Illicit Liaison by Katelyn Skye Page A

subside.
    The sound of metal clicking against metal made his eyes pop open just in time to see Lolita snap a cuff over his wrist. The other cuff was attached to a thin railing that surrounded the wet bar that they lay below.
    “I win,” Lolita said smugly.
    Darien smiled at her and she had time to wonder just what he seemed so smug about before he sat up, knocking her off his softening penis to grab at something right behind her. A second click sounded and she swore again, this time in frustration as her ankle was encased in a heavy manacle attached to the same bar.
    The alarm began to sound and they both stared up at the infrared beams sweeping the floor. “Shit!” Lolita yelled, grabbing her shapeless black top and mask. “I don’t think that will help if the cameras come back on. I can see your pussy from here. You do know the carpets do not match the drapes I hope.”
    Lolita gave him the finger, making him laugh. “What the hell is so funny?” She snarled.
    He shook a small box instantly recognizable as her lock picking tools.
    “Those are mine!” Lolita yelled indignantly.
    “I’m a thief, why are you surprised?” His cuff slipped off and he rose off the long carpet. “If you get out you should take this rug, aside from it being a five hundred year old Persian, it has a shit ton of our DNA on it, although to be fair I only pushed my clothes aside whereas you disrobed. That is a mistake on your part sweetheart. Toodles.”
    “I’m not your sweetheart!”
    He tossed her lock picking tools at her feet, grabbed the prize they had been fighting for, a slim black case holding a necklace worth a cool two million that belonged to the very famous actress whose house they were in, blew her a kiss and vanished through a window.
    Isn’t this a bitch?
    Yes, it was. The bastard set off the alarm as he went and she had no doubt he had done it on purpose. She did not blame him; she would have done the same. She knew exactly how long she had to get out of there and so she grabbed the lock pick set he had tossed to one side but close enough for her to reach, freed her ankle, yanked her clothes on, bundled up the carpet, and fled as well, making it out with mere seconds to spare.
    In her car, she found herself laughing like a loon. Who would have known that she would pick the same house to rob that Darien Knight, thief extraordinaire, had chosen to rob as well? It had not worked out as she had planned but still, it had been a good night after all and she knew a buyer who would love to have the rug.
    She patted the wallet she had taken from his pocket, it would not be hard to find him, and not if she knew where to look and she had a feeling she would find the answers inside the wallet.
    Darien, sitting politely still at a red light, watched the flashing lights zooming past and wondered if she had gotten out in time. He hoped she had. Lolita Romanoff was a worthy opponent and he knew that she was not one to lose easily. The necklace glittered in his fingers; dash lights picking out the facets of the rare stones and he smiled, knowing she would come for it, eventually.
    And he was looking forward to it.
    **
    Lolita let herself into her apartment, a penthouse that had every safety feature available on the open market and some that were not. She had taken the black wig and clothes off in her car so that when she swept into the lobby she was the impeccably groomed blonde-haired woman that the staff knew as Mrs. Westmore, a little joke of hers.
    Westmore had been the prison where she had served four years, after a year in county jail and a trial that had been a nightmare for her. Westmore was a federal prison, a maximum- security joint that housed women who had committed all sorts of crimes and it had been there that she had honed the skills that made her one of the most capable thieves on the planet. Lolita never liked to think about the circumstances that had led her there but sometimes those things came back whether she wanted