I tried Josh again, but he was still not picking up. He was similar to Marc, I realized, in averting any delving into his past. Now that I'd gained some distance from the intensity of our coupling, it was clear that Josh had kept me isolated from the man inside.

He'd responded to every idea or hope with displacement, turning my questions back on themselves. I hurled the velvet palette of my fave Naked eye shadow across the room and caught a shadow.

“People usually knock before entering,” I shouted. The fury hurtled back into my chest as I pulled my underwear back up, smoothed down my skirt. “Or, shock horror, even wait to be invited in. Talk about lack of respect.”

Delilah took my indignation as blank-eyed as a replicant. She wasn’t programmed for respect, regret, empathy, or any of the finer human qualities relating to treatment of others. Did she too view me as something created for her amusement?

“You are required in the cellars,” she said flatly, without her usual malicious glint as she twisted a solid gold collar in her depraved fingers.

“No freaking way,” I snapped. “Tell your boss I'm not playing any more games.”

“Oh, did you think this was for you?” she said, so that a burst of jealous gunfire blasted in my lower stomach. Had he found someone to replace me already? Of course- Valentine could summon any woman from any corner in the world with a quick flick of his whiplash. “He wants to discuss a detail of the tasting rooms.”

“What detail?” I snapped, not trusting her in any way.

“I couldn't say. I'm just the lowly assistant, I know nothing of architectural design but he has some of the construction guys waiting to hammer out the issue so you need to get down there.”

“I will only go downstairs under my own free will,” I snapped. “I will not submit to you or any of his supplicants. If he wants to deal with me on a basis of business equality, I'll go to the meeting. Otherwise I'm staying here and I don't care if he leaves me to starve in my attic.”

So I was slightly dramatic with the Gothic heroine fantasies playing in my mind, from reading too much wronged woman fiction of late. Valentine was no sullen but sexy boss who's been lost his entire life until the poor governess slave (me) appeared to educate his children, lick his boots or design his tasting rooms.

Seriously my imagination was running riots since being stuck in this new world Bluebeard's castle and regularly locked into the dungeon of my own desires.

“Okay, keep your knickers on,” Delilah said, for the first time betraying the lick of a British accent. Unsurprising, as they were known for maintaining a stiff upper lip while flogging in secret. It began in school for the English. “Go down of your own volition if you like. He wants to see you and I'm sure you'll be excited by what he has to say.”

“You know what it is?”

If she said she was in on the plan then I was not leaving the room.

“No. But everything Sir Valentine offers is somewhere high on the excitement continuum. He's waiting in the wine cellar.”

Whatever bitch. Just get out of here and take your erotic infatuation for your master elsewhere.

Delilah turned on her seven inch heels and stomped along the corridor. With the clack of her heels penetrating the handmade silk runner into the old floorboards, I could have sworn I heard her mutter under her breath; “Bitch, you know you enjoyed it.”

There was no denying that her touch had elicited a violent reaction through my sensual depths. There was no way I was going to let her luxuriate in the knowledge that she'd turned me on. I was blindfold at the time.

Only once I heard her disappear into the other wing, did I retrieve my powder palette and make up my face ready to present to my employer.

“Two times in one day,” Marc said when I came into the cool stone room.

“Are you here for the meeting with Valentine?”

His assistants were at the far end of the cellar, testing acidity levels and temperature in a giant oak cask.

“I 'ave not seen Jay today. We are just finishing up with sampling.”

He handed me a tasting cup and I took a tiny amount in my mouth, cringing back from the sour tooth-drying juice of the previous sample.

“Wow that's divine,” I said, swallowing a deeper swig of the full-bodied red nectar.

“Yes, it 'as matured, you have a good nose,” he said. “More time in the barrel, better body in the mouth.”

“It must be fun getting to sip and savor all day long.”

“It is stimulating until it all goes bitter,” he said with a cryptic smile.

What does it take to be able to wrestle that battery acid into this vintage delicacy?”

“A great deal of training although I don't think winemakers can be taught. It requires all the senses, not just the mouth.”

He pronounced the words “Ze mouss” and I felt the delicious ripple of falling into flirtation with Marc again. My breasts filled and peaked inside the tight white shirt I had put back on for the meeting to show Valentine I was all about the business. Marc was so gorgeous but it had to be a French man thing. He had the ability of flirting without sounding like a douche.

Marc emanated a twinkle of pleasure for the enjoyment of the sensual arousal, just as he took a great wine on the tongue, the way he enjoyed the exquisite meals served at the chateau to all the workers. Valentine was a very generous and magnanimous boss- everyone was treated with equal value. Until they were dragged into the dungeon.

“Which other senses?”

I took the tiniest involuntary step forward, or maybe merely leaned in, my body craning toward his muscular lean chest. The yearning to be scooped up into his hold was stronger than the raw wine, still fermenting in the cask.

“The smell of the aroma, the sight of the color.”

“Anything else?”

“Perhaps the most important sense we possess – the sixth one in your gut telling you which is the right way to go, which will be a great vintage in the end, with patience and which will be a flashy fake requiring a clever label to push sales.”

“Have you ever been able to choose just one great wine?”

“I am far too much of an admirer to take only one. I want to taste many different varietals and vintages.”

In the instant his arms encircled me, crushing me into his hard torso, I knew it was more than his affection I thirsted for. My breasts returned the pressure from his chest ten fold, rising up and pounding with hot desire to be cupped and tweaked like swollen fruit.

“Marc, I want you. Please hold me, please-” my words were cut off by the moan escaping from my mouth when he clasped the underside of my full breast and rolled the protruding nipple in his thumb and index finger.

His other hand reached up my back to fill his palm with my thick hair, entwining it between his fingers to tug my head back and trail a line of nips the length of my neck. My arms clung around his neck as I pushed my pelvis into his, feeling the hard blade of his shaft pulsing with need for me. And then the explosion in my mouth when he swirled his tongue around mine like savoring his best vintage.

I had almost forgotten what it was to be kissed. It had been an age of Sundays since a man had shared that sensual intimacy, allowing me access to his desire. I splayed my fingers through his lush glossy hair, curling around the back of his head to pull him deeper into my mouth, as though I could swallow him up and savor the tobacco tannin of him always.

We stood in the cellar, the chill of the room emphasizing the heat rising from us like thunder crashing and drank each other up with a bottomless thirst until voices from the end of the row of old barrels reminded us we weren't alone.

Marc cupped the back of my skull in the most solicitous way. His touch brought the prickle of a tear to the corner of my eye as he maneuvered us along the edge of the massive wooden cask. When my back reached the end and turned the corner, Marc pressed me into the flat end hidden from the main area and mounded both breasts into his hands, pushing them up to his lips to kiss along the bulging fleshy tops.

Both my hands sworled his curls in my grasp, holding his head into my cleavage while he licked at the mounds and pressed the flesh out of the balcony cups to suck first one peak then the other into his burning lips. My panting exhaled faster and harder so that my breasts hurled at his mouth, urging him to pull me further into him.

By pressing my shoulders into the wood and arching my back so my hips pressed hard forward, I felt Marc's powerful need for me in the bulging shaft trapped in his pants. He pushed back against me and I ground my hips in response, begging him with my body as my clit shivered with every abrasion on his hard pole.

“Andie, Andie, we cannot. We ‘azz to stop this,” he moaned. He pronounced my name ‘Un-dee’ like always.

“No, I don't want to stop,” I whimpered from the force of my body's hunger.

“You must.”

“Why?”

“You will make more trouble than either of us can handle.”

I was alone that night yet again, and the following one, my misery compounded, my confusion making me almost as delirious as my aching clit. Josh still didn't answer calls so I was sure he was ignoring me. Valentine was absent, never showed for the meeting he demanded. Marc had pushed me off – I'd never felt so unwanted. It was contagious because I couldn't even work up the desire to pleasure myself, preferring to wallow in a vat of misery.

Fuck I hated all three of them- Valentine, Josh, Marc Chapelle, they were molded from the same last and I could not get away from their sick mind games fast enough.