Angie Thompson was utterly amazing in bed. It was all about technique and I reckoned she had studied it and perfected it. I mean, when I got home the day after the night we'd eaten at Le Main Gauche, I was still floating about six inches off the ground.
It was Rant Room day so I had to get my mind into gear. I read everything I could lay my hands on about Lucy Wilson. She was a loud voice for ex-prisoners who needed help to leave a life of crime, and spent a huge amount of effort persuading employers to give the poor devils a chance. I introduced her and sat back, waiting for her to rant.
Since she didn't start, I decided to prompt her. "Lucy, I was hoping to hear your rant."
"It's a bit awkward, Catherine."
"How's that then?"
"Well, what I want to rant about is, well, ranting." She had the most wonderful, impish smile.
"You're teasing me, right?"
She spoke very quietly and I saw my producer's fingers in the control room, adjusting the sound level. "I spend a lot of time trying to persuade business people to give ex-cons a chance. A lot of them, the majority I'd say listen with great sympathy and respect and then tell me that either they will look into it or well, they are unconvinced and fear that the effort might be greater than the reward. Then I ask them how they measure reward in these cases and it's usually about staff turnover and re-offending and, basically, it's all about them.
"So then I ask them if one of the ex-cons goes straight and gets a new start and takes advantage of it, isn't that a reward? And of course they agree that it is but they still decide the risk is too great. Well, that's fair enough."
She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. There was a curious tension in the studio, as if we were waiting for something. Radio abhors silence but I knew it would be wrong to fill it.
"But," she said eventually, "but there are some who sort of explode." And suddenly she started to speak in a fast and loud, angry voice. "I wouldn't employ an ex-con if you paid me they are all no-good they never go straight tigers never change their spots." I was going to point out that leopards are the spotty ones but she was off and running. "They are all thieving bastards and deserve all they get there are plenty of straight people who want a job and nobody should fail to get a job because some scummy thief has got one."
Lucy was just fantastic. She not only ranted but demonstrated that ranting is usually about speaking so much that no counter-argument has time or opportunity to intervene. It only ended when I broke down into a corpse of laughter and she joined me. We were laughing and hugging and I think I was crying a bit because it was so funny and so poignant. The producer never gave me a chance to say goodnight to our audience, she just faded out the two laughing idiots.
But I imagine you're wondering what made Angie so good in bed. It was simply that she seemed to know what I wanted without asking and was quick to adapt to the ebb and flow of sex with me. She topped, led, encouraged, directed as if she had taken me to bed a hundred times. No toys, just all the art of lesbian sex with hands and fingers, tongues and thighs. She undressed me slowly, licking or kissing as each new part of me was exposed. She guided me to satisfy her, firmly but without violence. She did something very special to my clitoris when she knew I was right on the brink and it just blew me away. She took my little pearl between her lips and blew a sort of vibration, her tongue tip vibrating against it. Fuck, that was a mind-bender.
Rosie was still away and we had exchanged texts and a FaceTime during which she had watched me masturbate to her instructions and, just as I was about to cum, she told me to "stop and wait until you get a message saying you can cum." She gave me a wicked smile and signed off and I groaned with frustration and was sorely tempted to disobey and finish myself off. But, and readers like me will understand this, the point is about obedience even when, or maybe particularly when, you don't want to be. The message came through as I was about to go to sleep and the moment had passed so I just rolled over and went to sleep.
In addition to my work for the paper, I also did a bit of freelancing; a couple of publications and an airline magazine. Airline magazines are fine as long as you don't expect anyone to read them. My editor knew and was fine with it. I had done two articles about Ellie Porter. One for my paper, a brief bio of a local success story, the other for the airline, longer and more detailed but similar. We'd got along. She was an engineer who had started her own business making, at first, parts for engines but had recently created an engine that could run on liquid hydrogen and had decided to build a car around it. The car was a huge success and Ellie became incredibly rich and famous. She was, however, in my estimation, modest, and thoughtful. My estimation may have been slightly biased since she was gay, tall, beautiful and a little androgynous which you may remember I rather like.
So you may imagine how I felt when I got a call from her PA asking me to drop round to her office for a chat. You may also imagine that I made a bit of effort when i dressed for the occasion. It takes skill to look as though you've made no effort when in fact you have thought of little else for two days!
So I turned up at the time arranged and was shown immediately into her office. She was behind a modest desk and stood as I approached. She was wearing a jump suit, dark blue and it did nothing to conceal how good she looked. Her short, dark brown hair seemed to highlight her bright brown eyes.
Greetings over, coffee organised and now sitting facing each other across a low coffee table (my knee length skirt smoothed under my arse as I sat - give her the femme razzle dazzle!) and she explained why she had wanted me to come.
"I want you to write my biography." To say I was stunned was a slight understatement. "We got on really well, you write, I have a publisher and I want you to do it."
"But, I have never written a biography."
"How hard could it be?"
"Well, it's not like writing for a paper. The book has to tell a story, be readable, it's a marathon, not the sprint I'm used to."
"If I am prepared to give you a chance, would you try for me?" How could I refuse. She gave a big smile when I agreed and said, "Bugger coffee, let's have champagne!" My kind of woman, definitely.
I discovered that, anticipating my agreement she'd already spoken to my editor to get him to agree to a furlough. I was a bit miffed that he hadn't said I was indispensable but I got over it when Ellie told me how much she was going to pay me.