A woman customer who accused a decorator of repeatedly raping her, confessed in court yesterday they had carried on an affair for years.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the 28-year-old said that she phoned married John Kerry, 40, up to 11 times before lunch asking him for sex.

At one point, they were having sex six days out of seven. Their passionate encounters included riverbanks, in the back of a van, and in flats which he was decorating.

She knew that he was married when they met in 1996, she told Christine Egerton, defending. She also admitted that she was willing to have sex with him in the bathroom of a flat which he was painting, which she earlier claimed was rape.

Miss Egerton said: "In your police statement you said that he was on top of you."

The woman corrected: "There was a time when I sat on top of him, they both happened."

She said they also had sex in the living room that day after sharing a pizza before he drove her home but she denied she helped with the painting, dressed in just bra and knickers.

She claimed earlier that Mr Kerry and his brother, Peter, 46, took turns to rape her in the bathroom.

John Kerry, of Kings Gardens, Sowerby, North Yorkshire, and Peter Kerry, of Prospect View, Northallerton, deny rape.

John Kerry also denies six more rape charges, procuring a woman to have sex by threats, and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The case continues.