Chapter One

      I could stare at the screen until the skies fell but the message wasn’t going to be any different. ‘This blog has been removed.’ No explanation, no apology, no clue as to why.

      The blank blandness of the words made my skin prickle. There was something sinister about the whole thing. It reminded me of old drama programmes about apocalyptic events when the TV pictures frazzled into test cards. What could it mean?

       What had happened to her?

      Never had I been so grateful for my habit of saving favourite posts to my hard drive. I went straight to her last – and most exciting – update and read through it again.

       Mia stands on the brink.

       The next time you hear from her, she will have crossed a Rubicon from player to professional, from ingenue to sophisticate. Most importantly, she will be what J wants her to be: his perfect submissive.

       She heard from The Academy today. She is to pack nothing but her toothbrush – everything else will be provided. On her arrival, she will be stripped, bathed and measured for her new costumes. For one week, she will wear nothing that restricts access to her, and she will be open and obedient to all.

       Would you be unnerved, in her place?

       Sweet little Mia has never given herself in submission to anyone but J before, and now she anticipates being used and whipped by anyone who wishes it. She wishes she could say the idea does not arouse her, but it does. It always has. And this is how she knows who and what she is. She wants to be owned, but she wants to be shared. She wants everything of her to be subject to the will of her master. And if her master wishes that she offer every one of her openings to faceless unknowns, then that is what she will do.

       She will glory in it, and with every stroke of the whip, every thrust of an anonymous cock, she will have his name upon her tongue.

       He will love her for it.

       Your Mia is trembling in anticipation, my darlings, and she hopes that you are too. She will be back in one week, to give you every dirty last morsel of her experiences at The Academy. Nothing will be hidden, because she is permitted to hide nothing.

       She kisses your boots.

       XOXO Mia XOXO.

      My greedy eyes lapped up her gorgeous illustrations – line drawings of her kneeling, naked and in profile, at a man’s feet, sucking on him. Only the man’s lower portion was visible, the picture ending at Mia’s bowed head. She had drawn the remains of faint whip-marks on the portion of her buttocks presented to the viewer. Her hands were bound behind her back.

      There were other pictures, too. One of her standing, her back to the viewer, before a huge and ornate front door, holding a cute little handbag. One of her standing naked in front of two stern and unyielding-looking characters – a suited man with a riding crop, and a woman of a Mrs Danvers cast, in housekeeperly black.

      God, I had been so looking forward to the next update. I had my vibrator ready and everything.

      And now this.

      I kicked at the desk leg and pushed my computer chair back on its castors,