In Doreen Desalvo's Still A Thief, ex-con Jake Monroe is determined to claim Assistant District Attorney Kate Kern as his very own sub. He does this with increasing demands, beginning with simple acts like making her late for work and ordering her not to wear underwear. He moves to encouraging her to exhibitionism and invades her work space with sex games with toys. Dinner at a restaurant brings yet more demands, and eventually they end up at an "adult sex club".

However, beneath Jake's primitive desire for Kate to call him "Master" runs an even stronger need to claim her love, although as a Dom this is the last thing he wants to admit to her. Kate is equally reluctant to explain her love for him, vacillating between rebellion and an intense desire to please him. In the end it becomes a question of who will break first.

Wow, talk about a hot story. Once I sat down to read, the only time I got up was to fetch a glass of ice water. Jake is the consummate Dom, mixing tenderness with outrageous demands from a woman with no experience with submission of any sort. Her rapid fall into his world is believable in ways that are many other stories of this ilk do not accomplish, perhaps made so due to their respective insecurities: Jake's that Kate feels superior to him because of his criminal background and Kate's that she is not woman enough for him. Doreen Desalvo does any excellent job bringing the reader into their inner emotions and fears, really quite an accomplishment with the amount of time these two spend making love!

A word of warning: Although the actual S/M factors occur late in the story, heed the disclaimer re: "possible objectionable acts." Still A Thief is most definitely not a book for the faint of heart. That being said, have your ice water handy-you're going to need it! Five Angels RR.

Reviewed by: Lynn