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presence, had always professed a profound disdain for the idea of ever having children. Could the discovery of her own submissive streak and the perception that it made her a new woman, the dangers it unveiled, have caused her to flee from him? From his clutches?
    Maybe, he decided, and sighed.
    It couldn’t have been his fault, though, surely. The kernels of dominance and submission had already been there, buried deep inside both Dominik and Kathryn long before they had met each other. Like embers waiting for the soft breath of an unknown deity to come back to life and burn afresh.
    Had they not come across each other, their lives would in all probability have continued their untroubled flow along more . . . normal roads. Vanilla ones, he realised.
    Once the cat had been let out of the bag, however, there was no closing the lid on those feelings, Dominik knew. At least as far as he was concerned. He just didn’t know what self-discipline and heartbreak it had taken Kathryn to reject the siren call and turn away from him so decisively and return to the straight and narrow. The abnegation.
    He couldn’t find sleep. Stray sounds of birds in the garden outside his bedroom window reached him, amplified, deafening in their quietness. In retrospect now, he admired Kathryn’s resolve, the way she had sacrificed herself. Sadly, Dominik knew he didn’t possess such fortitude. He had been bitten, for ever contaminated like some sexual form of vampirism, and had abandoned himself willingly to the embrace of the ghosts of lust without a second thought. He had found them set ablaze again when he had first encountered Summer.
    This time, Dominik was determined to get it right. If Summer genuinely craved to submit to him, that is what he would give her.
    He would learn the art of loving domination, take her on a journey from which both of them would emerge as new people. Hardened but tender, walking the tightrope, wondrously alive.
    He thought back to those years between Kathryn and Summer, the times of indulgence and cruelty. The knot in his stomach tightened as he evoked the memories of the madness.
    Exploring the dark, murky streets of the Internet, he had cruised chatrooms and forums and met scores of women whose desires matched his. He’d learned a whole new vocabulary and repertoire of clandestine encounters, a curious etiquette of alternative sexuality. Some encounters had proven liberating, others awkward and less successful, some even comic for Dominik with his developed sense of irony.
    As a voracious reader, he was already aware of some of BDSM’s practices and avenues, but was surprised by how prevalent it was, behind the everyday masks of respectability. The whole world seemed involved in it, a complete parallel world of which he had hitherto been so innocently unaware . Fiction was one thing, but real life was another altogether, and it had proven full of untold surprises.
    His wilderness years. Dominik closed his eyes.
    The man he had met at the Groucho Club was a friend of a friend of a friend. Dominik had been vouched for, somehow.
    â€˜You’ll still have to be vetted by a couple of the others,’ the other man said.
    â€˜I quite understand,’ Dominik had answered.
    The stranger had made a phone call, and an hour later they were joined by two others. Well-dressed businessmen, suited and tied. A few drinks later, he was formally approved.
    â€˜How do you find them?’ Dominik asked.
    â€˜Chatrooms, ads, by personal recommendation . . .’
    â€˜Recommendation?’
    â€˜You’d be surprised.’
    â€˜Jesus . . .’
    â€˜All quite normal women. No money changes hands, ever.’
    The spokesman for the group was in his early fifties. Earlier in the conversation, he’d mentioned he’d returned just a few weeks back from his holidays, sailing his boat along the coast of Turkey. Another was a surgeon, an imposing black man originally from Ghana, and the