A Pregnant Clause

Greetings everybody! Sorry about disappearing, I've been busy all month helping set up a wedding (not mine) and getting ready for a new part-time job.

I've also been writing. Aside from working on RSB3, I also started writing a sequel to my free mind-control story on Humbled Harlots, "Thank You For Staring". That sequel quickly turned into a prequel, and at this point is probably long enough that I'll end up publishing it as a new ebook when I finish it.

Anyway, I've got several captions basically finished as well, and as is increasingly the case lately, today's caption turned out way too long to actually put on a picture. Plus I only had the one picture to use, and didn't want to cut half my text to make it legible.

Click the 'Read More' to see the caption.

A Pregnant Clause

***

"Wow, how many are you having?"

"Oh, uh, just the one, I hope."

"Why, you look ready to pop! When are you due, dear?"

"Any day now. Say, I really nee--"

"Is it a boy or girl?"

"Uh, I don't know, I wanted to be surprised."

"Ooh, can I feel it?"

If there was one thing Peter had learned from the past three months living as a pregnant woman, it was that people were endlessly nosy and absolutely did not take "No, you may not fondle my belly" for an answer, no matter how politely he phrased it.

He waited, impatiently, as the stranger groped his rounded midriff, until finally the woman seemed satisfied. With a final pat on his belly, she said, "Well, I must be getting on my way. Good luck on your pregnancy dear. Don't forget your breathing exercises, they're a real lifesaver."

Peter thanked the woman, and left the building at a hasty waddle, before someone else could strike up a conversation. Taking lamaz classes every day on his lunch break was bad enough, without being assaulted by every woman he met on the way out of the civic center. It was the rare day he got back to the office less than a quarter-hour late and without at least a dozen random stranger inquiring about the state of his belly.

A few months earlier, Peter had been staring down a nasty sexual harassment suit, one that his lawyers assured him would not just be hugely expensive to fight in court, but would also destroy his company reputation in the meantime.

The timing could not have be worse. The company had had two failed product launches in as many years, and earnings were down across the board. He was midway through talks to finalize a merger with a competitor that would rejuvenate his business, but if they got wind of the lawsuit, it would give the bastards exactly the leverage they needed to turn the negotiations in their favor and cost him millions in the process.

Unfortunately, his secretary refused to accept a settlement deal. He had to give her one thing, the bitch knew when she had the winning hand, and right now she had him firmly by the balls, and wasn't letting go for a cheap windfall.

Desperate to make the suit go away before it caused any lasting damage, he finally asked her what she'd accept to drop the suit. Her response had not been what he had expected.

Three months later, and Peter, or rather Peggy, as the girls at the office now called him, was stuck in maternity dresses and taking humiliating lamaz classes five nights a week, when he wasn't at the office taking phone calls. Meanwhile, his secretary was sitting in his old seat, filling in as Acting-CEO while he finished his part of the deal.

Initially the bitch had wanted him in dresses for a full year, living as a woman full-time. His lawyers had argued her down to six months, but she'd added the "Pregnancy Clause" as she called it.

Apparently she and the other secretaries had not been happy about him taking away their paid maternity leave after the last contract renegotiations, and had learned of a rare procedure designed to let transitioning transwomen experience pregnancy first-hand. A few hours in surgery later, and he'd awoken, not just with two inert silicone sacks in his chest, but a much larger implant sitting in his abdomen.

He patted his apparent baby-bump, and couldn't help but grin. Embarrassing as this whole experience had been, it was almost over. His lawyers might've only gotten his bitch of a cockteasing secretary to drop the deal to six months, but he'd countered with an offer of his own: he'd live as a pregnant woman, but only for three months, with her taking over as CEO in his stead.

As he'd expected, she'd found this offer too good to resist, but had added a final wrinkle of her own, namely that he'd agree to spend an additional month as Peggy the Office Preggo for every percentage point she managed to add to the company stock price before the initial three months were over.

She'd looked surprised when he agreed to her final terms, but now, three months later, Peter could only grin in triumph. He'd known from long experience that the stock price dropped steadily during winter, after the holiday rush was over. And as he'd expected, the initial $5.23 share price had dropped a full dollar over the last three months, and under the watchful eye of the company's first female CEO too. He was going to lord that over his secretary for years to come, assuming he didn't just fire the bitch once he got out of surgery tomorrow.

Smirking to himself, and realizing it hardly mattered if he got back to his secretarial desk on time, this being his final day as a broad, he stopped and checked his phone. He had an app that kept track of the company share price, updating every few seconds. As the next day was a federal holiday, markets were closing early at noon sharp, so there would only be a few more moments before the price locked in and his three month nightmare was finally at an end.

The app loaded, and updated with the most recent pricing data.

 

Peter nearly dropped the phone. "Ten dollars a share!?!"

Frantically, certain that it was a glitch in the software, he hit update again and again. Each time, the price went higher. Somehow the shares had more than doubled since he last checked his phone, just before his pointless lamaz class.

He called his former secretary, now acting-boss. "Oh, hi there Peggy! Girls, girls, it's Peggy on the phone, keep it down. Sorry Pegs, we were just celebrating the great news."

Peter gulped, feeling oddly weak. "N-news?"

"Yeah! Remember that pesky merger you were working on? Well, I finalized it this morning, and we went public just a few minutes ago."

Peter felt his legs, sore from months of wearing high-heels and holding the added weight of his twenty pound belly implant, nearly collapse under him. How had she finalized the merger? He'd spent nearly a year just getting talks set up, let alone getting the merger deal pushed through the Board review and the shareholder vote. It should've been ages yet.

"Oh, wait, you must not have heard. You were probably busy working on your breathing exercises. Well, we had a big talk last week, and I decided it was just wasting too much time, so I agreed to their demands outright. They went for it, and the shareholders and Board all voted in favor of it this morning. And now the share are... oh wait, that's the closing bell ladies!"

Peter winced, as the phone buzzed from the loud cheer of the office secretarial pool.

"Wow! The final share price is... twelve-dollars and ten cents!! A record high!!! Sorry Pegs, sounds like you're going to be staying on as our resident baby-maker for a while longer. Now, I know you already had that surgery scheduled and all, so maybe instead of canceling, you could have the docs add a few more liters to your little bun-in-the-oven? Pegs? Pegs?! Huh, she must've hung up."

Peter, or as he'd be known for the next 230 months, Peggy the Office Preggo, lay on the ground, hyperventilating beside his dropped phone.

Strangers quickly crowded around the collapsed executive-turned-pregnant-secretary. "Everyone get back, let the lady have some air. And someone call an ambulance, I think she's going into labor!"

***