‘Yes, see you tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, did you get a speak to Leo Fox?’

‘Yes, everything’s fine,’ I assured him breezily, as I left the office and closed the door behind me with a sigh of relief. I had called Leo this morning and told him I’d had a change of heart, suggesting we meet at lunchtime instead.

‘Well, I’ve got a lunch in the diary but I can definitely move it,’ Leo drawled and I could picture him smiling lasciviously. I got a cab to his flat to find him already waiting. I put my hand up to knock on his door but it opened before my knuckles could make contact with the wood and he pulled me inside.

Before I had a chance to catch my breath, he had pushed me up against the wall and lifted my skirt. I was naked underneath, which is how I knew he liked it, so he slammed straight into me and thrust hard and fast until he came with an almighty groan, matched only by own breathless gasping.

Feeling stunned and with a growing knot in my stomach, I pulled down my skirt and exhaled as I looked up at him. My legs were shaking but for once with Leo, it had nothing to do with his sexual prowess.

Leo smiled and ran his finger down the side of my face, with the air of a lion contemplating its prey. ‘You see? You don’t want to give this up, do you?’

‘No,’ I admitted, truthfully. Sex with Leo was unpredictable, dangerous, exciting and addictive. But increasingly, he also scared me slightly and his reaction to me trying to cool things off had planted a seed of doubt that I knew could only grow.

There was no way out of this. If I stopped seeing him, he had made it clear that he could make serious trouble for me at work. Yes, it would cause problems for him, too, but I didn’t trust that he wasn’t volatile enough to risk it. And worse, I didn’t trust him not to cause problems for me at home, by telling Ben the truth about Elodie. I had to do everything I could to keep him sweet.

Leo bent down and kissed me. ‘That was so much more fun than the boring lunch I had lined up. Let’s do it again tomorrow. I’ll make it a bit longer next time and we can make use of my new … toys,’ he finished, with a dangerous gleam in his eye.

I hesitated, guessing what toys he was referring to, as our relationship had been growing increasingly sadomasochistic, before nodding. ‘Sure.’ It was the only possible answer I could give, if I wanted to keep the status quo.

As I caught the train home to Surrey, I gazed unseeingly out of the window at the wild rolling countryside, wondering how I had managed to get myself into this mess. I was married to a man I despised but needed to look after my child, and having fantastic, erotic sex with one that I also needed physically but who scared me. While the one man I loved and desired above any other, was dead and buried.