The Casting Couch

Book 1: Taste for Temptation

by Emma Allan

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance

Synopsis

Young Jason McIver, fresh from drama school, is desperate to make it as a frontline actor. So, when he is invited to Los Angeles, he is eager to seize his chance. But that chance comes in the intimidating form of predatory females whose appetite for sensual gratification is more profound than any traditional studio chief.

The choice for Jason is clear. If he wants to perform in front of the cameras, first he's got to demonstrate his talent on the casting couch . . .

Part one of the Taste for Temptation series.

Discover Piatkus Entice: temptation at your fingertips - www.piatkusentice.co.uk

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

Jason MacIver was an actor. It was official now, after three years at RADA. He was a good actor. That was official too, after
he had won the gold medal for the best student in his final year. He was also out of work. It had been five months since all
the excitement of winning the award and having his picture in the Evening Standard hugging Molly Hanson who had won the female prize. But he wasn’t worried. The prize had meant he had been taken on by one
of the top agents in London and he had already had five auditions and the promise of work with the RSC in the spring of next
year if only as a spear-carrier. Jason had an optimistic personality, always looking on the bright side of life. He knew his break would come and come quickly.


Jason had no money. He was permanently broke. But that didn’t worry him either. He would be rich one day, when he got his
break. Meantime he worked part time in whatever job he could get – burger joints, delivering pizzas, hod-carrying – to pay
the bills.


He took his chosen profession seriously. He continued to go to voice and singing classes, he made sure he went to as many
plays as possible to watch and learn from other actors and he kept his body in shape with regular games of tennis, long hours of fencing instruction and daily visits to a gym. The gym he frequented was not a fashionable club packed with
high-tech exercise machines designed to take the sweat out of training, but an unfashionable low-tech boxer’s gym in the Mile
End Road. There he could work out on the hard bag, use weights, medicine balls and wall bars, honing his body to fitness.
In fact, stripped down, his body looked very much like a boxer’s: hard contoured arms, a deep chest and a flat iron stomach
deeply lined with the definition of his ‘apts’. Each rib was visible like the rungs of a ladder and his legs were muscular
and strong. There was no doubt that Jason MacIver was in very good condition.


Nature had been on his side too. Jason was tall, six-foot-two in his stockinged feet, with hair so blond many women would
have envied it, and piercing blue eyes, a deep turquoise blue. He was a person who was capable of being very still; he did
not fidget when sitting or shift his weight from one foot to the other when standing and this had the effect, combined with
those steely blue eyes, of disconcerting people, especially women. Jason was not a man who had ever had any trouble with his
sex life.


He was working on the hard bag, hammering it with left and right combinations at waist level, sweat pouring into his track
suit, his hands bound in boxer’s tape, when the call came. It was his agent, or rather his agent’s assistant.


‘Have you got a pen?’ she asked. Of course he hadn’t.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a film. A big one. American money. Major studio picture. American director. Half made here, half in LA. They want a
newcomer for the young lead. The producer is here at the moment. We’ve sent them your pics and they’re interested.’


‘Great!’ Jason could feel his heart thumping and not from the exercise.

‘You’ve got to go to the Dorchester. Four-thirty tomorrow. Have you written that down?’

She must be mad. Did she seriously think he’d forget it?

‘You’re meeting Hanna Silverstein, she’s the producer, and George Mason.’

‘The George Mason?’


‘That’s him. Good, isn’t it?’

‘Great! Fantastic! How did you manage it?’

‘They say to go looking casual. Don’t wear a suit.’

‘The lead?’

‘The lead. Go get it, Jason.’

‘Listen, that’s really great. Thank Joy for me, will you?’

‘Oh, Joy says Hanna Silverstein is a real ball-breaker so not to worry if she’s rude. It’s just her way, apparently.’

Joy Chivas was his agent. She spoke to him rarely. In fact, she’d only spoken to him once since they’d had their first meeting.
If he got this film she would, no doubt, be on the phone in person.


‘I’ll be there.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. Will they give me a script to read, by the way?’

‘Don’t know …’

Well, he thought, as he put the phone down and went back into the gym to hammer the hard bag with renewed enthusiasm, this
might well be just the break he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was sure to get.


It took Jason a long time to decide what he was going to wear but, in the end, having posed in the mirror in six or seven
combinations, he decided on jeans, a crisp white shirt and his one expensive jacket – a leather Armani he had worked overtime
in a pub for three consecutive weekends to afford.


He took a taxi. It was an extravagance but psychologically it made him feel better, more important and substantial. Besides,
he didn’t want to arrive with his carefully brushed hair rearranged by gusts of wind as he walked down the street or got on
the tube.


The commissionaire, smartly uniformed with a gold-braided cap, open the door of the taxi as soon as it came to rest.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said, saluting.

‘Good afternoon,’ Jason replied, hoping he did not expect a tip. Apparently, as he continued to smile when Jason walked passed
him into the hotel, he didn’t.


Breezing into the main lobby with its marble floors, decorative gilt plaster work and fine oriental carpeting, Jason made
for the reception desk.


‘Hanna Silverstein, please,’ he said politely.

‘Who may I say it is, sir?’ the immaculately suited man behind the desk asked, his morning coat and pin-striped trousers looking
as though they had just come straight from the hotel laundry.


‘Jason MacIver.’

‘Thank you, Mr MacIver.’

In ten minutes Jason was standing outside the door of the Oliver Messel Suite on the top floor. He knocked tentatively and
the door was opened, after a moment, by a smartly dressed, tall and incredibly attractive brunette who Jason guessed to be in her mid-twenties.


‘Ms Silverstein?’ he said, stressing the Ms.

‘No, I’m Camilla Potts,’ she said in a soft American accent. ‘Come in. You’re Jason MacIver, right? Very prompt. You’re the
last appointment of the day. Follow me.’


Jason was surprised to find a flight of stairs inside the door. Camilla lead the way. It was not an uninteresting prospect
as her slender ankles and nylon-clad legs mounted the stairs in front of him. He could never remember seeing a more shapely
pair of legs and, since the skirt of her suit was short, there was a lot of them to see.


‘Are you Ms Silverstein’s assistant? Jason asked trying to make conversation.

‘Hell no. Just a friend of the family helping out for the day.’

At the top of the stairs the panorama of London unfolded in front of him. A wall of windows revealed a view of Buckingham
Palace on one side and Hyde Park Corner on the other. No wonder, he thought, that these suites cost so much. Camilla showed
him into the library, at least it was a room lined with books. On closer examination most of the books were fakes, their spines
mocked-up in cardboard.


‘She won’t be long I’m sure,’ Camilla said, closing the door behind her and leaving him to contemplate the view.

Almost immediately the door opened again. It took him a moment to recognise the man who entered. It was George Mason. He was
a lot shorter than Jason would have imagined and had put on a lot of weight since his last published photograph. He was also
very drunk.


‘Is this the fucking bathroom?’ he drawled.

‘No,’ Jason said, not at all sure what to say or do.

‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What the fuck do you know?’


‘I’m here to see Hanna Silverstein and you, sir.’

‘Where’s the bathroom then? I’ve got to take a leak.’ He slumped into one of the armchairs unable to stand up any longer.

‘Shall I go and find it?’

‘Yes, make yourself useful.’

Jason walked out into the suite again. There was no sign of Camilla or anyone else. He tried a couple of doors after knocking
and getting no reply. Behind both were bedrooms. He had found his way into the dining-room of the suite before he realised
that in such a grand hotel each bedroom would be sure to have its own bathroom.


He walked back to the first bedroom be had found and went in. It appeared to be unoccupied. There were three identical doors
on one wall. The first he tried was a wardrobe quite empty of clothes. The second, as he’d guessed, was a bathroom. Unfortunately
this was not empty. In the middle of the white marble tiling Camilla Potts stood absolutely naked. In fact that was not quite
true. She was wearing the black high heels Jason had followed up the stairs. As the bathroom was mirrored on every wall there
was no part of Camilla that was not available for Jason’s inspection, but she did not seem to be in the least concerned.


‘Yes?’ she said as coolly as if she were sitting behind a reception desk. She turned round to face him. Her breasts were extraordinary;
though as full and rounded as any Jason had seen, they seemed to defy gravity, the nipples pointing upwards. Her movement had produced a ripple in their flesh and they bounced and quivered at him. But even more noticeable was that
Camilla’s pubis was completely hairless. Whether natural or shaved he didn’t know, but, as she stood now with legs akimbo,
there was not a detail of her labia, her clitoris, the whole slit of her sex, that he could not see.


‘Yes?’ she repeated.

‘George Mason. He can’t find the bathroom,’ he blurted out.

‘Well, that’s nothing new. You’ll gather he has a drink problem?’

‘Yes,’ he said, trying desperately to pull his eyes from her naked body to her face. ‘He doesn’t look very well.’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’

She had picked up a pair of black French knickers from a neat pile of clothes on the bathroom stool and stepped into them.
They slid over her long thighs to fit perfectly over the strong curve of her arse, the action reflected from every angle by
the mirrors in the bathroom.


‘Shall I bring him in here … I mean …’

‘I’ll come and get him.’

She was slipping into a black strapless bra, lifting the cups over her large breasts, clipping the fastening behind her back,
then pulling each cup in turn to settle the breasts more comfortably in their lacy restraints.


Jason didn’t know whether to go or stay now his mission was accomplished. He decided to go.

‘Hold on,’ she said.

She had stepped into a black silk evening dress, cut to mid-thigh and supported only by the thinnest of spaghetti straps which hooked over her shoulders. The dress revealed, as it was no doubt intended to do, a deep dark tunnel of cleavage.


‘Zip me up, could you?’

Jason obliged with shaking hands.

‘Thanks,’ she said kissing his cheek with the briefest touch of her lips.

She escorted him out of the bathroom, back to the library, as naturally as if he’d just stepped out of her office. George
Mason had vanished.


The phone rang. Camilla answered it.

‘You’re on. Good luck.’

She showed him a door at the end of the long corridor. ‘What about Mr Mason?’

‘He won’t have gone far. I’ve got to go.’ She looked at her watch. It was a Cartier. ‘Thanks for the help.’

‘My pleasure,’ he mumbled, meaning it.

As he walked down the corridor and saw Camilla leaving the suite, the vision of her naked body haunted him. Her pouting labia,
pink and smooth, nestling at the top of those long legs. Let alone her breasts, heavy but upturned. He couldn’t get it out
of his mind, and he was supposed to be concentrating on getting himself a very important job.


‘Come!’ a thick accent from the American south shouted in reply to his knock on the door.

He entered another bedroom. This one was arranged with a large desk facing the door. The desk was covered with papers, scripts
and photographs. He could see his own ten-by-eight lying in a pile with a lot of others. Behind the desk Hanna Silverstein
sat smoking a long brown cigarette. She was not what he had expected. She was blonde, natural as far as he could tell, and wearing a white suit decorated with large gold buttons. Her face was tanned, rather over-tanned, but though
she must have been over fifty-five her face had remarkably few lines and wrinkles. She was not tall but her body was well-proportioned
and neat with not an ounce of fat.


An empty bottle of champagne stood on the desk together with an empty glass.

‘Your name?’ she asked, not smiling, lifting her glasses to read from a piece of paper on the desk. From the way she slurred
her words she was quite clearly drunk.


‘Jason MacIver.’

‘That’s right. Have we met before?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ She took her glasses off and got up. ‘Look, it’s been a long day for me. Perhaps we could do this in the morning.’

‘Sure,’ Jason said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

Hanna picked up the phone and punched in one number. Somewhere in the suite Jason could hear a phone ringing. No one answered
it.


‘If you want Ms Potts I think she went out.’

‘Out where?’

‘George Mason’s missing.’

‘He’s not missing. He’ll be downstairs in the bar.’

There was an awkward pause. Jason didn’t know whether he had been dismissed.

‘Do me a favour. Get me another bottle of champagne from the kitchen and open it. I’m hopeless with corks.’

It took Jason five minutes to find the kitchen, and the champagne. Hanna Silverstein drunk the first glass he poured for her quickly and held out the empty glass for a refill immediately.


‘Join me, I hate drinking alone,’ she said, indicating a glass on a side table.

The bottle disappeared rapidly despite the fact that Jason had only sipped at his glass. He was dispatched to get another.
This time, when he returned, Hanna was lying on the bed. He poured the wine into her glass on the bedside table.


‘So why don’t you sleep your way into pictures … what’s your name?’

‘Jason …’

‘Jason?’

‘Because I don’t have the tits.’ He thought it was funny. But Hanna wasn’t laughing. She was unzipping her skirt.

‘Fuck me.’

‘What?’

‘You heard. I want you to fuck me. It’ll do your career no end of good.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Goodbye career.’ Now she was laughing. She stripped off her skirt revealing lacy white French knickers.

‘And if I do.’

‘That depends, doesn’t it? Come on, I’ve had a hard day. Come over here and rake the grass off my lawn.’

‘Do I get the part?’

‘You learn fast, Jason.’

She caught him by the hand and with surprising strength pulled him on top of her. Immediately her mouth clamped on to his
and her hot tongue was forcing its way between his lips. Her hands were all over him, pulling his shirt out of his trousers,
unzipping his jeans, squeezing his tight buttocks, feeling for his cock.


His mind was racing. The woman was drunk. She might regret it in the morning and then he’d have no chance. On the other hand,
she might know exactly what she was doing, and if he refused he would have no chance either. His agent had said Hanna was
a ball-breaker but he’d had no idea she meant literally.


His body made the decision for him. Hanna had shucked her way out of her jacket and blouse and now in white bra and French
knickers, was burrowing her head down into Jason’s lap. Her fingers had pulled his pants down far enough to reveal his cock
and Hanna’s mouth fixed on it like a limpet on a rock, impossible to remove. As she sucked and licked and tongued his cock
he felt his erection swelling in her mouth. As soon as it was hard she came up for air.


‘Good boy,’ she said, pulling off her knickers. ‘Now give it to me.’ She lay back, her hand still wrapped around his cock,
not bothering to take off her bra. He was committed now. It was too late to walk away. So if he was going to fuck her he might
as well make a good job of it, he thought.


Jason rolled over on to his side and pulled himself down the bed, kissing Hanna’s flesh as he went. When his mouth reached
her hips he moved over her, kissing and licking his way over her navel until be reached the wispy blonde pubic hair. She opened
her legs wider. His tongue found her clitoris. He had always loved cunnilingus and all his lovers had said he was good at
it. Well, if this was the casting couch he was going to make sure Hanna didn’t forget him in the morning. He started playing
with her clitoris, circling it with his tongue, tapping it, nudging it, then running his tongue down to dart into the moist passage of her cunt. Within seconds be could feel her juices
on his tongue, within minutes Hanna was shaking with orgasm, a long series of moans escaping from her lips.


‘Well, you are a find,’ she said, pulling his head up from her cunt. ‘Now I want cock.’

He climbed up over her holding his cock at the entrance to her cunt, feeling her fleshy labia against his glans.

‘You want it?’ he asked, looking into this stranger’s eyes, now quite wild with lust.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she screamed.

‘Take it then,’ he said as he pushed his cock home, sinking it to the hilt in one long, hard stroke. Immediately he was deep
inside her Hanna bucked her hips up at him pushing his cock in and out, reinforcing his own strokes, controlling the rhythm.
She wanted it hard and deep and frequent. The rhythm she established was frantic, like riding a horse in the rodeo, but he
managed to stay in the saddle and give as good as he got. She bucked and kicked and scratched. She bit his shoulder and scored
his back with her nails but he stayed with it, pushing his cock into her and grinding his pubic bone against her clitoris.


‘I’m coming,’ she cried as he felt her whole body tense under him. ‘Oh my God, I’m coming …’

With one final spasm she arched off the bed and held his cock deep inside her. He pushed deeper still and felt her body trembling
around him, every nerve responding to her climax. Then he felt her relax as though melting under him.


‘Now it’s your turn, lover,’ she whispered in his ear. . . .