Prologue – the mid-1990s

Sometimes I forget to breathe.

An assortment of paddles, straps, belts, and whips were scattered beside the bed. A dildo and a butt-plug had each been covered with a condom and placed beside a bottle of lube on the bedside cabinet. My nipples were burning and sore from the clamps that that had just been removed, and my lover leant over me to trickle whiskey from her own mouth into mine. The whiskey burned a path from her tongue to my throat and down, spreading its fire into my belly and beyond. A moment’s respite from the overload of sensations my skin had been subjected to: sharp slaps from an open palm; heavy, thudding hits from a thick belt; the tight pinching and twisting of the clamps being pulled off my nipples. She had me, and she knew it. I had crawled and begged, complied with her every command with only a whimper of dissent. And I urged her to further extremes with my screams and moans.

I watched her attentively as she lifted the butt-plug from the cabinet and dribbled lube over its pointed tip. ‘Just breathe, baby,’ she whispered, ‘let me do the rest.’

The plug looked impossibly huge and I released my breath in short gasps. ‘I can’t do it,’ I told her.