Jocelyn’s sweet lips were busy between my legs, lapping at my clit. When she glanced up from time to time, anxious to make sure she was satisfying her mistress, I gave her head a reassuring pat, letting her know I was enjoying everything she was doing to me. Still, as I took another liqueur chocolate from the box at my side, biting through its crisp outer shell to the syrupy, brandied filling, I could barely stifle a sigh. Who knew retirement would prove so dull?

Oh, I had all the time I wanted to indulge my every whim, along with more than enough wealth to make my life very comfortable indeed. And with beautiful, submissive Jocelyn as my lover and slave, I should have been the happiest woman on earth. But I missed the thrills of my previous life, the one that had placed me in this most enviable position.

Under the alias of The Black Lily, I’d been a highly successful jewel thief. The police had pursued me, but I’d never been caught, even though I’d taken all manner of risks, creeping into bedrooms in the dead of night in search of booty. For my weakness wasn’t just money, it was beautiful women – and I’d met plenty of those in the course of my adventures, though none as delicious as Jocelyn, who I’d met while she was modelling an item I was attempting to steal.

My problem, I decided, as Jocelyn’s tongue lashed against my clit and sent me tumbling into orgasm, was that life no longer held an element of risk. I had to do something dangerous before I expired of boredom.

But first, I had the small matter of a weekend in the country to negotiate.

The invitation came as a complete surprise. I hadn’t seen Catriona for years. We’d been best friends at boarding school, but our paths had diverged when she met and married a wealthy industrialist. They’d been living in Switzerland, until the marriage came to an abrupt end when Catriona caught him fucking the au pair in the marital bed. It was by no means the first affair Rex had conducted, but it was the first one she hadn’t known about. As she told me later, it was the simple lack of etiquette that appalled her. In the divorce settlement, she’d been awarded his old family home, Mottram Hall – he’d kept his properties in Zurich and New York, and his private island in the Maldives. Catriona was keen for me to see her new residence – and to bitch about Rex, I was sure – and invited me along to a house party she was throwing. The prospect of spending a weekend marooned in the wilds of Suffolk, up to my knees in mud and surrounded by the sort of chinless wonders I’d spent much of my career depriving of their valuables, filled me with dread. But I was sure I could anaesthetise myself to the worst of the horrors to come with the aid of enough gin. And I’d have Jocelyn to amuse me in the evenings. Or so I thought.