Leone Then and Now Pt. 01

'Well, there's a B&B for sale not far from here, but I'm starting to ask myself if I really want to spend the rest of my life cooking breakfasts, making beds, and doing laundry.'

I smiled. 'OK. Let's treat this as a bit of a project. Let's do a bit of a SWOT,' I said. 'What are your strengths?'

Leone studied her wine glass for a moment or two. 'Well ... writing,' she said. 'Obviously. And imagining. And mentoring. And organising. And cooking - but mainly for myself and a few close friends. The idea of doing it, on demand, for a coachload of tourists doesn't have a lot of appeal.'

'Not washing endless sheets and towels?' I said.

'No.'

'OK. And what are your weaknesses?'

'Aside from washing endless sheets and towels? Tolerating fools and people who are not prepared to give it 100 percent effort. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing as well as you can possibly do it. You understand that, don't you? I think that's one of the reasons that we have always got on. And I do get bored rather easily. I'm not especially proud of the fact; but it is a fact, nevertheless.'

I nodded. 'Well, I would have thought that that eliminates an option or two. The hospitality industry might look like fun, but I'm not sure that it falls within your strengths - certainly not as a woman of, umm, a certain age. In fact, I would have thought that the whole retail sector was off limits.'

'I suppose so,' Leone said.

'Maybe we need to revisit your list. Maybe over supper. But, in the meantime, I fancy a fuck. Unless, of course you want to go and visit those teashop chaps - just to confirm your initial impressions.'

Leone shook her head.

The bed in our hotel room purported to be 'a traditional canopied four-poster rescued from a local stately home'. I very much doubt that it was. It seemed too new. But it was the perfect height for a matinee encounter. Leone lay back, her bum lined up with the edge of the bed, her shapely legs in the air, and I stood beside the bed and thrust my cock into her waiting tunnel.

I wouldn't want to suggest that Leone was the only woman with whom I had enjoyed sexual congress. That would be far from correct. But, as my cock slid in and out like a well-oiled piston, I couldn't help but reflect that, even after all of these years, Leone was still 'the best'. A couple of exploratory thrusts into Leone's slippery slot and my cock was as hard as it had been when I was 18 or 19. Well ... perhaps not quite. But she was certainly more effective than Viagra.

The following day was my birthday. 'Fifty-seven,' Leone said. 'That's quite grown up, isn't it?'

'I suppose so,' I said.

After a leisurely breakfast, we drove south to Bourton-on-the-Water, sometimes called the Venice of the Cotswolds. The summer was well and truly over, but there were still plenty of tourists wandering up and down the banks of the River Windrush, popping in and out of the shops, and visiting the Model Village. 'I can see why this is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,' Leone said.

From Bourton we continued south to the medieval town of Burford. And then, from Burford, we drove back to Chipping Norton where we stopped for coffee before looping north to Moreton-in-Marsh, where I had been born 57 years earlier. To the day.

'So ... this is where it all began?' Leone said.

'Apparently. Although I don't remember too much about it myself. By the time that I knew what was going on, we were back on the farm.'

By the time we got back to Middle Merton it was past three o'clock. It had been less than a week, but Leone and I were already beginning to read each other's' minds as we had in the old days. Without even discussing it, I started making a pot of tea while Leone undressed and slipped under the duvet.

As Leone sipped her tea, she chatted about how beautiful The Cotswolds were, and how close they were to Oxford and Bristol and Swindon and Birmingham (where Angela had an editorial role waiting with Leone's name on it). 'We're not even that far from London,' she said. 'Not really.'

I just smiled. And then we snuggled. And, within minutes, we were both asleep.

When we woke up, it was already getting dark. 'What time did you make the booking for?' Leone asked.

'Seven. I thought that we should have nursery tea - given my advancing years.'

The restaurant that I had chosen was just a short walk from the hotel. (To be honest, in Middle Merton, everything was just a short walk from the hotel.) I had chosen The French Partridge not because of any high expectations of the food, but for its wine list. After all, it's not every day that a chap turns 57.

We started with a glass of champagne. 'Louis Roederer?' the waiter suggested. 'Cristal?'

'No. Although I'm impressed that you have it,' I said. 'And by the glass. But I have a weakness for the egg-yolk-yellow label of The Widow's fizz.'

The waiter smiled and went off to find us a couple of glasses of Veuve Clicquot.

As a starter, we both chose a raviolo stuffed with the yolk of a duck's egg and served with a smoked duck broth and deep fried chives. Delicious. And, to accompany it, we chose (well, I chose - after all, it was my birthday) a glass of New Zealand Fumé Blanc.

For our main course, we both chose beef. The Cotswolds has some very good Hereford beef producers. And, according to the menu, The French Partridge's supplier was 'one of the very best'.

We chose the chef's modern take on Tournedos Rossini: a medium-rare piece of beautifully-marbled beef fillet served on a thick crouton, topped with a slice of barely-cooked calf's liver, garnished with a few slices of truffle, and served with a small jug of thyme-infused red wine jus.

To accompany the tournedos, I chose a bottle of Chateau Lynch-Bages from the 2008 vintage. Heaven.

I had just taken my second - or maybe third - sip of the Lynch-Bages when an idea occurred to me. 'Have you ever considered becoming a literary agent?'

Leone frowned for a moment. 'No,' she said. 'But I suppose that it's a possibility.'

'Well, you have all that experience as an editor and a publisher. You must be pretty good at spotting talent. You're good at networking. You said that mentoring was one of your strengths. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before.'

'Perhaps I haven't been paying you enough,' she said. And she smiled. 'I know how you consultants like to milk the last dollar from every assignment.'

Later, back at the hotel, it was the consultant himself who was being 'milked'.

'I thought about getting a couple of 27-year-olds,' Leone said. 'You know ... maybe 27-year old twins. For your birthday. But then I thought: Nah, after a lovely dinner like that, he'll probably just fall asleep after the first one. So we'll stick with the 54-year-old.'

'A good call,' I said. 'Apart from anything else, I can't imagine the 27-year-olds being even half as good as this 54-year-old.'

Leone had probably got the falling asleep part just about spot on. Soon after covering her ever-attractive tits with cum, I must have dozed off. And the next thing that I knew it was about three o'clock in the morning and we were spooning. I somehow got the feeling that Leone was awake. 'Are you awake?' I whispered.

'I am.'

'Are you OK?'

'Oh, yes. Better than OK,' she said. 'Much, much better than OK.'

'But you're awake?'

'Something must have woken me.' She laughed. 'Does that cock of yours never sleep?'

'I'm pretty sure that it slept all of last winter,' I said.

'Well ... perhaps we can try and keep it awake a bit more during this coming winter,' she said.

'I would like that,' I said. 'Yes. I would like that a lot.'