His answer was to shout in my ear as he came, shooting torrents of come between my legs and then collapsing, panting, on top of me.

He climbed off after a few moments. Something hit the ground near my head. I looked up to see the box of wet wipes. By the time I sat up to start cleaning myself up, he was gone.

I told Vanette everything that night. I used half a box of tissues I cried so much, but she never lost patience with me, never urged me to hurry up and get to the point. Maybe getting it all off my chest was the point. I don't know.

"I take it that the man we know as Jules is the man you told me you were saving yourself for," she said, as she settled me with a cup of tea at the small, round table in her room. She sat at an angle from me instead of directly across. She had her notepad but hadn't written anything on it yet.

"Yes," I said, choking back a sob. "Damon said he would help me talk to him."

"Maybe you better start at the very beginning again with how you met Damon."

"I think I better go back further than that," I said, "because he's not actually my first contact with the society."

"Ahhh. Do tell."

So I gave her the abridged version of both how my advisor, Theo Renault, had inappropriately propositioned me, and how James and I had met, leading up to going to the society party together. "One of the reasons I finally got up the gumption to turn Renault in was that I was told his application for membership in the society would be rejected if I did. When he was, he showed up drunk and ranting at my doorstep about how I'd ruined his chances with what sounded at the time like 'the Crimson Glove Society.'"

She nodded. "Sexual predators try to hide in our midst. It is very much in our best interest to rid ourselves of them. But how did you and Jules come to be separated?"

Now I had to decide how much to tell her. But I realized I could describe the situation, keeping what James told me secret. "Up until then I only knew aliases for him. Meanwhile, though, he knew everything about me, where I live, where I went to school, everything. It was starting to feel to me very lopsided. If he loved me, really loved me, when was he going to tell me?" I had to pause to cry a bit, saying out loud the fears that had gnawed at me then. "I felt we'd already gone far beyond just being a kinky fling. We'd used the word love, even if there hadn't been a...a big exchange of I love yous, you know?"

"I know," she said, giving me another moment to gather myself.

"Up until then we...we hadn't had full-on sex, either."

She was so earnest and calm, I didn't even feel embarrassed telling her.

"We had been working up to it. So here we are at this huge party, which he'd been winding me up for all week, and he ties me up and does all these things, and we finally get in bed, and I t-tell him..." God, where had I gotten the chutzpah? If I'd known he was going to react the way he did, of course I never would have done it. At the time, I'd felt it was my only reasonable action. "I told him no, you can't put it in until you tell me your real name."

"Ahhh." She nodded.

"I felt like if I didn't demand it then, he was never going to tell me. No one was watching us at that point. It was just us, so it wasn't like I made him say it to the whole room."

"And he refused?"

"No! He went through with it. Told me and then we made love." Okay, maybe it was harder to tell her this than I thought. I tried to calm myself with a deep breath. "Or, I thought we did. I thought it was the most amazing sex I'd ever had in my life. But apparently, all through it he was freaking out. At the end, he ran off and gave orders to Stefan, his limo driver, to take me back to the city."

She let me cry for a few minutes after that, waiting until I had slowed down again before she asked, "Did he speak to you after that?"

"Not a word. Not even to tell me to get lost or to stop calling."

"I can see why that might leave a girl with a burning desire to track a man down." She tapped her pen against the paper but wrote nothing. "Did he change his phone number?"

"Far as I can tell, he hasn't. But he did go into hiding. And came here, to England, I mean. I heard some members talking to him. They seem to know he's an artist of some kind."

"Yes, the society has funded some installations of his in the past," she said.

The private showing of the glass houses piece, the riding crops, it made more sense to me now. "He has a reputation as a recluse. So him going into hiding is something he's done before. I followed a rumor he was in England."

"Very well, but where does Damon come into the picture?"

I sighed. "Jules introduced me at one point to the curator for the Tate I'm working for now. Damon showed up at the gallery for a private tour with Nadia and Juney in tow. When he got an inkling that I wasn't as freaked out by it as your average art history student, he showed me the glove in his pocket and everything clicked."

"Ah, so you knew there was a possible connection between him and your missing paramour."

"Yes. Next thing I know, Damon's offering me a position here and help searching for Jules. I jumped at the chance. At the time, it was my first real lead."

"And, indeed, Damon put the two of you in a room together." She clucked her tongue though, shaking her head. "Tell me more about your relationship with Damon."

"What relationship? He's been trying to get into my pants since that very first day. That's not a relationship."

"True." She gave an emphatic nod. "So would you say it's all one-sided on his part? He's mad for you and you don't particularly care for him at all?"

"I don't think he cares about me," I said. "I think he sees a challenge, and that's why he's so keen on me. It doesn't have anything to do with me at all. I think once he lands me, he'll lose interest and move on to the next conquest."

Vanette stood and stretched at that point before refreshing the tea in her cup, adding a dash more to mine though I hadn't touched it yet. It was lukewarm when I took a sip.

"I can only speculate on Damon's motives," she said. "I've known him a long time. I gather you promised him something if Jules turned you down?"

"I promised him I'd let him have me for one night if Ja-" Oops. "Jules rejected me. He makes out like he'll use that night to make me forget Jules ever existed. That he'll be such a superior lover and master that I'll forget my hopeless crush on the guy who dumped me."

"Do you believe him?"

"That's the thing. If he could really do that, and Jules really did convince me we had nothing, then I'd let Damon give it a try. But I don't believe he really could do that, even if he intends to. Like I said, I think once the challenge is beaten, I'll be just another trophy like Nadia and Juney to him. In a few months he'll be chasing someone else, and I'll be stuck, again."

Vanette nodded. "So when you said you wanted to learn how the minds of dominant men work, you were thinking of Jules?"

"Yes. Because I clearly miscalculated terribly with him."

"I am not sure you did," she said. "It sounds to me like you knew him so well and that is what scared him the most. He is, as you say, a recluse, a man who lives on secrets."

"That's what I told Stefan! That he was afraid. I think he realized how much power I had over him. I'm sure he didn't hand over his identity to just anyone. But how will I ever know if we have no contact?"

"And now that you have made contact, nothing he said or did tonight contradicts that feeling you have. That he runs from you because he's scared."

"Yeah. Until he can sit down in front of me and look me in the eye and truthfully say 'I don't love you,' I won't believe that he doesn't. I won't believe it's over." My eyes were dry as I said it. That's how strongly I believed he would never be able to tell me that.

Vanette sipped her tea and I did the same, waiting to hear what she would say next. When she did, she brought the subject back to the society. "Well, I cannot claim you were here under false pretenses, since I knew right from that first interview you were stuck on some dom. Damon is in hot water for not telling us everything and for being a general instigator of trouble, but you're not. The question now is whether you continue in training or not. How did you feel during tonight's exercise?"

I couldn't hold in a shiver. "I really have no interest in having sex, even pseudo-sex, with anyone here," I admitted. "I couldn't wait for it to be over. The...the men have all been perfectly nice. I enjoyed being flogged. But I'm really not interested in having kinky fun for the sake of kinky fun. I want Jules back. If training here was the way to do that, I don't regret anything I've done. But I'm really not into it."

"Alas, that was the sense I got from you," she said. "And you're the only one who actually displayed any aptitude for service among the trainees. Well, you and Stuart."

"Is he going to be all right?" I asked, before I really thought about what I was asking.

"Oh, he'll be fine. The membership gangs up on him about once a month. For the next week or so he'll be walking on air, completely chipper and well adjusted. Stu's got no capacity to ask for what he needs, though, and is far too obedient to act out to get it. Burns and his cronies take good care of him."

I chuckled a little. "And here I thought he was high-strung."

"He'll wind up again gradually over the next month, and then they'll take him apart again. It works for all concerned." She smiled dotingly. "But we were talking about you. I'm sorry to say that unless you have a very strong argument for staying on, we're going to have to let you go, and it sounds to me unlikely we'll see your Jules here again, so you've little motivation to stay."

"You're right," I said. "There's no reason for me to be here."

"I'm sorry we couldn't engineer a resolution for you and Jules, either," she said. "Keep my number. If he eventually does reject you, or you decide to give up on him and you want to come back, I'd be open to speaking with you about it."

"You would?"

"I like you, Karina. You're bright and smart and your heart is in the right place. Not to mention, you're a born masochist with an understanding of service. You'd be very valuable to us, if you wanted to be here. It's good we both recognize that right now, though, you don't."

"Yeah."

"I'll call you a taxi home." She stood. "My last piece of advice is this. Do you know what excites Damon George?"

"Blindfolds?" I guessed.

"Pushing the boundaries," she answered. "The thing that gets him the hardest is pushing against the rules and the strictures. Not breaking them, because that would get him thrown out of too many places, but on seeing how far he can go, how much he can get away with in the gray area before he crosses the line into too far. And this is a man who thinks with his cock."

"Are you saying don't trust him?"

"I'm saying understand what drives him."

"Thank you. That's good advice." It applied equally well to James, too. What drove James to be so secretive, so closed, so careful? I hoped I would have the opportunity to find out.

Twelve.

Images of Broken Light

The taxi let me off in front of the ArtiWorks. Despite the late hour, I could see the lights in the gallery were blazing through the paper that covered the front windows. Inside I found Michel with a roll of tape on his wrist like a bracelet, pacing back and forth on the raised section of floor that would serve as a "stage," though it was only a few inches higher than the rest.

"Ah, Karina, you can help me with this." He held out one end of a tape measure, which I took between two fingers. "Hold that down on the piece of tape over there." He pointed to the edge where I could see he had marked an X.

He then measured a distance he had in his head and put down another taped X. He marked out two more spots and then stood back. "Perfect! It will fit. Thank heaven."

"What will fit?" I asked.

"The rather large installation that your friend will be contributing to our opening, of course! This will leave plenty of room along here..." He gestured to the open area that would extend from the edge of the raised step to where the chairs and tables would be. "For the dance performance, which it looks like we will not have anyway, but I am hopeful, nonetheless."

"What happened to the dance performance?"

"Oh. The leader of the troupe has a severely sprained ankle, and her husband, who also dances in the troupe, a broken elbow, I believe. Quite a coincidence, no?"

"Were they in a car accident?"

"Heh. That would be a convenient cover story. But no, I believe it was described as a sex swing accident." He looked up at the ceiling where two large eyebolts had been installed. "They were rehearsing for this very performance and got carried away, I think. And then the attachment to their ceiling gave way. Alas. It will be dull without dance."

I had thought maybe he was going to say it would be dull without sex, but no. I looked up at the bolts. "I guess you'll have to hang a sculpture or a lamp or something."

"Yes." Then he looked at me for the first time since I had come in. "Mon cherie, are you all right? You look as though you have been crying."

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine."

"This man who took you on the weekend-long date. Is he a problem?" Michel took my hands in his.

"It's not him, Misha. I...I'll be okay. So, this installation. When's he coming to install it?"

Michel cleared his throat. "Well, he is shipping most of it down with two assistants, who will do the initial construction. He won't arrive until the day of, with the final segments. I can see from your face that you are disappointed about this."

I squeezed his fingers in mine. "I should probably tell you and Paulina something."

"Something serious?"

"Very serious. Although first I should tell you...I used to do modern dance. I...I could put together a performance for the opening. In fact, I would really, really like to."

"Truly? All right, cherie, let's finish up down here and then you can tell Paul and me all about your idea and whatever your other secret is."

"Okay."

We turned off the light and went out the front door. Michel locked it with the key and then unlocked the door to the flat. Upstairs, Paulina was emerging from her studio and putting on the kettle as we arrived on the landing.

We settled ourselves in their art-filled sitting room again, with the latest in Paulina's baked creations on the table in the middle, eclairs and cream puffs. "If I can get it right in time for the opening, I'll cater it myself with these," she said, holding up a mini-eclair. They tasted delicious, but some of them were oddly shaped.

"Tsk, they are artisanal," Michel scoffed. "I think you should make none in the traditional shape! Each one should be unique."

"That's harder than making them uniform," she said, licking chocolate from her fingers.

"No one said art was always easy." Michel looked up at me. "Karina has an idea for the opening, too."

"Um, yes. I heard about the dancers who got injured, and Michel was saying with less than two weeks to go it's too late to find someone to replace them. But I thought I could do something."

"Do something?" Paulina asked.

"Dance something," I said. "It's been a while, but I have an idea. If the piece that is being installed is the same one I saw in York, I even have a way to integrate it into the performance."

"Oh, that's exciting," Paulina said. "Misha, do you have the photos from the e-mail?"