Jessica works part time in a bookshop specialising in rare art books, where she stumbles across a book of erotic art depicting whipped women in various lewd poses. Fascinated, Jessica takes the book home without permission; it becomes her obsession, and she fantasises it is her in the drawings. Planning to continue her studies at Oxford, she decides to focus on the artist responsible for the book of whipped women, and this leads her to make enquiries with sex workers and models who allow themselves to be whipped then photographed or painted. Her interest in spanking develops further, and ultimately her investigations take her to private spanking parties, then onto rural France, to the home of Kempster, the old artist with a past interest in the sadomasochistic scene and the man she is basing her thesis on. Her stay is a life-changing experience in more ways than one. Not only does she form a relationship with Nick, the young employee of Kempster, she requests he should cane her while Kempster watches... and she then poses for Kempster while he paints the results, revelling in the marks on her own flesh, and happy in this new and exciting phase of her life.