I do not know what time it was that Irina brought us tea and coffee. I only know that within a few moments of her doing so, Ivanova arrived with Mira’s phone.

'There is a call for you. It is, apparently, urgent.’

Sitting up and still in that beautiful nightgown, Mira took the phone from Ivanova and spoke. Her breasts were not concealed by the gown, they showed, white against the black and her dark nipples showed brown against them. Ivanova sat in a chair at the end of the bed and looked at me, smiling like a cat.

Her call ended, Mira dropped the phone onto the side table and said, ‘Joanna and I will have to return to London immediately. Arrange for our bags to be packed and follow later, Ivanova.’ She got out of bed. ‘Get dressed, Joanna. The car will be on the quay in an hour.’ With that, she swept out of the room leaving me and Ivanova.

‘You had better get moving, Joanna. Mira does not like to be kept waiting.’ She did not leave the chair and when I got out of bed to shower and dress she remained there, studying me, her hand under her skirt lasciviously and openly stroking her pussy. ‘You’d look good with some marks like mine.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so and so does Mira.’

I realised that I did not like her. I ignored her as I dressed and took my bag and briefcase and left my cabin and made my way to the deck. Mira was already there and looking as if she had slept all night. I knew I looked a mess. A boat took us to the quay and the Mercedes was waiting there to speed us back to London. Mira barely spoke to me during the journey, spending much of the time on the phone. I read through some papers and made some notes.

When she did speak it was terse and I wondered why I didn’t just tell her to shove her job.

‘We’ll drop you at your flat and you can change into something more appropriate. Come to the office at around noon, we will be meeting the builders of the new hotel and I want your assistance.’

‘What new hotel?’

‘I have bought a hotel in Bloomsbury. The builders have discovered some problems in the lobby area and we need to discuss them.’

‘I don’t know anything about building.’

‘Just be there.’

And, I thought, fuck you as I stood on the pavement outside my flat and wondered what would be appropriate to wear.

A little before noon I arrived at the office. Mira was nowhere to be seen. I went to my office and found a stranger sitting at a desk placed just outside my office. She introduced herself in perfect English as Maria and I vaguely recalled seeing her name in that selection of CVs Ivanova had shown me when attempting to find a secretary for me. She seemed personable and was beautifully dressed in a simple black dress, not dissimilar from the one I had chosen. Hers merely looked about twenty times more expensive than mine. I went into my office and sat down, sorting through some papers. Maria brought me coffee and the bright summer sunlight caught her almost white blonde hair and highlighted the myriad of subtle changes of colour in it.

The builder’s representatives arrived and, despite knowing nothing about the situation, I was forced to sit and talk to them. They explained the problem with the building and it sounded to me that it was pretty serious. I asked them what the alternatives were and they showed me a report they had compiled. This allowed me time to read and digest it without having to make any decisions.

It was nearly two o’clock before Mira arrived. She entered the room, sat down and asked me to explain what the problem was. I did so. She asked me what the options were and I explained what I had just read, asking the builders to confirm I had understood correctly.

Mira makes decisions really quickly. Having heard from the builders and me she gave them instructions, pronounced the meeting closed and dismissed them.

‘You did well, little western lady.’

‘Thank you, Mira.’

‘I saw your new secretary. I think I will have to fuck her, she is beautiful.’

‘You have Ivanova.’

Mira looked at me with a dangerous look. ‘I have whoever I want. Come up to my apartment. I have something I want to show you.’

Together we boarded the lift to her apartment. It arrived at her penthouse and I followed her into the vast space she called home.

‘Wait here.’

I stood in the huge lounge and a few moments later she returned carrying a large, oblong and flat parcel. She unwrapped the brown paper that covered it and inside was a most beautiful painting of a woman, naked except for a blindfold. The subject had her back to the artist, her head turned to display delicate features and there were marks, like Ivanova’s after her whipping, across the skin of her back. Mira held the painting and looked at me.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think it is grotesque. She is a beautiful woman, why would anyone want to mark her like that?’

‘You saw for yourself the pleasure Ivanova got from it.’

‘I did but I still don’t understand it.’

Mira put the painting down and wordlessly led me further into the apartment. The room we finally came to was another sitting room with views all across the city. It was stunning and I stood by the window taking it in. I heard the clink of glass and turned to see Mira was pouring champagne.

‘I was impressed by your ability to grasp the details. It was a test, of course and one you passed. Here.’

She handed me a glass and toasted me. ‘To your success.’

I felt inordinately pleased. She had changed into a beautiful silk dress, tight to the waist and full skirted to just above her knees. It was a dark red and her hair contrasted beautifully with it. The black, silk stockings she wore were fine and very sheer. As usual her feet were shod with nail like heels. She sat, crossing her legs and indicated I should sit too. I sat in a black leather chair, facing her.

‘I want you to become my assistant, Joanna.’

‘But all your staff are Russian.’

She nodded, sipping her wine and seeming to consider this. ‘They are because I can own and trust them. You have ability and I believe I can trust you. Am I right? Can I trust you?’

‘Can you trust me to do what?’

Mira stood and went to the drink table and poured another glass, then brought the bottle to me and refilled my glass, her eyes moving between the glass and my eyes.

Turning to replace the bottle she said, ‘I have secrets. Nobody from your world can understand mine. Money does bring happiness, never believe the lie that it doesn’t. But that happiness comes at a price and the price is enemies. When the Soviet Union collapsed my father was not as scrupulously honest as you westerners expect people to be. Nobody who had ambition could afford to be. There were many unsettled scores.’ She paced the floor as she lectured me. ‘My father is dead and some of those scores may come to haunt me. I have built my life here in England and I am safe, relatively safe but only so long as everyone around me is trustworthy.’

‘I don’t understand, what scores?’

She almost spat the words, ‘Of course you do not understand. If I tried to explain you still would not. To remain secure I have to be able to trust everyone around me without question. I can trust Ivanova and Irina and all the others because I own them. You will never understand that either.‘ She turned on her heel to look deep into my eyes. ‘I need someone with your abilities. But I must know I can trust you.’

Her paranoia was beginning to annoy me. ‘I am a professional. If I learn things when working for you, they are secret and covered by our confidentiality agreement. If I learned that you were involved in anything illegal I’d go to the police. If you’re not then you have nothing to fear from me.’

She laughed. ‘Of course I am not involved in anything illegal. My business is precisely what it appears to be.

I even pay taxes to your pathetic government!’ She lowered her voice. ‘I just want to believe that my private life, the things you have seen are something you will keep to yourself.’

‘Dammit, Mira, it was you who showed me your private life. I didn’t ask you to.’

She sat again and remained silent for several moments. I drank my champagne slowly.

Suddenly she spoke. ‘The bedroom’s through there,’ she pointed, ‘go and get undressed and wait for me.’

I sat perfectly still.

‘You don’t want to go to bed with me?’

‘You said it, Mira – you may own Ivanova but you don’t own me. I know I behaved like a whore when we were on the boat but that’s not me – it’s not what I am.’

For a moment or two I thought she was going to explode, she seemed to be wrestling with herself mentally. Then she sighed, put her glass down and stood. I watched as she walked to me, extended her hand to me. I took it and she pulled so I rose from the seat. She took the glass from my hand and carrying it led me to the door she had indicated. Like the rest of the place, the bedroom was vast. The bed was covered in dramatic red spreads, similar in colour to her dress and looked like silk. The walls were draped with tapestries. The view from the windows was no different from that of the sitting room. The tall woman turned, still holding my hand. She kissed me and for the first time it seemed like a lover’s kiss; it was tender and soft. My hands moved around her and hers around me. I had to arch my neck to let her tongue into my mouth. I felt her hand at the zip at the back of my dress and slowly she pulled it down and opened the back of my dress to caress my naked back. I murmured incoherently into her mouth and she kissed me harder, moving to allow the dress to fall away from me as she stroked the straps down my arms.

I felt the dress slide slowly down my legs to lie at my feet. Her hands on my shoulders she stepped back and let her eyes roam over me then kicked off her shoes.

‘I am not used to people who do not do as I say. You must learn to be patient with me.’ As she talked she was undoing her own dress and I moved in close to help her, looking up at her and fingers fumbling a little on the delicate fastenings. She smiled and together we removed her dress. Her lingerie had probably cost my annual earnings, delicate and dark red like her dress. Her dark nipples showed through the fine silk of her bra. Her triangle of hair was similarly visible. I reached behind her to unclasp the bra but she pushed me away and opened it at the front.

We stood together, naked to the waist and there was a moment of tension.

She moved to the bed and pulled the covers back to reveal soft sheets of a lighter red colour.

‘Now will you get into bed?’

I smiled and slowly walked to the bed and slipped into the sheets’ cool caress. She watched me as I lay back and allowed myself to enjoy the prospect of her body. The dark nipples were hard and extended, her eyes gleaming. She put one knee on the bed and rested her hand flat on my belly.

‘I’m not able to change too much. I will never be exclusive.’

‘Would you please get into bed and stop talking?’

She laughed and moved into the bed with me, pulling the sheet over us. I rolled onto my side and we kissed, light kisses on the mouth and nose and chin and forehead. Her hands were on my hips, mine at her breasts. I rolled those beautiful nipples between my fingers and felt her hands slide up my body to do the same to me. Her kiss became harder and she squeezed my nipple enough to make me groan into her mouth. She pushed her leg between mine and I rocked my hips against it.

Sliding down from her face I took her nipple in my mouth and suckled it for what seemed an age before continuing southward to lick her stomach, then to nuzzle into her panties. She rolled onto her back as I slid down and spread her legs wide. I curled my tongue under the silk of her panties and found her pussy, wet and swollen so I sucked the lips and kissed her, letting my tongue open her and stroke her. She flowered beneath my tongue. She squirmed on the bed as I worked, my hands stroking her still stockinged legs. Her noises became a little more urgent and I let my finger slither into her and curl to stroke her. Her hands were in my hair, gripping it and encouraging me to further efforts.

She was not going to let me stay in that position. She sat and pulled away from me then guided me to lie on my back, head on the pillow. She rolled to straddle my face and bent forward to put her head between my legs, ripping my knickers aside with one violent pull that tore them from me. Such was her hunger that she devoured me, her finger deep in my arse as she pummeled my clit with her tongue. I sucked hers, squeezing it between my lips and stroking it with my tongue tip.

I knew she was cumming when I felt rather than heard her moan into me and her body tautened and stretched. She pressed her pussy down on top of my face and her moan became a bellow. I kept licking, kissing and sucking her until I felt her calm, relax and steady herself. Her orgasm had distracted her from my pleasure.

We lay like that for a few moments. Slowly she seemed to recover and finally she got out of the bed and walked to a cupboard. Turning to face me she held in her hand a strapon, slender and pink in colour. Looking at me she slowly buckled it on, straps tight around her waist and thighs. Satisfied, she took a bottle and ran some oily liquid over the phallus so it gleamed in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the windows.

‘Get on your knees.’ I did not move. She said, barely in a whisper, ‘Do it, do it for me.’

I turned onto my knees and I knew quite clearly what was going to happen. She had promised, or was it that she had threatened to fuck my arse and I knew this was the moment. I wanted it. I wanted it really badly.

The bed moved as she clambered onto it behind me. I felt the silk of her stockings against my knees, her hand, slippery on my buttocks which she spread and then I felt her fingertip stroking me, then probing into me. My back arched as she slowly opened me and then the tip of that slender dildo touched my hole. I almost pushed back but she stayed me with her hand firmly on my buttock and the pressure of her girl cock increased slightly, pushing at me and fighting the muscles’ resistance. A groan came from me as that resistance yielded to the insistent force of her hips and suddenly I felt the delicious intrusion, the brief spark of fire that was followed by the deep satisfaction of being invaded, taken and occupied. This was no hostile invasion though, this was the willing receiving of the intrusion of her into me. I sensed she knew this.

As her movements increased gradually in pace so her body curled over mine. Nipples almost scratched me, so hard were they against the flesh of my back. Her hands caressed me, then gripped my hair, forcing me to arch my back and neck as she began to thrust into me. Now the fire had passed and the pleasure began in earnest. A hand slipped around and under me to strum on my clitoris which I knew was poking out from her hood. Wet ran from my pussy, lubricating her finger as it danced over me, squeezed me, rolled me. Fingers gripping, bunching the sheet beneath me, I rocked against her. Mira’s hair stroked me as she buried her face in mine. Hot breath stroked my nape and ears as she moved above me, faster now, pushing deeper and deeper into me.

So many ways are there to describe an orgasm but no words to describe this adequately. I felt myself buck, strain, her hand holding my hair firmly, pulling at my scalp but although I felt all this I did not feel it. I sensed the moment was near but I was wrong, it was there. I heard a scream for somewhere far away. I rose, almost like a prancing horse and felt her ride me, stay with me as I wailed, screamed and shouted obscenities.

Later, much later, I was lying with my head against her breasts, her hands gently caressing my face, my hair, my own breasts.

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, what?’

‘You can trust me.’

I sensed the smile as she said, ‘You’re a noisy little western bitch, Joanna.’