Svitlana looked away, and I saw her neck and left cheek glow pinkly. When she turned back to face me she was blushing. “I thought that would be up to you. Not me. But I thought you might -. Oh, this is really embarrassing, seriously.”

“You thought I was going to come and get you, and let’s see… Maybe I’d have turned you round and smacked your bottom till you said you were sorry. Then you might have to promise to do as you’re told.”

“More or less. And maybe you’d have pushed me onto my hands and knees and fucked me on the carpet.”

“Bloody hell. Look, that was the first idea I had. Close enough. But I wasn’t sure enough that it was what you wanted. Or sure that you were ready for it. But you were hoping I would?”

Svitlana was still very pink, from the slopes of her breasts upwards. Her face was warm when I reached and traced my fingertips down from her ear to the corner of her mouth.

Her mouth quirked. “No. I wasn’t hoping you’d hit me. Oh, yes and no. Kerry, she’s one of Barbs’ friends, she told me you were a sadist. You get off on hitting women. She said it’s a disgrace that Barbs even works with you.”

“Oh, that’s cool! I’m the kind of man you were warned about?”

“Sort of.”

“I’ve never been that before. As far as I know, anyway.”

“Well, she wasn’t really warning me. She wouldn’t think she had to. It’d never even cross her mind that I’d fuck you.”

“But it was good advertising.” I frowned. “So did you come to dinner because you thought there’d be a man there, who might fuck you on the carpet outside his bedroom?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. It was just something that I knew about you. I mean, there was what Kerry told me. There was another woman who gave you a good review, actually. Anyway, I didn’t think it’d become relevant. I didn’t think we’d be in bed together.”

There were more important issues for me to pursue, but vanity won. “Hang on, who was that? Who gave me a good review?”