And then we were tumbling towards the king-size bed, hands and mouths still working, neither of us totally naked – he still had on his white Just Do It running socks and I was still in my pants and high heels. Then the pants came off and were tossed aside and he went down on me on top of the bed, far rougher than I liked for I prefer a very light touch with the tongue, and I was still wearing my shoes, the heels ripping at the pristine hotel duvet until he suddenly broke away and went to the bathroom, coming back still unfurling a condom over his erect cock. Then he turned me over, and slipped a pillow under my belly and fucked me from behind.

After, we had a few beers from the minibar, watching the winking red lights of the Tokyo night, not talking much, which was fine by me, and then when I was starting to feel sleepy, he took my hands and led me to the bed and fucked me a second time, between the sheets this time, a bit slower this time, face to face this time, both of us totally naked now apart from the white hotel bathrobes we wore after a shower, and if that second time had none of the mad urgency of that first, it was still – how can I put it? – desperate, and rough, with an edge of what felt like real spite.

I fell asleep with my back turned towards him, aware that I was on the wrong side of the bed – compared to the side that I slept on at home, I mean, the side of the bed that I was meant to be on, the side of the bed I had been on with Christian for a few thousand nights – and then there was our third and final fuck that must have been somewhere just before dawn, because first the white light of a spring morning was creeping beyond the cracks around the hotel room’s black-out blinds as I came awake with my back still turned towards him, still on my side as he slowly but implacably penetrated me. I was not ready, nowhere near it, and it hurt this time and it felt like he was having me because I was there, because he could, and I felt it again, that hint of something dark and nasty in his hard, highly experienced rutting. I was several light years from coming by the time he had finished and so he wanted to go down on me but I declined, my hands under his chin, lifting him up, and when he grinned I imagined I saw a touch of relief in his face. He looked older in the almost-morning, and he was so matter-of-fact as he checked his phone – as if nothing life-wrecking had happened between us – that I wondered how many other women James Caine had fucked in rooms just like this one.