The Mysterious Miss Mayhew by Hazel Osmond

one part of her utterly straightforward approach to her sexual needs that he, old-fashioned little Englander that he was, would never get used to. He didn’t want to talk about her other lovers either, those men who met her in hotel rooms around Europe to take her mind off venture capital and another night apart from Jakob.
    ‘So,’ she said, leaning her backside against the desk. First one strap was pushed down from her shoulders and then the other. She lowered the whole top to reveal her breasts, and however many breasts he saw in his life, that thrill never went. He had to will himself not to hurl his mouth towards them.
    A smoulder of a look from her and then she was undoing the fastenings on the material between her legs.
    What did his face look like at this minute? Yearning?
    He thought of that first time he’d met her, when he had really been interviewing her – a woman whose bank was bringing jobs to the region. Had he looked like he looked now? Is that what had made her, when all the questionswere over, reach under the table and put her hand high up on his thigh? He remembered the shock of realising that he’d stumbled on a woman who could provide him with something that, up until that minute, he hadn’t been aware he needed. Someone who didn’t want to get to know his family or the intricacies of his job or what had happened to his marriage, but who would love to have sex with him, vigorously, imaginatively, often.
    He revelled in the fact that she was a secret and what he was doing seemed daring. That Grietje could never be fully his or even fully known.
    ‘What would you like, Grietje?’ he asked, trying to hurry her along to the moment when she’d let him touch her.
    She thought about that. Licked her lips, he guessed, on purpose. ‘This,’ she said and gave him a little demonstration of what she meant, although you couldn’t call it a dry run. ‘And then again with your mouth.’ She arched her back. ‘Then however you want it, Tom. Rough. Gentle. Play a bit first.’ He followed her gaze to the bedside table.
    ‘So many choices.’
    A soft, low laugh. ‘So, what are you waiting for? A written invitation?’
    Standing up, he felt lightheaded because every drop of blood in his body seemed to be in his groin, burning andbubbling and driving him to stand between her legs and kiss her deeply and roughly on the mouth.
    He pushed her back on the desk and she flexed her hips, trying to rub herself against him and then he was moving away a little so he could lower his head.
    ‘So many choices,’ he repeated, ‘a real smörgåsbord,’ and then he was taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking and tonguing it. Smooth, then tightly budded. He brought up a hand to help him and felt her breathing quicken as he scraped his teeth gently back and forth. Everything about him felt hard and taut now – thigh muscles, stomach, cock, resolve.
    ‘Not smörgåsbord …Wrong country, wrong country,’ she said in little gasps. ‘Smörgåsbords are for the Swedish, you stupid Englishman.’ He could hear her need to come in the irritation running under her words, as if by making them harsher she could goad him into getting her there quicker.
    ‘Wrong country?’ he said. ‘Really?’ and moved his other hand between her legs. He slipped his fingers into the heat and the wet of her and those two sensations together made him close his eyes in an effort to pace himself. Slowly he slid his thumb to the place he wanted.
    He stroked, slowly.
    ‘The wrong country?’ he asked again. ‘And am I in the wrong country now, too?’ A push that sent his fingers deeper into her and caused a sharp pull in of her breath. ‘Strange … feels like the right country to me, Grietje.’
    Him in control now, her under him and responding. Wonderful to be able to do this with a woman again.
    ‘ Niet stoppen ,’ she said, urgently, and she was grabbing hold of his shoulders and pulling herself up so she could grind against his