I hate olives. In my opinion, these disgusting, overly-flavoursome nuggets of not-food are the best way to ruin a salad. Even so, I am repeatedly told by friends, family, and others who I suspect are getting secret kickbacks from olive farmers, that when I am older I will grow to love them.

Sadly, despite the olive I eat once a year to test whether I’m officially an adult yet, I have failed to start throwing them gaily into my mouth like someone at a posh dinner party.

Why am I banging on about olives? Because, although I still hate them with a passion only usually reserved for mushrooms, there are other things that I have acquired a taste for as I get older. In no particular order, here are a few adult sexual tastes that I’ve acquired, that are far more fun than olives:

Sexy massages

I used to feel the same about massage as I did about tickling: that it was something people were forcing on me in the misguided belief that I’d like it.

Now, at the grand old age of ‘oh shit I’m nearly 30’, I find that having moisturised hands pummeling my back and shoulders is not only nice but borderline orgasmic. The slickness, the power, the feeling of being so utterly cocooned and caressed by someone is delicious. Even more delicious when the massage goes south, and his slippery hands are mainly just lubing up my arse.

Only from someone I love, though – getting any sort of massage from a stranger still brings me out in a cold and unpleasant sweat.

The word ‘panties’

I have no idea why. Perhaps because when I was younger the word sounded too childish. As an almost-woman I was keen to project the image of an adult seductress. But now this dainty word makes me feel ever so slightly younger. It also conjures images of small, candy-coloured scraps of knicker fabric which makes me feel sexy even when the reality is less ‘miss’ and more ‘M&S’.

Spending more than a tenner on bedsheets

I know, it seems profligate. At University I’d have been happy to use the same cheap polyester sheets for an entire term, taking only short breaks to crinkle them a bit when they became too stiff with sex juices.

Now, as a much more mature adult, I find there’s something tingly and sexual about not just clean bedsheets but quality bedsheets. Soft cotton with a hint of fabric softener puts me in mind not just of sex but of the kind of sex I’ve had in hotels. Passionate, filthy, do-it-in-each-corner-of-the-room sex. Sex with bubble baths afterwards, and fresh towels, and occasionally complimentary slippers. Young me didn’t know the joy of this sex: adult me wants to reminisce about it by spending money in John Lewis and constantly loading the washing machine.

Sober sex

Naturally sober sex has always been good. I’m just not sure I realised how good, until I hit 25 or so. The older I get the more frustrated I am with my drunk self for not being able to fully appreciate every stroke, slap and sigh of a really decent fuck.

Drunk sex can be fun: giggly and uninhibited. And the slight spinning of the room makes you feel like you’re fucking in a fairground. But with sober sex you can feel every stroke, squeeze at just the right moments, and above all avoid falling off the bed.

I am not very sexy on weekday mornings. Not just in the sense that I have hair like a Muppet in a wind tunnel and breath like a Wetherspoons toilet, but also that if anyone touches me first thing in the morning I’m liable to cry. When my alarm goes off and I force my eyes open, the last thing I want is to have my tits touched: I will leap 20 feet into the air and run to the shower before you can say “I’m late I’m late I’m late.”

Life is exhausting and unfair. The fact that morning is usually when boys have their hardest, easiest erections is a cruel slap in the face: I feel ungrateful for saying ‘no’ to something so amazing, but at the same time… it’s 7 am, for fuck’s sake. I just want to drink my coffee, have a shower, and get the hell to work. Of course later in the day when my brain’s stopped caring how many minutes I have before I’m officially late, I feel like an idiot for wasting a lovely opportunity.

So I have to make opportunities elsewhen:

Just after work

I know people who change their clothes as soon as they get home, even if they don’t wear a suit to the office. The transition between work and home is an important way to strip the stresses and strains of the day from your body, shout “fuck that for a laugh”, and put on your relaxation face.

For me, post-work sex serves much the same purpose. I don’t want a guy to come home, sit on the sofa, and turn on the TV to wind down. Ideally I want him to come home, growl about what a shit day he’s had, then unzip his flies so I can sink eagerly to my knees and suck the stress out of him. If that fails, I’ll settle for a quickie up against the wall in the hallway, taking occasional glimpses of us in the mirror as he grabs, twists, pulls, and generally messes up the hair that looked so professional earlier.

During the evening

Sex has never, for me, been naturally associated with bedtime. Perhaps it’s down to my formulative teenage years, when the sex I had necessarily happened between 5pm and my 9pm curfew. I couldn’t sleep at my boyfriend’s house, ergo sex was an early-evening thing. As an adult, when sleeping with new people, I’d always prefer to have sex before we go to the pub, if at all possible, meaning I won’t be stuck trying to get a night bus at 3am after an unnecessarily long pre-sex preamble.

What I’m saying is that I like sex in the evening. I’d much rather be taken roughly over the coffee table before we watch Grand Designs than led gently to bed after Question Time for a half-hearted ‘I can barely keep my eyes open’ shag.

Evening sex is excellent – it inspires me to think more about when we might be able to fit a quick fuck in, and keeps me constantly on edge. I spend a lot of time appraising the boy as he sits hunched over his laptop on the sofa, cock visible through the thin fabric of his pyjamas. Coquettishly (but not that subtly) leaning up against him, rearranging my t-shirt so it shows enough cleavage to tempt him into putting an arm around me and squeezing.

The best thing about evening sex is that it doesn’t tend to become routine. Sex at bedtime can easily become part of my day in the same way as brushing my teeth or taking the bins out. Whereas evening sex can happen any time, anywhere – outside the bathroom, on the sofa, in the spare room as one of us ambushes the other while they’re putting away the laundry. Or, in my favourite scenario, bent over the bottom of the bed as I’m changing the duvet cover. Hands folded in the bed linen, gripping onto the fabric of the sheet as he pulls my jeans down just far enough, unzips his flies, and fucks me functionally until my legs give out. A fuck with just a few grunts, the feeling of him pumping spunk deep into my cunt, followed by a quick clean-up before I get back to the evening’s chores.

At the weekend

Because at the weekend I never have to worry about where I have to be and when. I have more time to do the things I need to do, so the things I want to do get more of a look in.

At the weekend I can wake up to him playing with my nipples and I can moan and play back, knowing that if I’m still tired we can go to sleep afterwards. At the weekend I can take my time when I suck his cock – edging him closer to orgasm then pulling away, grinning and watching him twitch with frustration. We can fuck in different ways, enjoying the pressure, the view, and the solid, tight feeling of each of our favourite positions. He can take his time to fuck me slowly but firmly, each stroke a teasing slap against my aching cunt as I will him to go faster, harder, to let me squeeze myself around his dick.

In the morning during the week we’re both desperate to get to work, and it matters if we don’t make it. At the weekend we’re desperate to come, but it doesn’t matter when we do it, as long as we both do.

As ever, I’m giving directions.

“Straight on here,” as we hit the roundabout, and he follows. A quick check in his rear view mirror to see whether anyone’s behind us. They’re not – it’s dark, late, and a much quieter road to the ones we’re used to. He lays a hand on my thigh, pushing my skirt up, never once taking his eyes off the road.

I love watching guys drive

Despite being so old that my fascination with it is bizarre, I find driving incredibly sexy. Not when I do it, of course. On the rare occasions I get behind the wheel it’s less of a journey than a slow, arduous panic-attack from A to B.

But the teenage girl I wish I still was loves watching boys drive.

The physicality of it is hot, naturally. Driving involves lots of showing-off of hands, one of the sexiest physical features. Gripping and releasing the handbrake, curving a hand around the gearstick, gently flicking accelerators and letting the wheel slide smoothly through their palms.

Not to mention that driving, much like playing Xbox, is an activity that requires so much concentration I am barely a distraction in the corner of his eye.

Most importantly, the driver is always the most powerful person in the car. The one who chooses the music, decides when you can stop, tells you to stop mucking about. The driver is the person who decides to pull over.

We’ll get back to that sexy bit now, shall we?

He flicked the indicator when he spotted a layby – behind a row of waist-high bushes, just enough for some vague cover but not quite enough to make me feel wholly comfortable. He parked the car and undid his seatbelt, reaching over for mine at the same time.

I grinned, and looked up at him in the way I imagined I would if I were genuinely nervous. I shifted in my seat, pulling my skirt up further so my naked cunt touched the seat.

“You’re a good girl,” he said, and pulled my face towards him. He was grinning too, not quite happy enough to take the power seriously.

“Do you want to show me your cunt?”

Yes. Always. I lifted my skirt higher and he pulled me forward, pushing my head into his lap with his right hand (his steering wheel hand) while his left snaked down my back and behind to squeeze me. I fumbled with his belt, feeling him rock solid through his trousers, straining to push through the zip.

“Good,” he gave me a hand with the zip, squeezing himself tight as I leant forward to suck him. “Good girl.”

Again, that power, the feeling of his hands all over me. The click as he moved his seat back to give me more room to work on him, to suck him. He wasn’t making me, but he wasn’t asking me either. This stop was just an extra bit of the journey, something he got to decide, in the same way as he’d decide the route or choose when we stopped for a piss.

Bucking slightly against the seat, he gripped the back of my head with controlled hands as he twitched mouthfuls of spunk into the back of my throat.

On the way back, we were quiet. My occasional directions half-whispered as I tasted him in my mouth, and the giggling teenager in the back of my mind squirmed with pride.

“My boyfriend’s hot. My boyfriend drives.”