Shocked at being summarily dismissed, I struggled to raise myself from the board. There were no napkins anywhere with which to wipe away the untouched remains of the dessert.

As I hobbled towards the door, the manservant Manuel appeared to unlock the chokechain from around my neck, which appeared to be solid gold. He pulled back the heavy velvet drapery for me to exit the dining room, eyes carefully averted. With my bare tits slathered and dripping with cream I hobbled along the passage and up the stairs behind him to be deposited in my quarters.

If I'd half expected a dungeon, I was disappointed as the room was the pinnacle of silky luxe. Hundreds of thousands of silkworms had toiled their entire lives just to create the piles of dreamy bed linens I would rest on. But in my frustrated state it was impossible to enjoy any of it.

I rummaged for my phone at the bottom of my Marc Jacobs and saw that Josh had left a message ten minutes ago. That was it? Only one in all the time I’d been here? Misery slushed through my lonely body. Only one message when I had arrived at the winery this morning? I'd got off the flight expecting he'd have called, that there would have been a bunch of ‘miss you’ sexy texts, seeing as this was supposed to have been our goodbye weekend.

I'd also hoped to see a bunch of missed calls asking why I didn't return his texts. One call, moments ago, almost as an afterthought. I threw myself on the bed, sinking into the plush layers of silk and down, feeling that close to a kicking and screaming tantrum of frustrated expectations.

But I would not. Jay Valentine would not get the better of me with his control games. I was mad at myself for the powerful attraction carousing through my body every time he was close to me. It drove me to the brink that I couldn't touch him and he'd never laid his hand on me apart from the briefest touch of guidance toward the table that had seared beneath my skin like a flame.

I pulled up against the pile of silk pillows, all the sweet cream rubbed into my breasts or the silk cover. Good, I hoped it was ruined. Not that the cost of a replacement would be the slightest inconvenience to Valentine. He probably tossed out silk covers with every change of sheets. My mind was ranting, even imagining Jay Valentine had anything at all to do with the purchase or laundering of household bedding.

I thumbed the phone and pressed Josh's number in New York. It would be 4am there now, but he was often up late when work plagued his mind and a new design withheld itself, torturing the edges of his creativity. Besides, he had called me not that long ago.

“A/C,” he yelled his nickname for me above the loud music playing beside him. “How's it going in the world of Bacchus?”

“Lousy to be honest,” I said, not sure whether tears or rage were higher on my emotional menu. I was so glad to hear his voice. I needed some support.

“What's up girl?”

“I've had a terrible day of non-stop labor, without actually doing any work and I'm all alone in my misery. I miss you so much.”

Fuck. I wished I hadn't said it first, but the sentiment fell out before I could muzzle my mouth. And then I had to gasp back a squeak as the electrode in my pussy buzzed and made it tug through a ton of contractions.

“What are you doing, Sweets?” Josh asked as I opened my legs and tugged the plug out of me. I felt strangely empty with it gone.

“Just removing a pussy stimulator,” I said, matter of fact, knowing the image would stimulate him equally. “Wow. I think this is real gold, no wonder it's been filling me so heavily.

“Babe, things don't sound that bad if you're wearing gold accessories.” Josh laughed out loud. “And they can only get better.”

“I think they might get a whole lot worse.”

“Well, I don’t know what's going on for real, but if you're really that unhappy you can always leave I guess.”

It sounded like yet another test- I knew Josh would never want me to give up so easily. We were both aware of the disaster that would wreak on my career and I had a contract that didn't allow me to bail.

“Do you wanna tell me about it?” he asked. He sounded distracted, not giving my woes his full attention.

“No. I know you're in front of your drawing board and thinking more about the form on the paper.”

“I promise I'll turn my back on that torturous minx and give you my entire attention. Shoot. What's going on?”

“Well, I'm sitting here having finally being shown to my room after the flight, with my skin blistered red from a skintight leather suit and welts across my neck from the brace and chain I just wore to dine in.”

“Now you're just toying with me,” he laughed. “Trying to get me worked up already, you sexy Nymph.”

“No actually I'm not, I'm speaking quite literally.” Maybe I shouldn’t have shared all that but he didn’t believe me anyway. Thought I was trying to get him worked up for a down below Facetime.

“Still sounds like an okay day at the office to me, better than mine.”

“I should have known you'd think it was cool.”

“Are you seriously going to tell me, A/C, that you've had no pleasure at all since you left? Even with all the E-stim?”

I opened my mouth to say no but that would have been the biggest lie. I'd been teased to the pinnacle a mile high and then shivered through a barrage of intrusive tugs down my pussy from the plug Valentine controlled. But most of all from- the crazy freaking desire I felt for my boss.

Guilt wrapped all around me, talking it over with my kind-of boyfriend, because although he wanted me to sleep with other men, had ordered me to do so and tell him all about it, I still felt ashamed of the ravaging hunger I felt to have Jay Valentine ram into me. It was completely insane, the man was absolutely gorgeous but he'd barely spoken more than two sentences to me. All he'd done was order me to go here and there, strip in front of him, bend over. Now his enigmatic silence was making me loopy.

And I hadn't told Josh how Valentine had ordered me to show him my breasts the minute I arrived and then to raise my skirt and remove the underwear I wasn't even wearing.

“How was your bare-assed plane ride?” he asked as though reading my thoughts.

“I-um-” I didn't know what to tell him. Would he be mad and cut me off right at the moment I needed him?

“I told you to tell me everything,” he said with a dangerous inflection.

He'd also told me to fuck the men he told me to and then share the details with him. My rebellion on the plane had made me feel independent, but now the break between us seemed irrevocable. He didn't offer to help me get out of my entrapment and return to New York. I felt completely abandoned by a man I'd trusted.

“It was fine except Valentine made me go straight to his office as soon as I arrived.” That much was true.

“And?”

“He ordered me to bend over his desk and I was still wearing that short skirt and so – he saw – the scarlet heat on my ass from your parting gift.”

“I really thought you'd be able to handle all this A/C. Was I wrong?”

The lilt of disappointment in his voice at my quitter stance stung and then it occurred to me- what did he mean by ‘all this’? He was speaking as though he'd known what I was heading into when I took the contract to design Valentine Winery.

“No.” I whispered, barely audible, trying to get everything straight in my head.

“Like I said you can always quit.”

“I'd have no job and no place to go,” I said, knowing as I said it that I could no more leave Valentine than fly to Venus. I was torn exactly in two right down the middle, craving my lover back in the city and mired in an impossible yearning for my new boss.

“You've got no choice but to stick with the pain then,” Josh said.

I had never heard such emotion in his voice- was he miserable? If so why didn't he ask me to come back to him, at least while I got back on my feet? There was no way I was going to ask him. Yeah, he liked me to beg but there was no way I was up for that humiliation in this situation. If he wanted me to beg for his help, he was out of luck. I was obviously mistaken in my ideal that we'd gotten closer and were more to each other than players.

“And here's what I want you to do,” he added. “Submit totally to Valentine-take everything he gives you and tell me all the details.”

“Sure. Night.” I cut the call.