I’d locked her in when I’d gone to see Max, just in case, but I needn’t have bothered. I wondered when she’d finally wake up. She was so still and peaceful, she could almost be dead. It was the way with subs sometimes, after an intense night of play. Not that it had been that intense. I’d gone through the motions; tying her, punishing her, teasing her submission from her, but my heart hadn’t been in it – never had, really, with Charlotte. It had ended abruptly, too, when she’d begged me to fuck her.

I’d called an immediate halt to play. She’d known the rules from the start, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t do that.

Damn Alex. If he’d agreed to take her on, I wouldn’t be in this mess. But he was right. He was busy enough as an overseer, not to mention the numerous other roles he took on for me.

I’d found it strange, even so, that he’d turned her down. It wasn’t like Alex to decline a beautiful face, or a perfect body. She had both. She was the complete package, in many ways, with long, soft hair that dripped down her shapely back like melted caramel, and eyes to match. But he’d been firm. There was something not right about her, he’d said. She was just too eager to learn, too full of questions. I wished now I’d listened to him.

When I’d refused to fuck her, she’d whined so much that, in the end, I’d agreed to let her stay over. That never happened. Absolutely never. But I was exhausted. I’d been in a shareholders’ meeting most of the day, and our session - intense as it wasn’t - on the back of it, meant I simply didn’t have the strength to argue. So I’d let her cuddle up to me, as I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how the hell I’d let her invade my personal time.

It was such an unusual sensation – her soft, bare skin pressed up against me, her hot breath on my neck - that I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there, wondering how I was going to call time on this whole thing. She didn’t need further training. She needed a Dom of her own, one that would take care of her, keep her safe from predators and weirdos and, most of all, from herself.

I must have drifted off at some point, because I remember coming to, feeling her rubbing at my cock through my sweatpants. I’d changed out of my suit, once it became apparent she was going nowhere, but I wasn’t sleeping with her naked. She was staying for comfort, not for a fuck, and I’d made that perfectly clear.

I struggled to wake up, but my mind was heavy, drugged with sleep. Even in that hazy half-state, I was aware of my cock stiffening, involuntarily. Charlotte gave a moan of delight, and began licking at it over my sweatpants, cupping my balls with one hand, while the other pulled at the top of my pants, inching them down across my hips.

I woke fully at this and pushed her head away. She gave a low moan of disappointment… or was it anger? I couldn’t tell until she sat up, fury etched into her face.

‘Why not?’ She pulled the sheets up around her, hiding her nakedness. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I can’t,’ I said, pushing myself up onto my elbow. I felt a complete bastard. ‘I could, but I won’t. I don’t do this. Ever.’

‘Am I not submissive enough for you?’ Her hair, still tumbled from the session earlier, fell in sensuous tendrils across the swell of her breasts. I had to stop myself reaching out. She was doing nothing to ease my aching cock. Judging from her body language, I didn’t think she’d welcome it now, not after my refusing her, and it would have complicated matters beyond belief. I had to keep my self-control. It was who I was.

‘It’s not you,’ I said. ‘Really.’

‘Is that the best you can do?’ She gave a harsh laugh, and went to get up. ‘Well, if it’s not me, who is it? Is there someone else?’

Christ, she still didn’t understand even the most basic tenets of our relationship. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t spelt it out often enough. She’d been warned about becoming too close, opening herself up too much. She was in training, but not for me. She was being trained by me. To help her find a Master. No self-respecting Dom would’ve touched her before. She hadn’t been submissive. She’d been a push-over.

I sighed impatiently. Surely she hadn’t let herself fall in love with me? How could she? She didn’t even know me. Not that she hadn’t tried. No one had tried to crack me open like Charlotte, but her endless questioning had been in vain. She had no idea of what I was really like, or she wouldn’t have tried it on like that.

She stood up, the sheets trailing after her and slipping to the floor.

‘There’s no one else,’ I said, as she walked out of the room. She didn’t turn around.

She’d gone into the bathroom. I could hear her running the shower. I looked at the bed. It looked like we’d fucked after all. The sheets were hanging off the bed, spilt like milk across the oak flooring, and her pillows were ravaged. I leaned across, pulling them back to rearrange them. It was when I pulled back the bottom one that I saw it, nestled there like a smoking gun.

A video-camera.

Not just an ordinary one, either. This was specialist equipment. It must have cost some. A hell of a lot more than a secretary would want to spend, anyway. And it was set to record.

I left it – didn’t even touch it – and sat there, my mind running over the implications. Damn fucking Alex. Who’d he hired to check her out, anyway? It couldn’t be one of the usuals. They didn’t make mistakes like this. Hell, security was everything. We all knew that. Without it, everything could come unravelled. Lives could be damaged – destroyed, even. It didn’t bear thinking about.

I slipped out of bed, and padded over to the dresser. I took her bag and twisted the snap, softly, carefully. Inside were the usual things you’d expect to find in the bag of a woman who cared as much about her appearance as Charlotte did: keys, hairbrush, make-up – Clinique, Estée Lauder, nothing cheap – cash. No credit cards, oddly, but – right at the bottom – the real smoking gun.

It was a slim metal box, rectangular, almost hidden in the folds of fabric at the bottom of the bag. I knew what it was on sight. I had a few of my own – white gold, mainly – that I’d been bought at one time or another by various well-meaning, but essentially unimaginative, relations. I didn’t use any of them.

It was a business card case. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t give. I prised at it with my fingernails…I had to get it open. It wouldn’t budge. It was clearly a cheap one, and the mechanism seemed to be fucked. I tried again. Still nothing – not even enough play to indicate I was doing it right.

Finally, it snapped open, revealing a clutch of bright white cards, a red and blue logo emblazoned across them. I knew I had to get one. I tried to tease them out, but they were wedged in.

Just then, I heard the shower stop, and the door of the shower enclosure swung open with a creak, spatters of water splashing onto the marble floor. I tried again to get a card out of the box, but there was no way. It needed a woman’s fingers. I tossed it back inside her bag, snapped the clasp together again, and positioned it carefully back where I’d found it, on the dresser.

I moved back to the bed, grabbing the sheets and billowing them across it. I slipped back under them, and leaned across to take the camera from its hiding place. I turned it off, and tucked it into the hidden compartment in the unit next to my bed. I’d have to get her laptop bag in the morning. I knew exactly where it was, in the living room, next to the sofa. Anything she’d previously downloaded could be on there. I smoothed the pillows over again, and lay down.

Just in time. She sauntered back in, towel drying her hair as she came. She stopped, when she saw me looking.

‘So, this is what you want?’ She turned to where her clothes lay, hanging across the back of a chair.