Page 67 of Thief

He shucked out of his jacket and flung it on the floor. Dragging his T-shirt off in his usual manner, he disappeared down the corridor.

Kat waited for the sound of the door clicking shut, but it didn’t come. She glanced at her jacket. She needed to hide the diamonds someplace else. They were too close for comfort.

Reaching quickly into her pocket, she grabbed the tiny bag and pulled on her dressing gown. As she stepped out of her room, she could make out the uneven gush of water, the spray interrupted by his body as it splashed onto the shower tray.

She slipped out onto her balcony and grasped the trunk of the olive tree. Tipping it in its ceramic planter, she poked the black bag safely beneath it.

She made it back into the bedroom just as John switched off the shower. She grabbed her hairbrush and pretended she’d been battling snags the whole time.

“You’ve got too much on,” he said, appearing at her door with a towel wrapped around his lean waist and his hair glistening with droplets of water.

“So have you.” She grinned and, despite the nervous fluttering in her chest, she went to pull the towel from his waist.

He clasped his fingers around her arm and jerked her away. “Not so fast, Pussy Cat. My game, remember.”

Kat pouted. “So play then, soldier.”

It was like showing a red rag to a bull. The next thing she knew, she was flung onto the bed and he was over her, his weight pinning her down. He grabbed a green silk scarf from the bedside cabinet and wrapped it around her wrist before she could even blink.

“Hey…” she said.

“You said you wanted to play.”

“I do, but you could tell me what we’re going to play first.”

“That would spoil the fun.”?His mouth was on hers. His hands were deft, everywhere at once. He shucked off her dressing gown, and was looping the scarf around the slatted headboard and her other wrist as his tongue was busy, probing and invading.

She felt herself liquefy under his relentless passion. She would forget about the diamonds and give herself over to him this one last time. It would set her up for a lifetime of fantasies. She would make those memories, store them in a secret place and revisit them in the dead of the night when she was all alone.

Suddenly, he stopped kissing her.

She lifted her head from the pillow, chasing for a kiss, and opened her eyes to see where he’d gone. She was greeted with darkness; absolute pitch black, not even the slightest chink of light.

“What the…?” She yanked her arms but they were held securely to the headboard by their constraints. She twisted as if to look at her captive hands.

“It’s all good, remember,” he breathed quietly by her ear. “All good, trust me.”

She felt the bed lighten and the mattress even out. “Where are you going?”

No answer.

“John?”

Silence.

“John, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be scared, Pussy Cat.”

Kat gasped as she felt something sharp and hard on her nipple. “What the hell’s that?”

“Just the hair brush…calm down.” He swirled it around, and she felt all the hard little points catch on her flesh. White dots flashed in her vision, and her areola became the centre of her world as he doubled the pressure. She tried to look, she wanted to see her body’s reaction to his game, but there wasn’t even the tiniest crack of light to be found through her blindfold, not even down at her nose.

Click. Whirr.

“What’s that noise?” she asked, twisting her head directly towards the new sound.

“Nothing.”

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