He had the answer right on the tip of his tongue. "Probably about thirty thousand total. London has the most Cypriots outside of Cyprus itself. But how did you get me off the subject? We're supposed to be talking about you."

"We are?"

"We are." He poured a cup of tea for me and waved at the platter of cookies and pastries they had sent up.

I could not eat a miniature eclair without thinking of James and the treats he had fed me from the catering table after the private show in the gallery. I took an eclair and savored it.

"So, the man you pine for is a control type with a taste for public display and art. But you're separated. Whose idea was it to separate?"

"His," I admitted, my throat closing suddenly. I took a sip of tea and blinked away tears.

He gave me a moment to gather myself. When he went on, his voice was softer. "And what is it you hope to gain out of training with the society?"

I couldn't tell him I was there to hunt for James. I simply couldn't. I had to wonder what James would think of me sitting there naked with another dominant man. Would he be jealous? Hurt? If so, would that mean he still cared? I tried to focus on Damon and his question, though. "We had a terrible misunderstanding. I misjudged the boundaries, I guess. I want...I need to know more about how these kinds of relationships work. So if I can get him to give me a second chance, I won't fuck it up again."

"And if he doesn't give you a second chance?"

"I can't even think about that."

"You should, Karina. You're young and beautiful and desirable, not to mention kinky. There are plenty of men who would love to collar you."

"I'm not a stray cat who was put on the street, you know." Though I felt kind of like one. Hiss.

"Ah, but the society could be thought of as a pet adoption center. For some, anyway." He sipped his own tea and then steepled his fingers, his eyes dark and smoldering as he considered what to say next. "Please be open to the possibility that your man is in your past, not your future. Having had a taste of what he offered-what we offer-could you go back to a vanilla relationship, now?"

I sighed. "Not like my old ones, anyway."

"How so?"

"It's taken a while to sink in, and I don't always get it right, but I think the thing that really gets me is the honesty." I forced myself to look at him while I said it. "Having to be honest about what you want, what you need. I don't think any of my previous partners could be honest with me about that."

"Or with themselves, perhaps," he murmured against the rim of his teacup.

"And I don't think they necessarily cared what my desires were. They wanted me to want to be their girlfriend. Like everything would have worked out fine if only we were on the same page, and then they couldn't understand why I didn't automatically want exactly what they did. I don't mean only sexually. I mean who they wanted me to be."

He nodded.

"I mean, I wasn't exactly the clearest about communicating my needs either, but I feel like when I tried, I got shut down. Like, 'Why are you making waves? Aren't we getting along just fine? Isn't this good enough for you?'"

Damon set down his cup. "Don't settle for 'good enough,' Karina. Never settle for that. Any man who lands you has caught himself a prize."

"So I should make sure he's a prize, too?"

"Make sure he's right for you, anyway." Damon wiped his lip with a napkin. "I'll be honest. I know you think this fellow was all that, but I hope if you widen your experience, you'll see perhaps he wasn't. You'll always love him for being the one who opened the door to the BDSM world, but if you realize there are more fish in the sea, it might make it easier to forget him and move on. Especially if he doesn't want you back. Have you been in contact with him?"

"Sort of."

"Explain."

I toyed with another pastry on my plate. "I leave messages for him. I don't know if he gets them. I know he had more than one phone. He doesn't answer, anyway. He hasn't communicated with me at all since the night of...the big blowup."

"And you aren't taking that as a sign he doesn't want to speak to you?"

"Well, maybe I'm deluded. But I think if he really wanted me to stop, he'd tell me to stop. Or change his number."

"Then why is he ignoring you?"

"Because he's a chicken-shit bastard who's afraid of love, that's why."

Damon nearly snorted his tea. He coughed a little. "Aha. All right. I won't be solving this puzzle tonight, but you've given me some food for thought." He looked at me, though, as if he were hungry for something other than food. "How old were you when you figured out you were kinky?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know. Did you tie up your friends playing pirate captain or what have you?"

I shook my head. "I didn't know until J-" Shit, that was close. "Until my partner pulled me into it. In fact, I'm not sure I would call myself kinky."

He gave me one of those skeptical looks. "So you think the only reason you get turned on when a lover takes control is because you imprinted like a baby duck on this one guy's style?"

"Is that possible?" I asked. That was exactly one of the things I wondered about. "I mean, you are a little bit similar to him, the way you order me around. Bringing Nadia and Juney to the museum, leaving me the written instructions, all that...I could picture him doing the same things."

"And was it his cock you imagined when you took me in your mouth?" he snapped.

I sucked in a breath. Damn. I hadn't meant to insult him, but don't they always say no guy likes to be compared to the one who came before? And I had thought about James when I'd pleasured him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"Didn't mean it what way?" He looked sullen.

"You're hurt. I'm sorry. I didn't bring him up to be hurtful or push you. I'm just trying to figure it out. I thought you were trying to figure it out, too. I mean, am I actually into this stuff or is it only because of him, you know?"

Damon closed his eyes, clasped his fingers together, and was silent for a long moment. When he opened his eyes he sounded calmer. "He wasn't there when you kissed my shoe," he said. "He wasn't there in the bedroom tonight. I'm not saying that I"-he pressed his hand against his chest-"am all that, but that you, Karina, do respond to dominance and submission."

"Okay, but what does that mean?"

He sighed. "It doesn't have to mean anything. It just is. The play with power and control turns people on sexually. It doesn't have to be more than that."

"But people make it out to be something terrible, something we should hide. That's why the society is secret, isn't it?" I poured a fresh cup of tea for myself. The room was comfortably warm even though I was wearing nothing.

"Well, first of all, the society has been a secret since the days when there were thousands of secret societies. It was totally a thing in the mid-1800s. Some men were in several societies, dozens maybe. Some were more secret than others. The Freemasons aren't secret at all these days. Our particular society was built for those who were sexually excited by power but who didn't want to have to abuse their power. At least, that's how I imagine it came to be. One moment." He got up from his chair, went to the other room to retrieve his jacket, and then showed me the red satin glove in his pocket. "Did Vanette explain this?"

"Not exactly. She told me the society has no name, but it's pretty obvious to me you use the crimson glove as some kind of signal or calling card."

He nodded and sat back down. "Now, imagine you lived in a society where to get your kinky needs met, consensually that is, you couldn't reasonably speak to anyone about it without fear of being exposed. If you met a woman you wanted to tie up, spank, and fuck until she cried, how were you to ask her if she was willing to do such a thing? After all, she doesn't dare admit aloud to her desires either."

"Well, couldn't you meet at the club?"

"I believe we're speaking of a time before the club building was established," Damon said. "Say you met at a polite function of some sort. Perhaps you even flirted a little. The story goes that the man would say to the lady something like, 'Oh, I happened across this. Is it yours?' And if she was in the know, and willing, she would reply, 'Yes.' If she was in the know and not willing or not able to take up his offer, she would say, 'Oh, I don't believe that will fit me.' Or many other variations. The woman could initiate it, asking if the man had perchance seen a glove she had lost. And so on. Once the actual calling card came into fashion, of course, it became as simple as what we do today, merely flashing the token as the card is handed over."

"I see."

"Of course, today one can also go down to a fetish nightclub that advertises in the newspaper, pay the cover charge, and go in and mingle like any other singles bar, except everyone's in black."

"If that's so, then why is the society still secret?"

"Ah. Well. As you say, there are some people who still have a problem with it. Many of our members are politicians and the like."

"And rich people."

"Why, yes, and rich people," he said with a chuckle. "That's always been so. That's how we came to have five town houses connected together for the club. And society members live in the adjacent buildings and most of the other buildings on that cul-de-sac. It was quite the expensive neighborhood at the turn of the last century, and still is today."

"Makes sense. Back then, though, couldn't a man with, er, perverted tastes go and beat up a whore if he wanted? That's what all those terrible books make it sound like."

"I'm sure many did," Damon said. "And those are not the type we admit. I thought you knew that."

"Yes, but-"

"But what? Is it so hard to believe that decent but kinky men-and women-might have banded together to do it in a way that their morals of human decency could accept, yet kept them safe in the eyes of polite society? And what about the man who doesn't want that companion for a night, but for a lifetime? It has worked marvelously in that regard for generations. And for a rich kinky fucker like myself?" He grinned. "All the willing, prime-grade ass I can spank."

I laughed. "All right. It makes sense to me."

"I pity the poor sods who can only get off if they're actually forcing someone," he said as he stood and yawned. "They're the truly perverse. Trapped in a world of lies and coercion and sickness. You see it all the time. That CEO in Georgia who was fucking his secretary all those years, made her do all kinds of nasty things, but she turned around and sued him the second she had saved enough to put her mother in a home? Otherwise we'd never know about him. That one here who had been doing it with his Irish Catholic housekeeper and forcing her to abort the babies he got on her? Sick. That's sick. And people classify us in the same way because they don't realize there's a difference. A huge, huge difference."

"You can get off your soapbox, you know. Preaching to the converted and all," I said. "Maybe they just don't realize there's a difference because it's so secretive."

He shook his head and beckoned me to follow him into the bedroom. "It's because there's so fucking much of the sick stuff." He went into the bathroom but kept talking. "You want demographics? How about this: A third of British teenage girls eighteen and under report they've experienced sexual violence. A bloody third! But the rate of conviction here is staggeringly low. Maybe one out of a hundred. Maybe the U.S. is different. I don't know."

I followed him as he brushed his teeth. "It's not that different. They say one in six American women will be the victim of rape, or at least attempted rape, and at any given time, five percent of the women on a college campus experienced it at their university."

He rinsed and spat. "That sounds like a pretty specific statistic."

"Yeah, well, I got real familiar with that topic."

He stood straight, his eyes serious. "You were a victim?"

"Of an attempt. By my own thesis advisor. I told him to fuck off, though. It took me a while to get around to accusing him publicly." I blew some hair out of my eyes. "That's why I'm in England. Waiting for it to blow over."

"Ah, so much becomes clear," he said. "I looked into your academic record before your interview and wondered why your coursework was complete but not your thesis. I thought maybe you were here for the exhibit to finish your research."

"If only. I think it will all come out fine, but it's good I'm not there for the summer."

"Okay. Thank you for telling me that. Your bag is in the closet. Get ready for bed and join me there."

"Wearing nothing?"

"Ideally." He smirked. "I didn't say we were necessarily going right to sleep."

Six.

The Stars Look Very Different Today

The next morning I woke to the feeling of the bed jiggling under me. I looked up to find Damon masturbating with his eyes shut, his arm moving quickly as he worked his fist up and down his shaft. He had kicked his pajama bottoms off and was outside the covers, so I had a very clear view of what he was doing.

He held his breath when he came, coating his fingers with ropy come, then opened his eyes when he started breathing again.

"Karina," he said.

"What?"

"Nothing, just seeing if I remembered your name right." He grinned.

"You bastard."

"Ah ah, calling your dom, even a temporary one, names? That's a spanking offense." He sat up and wiped his hand on the sheets. Then he used his pajama bottoms to wipe off his penis before he tossed them on the floor. "Come on. Across my lap."

"You're kidding!"

"I'm not. Besides, a good spanking will wake you up better than coffee. Come on. Around the side of the bed and lie across my lap. And say 'Yes, Mr. George.'"

Right. "Yes, Mr. George."

I climbed out of the bed and lay across him, my feet hanging off the bed. I still wasn't wearing anything, so he had a nice eyeful as I did.

He rubbed my ass cheeks with his hand. "You mentioned you've been spanked before?"

"Yes, Mr. George."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes."

"Were you a naughty girl or did he merely like hitting you?"

I had to think for a moment. "Once it was because I did something I wasn't supposed to, and once was when he had me all tied up and I guess it was just the thing to do."

He switched to scratching me lightly with the backs of his fingernails. "That's it?"