Prologue

 

I haven't a care in the world when I'm in this place. White sand slithers between my toes as I make footprints down the beach. Wind blows kindly against my skin. Sam, my mongrel retriever, barks excitedly as he rushes toward me with a lump of driftwood in his mouth, which he drops at my feet before playfully kissing my face with his wet tongue. The surf crashes delivering up a fine mist that covers my arms and I smile. I am determinedly peaceful.

When I look toward the bluffs, for just an instant my smile fades into a frown of uneasiness. I think for a minute that I see his silhouette against the watery blue sky, but then it's gone. That is all that Kovac is to me now, a faint apparition that I see in dreams and against the unfettered sky, or fleetingly on a busy street one arm's length too far away for me to touch. He died eighteen months ago, victim of a car crash, which left me without a lover, a friend, a companion, a savior and my master.

My heart broke. My life crashed around me. My world of dangerous lust and of verboten pleasures disintegrated into dust as if it had never been. I lost the liberty I felt in the arms of sexual surrender because I lost the comfort of Kovac's strength keeping me safe.

Kovac had been my anchor, the strength that put me back together after three horrifying years of captivity in the hands of Middle Eastern terrorists. Abducted from the Orient Express traveling from Bucharest to Istanbul while filming a documentary, I became a slave, trained to be the sexual servant for those who take pleasure in the defilement of women. I would still be the property of a sadistic master if a miracle had not intervened to bring me safely home.

I was a beaten and defeated woman then, but Kovac took this freed slave and returned her whole to the civilized world. He gave me hope and love and tenderness. He did all that, while at the same time honoring the great discovery I made during the time I was enslaved. He honored the woman of submission I had become and allowed me to accept the submissive elements of my character I never knew existed. He molded my new freedom with chains and bondage, reshaped my liberated mind with comforting authority, and created a consensual slave to fit the customs of the day. He offered a new, palatable form of captivity right for a sane and enlightened time. I thought our life would last forever, that this relationship was the gift God had given me for surviving a trial no woman should face.

Obviously, God wasn't finished with me because Kovac died, and once again, I was required to put an intensely passionate segment of my life into rational perspective and continue on down another path.

Such rational perspective became surprisingly easy once my initial grief passed. I believe now that I would have fallen into the gutters of despair had Kovac not found me soon after my return to the United States. And yet, there is something strangely reasonable about his death. As if he were no more than an angel, descended for the one task of restoring me to the real world, Kovac appeared in my life, completed his work, and then unceremoniously left, certain that I could handle the rest on my own.

Of course, my life changed greatly when he died. But oddly, I picked myself up, dusted away the old and moved on. With greater ease than I ever expected, I packed up my life with Kovac like old clothes taken to the basement and stored. I began anew, wiggling back into the skin of an independent woman with her head on straight and her eyes focused keenly on a benevolent and productive future. I made up my mind then, eighteen months ago, that the sexual submission I needed under Kovac's guidance was necessary closure-in colloquial terms-a way to resurface after three years away and find strength before I could resume a normal life. The idea that my life couldn't be normal after being conquered by cruel terrorists was simply not true. He was merely a bridge to the present, a necessary one that I will think of fondly as the years pass.

 

Even now, as I gaze toward the bluff with the idea that Kovac will suddenly appear again, my mind flashes even further back in time, where the imprint of that other man haunts my boundless skies. In truth, it's his face I hope to see, not Kovac's. It's his face I look for in crowds, not that of my just deceased master. It's Daniel Broc's that I imagine appearing out of nowhere. I may miss Kovac-the fact that he was taken from me so abruptly stills stuns me. But while he set my mind right after the cruelty I endured from the slave traders, he was not the man who reached into my heart, my guts, my loins and shook the foundations of my psyche with holy terror. He was not the man who raised the animal, the voluptuary and the seductive temptress that I am. It was Daniel Broc-an Ivy League educated Texan turned mercenary-who found lurking inside me a brain and body fettered by 20^th century rules, a woman of substance, humanity, humility and sexual power. And quite oddly, it was Daniel Broc-the antithesis of what we hold dear in a rational society-who taught me that I could love deeply with my whole heart, not part of it; Broc, who gave me the ability to love the other men who would replace him.

 

I am content that I will live the rest of my life with neither Broc or Kovac at my side, or above me as my master. They are both pieces of the past. The chains, the collar, the corset and the whips have been gladly given to the Salvation Army for impoverished dungeon connoisseurs.

I, Michelle Monroe, am on a different path now. I am nearly engaged to Steven Vanderberg-whose beach retreat this is-a decent, solid citizen, a kind and generous soul. He's All-American clean-cut, with an affable grin and a frequent twinkle of amusement in his brown eyes. He is the kind of man to love forever, to change for, to accommodate and to inspire-he tells me frequently how I inspire him with my enthusiasm for reinventing my life, since I've done it so many times-I'm afraid he doesn't know the half of it! I trust his even-tempered calm to wrap me in a safe cocoon, just as his steely arms and muscled chest hold me safe. He's a health guru, a body-builder, a man grace as much as might, seamlessly perfect, while unapologetically self-effacing. I could even indulge myself in the romantic fantasy that perhaps he's the one God has been preparing me for.

But then, it's far too soon to tell.

If I've learned anything, it's to count on nothing.

I used to think that sitting at the feet of a master was an end in itself, that whippings and sexual servitude were a calling in me so deep that I couldn't live without it. But apparently, that's not true. I put away the trappings of servitude along with my kinky ideas and am perfectly content with normalcy.

I still occasionally hope for Daniel Broc. But even that is rare anymore-just like this brief moment when I'm caught off guard staring toward the rugged New England bluffs. That faint hope will pass through my thoughts with only the tiniest ripple of regret. Steven seems to be all I need now.

I remain watchful. I know that any minute, that warm rain of contentment may turn cold. A creepy premonition hits and the back of my neck tingles for just an instant of warning. Perhaps I'm not yet done with my life's grand adventures, and perhaps my past is not yet through with me.