"These five will be the most difficult to take," he said. "Your skin is already sore now, and I won't be holding back."

So I was right, I thought. He was holding back. "Yes, Mr. George. I'm ready."

The next one made me scream loud enough my throat felt raw. "Sixteen! Sixteen." That meant how many? The strike had driven all the thoughts out of my head. Think, Karina! "Four left. Thank you, sir." Was I actually ready for another one like that? We'd find out. "May I have ah...another?"

He said nothing, merely delivered the blow. This one making my knees buckle. It took me a moment to realize that what I was feeling then, as the pain slowly ebbed away, was him tapping me gently on the thigh with the tip of the cane. Aha, trying to get me to straighten up again. I did with some effort. "Seventeen. Oh God. Three to go. Thank you, Mr. George. I-" I took a few deep breaths. "I'm not sure I'm ready for the next one."

"You're doing very well, Karina. I'm so proud of you. You're doing terrific."

Hearing the words made me feel good, but I couldn't help but feel they were kind of empty. They didn't mean what they would have if James had said them. The same way the sex play we'd had yesterday didn't mean anything. Though I still felt guilty about it.

"Thank you, sir. I'm...I'm ready for another."

Oh, the bastard. What he did next was hit me hard, not once, but twice in quick succession, which made me crumple all the way down to my knees, screaming and hanging on to the chair. He didn't touch me this time, leaning back and waiting until I made myself straighten up again.

"That..." I was shaking like I was angry. "Did that count as one or two?"

"Two, dear," he said.

"Wasn't that cheating, then? Hitting me before I was ready?"

"Would you prefer I count it as only one?" he asked. "Then there would still be two to go, instead of only one more."

"Oh." I tried to clear my head enough to understand that.

"You give me feedback by asking. It helps me gauge how much you can take," he explained. "But you are not the one in control here."

"I see. Thank you, Mr. George. Does that mean there is only one left, then?"

"It does. Are you ready for it?"

I had to take a couple more breaths. I'd come this far. I could do it. One more. I could do it. "Yes, sir. I'm ready for another."

"Good," he whispered. "Here you go."

He tapped me ever so lightly with the cane and then rubbed his hand over my ass, kneeling beside me and pulling me against him.

Don't ask me why that was what made me burst into tears. Somehow getting all worked up to one more shot of pain, expecting the worst, and then having him turn gentle, melted my resistance away and I started to cry.

"There, there," he said, stroking my hair. "You did very well. And now you're forgiven."

But I'm not, I thought. You're not the one I need to forgive me. The thought only made me cry harder.

He held me and let me weep until I was cried out. I got tears all over his lapels, and he gave me the silk handkerchief from his pocket for my nose.

And then, because I wasn't in any shape to stand up, I guess, he brought me a glass of water and a bathrobe.

After I drank the water, he helped me into a chair, and I belted the robe. He opened the curtains again, and the afternoon glow brightened the room.

He took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair, then sat down. "Do you feel better now?"

I looked at the glass in my hands and he refilled it for me. After another sip I said, "I do and I don't. I feel lighter now. My mind feels clear. But I still feel guilty about why I'm here."

"Explain." His expression, rather than stern, looked concerned.

I realized I had to tell him the truth. The big lie was that I hadn't told him why I wanted to join the society. Duh. And that was tied up with the reason I'd let him do what he did to me in the first place. I wondered how I would start.

"Maybe you should say a bit more about why you wrote you felt guilt over having sex with me. Wait, not-sex. You wrote 'pleasure.' Do you not believe you deserve pleasure and release, Karina?"

"It's not that." I turned the glass in my hands. "I do. Everyone deserves that. It's just...I don't actually want it from you. Not that you're not great at it. But...but it's true. I'm thinking about him the whole time. Part of me says if I were really going to be loyal to him, I wouldn't even do that much. And part of me says I'm being bad to you, too, by thinking about him instead of being here with you."

He said nothing, digesting my response.

"And then there's the fact that I haven't told you everything."

He kept silent, the peaking of his eyebrows the only indication that his interest sharpened.

"The man I'm trying to find? I think he's a member of the society. I..." I tried to cover my nerves with a sip of water, but my hands shook. "I'm hoping I'll find him. I'm hoping if he sees me there..." I couldn't say any more. I had to hold my breath to keep back the tears.

Damon took the glass out of my hand and set it aside before I could drop it. He then held my hands in his. He still didn't say anything though.

"I'm so stupid!" I said. "I don't know what I was thinking. I saw...I saw a chance and I thought I would grab it, and here I am in trouble again because I didn't tell the truth."

"No," he said softly. "First of all, you're not in trouble. Secondly, your situation is as much his fault as yours."

I looked into his eyes. "Surely, I'm in trouble with the society for trying to join them on false pretenses."

"I didn't hear any false pretenses in anything you said." He rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. "I think you meant every word."

"You're bending the truth."

"Am I? The truth is relative, perhaps. Karina, seriously, you're clearly very deeply in love with this individual. Enough to make your judgment questionable, perhaps. But don't beat yourself up about having not-sex with me. If he abandoned you, I'm sure he doesn't expect you to go live in a nunnery or something now."

"I guess."

"If a man abandons his cat, is he going to be angry at the cat for getting fed by a neighbor?"

"Well, he shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean he won't feel betrayed anyway."

"True. Is your former master that irrational? If so, I'd say he's not worth your loyalty."

"It's not that simple. I'm the one who feels guilty anyway." I squeezed his hands in mine, hard. "What should I do?"

He pulled his hands away then, shaking one of them like I'd overdone it. "I think you should get dressed and have lunch. We'll talk about it after."

"We're not allowed to talk during lunch?"

"No, dear. You're going to go have lunch. I'm going to fuck Ms. Juniper's brains out while you do." He stood as a knock came at the door. "That's probably her now."

"Really?"

"Really. You turn me on tremendously. Since I can't have you, why should I suffer?" He opened the door and Juney came in, grinning from ear to ear. She gave me a little nod and a wave.

"Hey, Juney." I smiled. "Okay, I'll leave you two alone for a bit."

I wandered down to the gym, which was deserted. I wasn't planning to work out-I'd already had my workout, thank you very much-but I wasn't hungry for lunch yet and I wanted to stretch my legs a little. Everything in the gym was black and red, with the most stylish-looking barbells I had ever seen. They looked like they belonged in a science fiction movie.

As I walked around the hotel, I thought about James. And myself. I didn't come to any big conclusions, but when Damon met me for lunch I was a lot calmer.

Instead of lunch, in fact, we had tea, and although it wasn't quite as fancy as the Buckingham Palace Hotel tea, it came pretty close.

When we were settled with a pot of tea each and a tower of tiny sandwiches and pastries between us, he shook his hair out of his eyes and said, "Now, where were we?"

The next closest table to us was across the room, four women who were chatting animatedly and paying us no mind.

"I think we were talking about whether I was going to join the society or not."

"Ah, yes. I think you still should."

"Even though I'm doing it to find this guy?"

"Look at it from my perspective, Karina, or from the club's perspective. We see a bright young woman who is delightfully responsive to sadism and dominance. She's old enough to have her wits about her, educated enough to be good conversation, but young enough to maybe turn into a lifetime companion for someone. What's that? She's had her heart broken by some lout? Well, that doesn't make her different from half the girls we take in. And what's the other thing? Oh, if she met the right fellow while at the club, she might marry him? Well, that certainly happens often enough, too."

"I guess so. So I wouldn't be breaking any rules by it."

"No. Though of course if the director and Vanette thought the only reason you joined was to search for him, well, they wouldn't take too well to that. However, I think you have plenty of good reasons to join outside of this one motive. After all, what if you find this fellow and then he rejects you? You will need a support system."

"I guess you're right..." I let out another long breath. "There's also the fact that I'm supposed to go back to the States at the end of the summer. What about that?"

"Tell me truthfully. If this man turned up at the club, reconciled with you, and asked you to stay with him here in London, would you?"

"Yes," I said, without hesitation.

"Then I think you have as much chance of staying after your training is done as any other S-type we take on these days. No need to mention to the others what may happen." Damon set down his teacup then and leaned forward, staring into my eyes until I felt all I could do was stare back. "I will make you a promise if you make me one."

"What promise is that?"

"I will promise to do everything I can to help you find this man, if you promise me that if he rejects you, you come to my bed for one night. One night of anything I want, no restrictions."

His eyes were intense in the afternoon light, wide but lit with a hunger in them.

"Not being able to fuck me really has you bothered," I said quietly.

"It does. Do we have a deal, Karina?"

"Okay. I promise. One night with you, I'll do anything you want if J-Jules rejects me, and you'll do everything you can to help me find him. The first thing you can do is buy me a train ticket to York on Thursday."

He smiled brightly and sat back, clearly pleased with himself. I could see him already plotting what he wanted to do with me. "Easily done. One moment." He pulled out his phone and sent either a text or an e-mail. "There. It's as good as done."

"You really think I'm a masochist?" I asked.

"I do. Are you worried about that? All that means is you get sexually excited by intense sensations like spanking or being caned."

"Pain, you mean."

"Pain, and other challenges. On the psychological side, you find control arousing, too. Honestly, I think most people do, they just tell themselves they don't because it's not socially acceptable. You're supposed to be turned on by, what, bouquets of roses and bubble baths? That's nice if what you want is to fall asleep side by side. Physically, we're a lot more complicated than that."

"You get turned on by seeing a woman in pain."

"Physical pain, yes. I'm not so big on emotional distress." He sipped his tea. "Making women cry has never been my thing."

"Oh. Then I'm sorry about before."

"Sorry? For what? It was fantastic to make you cry."

"But you just said..."

"I said I didn't get sexually turned on by it. But I was very pleased to get that result out of you, Karina. You opened up. It helped you tell the truth. And now that you told the truth, I can help you."

"You're right. It did." I nibbled at the cucumber sandwich. "Well, what should I tell you about him?"

"How about starting with his name?"

"He told me in the U.S. society a lot of people don't use their real names, so they never even know sometimes."

"Someone in the group must know because they run background checks." He frowned over his teacup.

"Yes, but the members don't necessarily know one another's names, I meant. He went by the name Jules, or Jewels, I guess, depending on your accent? He said he got the nickname because he wore a lot of diamonds and gems when he first started going to their parties."

"Diamonds?"

"That was what he said. They have elaborate balls and people get quite dressed up."

"So I've heard. Trying to imitate us, though we hardly do that sort of thing anymore. I mean, we do, but not for the society. You have the regular ones for nonerotic purposes, and then you have private ones on various estates by invitation. But anyway, that's fascinating. Sounds like he was quite ostentatious, then?"

"I have no idea. He made it sound like a long time ago. Anyway, he told me about the group here, too, so when you pulled out that card, I jumped on it."

"How did you know it was the same group, though?"

"Oh, I wouldn't have, except you know the professor I turned in? He was trying to gain membership, and I scuttled it by reporting him. He showed up at my building drunk and ranting. My roommate tried to tell him I wasn't there. He went on and on to her through the intercom, and she told me he used the phrase Crimson Glove Society."

"Ah, so that's where you got the designation crimson. I wondered why you used that word instead of red."

"He might have been saying crimson-gloved society, but she heard it as a name, anyway. And so when I saw yours, it clicked."

"All right, and this Jules, describe him?"

"About six foot, built like a dancer, all muscle but no bulk, blond. His mother was British and I guess he did some school here. Sound familiar?"