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      Chapter One

      The Master, by Kit Connor

      I know how wicked I must look, all bound like this. He hasn’t even used something decent like a length of rope or a nice scarf. He’s used fat strips of red ribbon, and everywhere he’s wrapped them I can feel their thick edges digging into my flesh. Can feel them turning me into something obscene – breasts pushed up and out by the presence of them laced beneath, eyes sightless behind scarlet silk.

      Yet no matter how lewd I look – how ready to be used – he doesn’t make a move towards me. I can hear his heavy footsteps against the glossy wooden floors of this expensive apartment, and occasionally there’ll be another hint of him: the faint tang of his cologne.

      But nothing substantial.

      I don’t get anything substantial until I hear the whisper of his breath, and have to wonder if that sound is slightly heavier than it would usually be. Do I look good enough to make my Master pant with anticipation, perhaps?

      I doubt it, but find myself hoping anyway. I always hope, no matter how unlikely it is that he would show me the smallest sign of his own pleasure. He is like granite, my Master, he is a rock I cannot penetrate, and yet he moves me to do things I never thought I was capable of.

      ‘Take your clothes off,’ he had said to me, and I did it. I didn’t even ask him to close the curtains over the broad glass-covered cityscape that I know lies behind him and in front of my bound form. We’re high up here in this island of luxury – London is just a dot – but it’s possible that someone could catch sight of me. Someone might look out of their high-rise window and see me across the city – a faint blur of naked skin, striped with red.

      Though, alarmingly, the thought doesn’t dampen my ardour. It enflames it instead. It makes me slick between my legs, to the point where I’m almost uncomfortable.

      I think he knows it. He never seems surprised to find me wet and wanting, and he’s even less surprised now when I break, quite suddenly.

      Which seems unfair, because I’m surprised. I even shudder to hear myself say:

      ‘Please touch me.’

      Though I confess, it’s the good kind of shudder. My sex swells, my body thrums, I ache to think of him in me. God, a hand on my breast would be so good right now – maybe rubbing one of my nipples ever so lightly, the way he so often does when I’m writhing and past the point of no return. That teasing, twisted look on his devil’s face, as he works one stiff little point back and forth, back and forth.

      Lord, I can’t stand it. I can’t, I can’t – and then he goes and says:

      ‘If you’re a good girl, perhaps I will.’

      And I can stand that even less. I want to scream at him that I’m not good, that I’ll never be good, but the truth is – he sees to the core of me. He knows the layer of restraint I’ve built up around myself; he’s unearthed every hallmark of a buttoned-up, too-perfect princess.

      And he won’t be satisfied until he’s stripped it all away.