PROLOGUE

BEING HANDCUFFED TO A WOODEN vaulting horse can do strange things to a person. When it happened to me, I tried to convince myself it was someone else’s fault. The truth was I had no one to blame but myself. If I hadn’t agreed to come here, if I hadn’t let my housemate convince me to sign up to play the game, well, none of this would have happened.

I wouldn’t be trapped into a rich weirdo’s playroom. I wouldn’t be looking across at shelves containing neat rows of sex toys, some of which I couldn’t even recognise. They all looked terrifying. But exciting at the same time. It was difficult to reconcile the two feelings at once. It didn’t matter though as none of them were going to be used on me. Never going to happen. After all, it was only a game. They were just for show, right?

The longer the conversation went on next door, the more my mind wandered. I was in the playroom. They were in the living room. Deciding my fate.

I’m aware that it sounds a bit overdramatic but they really were deciding my future while I could only wait and look around me for the hundredth time at the equipment on display.

I was surrounded by enough BDSM purchases to stock a Fifty Shades convention with plenty to spare. Close enough to look at, too far away to touch. Story of my life. I’d always wanted the things I couldn’t have, the boss, the coffee shop guy with the chiselled chin and the backstory I yearned to know, hell, I even had a crush on the pizza delivery guy for a while.

So how did I end up here? Cuffed in place, waiting to be freed?

Well, first of all, let me tell you where here is. It’s a room inside the most palatial mansion I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a grand total of one. This one. Owned by the most handsome and obscenely rich son of a bitch you could imagine.

The playroom was red as was I, the heating making me bake. More than anything, I wanted a drink, something to quench the burning thirst in the back of my throat. But until they finished talking, that wasn’t going to happen.

The walls were red, the carpet red, the ceiling pure white, the only pure thing in there, apart from me. The shelves covering two walls contained every sex toy imaginable and some that weren’t They were arranged pretentiously like exhibits in a museum. Nipple clamps, handcuffs, ballgags. The butt plugs went from smallest to largest, each with a printed label in front though the writing was too small for me to read from my position.

I could imagine him coming in and placing a label next to me.

Karina Browning. Recent Acquisition. A Mistake.

Being on your own with only handcuffs for company can make your mind wander, that’s for sure. What else could I see? There was a wooden chair with a dildo stuck into the seat, straps on the arms to hold you in place. That looked terrifying. There was a swing over in the corner but it was definitely not the kind of swing suitable for a playground.

The size scaling carried on with the vibrators, smallest to largest, and the dildoes, largest to smallest, on the other set of shelves, ending the row with a scooped rubber fist that looked terrifying. The top shelf contained a vase of red roses, standing out yet somehow fitting in with everything else.

I shuffled sideways, trying to work some life back into my arm. I didn’t want the metal cuff to jangle and give away the fact that I was here. Their conversation was showing no signs of ending anytime soon. I had to let it play out.

The top of the wooden horse had a length of metal running along it and I was cuffed to that. By sliding along the floor, I was just able to ease myself downwards, getting into a sitting position though with my arm stuck above my head like I was waiting to ask a question in the world’s strangest classroom.

I suppose the question would have been, how the hell did you get into this mess, Karina? And more importantly, what do you do now?

The answer to both questions was complicated but simple at the same time. I had got into this mess out of nowhere and there was nothing I could do but wait until he came back in.

Until he came back in.

He.

It’s always been a he. A him. A man. Men. The cause of all my problems.

My story starts with a man. Not the man out there talking, Mr Rich Weirdo. We’ll get to him soon enough though, don’t worry.

First, I want to talk about a man called Tony. That’s where all this began. At the time he was my boyfriend, on the verge of becoming my fiancé.

I hope you’re sitting more comfortably than I am. But whether you’re sitting in an armchair as bizarre as the one over there, or laid out in bed on a warm afternoon or crushed between two suits called Nigel on the overheated train to work, I want you to brace yourself. I’m going to tell you a story. Not a long one but my one. I want to tell you how I came to be chained up, surrounded by sex toys, waiting for the man of my dreams to come and rescue me. It’s a hell of a story and I’m not expecting you to believe it all. I am expecting you to listen though. You could just learn from my mistakes. Someone might as well. I sure didn’t.

Let me take you all the way back to Tony, the man who set me on this path, the man who, as I begin my story, is about to break my heart.