by Lexi Duval
It's beautiful, of course, but I spend no time thinking about it. I'm here for work, only, and nothing more.
Sage sits behind his desk, covered in computer screens and files, his suit jacket hanging on his chair.
“Kristen, come on in,” he says, and I cover the 30 or so feet to his desk. “Take a seat.”
The orders keep coming, and I keep obeying. But today it's not about sex. This is about business.
“I trust that no one can hear us, and that none of this is being recorded?” I ask, my tone businesslike, professional. Because this is my world we're going to enter, not his.
“You can. And can I trust you, that you're not wearing any recording devices?”
“I'm not.”
“Well, you won't mind if I make sure.”
He stands and moves toward me around his desk.
“Remove your jacket.”
“I'm not wearing anything...” I say.
He doesn't listen to me, and only repeats his command. Clearly, he's meticulous to the point of being obstinate, a quality that probably serves him well in life but is grating on me right now.
“Fine.”
I remove my jacket and let him inspect it.
“Anything else you'd like me to take off? Perhaps I should do a little strip for you right here in your office?”
He smiles, and merely stands me up, rubbing his hands over my body and feeling for any wire or recording device. Against my will, I feel a thrill at his touch...something I've yearned for since he fucked me so vigorously last week.
“I suppose you're all clear,” he says, but I suspect that he's just toying with me and using the whole thing as an excuse to fondle me.
Not that he'd need an excuse. All it takes is an order...
He sits down again, and pulls a bottle of scotch from a drawer, along with two glasses. He doesn't offer me it, he just pours, and slides one across the table toward me. The assumption is I'll drink it, which I do.
“So, shall we get down to business?” I ask.
He takes a sip and hands me a file.
“His name's Morgan Trayfoot, he's an old business rival of mine. Well, I say old, but I mean current. He's been a thorn in my side for years.”
I flip open the file, and see a picture of the man. He's older than Sage, but still relatively young. Perhaps 40 by the looks of things. Blond hair, a fair complexion, and a little extra timber around his midsection.
I flip over the page, and see the sight of a gorgeous necklace, all diamonds and rubies and sapphires.
“That's the target,” comes Sage's voice. “It's his absolute prized possession. He keeps it in his mansion, like I did with my earrings.”
I look up at him, and he gives me a knowing nod.
“Now, I want you to steal the necklace for me. Do you think the Night Panther is up to the job?”
“It depends on the situation,” I say quickly, flicking through a couple more images of the man and the necklace, as well as the mansion he owns. It looks just as grand as Sage's, and I suspect the two respective men have been going toe to toe for years over just about everything. Mansions, work, women...
“Explain.”
“Well, I'm a professional, Sage. I only take jobs once I've done my own due diligence and I know the odds are hugely stacked in my favor. I don't take risks, and won't follow through if I don't think I'll succeed. So, it really depends on what my research turns up.”
“Well, I can help you little on that front,” Sage says. “The necklace is held in a safe, like mine was. And thankfully, I know precisely where it is.”
“How?”
“I've seen it.”
“How recently?”
“Less than a month ago. He invited me around for dinner, but it was only to show off his world famous necklace. I know that much. Of course, I didn't see the combination to open the safe, but I know the system was just like mine. If you can get through my security, you can get through his.”
“OK. And, can you tell my anything else? Guards? Cameras? Do you know anything of the nighttime security?”
“Well, that won't be necessary.”
He slips his hand into a drawer again, and passes me a small, rectangular piece of card. I inspect it quickly, and raise my eyes to him once more. There's a sly smile on his face.
“An invite?” I ask. “He's having a party next weekend?”
“He is. The horrible little man is getting engaged. It's an engagement party and, well, half of the East Coast aristocracy will be turning up.”
“And how does it help me that the place will be filled with people?”
“Because, Kristen, you will be my guest.”
He takes another sip of scotch, and peers at me with interest.
“So, how about it? The safe is located in a study at the back of the mansion, well away from the party. You should have no trouble getting in.”
“And if there's security guarding it?”
“There won't be. And, if there is, then that's something that you're going to have to work out, isn't it.”
I think for a moment, running through the potential permutations and risks. Gradually, I begin shaking my head.
“It's too risky,” I say. “Too many elements I can't control.”
“Kristen, you do realize that this isn't an offer. It's an order. You will do this for me. Just think of how brilliant it will be for the little toad to lose his prized possession from right under his nose at his own party.”
He smiles wide at the thought, his mouth curling into a perfidious grin.
“And, imagine how it will improve the legend of the Night Panther. Surely you like the sound of that?”
He's pushing the right buttons, probing in the right places. I like my media handle, as all criminals enjoy the status bestowed upon them. But is it worth the risk?
And do I have a choice?
“Next Saturday?” I ask.
He nods.
“That gives you ten days to work up a plan and do your research. Will that work?”
I consider things again, knowing that I'll have to at least try. If I can't make it work on the night, however, he'll have to accept that and let me try again on my own terms. Something tells me he really wants this necklace, if only to rub his rival's face in it and watch him squirm.
“I'll see what I can do.”
I sink the rest of my scotch as if to seal the deal and end the conversation, before standing from my chair and picking up my jacket. I turn, coat and file in hand, and begin pacing toward the door.
“Um...Kristen, I don't recall telling you to leave quite yet.”
I stop in my tracks, and turn toward him.
“Lock the door, would you?”
I spike of anticipation rushes through me.
I move to the door, twist the lock, and turn back to him. He's already on the phone, speaking with his secretary.
“Hold my calls will you, Claire. I'll call you back when I'm available again.”
He keeps his eyes on me the entire time.
“Now come a little closer, Kristen.”
I do as I'm told, falling back into the pattern of a few nights ago. Part of me is starting to boil at the control he's exerting over me. But another is unwilling to stop, and not wanting to either...
“What color are you panties?”
“White.”
“Show me.”
With my jacket and file still under one arm, I drop my other down my skirt, and begin sliding it up my leg. My left thigh is exposed, and at the top, a pair of functional white panties. Not sexy, not frilly, but comfortable and all I thought I'd need today.
A smile runs over his face.
“Very nice, Kristen. Now put your jacket down, and remove your clothes.”
“What?”
“Did you not hear?”
I hesitate for a few moments, before doing what he tells me. I drop my jacket, unzip my skirt, and pull off my sweater, leaving me in only my functional bra and panties
and flat black shoes.
“You're just toying with me now, Sage. Can't you just let me get on with this job?”
He stares at me, and slowly shakes his head.
“You've plenty of time for that, Kristen. But I have other uses for you too. Now come here, and sit on the desk.”
I take a deep breath, the battle still raging inside me, and go toward him. I go around his desk and sit right in front of him, the grandeur of the Manhattan skyline visible through the large windows. In other buildings, I can make out shapes of people working, and wonder if they can see us.
Sage clearly doesn't care.
He leans forward, opens my legs, and slips his fingers inside me. I'm not wet, and the friction doesn't feel as pleasurable as before, my mind taken by my professional duties right now and not sex.
Slowly, however, he works at me, and soon his head has dived in and he's eating my pussy, lubricating me with his saliva. Gradually, my own moisture builds, and my mind clouds, and I begin to forget once more about the job that needs to be done.
“Do you like it when I eat you out?” he asks.
I nod.
“And when I fuck you. Do you enjoy that too?”
I nod again.
“Well then, today is your lucky day.”
He stands, opens up his trousers, and pulls out his dick.
“Suck me first, and then I'll fuck you. And after that, then you can get to work.”
His orders simultaneously grate on me and make me even more horny.
And with his eyes staring and his cock swelling, I slip off the table and send his full length down my throat.
Chapter Three
For the next few days I turn my mind only to the next job.
It's the way I've lived my life for years now, my world measured from one job to the next, from payout to payout.
From time to time, I castigate myself for being so greedy. For me, money has become less valuable, and it must be my avarice that's been driving me. I am a multimillionaire, having gathered great wealth through the many treasures I've stolen, and could quite easily stop and retire right now.
And now I'm kicking myself for not doing so before taking Sage's earrings. That score would have truly set me up for life, and I might have been able to find a happy little corner of the world somewhere and live a normal life.
Move to Cost Rica and start a surf school. Buy a club in Sydney. Run a restaurant on the South Coast of England. With the sort of money I would have had after that score, I could have done just about anything.
But no.
I fucked up, and now I'm here, doing a job for free, and never quite knowing whether Sage Dalton will be true to his word or not. And however good the sex is, when the dust settles and the fog of lust in my head clears, I begin to feel more and more dirty for the sexual control he's exerting.
However, I need to focus on this job, and after that I can reevaluate my life and consider another path. This has been a true wake up call, and perhaps getting a whole new identity and starting afresh is just what I need.
But only after...
Sage offers me some more inside information on the target, Morgan Trayfoot, and I continue to do my own research into him and his Long Island estate. I also manage to get hold of blueprints for the property, studying them with the focus and attention of a scholar so that I know every little secret within.
This job will represent a first though – I won't be infiltrating secretly at night, but on the arm of a billionaire during an engagement party. At first glance, it might seem like an unnecessarily risky move by Sage, entering the house with a criminal like me.
But on closer inspection, he can happily plead innocence over all of it. His argument, I'm sure, will simply be that he had no idea I was a thief, and that I was purely using him to gain access to the mansion.
His lawyers will lap it up and tear me apart if I try to say otherwise. So, really, the risk is all on me.
And I know it.
So, with Sage's information of the whereabouts of the safe, I consider my options, and draw up several plans and back up plans to follow through in case things go wrong.
I also scope out possible points of escape if I need to use them. Routes I can take through the mansion and out of the estate to safety where I'll have a good chance of outrunning and outwitting the cops.
Really, it's all about planning. And the more I plan, the more confident I feel that the night will go without a hitch.
I hear from Sage from time to time over the ten days leading to the party. He calls me on secure lines and asks me how everything is going. Clearly, he's interested in knowing exactly what steps I'm taking to secure the necklace, something I put down to his perfectionist nature and intrigue at my life.
When speaking with him on the phone, I begin to see a slightly different side to him. Not the side that revels in his control of me and demands that I perform sex acts on him, but one that's a little more charitable. A side that aims to help me, seems genuinely interested in my world, and truly wants me to succeed.
I begin to get the impression that his desire for me to get the necklace isn't only down to his desire to have it. It's also because he genuinely enjoys my legend as the Night Panther, and in my heart of hearts I don't believe he wants to see me go back to jail.
I suppose some of that is because I described it all in such horrendous detail that night we had dinner. Fueled by alcohol and somewhat venting over certain elements of my life and my past, I told him things I've never uttered.
And through my hazy memory of some of that night, I remember the words he told me then: “you're too bright a bird to be caged, Kristen.”
So, when I truly think about it, I begin to doubt whether he'd even follow through with his threats of handing me over to the police. In that single stroke, he'd condemn me to a world I hate, and would extinguish the legend of the Night Panther all at once.
He wouldn't do that, would he?
Regardless, I have to follow through. There's no other choice, and consequences be damned, I'll settle my debt with Sage or get caught one way or another.
In the days leading up to the party, I finalize my arrangements. After this night, I will leave the city and start somewhere new. Whether I leave the tag of the Night Panther behind is another matter, but I'll certainly leave the city.
There will be serious heat, and when the heat comes, it's best to not be near.
Because this will not be a regular heist. The necklace is worth a staggering five million dollars and is famous throughout the world, having been worn my French Queens and Princesses for hundreds of years.
The manhunt will be national, perhaps even international, and I have to be prepared for the backlash that will come along with it. I've told Sage exactly the same, but he doesn't seem too concerned.
“Nothing can possibly link me to this,” he tells me with such assurance that I have to believe him.
“As long as you're sure,” I say, noting that if I'm seen lifting the necklace, a lot of questions will be asked of him.
“I'm sure you'll figure something out,” he says calmly.
And day by day, the night approaches, and the anticipation builds. And I know that, whatever happens, this night will represent a watershed moment for me.
Sink, or swim. There's no other way...
Chapter Four
“I like your dress,” says Sage, eyes sliding over me.
“You don't look so bad yourself,” I return, looking over his tuxedo.
“Are you all ready for tonight?”
I nod confidently. There's no place for doubt now. And no place for nerves.
“As I'll ever be.”
“Good. Because I want that necklace, Kristen.”
I fucking know that...
I'm back at Sage's mansion, and soon we're due to leave and make the short trip towards Morgan Trayfoot's estate. Once more, the proximity of their homes has likely added to the rivalry.
My dress is black, dem
ure, reserved. As before, I'm wearing dark make up, my hair tied back in a bun, my shoes nondescript. It's all part of my plan, and I hope it pays off.
“What color is the inside?” asks Sage, referencing my dress
“Crimson red,” I say.
But this isn't a proposal to see it. Sage knows, because I've told him, that my dress can be turned inside out and transformed into something entirely different.
He moves toward my handbag, sitting on a table in the room, and opens it up.
Inside, carefully positioned in a small secret pouch, is a blonde wig and blue contact lenses. When the time comes, I'll completely alter my appearance and hastily change my make up until I'm nothing but a shade at the party, slipping between people, unrecognized by a single soul.
It's for my protection, and also for Sage's, to add to my deceit.
He turns now, and moves toward me.
“Your look isn't quite complete, I don't think.”
I frown, and quickly check myself out.
“What's missing?”
“These.”
He reaches into his pocket, and pull out a small box. He opens it up, and inside I see the earrings I stole from him only a couple of weeks ago.
“Very funny,” I say, smiling.
“Oh, it's no joke. I'd like you to wear these tonight. Put them on.”
Is he serious?
He holds the box out as I take the earrings and put them on. Then he turns me to the mirror, standing over my shoulder.
“They suit you, Kristen. You look better in them than my wife ever did.”
“I'm sure that's not true.”
“It is,” he says, and turns me toward him and kisses me.
It's more tender, less passionate, and carries a small element of meaning.
“Tonight, if things go well, you can keep them for your trouble.”
No...
“I...I couldn't do that.”
“Oh, you can. They don't mean much to me anymore anyway. You've earned them, Kristen.”
I'm shocked by his generosity. Only 15 or so days ago I was stealing them from his safe, and now he's offering to give them to me outright? I can't quite compute the goings on in his mind.
