I shuddered again wondering what I'd be required to do. The lights in the room dimmed so that only the soft spotlights on the two girls were visible through the gloom

I stopped search-lighting with my eyes trying to find my boss. Valentine had obviously not brought me here on genuine business. Those recent words, Happy initiation’ from the waiter boy repeated in my mind as I stared at the two blindfold women on the dais. What on earth could he have meant?

Was I being inducted into a sexual cult or had he been mistaken and confused me with the girls on the stage? My mind bounced like a ping-pong ball between the extreme scenarios.

When I felt the warm presence rise behind my left shoulder, my heart quickened. Pressure filled my breasts, pushing them out eagerly with anticipation for the Masters approach. I sucked my lower lip into itself, the tension of his closeness ratcheted through my invigorated body.

Every cell wanted to turn and drink him in up close, I craved an intimate smile after the relaxed evening we spent the previous night at his penthouse high above San Francisco. But something prevented me.

The tense crackle in the air behind me warned of a change in the game. We were no longer two equals sharing cooking and fine wine. The relaxed, beautiful man of the night before had disappeared into the shadows. We were master and servant and something told me Valentine was livid with emotional fire. It burned through my pores even though I couldn’t see him.

I swallowed hard, as though that could alleviate the tingling on the outer layer of my skin. Valentine was so close I felt his heavy warm breath skitter across my shoulders, so that the hairs on the back of my neck sprung to life.

“Ms. Cannon I'm glad you were able to join me, " he husked, his voice a gravel burst behind my ear.

Like Persephone in the Greek myth, I didn't dare turn around for fear of bursting the bubble.

"Your command is my wish, or something like that," I replied with a whisper touch of irony, but keeping my eyes fixed front to hide my overriding grin.

Game on tonight then, after yesterday evening.

"Still I'm surprised to see you, in view of your overlapping engagements," he said.

His tone turned dangerously low, making me shiver. I knew there would be some sort of punishment for having run out to see Josh. For some reason Valentine had a seriously negative vibe going on where Josh was concerned.

But I was vibrant with curiosity. I also longed to make him aware that I knew about his previous relationship with my ex, well not quite, ex-boyfriend.

"You mean my meeting with your childhood friend?” I murmured so no one around us knew we were having a chat, or that I was answering back.

I still kept my eyes fixed straight ahead against every impulse to turn and face him down with a challenge. Again the air between us thickened and I felt his body bristle and turn rigid.

"No, I mean with the man I put through school and supported, no created, to become the renowned architect he is today,” he snarled, also under his breath. “The man who, without me, would be working retail at an electronics store, not dating smart strong and perfectly sub women."

All my sassy confidence. Along with any triumph I may have felt at having a secret, vanished, slithering away like water down a drain.

“I, oh, he only told me he knew you as a child, a little,” I spoke in a half whimper, confusion shaking me to the center of my trembling body.

"Yes the hubris of the boy never fails to surprise me,” Valentine said, then demanded; “did you have sex with him this afternoon?"

“No,” I replied automatically, right before my hackles rose at being questioned by a man I actually owed nothing to.

He was my employer I was his designer, not his slave. My relationship outside of work was none of his damn business and there was no excuse for this compulsive stalking of his.

Somehow we fallen into a bizarre relationship of him tormenting me physically, emotionally, psychologically, sexually – okay on every level – and I’d become hopelessly addicted to his game.

Bondage play with Valentine felt like a more intense form of communication than any of the quotidian dinner and movie affairs I'd had with Josh. I felt more connected to Valentine, who barely spoke to me, then to any man who'd regaled me with info drops about his inner self. I’d always really loathed those question and answer dates that felt more like school admission interviews.

In New York I'd always felt I should mail out my resume before a date. Indicate my short-term, long-term, and lifetime goals of the top of the page, finishing up with the clichéd old bucket list. Was that a way to know someone? To know whether you wanted them in your life or your body? As though life was a series of standard events to be crossed off until you came to the end. How were people matched like a computer dating service by the number of shared interests. I don't know, maybe it works for some.

“Did you want to fuck him?’ Valentine demanded in a low growl, almost feral in its intensity. Like a wounded animal wandering starving, no joke that’s how animalistic he sounded. “Ah you hesitate,” he gruffed when I ignored him, skirting the perimeter of punishment.

“Not in the way you think,” I countered.

Yes I wanted him inside me but only because after an amazing evening, you abandoned me to my fever of desire and left me to sleep alone in the guest room. Every time you push me away hurts more than the previous time. It makes me want to slink back to the imaginary security of my previous lover.

“You know what I think?” he gruffed.

“I thought that was the reason why we forgo the safe word,” I countered.

“Hmm.”

I could hear the pleasure on his lips. As though he’d won. But what? Was I the prize?

All I knew was that with Valentine I felt finally alive.

We had nothing in common. We lived in different worlds, knowing nothing about each other and yet I still felt closer to him than anyone else in my life. That included the man that I’d recently been sure was the one. My new boss knew me better than anyone. He saw me and brought out elements of my very essence that no one has ever sourced including my first master, Josh Perrine.

“Do you love him?” Valentine couldn’t seem to let it go but I hardly dared believe he was jealous.

That he wanted to possess me for himself. Not when he exposed me to Marc and this crowd.

“Isn’t love's purpose that the other exposes a facet of the humanness you haven't yet discovered for yourself. That they accept you – love you – for it and in spite of it.”

“Is that what you’re searching for in a partner?” he asked, his tone entirely different, that hurt beast again.

I nodded and felt tears jab at my eyes, had to bite on my mouth to halt the spill.

“You didn’t answer my question, Ms Cannon,” Jay rasped.

I shook my head side to side and immediately felt the air between us sigh.

The only problem was it didn't seem Valentine had that same set of requirements for his life. Every time he seemed to be letting me in, dropping some of the razor wire boundaries surrounding him, he soon took fright again. Then he retreated further by tossing me out to another man.

I was pretty sure the dungeon session with Marc had been his method of creating distance by trying to devalue me. He wanted nothing more than total unquestioning control, buttoned up and tie tighter than all the dinner suits in the room combined. And now this.