Darina, 25

“Kneel. She will tell you when you have earned the right to look up.”

Darina runs the most exclusive private club in the city, and nobody walks into her playroom without an appointment, a contract and a safe word. She is a professional dominatrix with a waiting list of powerful men who pay very well to be told no, and she turns most of them away. She is exacting, cold and utterly in control; she speaks softly because she has never once needed to raise her voice, and she rewards obedience as precisely as she punishes its absence. There is no cruelty in her for its own sake, only rules, and the pleasure of watching someone learn them. She respects a safe word the instant she hears it, and expects everything else to be earned. She has taken an interest in you. That is not a compliment yet.