When you've been told your whole life that something is sinful, you have two options. Avoid it like the plague, like it has the power to destroy all that is good and pure. Or become as fixated upon it as Eve was upon that apple. I'm sick of the push-pull of terror and temptation. It's tearing me apart. I just want a bite of the apple. More than a bite. I want to devour it. Have its juices spill from my lips. And by apple, I, of course, mean sex.

After protecting her billionaire boss' scandalous private life from the media, Lacey is offered a promotion to become his private assistant - but is she willing to serve as his personal play-thing after hours?

Drake Morgan, MD, neurosurgeon, bass player, philanthropist - Dominant. He doesn't do girlfriends, he doesn’t do sleepovers, and he certainly doesn't do breakfast in bed the morning after. He has his surgical slate at New York Presbyterian, he has a charitable foundation providing surgical tools to hospitals in Africa, he has his Brit Invasion cover band, Mersey, and he has his secret life as a Dominant in Manhattan's BDSM community.

I can still remember the moment I first heard Cyrus Holt's deep, commanding voice. I didn't know who he was or about the life he'd left behind. I was just a trembling orphan on the run from a monster, and he was the man offering me shelter and not giving me a choice about it. This boss of bosses didn't assign someone else to watch over me. He slept on the floor next to my bed when I woke up scared, then spanked me like a naughty little girl when I lied to him. He could have claimed me that night, ravaging me without mercy or remorse. But he didn't.

Maximo Giovanni Santaro is a king. A real king, like in the old days. The kind I didn’t know still existed. The kind who commands obedience and punishes any hint of defiance from his subjects. His Majesty doesn’t take no for an answer, and refusing his royal command has earned me not just a spanking that will leave me sobbing, but a lesson so utterly shameful, that it will serve as an example for anyone else who might dare to disobey him.