THE TILES were freezing beneath my bare feet. But with each slow step I took towards him, with each second his gaze soaked into me, I could feel the heat strumming and building, melting me from the inside out. By the time I reached him, I felt like I was on fire and the tiles felt pleasantly cool.

I glanced around and my breathing went tight. I’m really here. Deep underground, where no one could hear me scream. This time, there’d be no interruption, no rescue….

And this time, I hadn’t wandered down here by accident. He’d told me to come down here and I’d obeyed. Willingly.

I had to, I told myself. For the mission. But as the broad sweep of his chest filled my vision, as my fingertips tingled with the need to touch him, to smooth my hands over the soft cotton of his shirt and feel the hot muscle underneath... I knew that wasn’t the reason.

He slid a hand over my bare back, making me gasp, and then buried his fingers in my hair. He tugged gently, just enough to make me tilt my head back to look up at him.

I swallowed. God, the raw heat in his eyes, like he wanted to devour me whole. What had he seen, out there in the garden?

He moved his head down and I closed my eyes. But he didn’t kiss me: not quite. He stopped when our lips were just barely touching and stroked, drawing my lower lip down and opening me, and then letting it go, again and again.

The intimacy of it was amazing: our breathing fell in time and my lips became so sensitive that it felt like I could feel his whole body, all of his size and strength, in that one tiny contact. With each brush of his lips, the pleasure rose and spun, making me heady...but what made me go weak was the way I could feel him struggling with himself. He wanted to just full-on kiss me, to bury his tongue in me and ravish me, but he was forcing himself to keep everything locked down and controlled, to make it a choreographed dance with exact steps.

And he was losing the fight. First one big hand grabbed mine, then the other. He stood there, his muscled body trembling, his hands kneading my smaller ones as his lips stroked and stroked….

... and paused….

He suddenly whirled around and flung me onto the four poster bed. I landed on my back, legs kicking. Before I could speak, he was marching towards me, using his foot to pull something out from under the bed. I leaned over and looked. A wooden box, filled with everything from colored ropes to brutal-looking black leather straps. He’s going to tie me up. And before I’d even finished thinking it, he took out what looked like a long, black satin ribbon. Then he grabbed my wrist and pulled me.

Something was happening inside me, a thrashing, urgent heat that went straight down to my groin. It had started when he’d thrown me onto the bed, but when that hard grip closed on my wrist and he pulled me, my ass sliding across the covers, it doubled, trebled. It was the way he manhandled me so easily, the way he didn’t ask.

And then he started to wrap the ribbon around my arm, starting right up near my elbow and spiraling it all the way to my wrist. Just a thin slice of pale skin showed between each loop of glossy blackness. I watched, transfixed. It almost looked as if I was wearing black opera gloves.

Then he made some clever, looping knot at my wrist and tied the rest of the ribbon to one post on the four poster bed. I was trapped. The heat coiled and twisted, lashing inside me, the blood pounding in my ears. When I pulled, the ribbon spread the load all the way up my arm: I wasn’t just trapped, I was imprisoned, and that idea gave me a strange, fluttery feeling in my chest. I pulled again and felt the tightness all the way up to my elbow. It wasn’t painful, but it was firm. I can’t get free. The heat thrashed even faster inside me. It was like that moment on a roller coaster where the safety bar comes down and you realize you’re not getting off. I started to pant.

Then Konstantin was moving around the bed and that hard grip was on my other wrist—

Why am I letting him do this?

I knew the answer as soon as I’d asked. Because, against all reason, I trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

He bound my left wrist to the other post, so that my upper body made a wide Y on the bed. I was gulping down air, now, trembling. Oh God...what’s happening to me?

He walked around to the foot of the bed and just... glowered at me. Almost as if he was saying this was my fault, that this was the punishment I deserved for tempting him, somehow. All I did was play with a cat!

He lunged forward and grabbed my ankle. My heart started crashing against my ribs. Oh God that was even better than a wrist. A strong man gripping your wrist might want to kiss you or arrest you but a strong man grabbing your ankle—Did I really just think that? And yet my face didn’t go red. I didn’t have to lie about what I liked, not with him.

He pulled me down the bed until my body was taut. God, he moved me so easily! And that gorgeous face, those merciless gray eyes glaring down at me as he tied me and spread me, making me ready for him. This was every secret fantasy I’d never admitted to, since I started watching him.

He started to draw my left ankle to the left, opening me—

I quickly crossed my legs, right over left, cinching them tight. I can’t explain why I did it, I just had to.

He scowled at me, but I could see the glittering heat in his eyes burn hotter, darker. He took one ankle in each hand and—

His forearms bulged and suddenly my legs were forced apart. I actually went a little dizzy with how good it felt: my inner thighs quivering, weakening...and then my muscles giving up and my legs flopping open on the covers, only for my ankles to be quickly bound in place with more ribbons. By the time I was a spread X on the bed, the heat inside me was spiraling out of control. I’d never felt so utterly helpless.

Konstantin moved around the bed, staring down at me, and every heavy footfall sent a shockwave of heat reverberating through me. I bucked and wriggled in response, and that made my wrists and ankles tug at the ribbons, and the feel of being bound turned me on even more.

The bed creaked and sank as he put one knee on it, then the other. He knelt there, the top of his head almost reaching the bed’s canopy, hulking between my pale, straining thighs. We watched each other for a second, his massive chest rising and falling under his shirt and jacket. I knew what was underneath it, now, could visualize every hard ridge of tan muscle, every dark swirl of ink. God, I’d watched this man for so long. I just couldn’t believe he was staring back at me.

He leaned forward and plucked at the ribbon that tied my bra together between my breasts. It slipped loose with a silken whisper and he knocked the cups aside with two impatient swipes of his hand. Suddenly, my breasts were throbbing in the cool air of the room, my nipples puckering and tightening as his gaze roved over them.

He grabbed the bows at the sides of my panties in both hands and pulled. My panties fell away. I writhed and ground my hips, feeling his gaze like a touch as it ran over every secret fold. I knew he’d be able to see how wet I was.

He’d been silent for so long that when he spoke, it was a shock. “You’re just...so….” He shook his head. “I’ll never get tired of looking at you.”

I flushed, but then my chest contracted. It wasn’t me he was talking about. I’d stolen someone else’s face.

He reached down and touched my naked hip, then followed my leg all the way down to my ankle. His touch was almost reverent. “Since you got back, there’s something….” he pressed his lips together and shook his head in confusion. “ I don’t know what it is. But I can’t take my eyes off you. I want you all the time.”

A big, warm wave rose in my chest and broke through me.

He lifted one hand towards my breast...and then pulled it back and gripped the bedpost, knuckles white, denying himself. He got up and walked to the rack of implements. I arched my back off the bed and craned my neck but I couldn’t see what he was choosing...and I knew that he’d designed this room like that deliberately. What if it’s a whip? Or a cane? Something that’ll really hurt? Maybe Christina was into that. Or what if—

My stomach twisted. What if he knows? What if he’d just been toying with me, all this time, and now that he had me naked and bound, he was going to interrogate me?

He crossed back to the bed, one hand hidden behind his back, and—

As soon as I saw the lust in his eyes, I knew: he still thought I was Christina. The mission was still on. Everything’s fine.

Except...a shockingly strong part of me wanted to just stop all the deception. Not to drop the Christina act and tell him I was Hailey. To forget I was Hailey and just be Christina.

He brought his hand down and there was a musical hiss….

A second later, my body exploded into heat. Not pain, exactly, more like the aftershock of pain, when the adrenaline thumps through you and you catch your breath. Warmth radiated out across my stomach, turning to a twisting, darker heat as it sunk into my body and slid down to my groin. What was that?

It flashed down again, too fast to follow, and this time I was anticipating it. A flash of heat, like a pinch or a slap, but much subtler than either, crackling across my skin and leaving me panting and glowing. I stared at his hand and for the first time I got a look at it.

He gripped a carved wooden handle in his fist. Immediately above that, it became a thick bunch of soft, flat strands as long as my forearm. A flogger? Was that what it was called?

His eyes met mine and there was a wicked gleam in them. He glanced down at a particular spot on my body—

I followed his gaze and saw my naked breasts. Then it clicked. What? No! Not there!

But part of me burrowed my ass down into the covers and hissed, yes, there!

The flogger came down again and there was a flash, white-hot but so quick it didn’t register as pain, and then the heat and pleasure rumbled through me like thunder, leaving my breasts throbbing and sensitive, and my nipples straining and pebble-hard. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and it came out as a low, throaty groan.

He knew exactly how to use it. He could land the lashes just where he wanted them and he could twist and flick his wrist to come at me from different angles so I never knew what to expect. One second, heat was exploding across my inner thighs, melting up into my groin and making me moan and grind against the bed. The next, it would be a light touch on my breasts, the strands brushing over my nipples as gently as palm fronds, and I’d be clawing at the air with my hands, arching my back to get more, more!

He kept going until every inch of me was ablaze, until I was a straining, panting, thrashing mess...and then he dropped the flogger and climbed onto the bed…..

The first time his tongue bathed my nipple, I almost came. I hadn’t realized how super-sensitive the flogging had left me. Everything was throbbing and tingling with heat and suddenly the wetness of his tongue, swirling around the base of my nipple and then flicking over the top—I gave a short, hard yell of shock, the pleasure expanding and turning silver-edged and scarlet.

He went to work on me with his hands and his mouth and every touch of his fingers, every press of his lips, was magnified a thousand-fold. All I wanted to do was grab him and rub my body against him, press my breasts against his mouth and hump my groin towards his hands to show him where I needed it. But I couldn’t do any of that. The ribbons held me fast and all I could do was gasp and plead and arch my back and trust that he knew where to go next. And he did. He knew better than I knew myself, and he showed me sensitive spots I’d never discovered.

But instead of making me come, he drew out the pleasure for as long as I could bear, toying with me. He drew blistering paths of heat with his lips that wound from my mouth to my breasts to my groin. He pushed two fingers deep inside me and found that hidden spot that made my brain explode into silvery trails, the heel of his hand grinding down on me while I rocked helplessly against him. He let me feel the edges of his teeth on my nipples while his tongue darted over their tops. I lost track of how many times I came.

By the end of it I was a limp, red-faced wreck, drunk on endorphins. All I could do was beg him. “Please,” I moaned, beyond shame. “Please f—fuck me.”

He pushed himself effortlessly back so that he could look at me and I saw the victory in his eyes. But not victory over me. Victory over himself, that he hadn’t lost control, hadn’t gotten...involved. He would fuck me, he’d allow himself this release, but it would still be on his terms. It was so sad...but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed him more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.

“Please,” I said again.

He froze. His look of victory faded. It was the same look he’d given me in the garden. I thought I saw a flicker of blue in all that merciless gray, a softening...and then his eyes lit up, hotter and harder than I’d ever seen them. He suddenly grabbed for his belt buckle, shoving the heavy leather through the loops. He tore at his suit pants, but a button on the fly caught, foiling him—

There was a clatter as the button went skittering across the tiles. Then he rammed his pants and shorts down his thighs and—

I drew in my breath. It was the first time I’d seen it. Not just long but thick, with a beautiful, purple-pink head and a tan shaft. I remembered what he’d said on the phone, about Christina’s first time with him: You weren’t sure you could take me, but you did…. I gulped. I suddenly knew exactly how she’d felt. “Go slow,” I said, and it came out in a kind of throaty whisper, half nervous and half lusty.

The sound of that excited him even more. I swore I saw his cock twitch and strain. But he gave a tiny nod as he brandished it in his hand, bringing the head of it between my spread thighs and ah! just nuzzling it against my folds. God, I was soaking…

A ripple of raw need ran through me. I’d closed my eyes for a second but now I opened them and stared up at him. He was glaring down at me and not with that masterful, dominant glare of power. This was fury. Outrage, at being out of control. How have you made me do this?

I had no answer.

His eyes hardened. You asked for this. And his hips pushed forward….

Despite his anger, he did go slow. The silken head of him spread me, spread me, stretched me—and then he was plunging deep into me and both of us cried out together at how good it felt. I panted and looked down at the spot where we joined. He was still fully dressed, save for the pants shoved down around his thighs, and I was not just naked but stripped, my lingerie untied and strewn around me, and tied to the bed with black ribbons…. There was something about the imbalance of that that was wrong and yet so very right. It set off a depth-charge of heat right in my core.

He began to thrust: slow, powerful strokes that drove him a little further into me each time. My breathing tightened and I moaned as I felt myself slowly filled.

He lowered himself onto his forearms, hulking over me, but careful not to hurt me, staring into my eyes for any sign of pain. My moans became low, guttural groans as he slid deeper, deeper, hot and hard and throbbing against my satiny walls….

He groaned as he finally rooted himself inside me and our groins kissed together. Each throb of his cock sent a new wave of pleasure rippling through me. He cursed in Russian and then, “God... my shlyukha, you feel amazing.” He leaned down and kissed me once, tenderly.

Then he shook his head and his face darkened. He kissed me again, open-mouthed and aggressive, a kiss that plunged deep and took what it wanted. He wanted this to be a battle so that he could win. He wanted this to be just fucking, so that it meant nothing.

He began to fuck me, fast and hard, and it was amazing: the silken stretch of him, the hot, steely plunge of him and the ache as he withdrew. He was brutal and hard, his hips slamming into me, but it felt so good, each thrust compressing the pleasure and making it brighter and hotter. God, wasn’t this every guilty fantasy I’d ever had about him, even if I hadn’t admitted it at the time? Naked and tied, helpless under him as he had his way with me?

I gazed up at him, my eyes hooded and heavy with pleasure. God, the wonderful size of him, the power of that chest and those huge shoulders, those cold gray eyes glowering down at me…. And then it got even better. I saw something moving in the gloom behind him and made out a gold-framed mirror, over by the door. I could see his reflection, the tan globes of his ass pounding between my thighs. Oh God….

He took his weight on his elbows so that he could fill his hands with my breasts, his thumbs rubbing over my slickened nipples. I cried out, the pleasure arcing down to my groin and making it twist and coil. His hips were a blur, now, pounding me. He was determined to fuck me into submission, to make me come long before he did, so he stayed in control.

And I knew he’d win. Because what could I do? I couldn’t wrap my arms around him and draw him close, or hook my legs around him, or even run my fingers through his hair. I suddenly understood why he’d tied me up.

All I could do, as the pleasure tightened and tightened and became a glowing bomb that I couldn’t contain was...look up at him. Look up into those cold, gray eyes as he pounded and pounded and know what I’d seen there, know that somewhere inside there was another man….

He glared down at me, furious. He pumped me harder, faster, but I felt his strokes falter as he struggled for control—

I cried out as the orgasm ripped through me, my whole body jerking in its bonds. And as I spasmed and clenched around him, I heard him growl. I looked up and for a second I saw that tiny hint of blue in his eyes….

He slammed forward and buried himself in me just before he erupted in long, hot jets.

We lay there for long seconds, riding out the storm we’d created. When I managed to focus on his face, he was staring down at me with utter shock. How did you do that?

I just stared back at him. I couldn’t answer. Because the truth was, right at the moment he’d lost control, I’d forgotten all about being Christina...and I was just being me.