even from high up in my box, he looked to be nearly seven feet tall and his shoulders seemed twice as wide as mine. He wasn’t wearing much more than the slave standing behind me, but his muscles bulged and shone with oil and made the leather belts look even less substantial. A fringed leather skirt protected the delicate sensibilities of the watching Roman ladies. I found myself wondering if he was wearing anything underneath it.

His enemies screamed war cries and ran at him—at least a dozen of the finest gladiators in Rome. I should have been cheering for them to slay the criminal who had threatened the republic. Instead, I found myself clutching at handfuls of my long white dress every time it seemed that Tannis might lose. I leaned forward, biting my lip, as steel clashed against steel and Tannis grunted and swung and uttered curses far too colorful for my noble ears.

And then he turned and saw me from right across the arena. His gray eyes burned into mine and a hot shock traveled through me, from my face all the way to the treasure between my legs. I was sitting right up on my chaise longue, now, my knuckles white as I gripped the balcony.

Tannis erupted into a whirlwind of flashing blade and spouting blood. Heads and arms went flying through the air. When he was done, Tannis was the only man left standing and the crowd was cheering his name.

I watched, frozen, as he scaled the wall of the arena and climbed over the balcony into my private box. He landed no more than a foot from me. I could feel the heat of his body throbbing through the air towards me and breaking across my skin, seeming to soak straight through my dress.

“Guards!” I said in a strangled voice. “Seize him!”

But my guards and my slaves were all standing back against the far wall. Watching.

“They’re all on my side, now,” Tannis snarled. “The winning side. We’ll take your precious republic...as soon as I’ve finished taking you!”

I drew in a gasp. “Never! You foul beast! You will never so much as touch—”

His huge hand was suddenly on my waist, the heat of him seeming to burn through the fabric.

“Well you—you shall never know the lips of a noble woman!” I told him. We were staring into each other’s eyes, my heart pounding in my chest. “I shall never—”

He snarled and bent me backwards over his arm and suddenly his lips were on mine. So strong and hard, pressing,
demanding
that I open to him and then my lips were softly parting, something like a groan escaping me. My whole body went weak, wilting like a plant in the sun, and I felt an arm as solid as iron slide under my back to hold me up.

No! No, I mustn’t! I am a noble woman and he is nothing more than a slave! What will the other ladies think?!
And then his tongue was teasing my lips and all reason left me. I opened shamefully easily for him and then he was ravishing me with his mouth, his tongue exploring my softness as I groaned and thrashed weakly in his arms.

He stepped back for a moment and I thought that it was over. Then he ripped my dress from me, the shreds of it falling around my feet. There was a gasp from the crowd and I realized that hundreds—no,
thousands
—of nobles were watching from their seats. It should have made me tremble in shame, but the sun was caressing skin that had been carefully shielded my entire life, and it felt wonderful.

Tannis pushed me back towards the chaise longue, but then seemed to change his mind. He pushed me instead to the balcony, until the fronts of my hips brushed against it. Then he pressed me down over it, so that my top half was hanging out into space, my breasts swinging in the air.

“D—Do you mean to take my life?” I asked, my voice quavering in fear.

He stepped up behind me and strong hands parted my thighs. I heard the rustle of leather: his skirt being raised. “No,” he told me. “I mean to take
you.”

And then I felt it pressing against me. Far thicker—and, somehow I knew, longer—than that of any of the Roman men I’d bedded. And it was already parting the petals of my sex—petals that I was ashamed to find were sopping wet for him.

“You are ready for me,” he grunted. “Ready to be taken by a real man.”

I couldn’t deny it. My face flushed. Half of Rome was about to watch me being taken by a common criminal, and yet...I could feel the hot waves of desire rippling through me, turning into throbbing heat between my legs. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, take me!”

And then, with a sudden thrust, he was entering me, impaling me with a length that seemed harder than steel. My body clutched and shuddered around him, sparks of raw pleasure erupting from every inch that he touched. And as he slid deeper, deeper, I knew that I’d been right about his size. “Gods!” I moaned. A dark red mist was clouding my mind. Years of desperate need, repressed by polite Roman society, were breaking free.

“The only god you need to pray to,” hissed Tannis savagely, “Is Venus, to beg her that you’re not ready to make a child today.” I groaned as he filled me completely, stretching me. “Because I have no intention of spilling my seed outside you.”

He began to thrust, his hard body slamming against my upraised ass. His hands came around and scooped up my hanging breasts, fondling them as he pounded into me and sending new ribbons of lust through me, rippling freely and then snapping tight. “A...a child with you?” I said in disbelief. I thought of all my noble friends seeing my belly swelling up, knowing that I’d lain with a common criminal. “Gods, no! That would be—”

“It will be a symbol of the revolution,” Tannis snarled.

He was thrusting faster, now, my body tight around him, every stroke like iron wrapped in velvet, and I could no longer speak, could barely think. I closed my eyes. The thought of it should have been horrifying, but, oddly, it seemed to explode at my core with dark fire, making me squirm and thrash against the sun-warmed stone of the balcony.
Yes. Pregnant by an outlaw.
My noble name would be ruined...but he felt so good inside me, and it would feel even better when his seed erupted there. I felt myself begin to drive my hips back to meet him like a gutter whore, my cheeks flushing. “Y—Yes,” I whispered. Then, louder, “Take me Tannis!” I could feel my orgasm rushing towards me like a raging bull, massive and unstoppable. “Take me, Tannis!”

“Charlotte!”

My brow wrinkled. My name wasn’t
Charlotte!
What sort of name was that for a Roman noble woman? I was so close, so close. “Take me, Tannis!” I almost screamed. “Fill me with your slave seed!”

“Charlotte!”

My eyes opened and I looked directly into the blazing Roman sun. It seemed smaller than I remembered it, more white than yellow, and it was surrounded not by sky but by a white plastic bulkhead.

I sat bolt upright and turned towards the voice that had called my name. Rachel was staring at me, her lips pressed tightly together. She was trying not to laugh, I realized.

Then it hit me how quiet the cabin was. Even quieter than normal. Everyone was either looking at me, or trying very hard to pretend they weren’t looking at me.

I played back the last thirty seconds of my dream. “Did I—” My face blazed crimson. “Did I...Oh God, please tell me I didn’t—”

“Who’s Tannis?” asked Rachel sweetly. “And why are you so intent on him filling you with his slave seed?”

***

After that, I decided I should probably stay off the alcohol for the rest of the flight. I remembered seeing a jug of cool, clean iced water in the galley, the last time I’d got up to stretch my legs, and figured it would be the perfect antidote to my throbbing head.

It wasn’t the only thing that was throbbing. I could feel the hot slickness between my thighs, and I was glad that the cabin was dark enough that people couldn’t see my red cheeks. I could feel that my panties were actually damp. It had been a long time since I’d had a dream like
that.

When I got to the galley, one of the female crew was being slowly backed into a corner by a painfully elegant woman in a business suit. She must have been forty, but she looked as if she’d stepped off of a magazine cover. “This is
rid-eek-ulus!
” she said in a heavy French accent. “‘I’ll complain about you to your superior!” She made
superior
have at least fifteen ‘r’s.

“Please don’t!” begged the cabin attendant. She was almost in tears. “I’m sorry we ran out of sleep socks! It’s my fault—I’m in charge of restocking and I forgot.”

“I have a
meeting,
” the woman said, unimpressed, “and I must
sleep
tonight
.
I cannot sleep with cold feet. I will write a letter—”

“Please,” said the cabin attendant. “It’s my first flight!”

I looked down at the washbag in my hand. They’d given everyone in first class a plush black bag of goodies when we’d boarded, and I’d brought mine with me because there was a toothbrush in there and I was going to hit the restroom on the way back to my seat. I pushed between the two women and held mine up as I dug through it. “Sleep socks?” I asked. “Is that what they are? I did wonder why you gave us socks.” I fished out the thick wool socks and handed them to the French woman. “There.
First class
sleep socks.”

She looked at them and opened and closed her mouth a few times, clearly angry at having lost her reason to complain. “It is
rid-eek-ulus
,” she said again, but she trudged back to her seat.

“Thank you
so
much,” said the cabin attendant, slumping against the bulkhead. “I can’t believe I forgot to restock those things. We ran out just as we got to business class. It’s been chaos here ever since Kaitlyn left.” She gave a yawn that lasted a full six seconds. “Sorry. Kaitlyn was the person I replaced. She ran off with a billionaire.”

That brought me right back to Tanner, and my dream. The intense humiliation of everyone hearing me calling out in my sleep had had one advantage—it had allowed me not to think about
why
I’d had that dream, and what it meant. I gave the cabin attendant a weak smile and poured myself a glass of ice water.

What was wrong with me? The previous morning, Tanner Cole had barely even been on my radar, except in a very vague, distant sense as a celebrity I’d never meet. Now I’d jilled off to him in the tub, he’d seen me naked and I was dreaming of him as some sort of leather-clad hero who—I flushed—
conquered
me. It was
rid-eek-ulus.
I didn’t even like him! I mean, okay, he was tall and dark and all muscley and the heroes he played had a certain something, but the man himself? The actual, real-life Tanner Cole? He was like an out-of-control ball on a pinball table, bouncing from bar to bar and knocking every starlet he met flat on her back.

That was it, I decided proudly. I might have a tiny but completely understandable crush on some of his characters, now I came to think about it, but I certainly wasn’t crushing on the man himself. And, therefore, working with him would be no problem whatsoever.

Right?

***

After I’d hugged Rachel and promised to call her if I ever needed anything in LA, I raced through the baggage carousel and customs, trying to avoid looking anyone from first class in the eye.

As I stumbled into the arrivals lounge, I saw a tall, dark-haired guy in a suit holding up a sign. I stopped in my tracks, drawing growls from the people behind me. The sign said
Charlotte Portingwood
and it wasn’t scrawled with marker pen on a sheet of cardboard. It was printed on a very posh-looking card with green and black borders. Tanner had sent a limo for me. I’d been expecting to get a cab.

What if there are two Charlotte Portingwoods?
I wondered.
What if I get in the limo and it takes me off to deliver a lecture on particle physics, or to a meeting with a drug kingpin?

“Miss Portingwood?” The man had a goatee and a mustache, and looked something like a twenty-first century musketeer. “Going to see Mr. Cole?”

Oh. Well, that was alright, then.

***

It was dark. That threw me completely. I’d known about the time difference, of course—after what had happened with the phone call, I’d quadruple-checked the flight time. But that didn’t change the fact that I’d boarded a plane in London at 10pm, eaten a late dinner, slept, woken up, and now it was evening again. That might make sense scientifically, but it didn’t
feel
right.

The limo sped through the streets of Los Angeles—which seemed to have more restaurants and fewer gangs shooting each other than I’d expected—and up into the hills. The houses grew further apart and the walls around them rose until they were too high to see over. Eventually, we came to a set of iron gates that opened soundlessly before us.