“It’s Karma,” he said. “Torsten has talked.”
* * *
I might not quite have approved of Operation Atomic Kitten, and I might not have enjoyed spending three nights piecing together strips of shredded paper, but I had to hand it to Sunny—his dirty tabloid tricks had got results. By Thursday evening, Sunny and I were sitting at our laptops, side by side, writing our separate stories, cross-checking every fact, making sure we could prove everything we’d discovered, and generally making our stories as watertight as possible. When we were done writing, we read our articles out loud to each other. The information was exactly the same, but the tone was different. This was my opening paragraph:
The Government has done a secret deal with British renewables firm ZephEnergies to build and operate a 3.2 gigawatt nuclear power station at Newton Bardon in Leicestershire. The Government had said that any proposals for new net zero energy projects would have to go before the new National Investment Committee, but theSentinelcan confirm the Leicestershire plant was given the go-ahead before the committee was even formed.
Whereas Sunny’s report had a bit more colour:
The grubby soviet nuclear power plant deal that ended the career of sexpot former energy minister Bob Wynn-Jones has been reheated, with the Government secretly giving the multibillion pound contract to UK-based “renewable energy” company ZephEnergies. The Leicestershire project exploded in a mushroom cloud of scandal last month when theBulletinrevealed Wynn-Jones was having an extramarital affair with a Belarusian spy. In the fallout, the Government announced it would create a National Investment Committee to decide which net zero projects would get the go-ahead. But today theBulletincan reveal that ZephEnergies was awarded the contract to build and operate Newton Bardon within days of the Cabinet reshuffle that saw the creation of Jemima Carstairs’ mega-department.
“By Saturday morning, this will be all anyone in Britain is talking about,” Sunny said.
I passed him a USB stick with his copies of all the evidence we’d collected.
“You’ll need this.”
We sat back in our chairs and smiled at each other. There was nothing left to do now but for us to pitch our stories tomorrow morning.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Starving,” Sunny said. “Shall we go up the chicken shop?”
“That’s notquitewhat I had in mind.” I brushed my socked foot against his leg playfully, without dropping eye contact for even a second. It was dark, and we were lit by our computer screens. There had been a rush of adrenaline as we wrote and as we read, but it gave way to something else now. Where there should have been exhaustion, a kind of thrill shivered through me, a nervous energy. Sunny’s eyes twinkled, little emerald sparkles shining out amid the peridot. I let my foot stray a little higher. He raised his eyebrows. I smirked. Sunny shoved his hands in his pockets and spread his legs. I crept my foot higher and found the spot where his body was responding to my touch. I realised, then, what this new feeling was. It was power, and the anticipation of power. And it was arush.
Sunny pulled off his hoodie, revealing his beautiful pale skin dashed with the amber and umber of a million freckles. He was lean, and the intercostal muscles of his ribs created tiger stripes that curved around to his back. His blush-pink nipples were as hard as shot in a roasted pheasant. Still, I held his gaze. He did not move. We were playing a power game of our own now, and the anticipation was too much for me. I let my foot fall to the floor. I took my glasses off, crept out of my chair like a predator stalking its prey, crouched on the floor between Sunny’s knees, and gently tugged down his joggers.
“Bugger me rigid, Sunny. Do you ever wear pants?”
* * *
Half an hour later, we were both sprawled out naked on the rug on the summer house floor, exhausted, completely sated.
“I think I have at least a thousand tiny paper cuts on my back and butt,” I said.
“Let me check,” Sunny said.
“If I roll over, I’ll get them on my front too.”
“Roll over.”
I did as I was told. The room was dark, lit only by the bluish light from my laptop screen.
“I can’t see any,” Sunny said.
“I can feel them.”
“Do you want me to kiss it better?”
“Yes, please.”
Sunny kissed the nape of my neck, his warm breath making my skin tingle.
“Where does it hurt? Does it hurt here?” He kissed my shoulder blade, his lips lightly grazing the flesh, giving me goosebumps all over.
“Yes,” I said. “Everywhere.”
“Even here?” He kissed the small of my back.
