For Daniella all was darkness. Dark too was her understanding of this man with whom she could talk politics and ethics and movies, science and spirituality come to that. With whom she had laughed on dates past - clever laughter, stupid laughter. Comfortable laughter with a man of easy charm, who was fucking sexy with it. Before his games and his agenda became apparent. Even now with their supposed understanding he was playing mind-games, undermining, trying to re-establish himself as someone she had almost come to hate a day earlier. But as he played his game, she hardly cared to think why.

She felt the cold tip first, a blunt...