I turned the handle on the heavy door, slowly pushing it ajar, and took two hesitant steps into the room, scanning it for signs of his presence.

The first thing I noticed was that one of the two armchairs which were usually situated in the alcove between the windows was missing. Opening the door wider, I turned to look behind it and discovered him there. He had moved the chair in front of a free-standing mirror, a piece of furniture as gilded and fussy as the rest of them. He was just sitting there, clad only in his pyjama bottoms, his right hand inside his garment, touching himself.

He knew I was there but didn’t take his eyes off his reflection. “Close the door,” he said. His hand was still tracing an up and down oscillation under the thin fabric, slowly, the movements barely enough to maintain his erection.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked him, obeying and coming to a stop a pace or two from his chair. “Thinking of Julia?” I half-teased. At the mention of his wife’s name, his hand immediately stopped moving and his eyes sharply turned to me. He looked me up and down, and his gaze stopped not at my face, but somewhere in the area of my thighs. I was wearing my usual button-down nightshirt which almost reached down to my knees, but he’d know that I had no underwear on, as was my wont.

“Come, sit,” he said, motioning for me to approach with a jerk of the head. I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I sat down on the arm of the chair. He looked in my eyes for the first time tonight and raised his eyebrows. “On me,” he added, a little impatiently. I grew more hesitant now, realising there was more than one way of obeying and unable to divine what in his view must be the correct one at that moment. The truth is, he was a bit of a stranger to me when he was in this mood. Familiarity and affection were diluted by the remoteness of his disposition, and I was left feeling that I was fucking a familiar stranger. This game was exciting at times, plain awkward at others.

I got up and walked to the front of the armchair, blocking his view of his reflection. He ordered me to turn around and sit on his lap facing the mirror, his face expressionless, his voice the severe pitch I knew so well by now. As I climbed on the chair, my back to him, he lifted my shirt from behind and slid his hand between my legs, briefly cupping my vulva. His palm was unusually warm – from rubbing his cock, I realised – and I would have liked it to stay there, but he immediately removed it as I brought my legs up to kneel on the seat cushion, straddling him. I sat down on him, feeling his erection against my butt, my knees being pushed to the sides of the chair by his.

He brought his hand to the front of my shirt, lifting it and sliding his long middle finger between my fleshy outer lips. He was looking at me in the mirror from above my right shoulder, his face serious but relaxed. He explored there, very softly, and when he found me dry, he moved the same finger to my mouth, ordering me to open up. He brought the now well moistened digit back between my legs and massaged around my clit for a while, never breaking eye contact through the mirror.

“Keep looking at me,” he said right before he slid the finger in my vagina. I would have closed my eyes but he had commanded, and I obeyed, my eyes fixed on his, my breath becoming quicker. Now he used his other hand to free his dick from his pants and then draw my hips closer to his body. He was still fully erect, but he left it up to me if I would lift my pelvis to lower myself, letting him penetrate me or just sit there and allow him to keep pleasuring me. I opted for the second, and we both sat comfortably back, me against his chest, him against the back of the chair, both his hands now exploring me, his breath warming my neck.

I didn’t realise that my eyes had closed until he commanded me to open them and look at myself in the mirror. He unbuttoned my shirt and grabbed a breast with one hand, the other one still working its way deeper into me. “Look at what I’m doing to you,” he whispered in my ear, and it was surely adding to my arousal to observe and feel the movements of his hands at the same time. “Look at how scrumptious you are,” he purred. “I was planning to leave a big cum stain on Julia’s chair. See, she wants the bloody things back. But now I’m thinking I’d rather leave one on you,” he said pushing forward between my shoulders with one hand, wrapping his other arm around my hips, forcing me to bend over and brace myself on his knees. He lifted my shirt and threw it over my head, exposing my back. He held me down as he slid his dick into me and started thrusting, slowly at first, picking up speed as he got closer and closer to his climax. His arm was pulling at my hips, following his tempo, and I could hear in his accelerated breathing that he was close to coming when he abruptly stopped and slid out of me. He quickly sat me down on his thighs and pushed my neck forward with one strong hand, making me bend even lower so that I was almost folded in two, looking at the floor in front of his feet. I felt warm liquid trickle down the small of my back. After a couple of seconds, the pressure gave, and I was able to straighten my body.

I took my nightshirt off and used the master bedroom’s shower and Julia’s pink towels to clean myself up, somewhat upset that he had turned me on and left me hanging, a little aroused by the thought of having been used as a fuck doll. When I came out of the bathroom, he was still sitting there in the armchair, his pyjama stained, his head thrown back, looking as relaxed as I’d ever seen him.

He followed me with his eyes as I buttoned up my nightshirt and walked to the door.

“I’m going to bed,” I told him, one hand already on the door handle. He lifted his head to look into my eyes and nodded. “Are you coming?” I asked. He nodded again, and turned his gaze to the mirror.

Later, as I lay wrapped in a light sheet, still agitated by the high and irked by the crash of the missed orgasm, he entered the bedroom – our bedroom? Was I allowed to think along those lines, now that it was all over? – but didn’t join me in bed. He stood over me in the darkness instead, maybe trying to sense if I was asleep. I turned on my back and looked at his shape, silhouetted beautifully in the meagre diffuse light seeping in behind the dark drapes covering the north-facing windows. I felt my vexation subside. Maybe he’s up for a round two, I thought to myself, feeling hopeful.

“What?” I prompted him.

“Ah. Not asleep, then.”

“You turned me on and pulled out. Kind of hard to relax after that.”

“You can still rub yourself to sleep.”

“Cock is better,” I replied as I sat up and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. He sat down at the edge of the bed, and we locked eyes.

“Have mercy on me, love, I’m pushing fifty.” He cocked his head to the side. I didn’t reply, but just stared at him, waiting.

“Tongue or fingers?” he asked at last, and it took me a while to understand what he meant, because he had delivered his laconic question in the same deadpan expression he used to talk about any matter of minor significance.

“Aaah,” I sighed and remembered him emitting a similar sound three months earlier, in his office in Munich, after I had made a suggestion to him much like the one he was making now. And so we have come full circle, I thought as I threw the sheet to the side. “Both, McInroe,” I answered. “I need both.”

“Your wish is my command, my lady,” he replied with a suggestive smile.

It took me a while to reach the point of door-penetrating, bodyguard-embarrassing shouting. John had shed his dominant persona to become the considerate, suggestion-taking, advice-seeking lover he sometimes allowed to take the reins. He asked me to speak to him, to tell him what I liked and how I liked it, and after a while I managed to let go of my inhibitions and bring his attention to the spots I wanted to have touched, kissed, licked, sucked. He mostly followed my instructions, being disobedient at times, teasing me and seemingly enjoying it or outright defying me and denying me the pleasures I asked for, letting me cool off, only to come back with a vengeance a bit later.

Pushing fifty, he had said, but he gave no signs of tiredness as he got too aroused at my moaning and decided to treat me to another unexpected cock drilling. I threw some profanities at him for the sudden discontinuance of the tongue action – he had been sucking so wonderfully at my clit, and I had been so close to coming – but he laughed at my frustration and asked me if he should just stop. I cursed again at his relentless teasing, but “stop” was the last thing I wanted to shout at him.

That night, I went to sleep feeling tired but relaxed, the divorce sorted out, John at my side, the whole world in perfect order as far as I was concerned.