Read Online Little Grey Mice by Brian Freemantle - Free Book Online

complete with more quilted brocade, over the bed. To one side, arranged into a vast window alcove in the bedroom, was a claw-legged breakfast table, bordered by four chairs, and a chaise-longue nearer a dressing table display of cream jars and lotion and perfume bottles. The modern, contrasting bathroom led off. Everything – the bath, the double wash-basins, the alcove-recessed toilet and bidet – was in black-speckled white marble: reflected by an assortment of mirrors, chrome glittered everywhere.
    â€˜You live here!’ exclaimed Jutta.
    Reimann laughed, enjoying the rare experience of Jutta being impressed with anything. ‘We’re allowed it while you’re here. I normally live at the school.’
    â€˜It’s …’ Jutta straggled to a halt. ‘… amazing.’ Jutta visibly jumped at the appearance of a fat, sag-breasted woman.
    â€˜You don’t have to bother about cooking,’ assured Reimann, who had been given a tour and had the apartment facilities explained to him by the chauffeur before being driven to Vnukovo.
    â€˜I didn’t intend to.’ On their previous assignment in West Berlin, they’d eaten out most days. When they’d stayed in, Reimann had done most of the cooking. And become good at it.
    â€˜We’ll eat early,’ decided Jutta, ahead of Reimann, to whom the housekeeper had put the question about what time they wanted dinner.
    Reimann served white wine with the fish, fresh salmon, and changed to a mellow Georgian red for the strogan off, opening a second bottle by the middle of the course. Throughout, his attention was entirely upon Jutta, encouraging when she spoke, deferring to any interjection she made. When Reimann held the conversation almost everything he said was light, amusing: he actually made jokes about the Balashikha women, insisting upon his initial apprehensions and exaggerating his embarrassments. Jutta listened attentively, although occasionally her eyes strayed around the opulent apartment.
    Jutta went into the bedroom ahead of him, which Reimann allowed her to do under the pretence of his dismissing the housekeeper. Jutta was already in bed when he entered. She kissed him properly for the first time when he got in beside her, but again waited for him to come to her, not initiating it herself.
    Reimann didn’t hurry.
    He played his lips over her neck and shoulders, momentarily mouthing her nipples before kneeling over her but not close enough for their nakedness to touch, diving and darting with his mouth, to her gorged nipples and belly dimple and at last into the anxious thatch. He entered her as he’d always done, from above, and she locked her legs familiarly around his waist. Reimann remained utterly controlled, feigning the reaction to her quick urgency, and only partially climaxed with her. Almost immediately she squirmed under his weight and when he rolled off she leaned at once to the bedside table for tissues. She dried between her legs and handed him tissues to dry himself.
    â€˜That was good,’ she said, edging away.
    Reimann thought she sounded like a schoolteacher praising a homework project. Jutta really hadn’t changed. Why had he expected – or hoped – she might have done?
    â€˜How many others have there been?’ she demanded, suddenly. It was an objective question, with no sexual interest. Or jealousy.
    â€˜Six,’ he answered at once. All better, he thought.
    â€˜Singly? Or sometimes more than one?’
    â€˜Sometimes more than one.’
    â€˜Why an orgy?’
    â€˜To see if I could sustain it.’
    â€˜Could you?’
    â€˜Not at first.’
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜What’s it like?’ She was still objective.
    â€˜Mechanical.’
    â€˜Do you enjoy it?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Do you come?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜So you enjoyed it!’
    â€˜A man has an orgasm with a prostitute: he forgets