Owen well remembers Sterling, his bratty behaviour, his stubbornness… for any other Dom those would be faults, for Owen instead are reasons to be attracted by Sterling. Now Owen is no more Sterling’s teacher, but when they meet again in the club, Owen would like to not move their acquaintance on a deeper level. So it was with Owen, Sterling’s literature teacher when he was a freshman in college. And more the person on the other side is an authoritative figure, and more Sterling challenges them. He is always challenging the people he meets, something that he is probably projecting from his own experience with his father. Sterling is quite the bratty type, both in his public than private life. But that is not Sterling’s true nature, he is unwillingly trying to follow his father’s step, and instead Sterling needs a strong hand to lead him. Even if Sterling has never really done coming out, his father knows and obviously doesn’t approve Sterling has opposing feelings on that, he doesn’t want so much his father’s approval to deny his own sexuality, but unconsciously he is trying to prove that he is man enough always playing the top in his relationship. The author well explains Sterling’s reasons, he comes from a very difficult relationship with his father, a relationship that was always a challenge to prove that Sterling was not alike his own father due to the fact that his father wanted for him to be his own replica. At first they think it’s only a question of experience, and so Alex brings Sterling to a BDSM private club to give him an introduction on the world, but as soon as Sterling tastes that reality, he also understands that he doesn’t need to learn how to be a good Dom, he wants to be a submissive. He met Alex, a submissive, and since their relationship remained on a friends with benefits level, everything is all right, but when they tried to deepen it on an upper level, both Alex than Sterling realize that they are not right matched.

Sterling is not a virgin to gay sex, but he is a virgin to the BDSM world. In a way Owen, the dominant in this story, is similar to me, he thinks that a D/s relationship not necessarily means that the submissive has to loose his independency. Elisa_rolle Bound and Determined pushed my comfort boundaries on the BDSM world, but strange is, not so much for me to not like it.

Bound and Determined by Jane Davitt