NOTE FROM RIOTTORI: MORE FLASHBACKS FROM CHRISTIAN'S POV. THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL THE COMMENTS

My feet pounded the path as I tore through the park. Already I could feel the familiar burn through my limbs, the pleasurable pain of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I ran on, trying to break through the wall of pain, tried to feel alive. Maybe this would help.

It didn't. Nothing did. I visited Flynn, I played with my kids, I made love to my wife. Shit, I even took up running. All displacement activities, all ways to take my mind off The Room.

I visited it in my dreams, would wake sweating, my hand clenched around some imaginary whip. That's when I went to see Flynn. But slowly, slowly, the dreams began to penetrate my waking life, to drip in. Contaminate. I would find myself at work, lost to a forgotten life in The Room, staring into space.

Ana wanted to go with me. She had offered herself to me. But I couldn't. How could I take her in there? My wife, my life. No, it was wrong. She was the mother of my children, her breasts had fed my boy, my girl. How could I truss her up, touch her body with anything other than love? Gratitude? I could worship her body in the comforting cream of our bedroom but not in The Red Room. Not Ana. Not anymore.

I didn't know I would feel like that. The final time we tried The Room, I was excited. I would be getting Ana back as mine, all mine. Not a Mommy anymore. I was aroused when I'd entered, saw her conforming, the submissive posture adopted perfectly. I couldn't wait to touch her, I was greedy then, like I had been when I'd first met her, when I had to make her mine. My commands were barked at her, gruff with lust.

I ran my fingers through her pig-tailed hair, down her neck, over her full breasts. I could feel her automatic reaction to my touch. She never failed in her faithful desire of me. Her skin was as familiar to me as my own and it goose-bumped as I knew it would. I traced a forbidden line down, across her belly. The ridge of her scar slowed me, its ragged pink edges marking her as mother. Fight it, I thought. I touched her again, imagined her prostrate on the bed, begging for release, her skin pink under my controlling hand. It didn't feel right. I couldn't do it. Not anymore. We left The Room and had our fill of Vanilla.

I had never known such self-control in the years that followed, such restraint. I was proud of myself for playing the part of husband. For the first time in my life I felt 'normal'. I honestly thought I had conquered my desire, my need to be a Dom. Vanilla with my wife was all I needed. At last.

How wrong I had been.

It ambushed me one night when I was alone. It seemed, looking back, that all the events surrounding that night were channeled in the direction of our reunion. Ana and the kids were in Georgia visiting her mother and the hasty phone-call I made did little to fortify me against the power of The Red Room. Flynn was out-of-town too, his mobile switched off, Goddamn him. My desire had grown so large by then, that it overpowered me, alone in Escala, brought me to my knees. I had turned my back on it for so long that I hadn't properly monitored its progress. It had grown and swollen by itself. My attempts to ignore it were futile. I tried to turn from it again but it covered me like a cloak and dragged me back. I was its prey. It had won. That night I found my next Sub.

I was surprised I still remembered the formalities of obtaining a Sub. I had photocopied the NDA and a copy of the contract while I waited for her to meet me in my office at Escala. My fingers drummed the table, keeping time with my racing heart.

You can do this, I coaxed myself. You need to take charge. This is what you've been missing. You'll do this for a month and it will be enough.

At one point I almost canceled, almost phoned her to tell her not to come. But she arrived early and I knew there was no way back.

The minute I met her, I knew she wouldn't be good enough. She was wearing too much make-up and smelt of cheap perfume. My first order to her when we signed the paperwork was to get in the shower, scrub herself clean. I wanted her to be like a new canvas. How could I go back to Ana smelling of her? Touch my wife with hands that reeked of fake Lily of the Valley?

I swung open the door to The Red Room and heard her small gasp. It made me feel powerful.

"I've never seen so much equipment," she drawled, her accent annoying me.

"Silence."

I walked her through the rules, the rigmarole, a speech I had made many times before. I remembered them like lines in a play and this was a role I was reprising. I left her to assume her position while I changed into my faded jeans.

She was very experienced, perhaps too experienced. She left me cold. I had taken out the new flogger, the one I had purchased just for her, had flicked it over her. She had not cried out once. It was as if she was made of stone; she was as cold as a boulder. I needed more. I wanted to incite desire not beat the shit out of little brown haired girls anymore. She gave me nothing, my most impassive submissive. I bored of her in the first hour.

I canceled the contract as soon as we had finished. I couldn't stand a month of her. She didn't seem to care. And then I booked an emergency meeting with Flynn.