I STOOD JUST BEYOND the doorway, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.

The room was roughly rectangular and about the size of one of the big bedrooms upstairs. But the walls weren’t quite straight: they curved in and out like a frozen sea. The room had been carved out of the rock, the walls chiseled smooth with millions of individual hammer blows. Then the walls had been painstakingly polished so that all those tiny flat surfaces shone like the facets of a diamond, the dark rock reflecting the light from a fireplace until it looked like the walls themselves were on fire. The floor was tiled with white marble, the firelight turning it creamy and warm.

There was a beautiful four poster bed with cream sheets and a crimson comforter, hung with matching crimson drapes. The wood of the frame was so old that there were no square corners left.

But what had stopped me in my tracks wasn’t the amazing room, or the bed. It was the rest of the furniture.

It was in the same style as the bed. Maybe it had even come from the same European palace, hundreds of years ago. It was all handmade, with elaborately carved wood, cold cast iron, and soft scarlet leather. It was beautiful. But terrifying.

On shaking legs, I started across the room, looking at each piece in turn. A bench that you would kneel on, your lower legs bound and your upper body pressed against the leather. An X-shaped thing you would stand against, your wrists and ankles held by straps. A thing like a gymnastics horse that you would bend over, your ass in the air, legs spread….

I came to a stop at the end of the room, next to a wooden rack holding whips and riding crops.

A dungeon. This was a dungeon.

Which meant Konstantin was into this stuff. I had a sudden vision of Christina bound to one of the benches and Konstantin hulking over her, teasing her and taking her over and over again as she wriggled and begged.

Except it wasn’t him and Christina, anymore. It was him and me.

But I’m not into this stuff! I’d tried BDSM once, with a boyfriend. He’d tried to tie my wrists to the bed but the plastic clothesline he’d used wouldn’t hold a knot and kept slipping apart, and he was too timid to be convincingly menacing.

Konstantin, though...he was plenty menacing. I looked down at the thing I was next to, the one I thought of as the “kneeling bench.” With those big hands, he could absolutely push me onto that thing, naked, my breasts pressed just there, and pin me there while he bound me....

A drumbeat started inside me, slow but insistent, resonating up into my head and down into my groin. I pushed my hand experimentally against the leather padding. Soft but firm. It was cool against my palm but it warmed to my body in just a few heartbeats. I kept my hand there, transfixed, and the room was so quiet, I could hear that my breathing had gone tight. The drumbeat inside me was building in power, each crash of it radiating out in slow motion, shattering everything in its path.

I fingered the thick leather straps and buckles. Once he fixed me in place, I’d be helpless. That word felt weirdly powerful, echoing again and again in my head, blending with the rising drumbeat and making me crush my thighs together. Helpless. Tied tight, all I’d be able to do was thrash and plead, and he’d just take me, just utterly, utterly, take me—

I snatched my hand away, shocked at what was in my head. I have to get out of here. Right now.

I spun around...and froze. The door was wide open and Konstantin’s huge form was silhouetted in the doorway. He stepped into the light.

“I should have known I’d find you here,” he told me.

And he kicked the door closed behind him.