The principal villain visits a lady.

Harry caught the elevator to the eleventh floor, and knocked briskly at the door of 1103. It opened almost instantaneously. "Hello darling, I thought you'd never get here." Harry was greeted by Jane McPhee, a smartly dressed lady in her middle thirties.

"What time did I say I'd arrive? I did say nine. Well I thought I said nine."

"Oh Harry, you said seven. You never seem to be able to get it right with the details. But you must be exhausted. Sit down and I'll get you a scotch."

The latter portion of this dialogue occurred as the parties embraced each other, with Harry fondling Jane's small and boyish bottom and Jane rubbing her crotch against his still be-panted organ. Arms entwined they proceeded to the lounge where Harry began to nuzzle in the general locale of the cleavage.

"Not just yet," Jane giggled, attempting simultaneously to get up from the sofa, and to reassert control over her now semi-liberated mammaries. She walked towards the drinks cupboard while Harry wondered yet again at the simplicity of sexual conquest and colonization. His first rule was to keep the initiative by never allowing the lady to know exactly where he was or what he was doing. That gave him room to manoeuvre. And when one had a sexual life as complicated as Harry's frequently was, this bestowed a great advantage upon the player.

Harry's second rule was one of action. As a nervous young man he had made the mistake of talking first about what he had in mind. All that stuff about rational agents he'd learned at Chicago - he'd taken it much too seriously. He'd then believed that the way - the only way - to begin the proceedings which he hoped would end in the bedroom was to ask the lady in question what she thought of the idea.

It was, needless to say, a totally self-defeating strategy. The young Harry became more and more dejected with his every failure. Finally he gave up completely, and turned to booze for consolation.

This proved to be the beginning of Harry's sexual renaissance. Totally tanked one evening, he had fallen asleep on his hostess's settee. He awoke, still rather less than sober, as the last of the guests were departing. His hostess pressed another drink on him and Harry's spirits began to ascend. As he lumbered towards the door, he turned to embrace her in farewell. Somehow the embrace continued beyond that usual in this kind of situation. Harry found that his hands had moved to Pam's large and shapely derriere. And Pam was not objecting. Indeed she had begun to bite his right ear-lobe, and wriggle against him in a quite unsettling manner.

Greatly emboldened, Harry removed one of his paws from her bottom and slid it around her body. The wriggling became a writhing, and heavy breathing accompanied the lobe-nipping.

Harry made an instantaneous decision. He'd hazard all. He began to ruck up the sides of Pam’s flowing skirt. He inserted a trembling paw between her thighs, and joy of joys, she was wearing no knickers. In an instant Harry was unzipped and in.

Watching Jane's arse as she bent to get a bottle of tonic, Harry thought, "I've come a long way - a bloody long way."

"Here's your drink, darling," said Jane returning to the sofa. Harry took the proffered glass in one hand and Jane's waist in the other. He tossed down the scotch in a single gulp, and pulled Jane into his lap. "And how have you been getting on these past weeks?" he asked.

"Quite well," Jane replied. "I've just finished a piece on the budget for the Financial Times."

Harry and Jane had originally become acquainted when Jane arrived at the University of London to do a PhD in economics. Their relationship had been cemented by Jane's two years as Harry's research assistant. And now Jane was well launched on her career as an economic journalist.

She saw Harry frequently when he was resident in London. In addition to the obvious carnal advantages of such an arrangement, Harry was frequently able to provide Jane with interesting tip-offs. And Jane in return would provide publicity for both Harry and his opinions.

But right now Harry was interested in only one thing. He had removed her outer garments and was in the process of unbuttoning the lower portion of a 1940s "Nice but Naughty" merry widow. "Oh God," he groaned, "I want it now."

*******

Genitally sated, Big Harry lolled back into the cushions. "It's my turn I believe," Jane breathed into his ear. Harry was a fair-minded man and so was quick to supply the requisite digital relief.

"It's power that turns you on really," Harry said later over his second scotch.

"I suppose it is," Jane replied, but she was inwardly confused. Was it Harry's power that turned her on, or her sexual power over Harry? In truth she could not say, but then she sometimes wondered whether this question admitted of any precise answer. All that was clear to her was that Harry turned her on. Young he was not, slim he was not, handsome he was not. But he had something that many who were younger, more virile and more beautiful lacked. And Jane, who had clocked up a good deal of experience in her thirty-two years, was one to enjoy a pleasure rather than agonize about the reason for its existence.

"Mind if I phone Chicago?" Harry asked Jane as she moved between kitchen and dining room setting up their dinner. "I promised I'd let Emma know the result of the New York talks and I was too busy to call from there."

"Go right ahead," Jane replied. "I'll be at least another five minutes. Use the bedroom extension - it's more comfortable there."

"G'day Emma," Harry greeted his wife of twenty-six years.

"Hullo Harry, I though you'd never call. But when I'd heard nothing last night I assumed that the result couldn't have been that exciting."

"Yeah, it was pretty much as I'd anticipated. U.C. has come out of it as well as one could expect given the circumstances. I had to pay a price of course. Had to pull in a swag of credits, and they're chips we no longer have to play with. But still, under the circumstances ..."

"Where are you now?" Emma interrupted. "At Jane's I suppose."

"Yeah, we're just about to have some dinner. But I plan to get an early night as it's a big day tomorrow."

"I was thinking about Jane this afternoon," Emma continued. "I've been writing this piece on the futures market in human organs. She might be interested in trying to line up some kind of deal with the Chicago Tribune."

"I'll pass the message on," Harry replied. "Or maybe you'd like to speak to her yourself?"

"No don't bother her now," Emma said. "There's nothing more irritating than being pulled away from the stove at a vital moment. Tomorrow will be fine. And maybe I'll call you at work. Cheers."

"Cheers honey," Harry said as he replaced the receiver.

Harry and Jane now commenced the process of assuaging another appetite. They consumed two dozen oysters, a lobster, and a large quantity of Veuve Cliquot. They talked of news from Chicago and U.C. Inc., they talked of the international economic scene.

That topic exhausted, they moved on to a more personal subject. "I know I've said it before," Jane began. "But you and Emma do have a good relationship. And you've been married twenty-five, no! twenty-six years."

"Yes," Harry replied. "We certainly do. But you know Jane it continually surprises me what an exception we seem to be. Because it's not that hard really. It's a question of approaching the thing in a rational kind of way. It's fundamentally a business deal like any other. But it's a straight deal, not a crooked one."

"But Harry, there must have been times when you've been tempted to bail out? After all, I imagine very few of your contemporaries have lasted twenty-six years, and when they decided to call it quits you must have thought, 'well, why not us?'."

"I can't think of any of our set who are still together," Harry mused, biting into a liqueur chocolate. "But that is not because we were fundamentally better suited than they were. On the contrary, it was the fact that we are in many ways so different that forced us to adopt the hyper-rational approach to negotiation. And then as the years go by one has more and more history in common, ergo more and more invested in the relationship."

"But surely Emma must have been upset when you started screwing around," Jane suggested.

"I don't think so really," Harry replied. "We'd been married for ten years and by that time the passion had begun to fade. And Emma was interested in stretching her wings too. She had this strict Catholic up bringing you know. There had only been a boyfriend or two before me. She was interested in exploring new possibilities herself."

"So you just set up a deal," Jane said, "with terms and conditions and the whole caboodle."

"Yep," Harry replied. "No screwing anyone else in the home city. Contact numbers always available. Instant support in any major crisis, etc. It beats me why no one else seems to be be able to negotiate that kind of deal."

'Too much latent romanticism, I suspect," Jane suggested.

The conversation trailed off. Big Harry was tired and at 1130 he rose and shambled toward the door of the bedroom. "Better get some sleep so I can be off early."

Jane packed the Dishlex, removed her make-up, and then quietly slid into the king-size beside Harry. "Urn, um," he mumbled contentedly, sucking gently upon her right nipple.

Jane smiled to herself. The sexual realm admitted of few true generalizations. But one there was. Jane had bedded many, and in her not inconsiderable experience she had always found the real bears to be breast obsessed. Oh yes, they were, in the urgency of the moment, interested in the lower regions. But when released into the uninhibited realm of dreams it was for the tit they sought.

Chapter 3 linked here.

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