The Handbook

For six years she’s held the lead in every room she walks into. She’s about to find out how badly she wants to let go.

Tanya is a chaperone at the Velvet Labyrinth. She pours the wine, walks nervous newcomers through their first night, and reads every body in the room. She watches. She keeps everyone safe. She never, ever plays.

Then the club’s legendary Mistress Velvet retires and puts Tanya’s name forward to run the place. The committee wants an answer by midsummer.

So Tanya packs rope, arnica and an oxblood notebook, buys a rail pass, and gives herself three weeks.

In Venice, a tour guide bites down on a velvet mask and holds perfectly still. In Prague, a mouthy Australian surfer swears she can take anything, and Tanya takes her at her word. On a night train, in a sleeper with paper-thin walls, nobody is allowed to make a sound. Every morning Tanya texts the details home to two friends who are keeping score.

Then Berlin turns the tables. A tattoo artist with very steady hands ties Tanya down in a club full of strangers, writes one humiliating word across her skin, and invites other women to take their turns. The woman who always holds the lead discovers she has been aching to be held down, shared, and made to beg.

Every train leads to Paris and to Hélène, the woman Tanya walked out on at twenty-one, the one who taught her everything. Hélène hasn’t forgotten a thing, and she has new rules. Tanya is not allowed to come until Hélène says so. Not with anyone. Not even alone.

On the longest day of the year, in a candlelit cellar beneath the Marais, masked, silenced and on display, Tanya is going to learn exactly how much she can take, and how sweet it is to finally give in.

The Handbook is a scorching, funny, unexpectedly tender travelogue of consensual kink: bondage, impact play, wax, toys, orgasm denial, exhibitionism, group scenes and plenty of delicious humiliation.

For adult readers (18+). All characters are adults, and every scene is consensual.