It was her turn.

"Have you ever been with another man?" she asked.

A little pause.

"Yes," I answered. "A conductor in Vienna I was working under. No pun intended."

She grinned slyly and so did I.

I continued.

"One evening we'd imbibed that tad bit too much spirits and I suppose you could say male bonding got taken to another level. He was heterosexual as well, but our sexuality had little to do with it..."

I trailed off. Her grin had widened. There was a playful amusement in her eyes as she looked at me in that extremely alluring way of hers that gets me every time. I could feel an undeniable stirring inside me. Every nerve of my body cried out for her. I wanted her. Now. But she would have none of that. Not until I had finished telling her every filthy detail.

But let me tell my story again properly for you lusty readers.

The year was 1910. It was the final year of my musical studies at the conservatory. Franz was about ten years older than me and occasionally visited our class to lecture or give instruction as he was too young to acquire the position of a professor at the time, though he was on good terms with all of the teachers and many of the students.

A respected young conductor, he was a mentor of sorts to me, having already achieved the status I could only dream of someday nearing.

I rather looked up to him but he had always treated me as an equal, despite the difference in our ages and social standing. Somehow his status was never an issue between us, or at least he never gave me cause to feel that it was, and I was immensely proud of the fact that I had earned his respect at such a young age.

He had seen potential in me and it was as though he had already given me credit in advance for the greatness he was certain I would inevitably achieve. We'd always got on quite well as colleagues, and over time we'd developed something akin to a professional friendship.

He was a handsome, accomplished man of about 30 and was married to an attractive woman from Salzburg who was a couple of years his senior. I'd met and spoken to her on numerous occasions when I'd had the honour of being invited to dine with them at their beautiful home in one of the nicer parts of the city.

In comparison, the scruffy 25m² behind the Westbahnhof I returned to every evening was a constant reminder to me of my lowly position in society, at least for the time being.

I would never have dreamt of inviting any of my peers back to my modest dwelling, let alone the great conductor himself. But as chance would have it, one evening after attending a spectacularly performed Handel concert, he invited himself. It was not the only surprise fate had in store for me that night.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our first stop after the performance was a local Kaffeehaus where we had a satisfying go, as usual, at picking apart each detail concerning the orchestra, good-naturedly finding fault where we could. He'd already ordered his