Melissa Febos teetered in borrowed 7-inch stilettos, towering over the body of a naked middle-aged man.

she adjusted her garter, rearranged her Bettie Page-esque black bob, licked her cherry-red 99-cent lip gloss and struggled to breathe in a corset that cinched her waist down 6 inches. she frantically searched for the right words. how does one start this? she was so nervous, she burped.

“Yes, Mistress? are you all right?” asked the slave.

she felt his breath on her fishnet stockings and fought the urge to run away. it was the 21-year-old’s first time alone in the room with a client — just days after applying for work as a dominatrix in Midtown’s Mistress X dungeon.

instead, she found her calling.

“Yes, of course I’m all right. PIG!” she snapped, hardly recognizing her own voice. “Stop breathing on my legs, you crust of scum!”

Her client scampered away on all fours, waiting for the torture to begin.

Febos, whose dungeon name was “Mistress Justine” (after the Marquis de Sade’s submissive heroine), began her S&M double life in 2002.

By day, she was a top-earning dominatrix; by night, an English major at the Village’s new School with a 3.9 GPA.

“I didn’t end up at the dungeon out of financial desperation,” writes Febos in her memoir “Whip Smart” (St. Martin’s Press), out March 2. “I was not a tourist but a member of that world, with reasons for being there similar to those of everyone else: an obsession with power.”

Febos unshackles the secrets of her four years in the dungeon, which is hidden in plain sight in an office building off Herald Square. she made a few hundred dollars a day humiliating, whipping and torturing all kinds of men, from stockbrokers to rabbis, tourists to millionaire record executives.

she tells the Post that, contrary to stereotypes, she had a “unique and loving” childhood in rural Cape Cod. the daughter of a psychotherapist and a sea captain, Febos was preternaturally mature, deciding at 15 to drop out of high school, get her GED and move to Boston, where she took night classes at Harvard and waitressed during the day.

to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer, she moved to the Big Apple, started college classes and took internships in publishing. two years later, after moving from Chelsea to a fourth-floor walkup in Bedford-Stuyvesant, she met a woman who would forever change her world.

“She’s a professional dominatrix,” Febos’ roommate whispered about the law student next door.

Febos was intrigued, so she knocked on her door one afternoon. after an awkward introduction, Febos blurted out, “Is the money good?” she could use the cash to pay for air conditioning — and she hated taking money from her parents.

Queen of pain: My life as Midtown dominatrix

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