With Shelley's marriage to Ben in the doldrums, she is looking elsewhere for her satisfaction and her handsome boss offers her something new and exciting - the chance to boss HIM around, for a change . . .

Duncan didn't waste any time in idle chat. He came to sit by her on the leather settee and put his arm around her. 'You're a very attractive and sexy woman, Shelley,' he smiled, taking her hand. 'You should be with someone who appreciates you.'

She smiled, but said nothing. Somehow she didn't see Duncan as her Father Confessor. His hand moved to her blouse and began unfastening the buttons, making little shivers travel around her body and raising goose bumps on her arm. His touch was slow, deliberate as he moved in to caress the soft skin between her breasts. This time, she sensed, their love making could be more like it had been in the hotel, not like the rushed episode in his office. She stretched languorously, catlike, throwing back her shoulders and pushing her breasts up in their shiny white satin bra.

Duncan began nibbling at her neck, intensifying the quivering in her stomach. When he reached her ear he whispered, 'Does it make you feel good then, Shelley, screwing your boss?'

She giggled. 'You know it does! I suppose it's every woman's fantasy to have some power over powerful men.'

'Ever wanted to be totally in control? In a sexual context, that is.'

She looked up at him, vaguely shocked. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh, I think you do.' He stood up, holding out his hand to pull her to her feet. Mystified, Shelley followed him out into the hall and then into his bedroom. She could feel a visceral excitement beginning deep within, a forewarning of something new and strange. As she entered the darkened room she realised she was holding her breath.

Duncan switched on a subdued light. The bed was large, covered by a navy duvet, with a brass rail at the head and foot. Shelley's eyes went straight to the headrail, where a pair of handcuffs was hanging as casually, and with as much dramatic effect, as a child's stocking at Christmas.

'Now do you understand?'

His voice was low, seductive, but it took some time for the truth to sink in. 'You like to be handcuffed while making love?' she said, incredulously.

He gave an ironic smile. 'I believe I'm not the only one in the world who does.'

'And you want me to do it, right?'

'Only if you're into it. If not, we could make love as we did before but I wouldn't enjoy it so much.'

'I see.' Shelley had heard of people who liked this kind of thing, of course, but she'd had no personal experience of it. Now that the shock was fading she thought she wouldn't mind. The business was beginning to intrigue her. 'What would I have to do, exactly?'

He sat down on the bed, looking up at her. Something about his demeanour suggested helplessness, submission. Shelley was surprised to find herself responding to it with a sexual buzz. 'What I'd like,' he began in a soft, almost crooning voice, 'is for you to strip to your underwear and put on one or two extra things that I've got here. Then I want you to handcuff me to the rail and take off your panties. I'd like you to put my feet through the legs of your panties and tie them around my ankles. Then you can do what you like with me as long as you don't actually cause any injury.'

'What, you want me to hurt you?'

'Only if you want to. It's up to you, you see. It's entirely up to you. I'll be putting myself completely in your hands.'

Shelley resisted the urge to tell him how weird he was. Presumably he already knew that. But the idea of being in total control of the proceedings was proving very attractive. She could make him lick her for hours, presumably, use his dick to pleasure herself any way she wanted. He would be, almost literally, her sex toy.

'Okay, I'll give it a try.'

He smiled, a peculiarly secretive and exposed smile that made her feel awkward as long as she thought of him as her boss. Yet she was already moving away from her image of him as a powerful man, one who had control over her own destiny as well as that of others. It was like discovering that someone you thought was straight was actually gay. You couldn't help subtly reassessing them, reinterpreting their past behaviour.

Duncan walked over to the wardrobe and drew out a pair of stiletto-heeled black patent shoes. 'Do you think you could wear these? They're size six.'

'I'm normally a five, so they'll be a bit big.'

'It doesn't matter. You won't be walking far in them. And then there's this.'

He showed her a beautiful carnival mask, the sort Venetians wore. It was a pure, translucent white but decorated with green and turquoise sequins. In the corner of one eye a crystal simulated a tear. Shelley held it up to her face and regarded herself in the mirror of the wardrobe. She looked remote, exotic, inhuman.

Duncan stood by the bed. 'All right, you get yourself ready then. I'll lie down and wait for you to handcuff me. You can put the key into your bra.'

'Are you getting undressed?'

'No, I prefer to remain clothed but you may open my clothes to gain access to my body. Oh, and please call me 'George', throughout.'

'George?'

He nodded, curtly, and lay down on the bed with his arms above his head, waiting. Shelley felt a warm excitement curling up from her groin into her belly, filling her with the expectation of a dangerously novel kind of pleasure. She had never felt quite like this before. After taking off her skirt and petticoat she put on the shoes. They were a bit loose on her but not uncomfortably so. Then she pulled the mask over her face and tightened the buckle of the elastic that went behind her head. Glancing at Duncan through the almond-shaped eye holes she saw his face change too, becoming abjectly enamoured of her.

Shelley looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror for a second. Her auburn hair flowed freely around the mask, softening its severe lines. Her breasts stood out proud within their white satin cones, and her matching briefs showed beneath the frame of the suspenders that completed the lingerie set. Her stockings were charcoal grey, emphasising the length of her legs in the shiny black high-heeled shoes. She looked . . . magnificent.

Slowly Shelley walked towards the bed and took hold of the handcuffs. She examined them, turning them over in her hand, prolonging the suspense. Then she lifted both Duncan's arms and managed to get the cuffs first round one wrist then the other, snapping them shut. She fixed them to the rail so that he could move his arms a little but not escape. She smiled down at him then realised that all he could see was the fixed, impassive mouth of the mask.