Many years ago, when this reviewer was the unhappy wife in a heterosexual marriage which was supposedly vanilla but with a strong flavor of booze, insecurity and rage on the husband’s side (don’t get me started), I had a revelation. In one of the self-help books I had sought out, with some title like “Your Lousy Relationship and What to Do About It,” was a simple but profound statement: “A relationship is no better than the quality of communication between you.”

Of course, I thought. If the man and the woman, the Dom and the sub, the Mistress and her girl, the Master and his boy, or X and Y don’t understand each other, they really have no relationship, case closed. And regardless of the power dynamic, the talking and the listening have to be done on both sides. This is the only way to have a real relationship. All else is window-dressing. (This insight enabled me to escape from a stifling cage, but that has nothing to do with the e-novel under review. Alas, I digress.)

The co-authors of this gay-male BDSM romance seem to understand what took so many of us so long to learn. Despite the numerous scenes of bondage, percussion, sensory deprivation, suspension, role-playing, blow jobs and anal sex (lots of those two things), the winding road to mutual understanding is the thread that keeps the plot moving forward and keeps the reader interested.

Tobias Vincent is the Prince Charming of this e-novel. He is a veterinarian who grew up on the farm he inherited, and who learned to care for animals as he became aware of his attraction to men and his need to dominate them. By age 41, he has become a Dom with a sterling reputation who has occasional moments of self-doubt, especially since his painful breakup with his last submissive boyfriend, who wanted more pain than Tobias felt he could ethically dish out. Through an exclusive club for gentlemen of the leather persuasion, Tobias meets Noah, a hunky young cop who is genuinely submissive but who has issues of his own. Can the two men learn to trust each other? More importantly, can they each trust themselves?

The two authors have done a remarkable job of co-operating on a seamless story about the development of intimacy between the two central characters. As they both reveal parts of themselves to each other, questions are raised and answered on both sides. There are predictable setbacks, and the reader learns that Doms, as well as subs, sometimes need to safe-word.

Safe, sane and consensual BDSM as a delicate but gruelling journey of the soul is contrasted with a seamy world of men’s leather bars where not every Dom has a conscience and inexperienced young “meat” can be so damaged that it is hard for them to trust anyone again. In different ways, both Noah and Tobias have been affected by the irresponsibility of those in this under-world. In some sense, they both need to go there to retrieve missing parts of themselves.

Noah learns that he is capable of pleasing a good Master and then shifting out of “sub-space” to function well in his job. Tobias appreciates his “boy,” but knows that he must discover Noah’s limits as well as his own if he really wants them both to be satisfied. While falling in love, both men learn that issues from the past (and people from the past) never go away until they are dealt with.

This e-novel is the first in a projected series of four in the “Deviations” series. The second novel, Domination, is also available, and the third one, Discipline, is due to be out in 2007. The characters change and interact with each other in believable ways, and therefore they are interesting enough to follow through four thick books. However, the blow-job-and-anal-sex scenes become repetitious after awhile, regardless of how thrilling they are for the characters. If this is your thing, you might want to highlight those scenes in magic marker. If you prefer character development, you might want to skip ahead.