It had been months in the planning.
His capacity for punishment, whether taking it or meting it out, was the stuff of lore.
In the gym, nobody pushed harder. Five nights a week he'd pound out eight kilometres on a Vision Fitness treadmill at 12km per hour, with the hill incline set to two so it accurately simulated the intensity of a road run.
He'd follow that with a full abdominal workout - 50 crunches, leg raises and two minutes of air bicycle – then repeat.
Mondays and Thursdays he'd focus on upper body – triceps, biceps, shoulders, chest and back. Tuesday and Friday were legs – calves, quad extensions and leg press, hamstring curls. Three sets of 15 and only then would he increase the weight.
Saturdays were just the run and a double abdominal workout, Wednesdays and Sundays were his days off.
It wasn't the most intense regime in the world, but for a guy that had spent his university years and his entire twenties putting the same kind of application into his drinking, it was something.
At the end of it, he'd take stock of himself on one of the gym's many mirrors.
The old style scales tattooed on his right bicep in stark black ink against his porcelain skin pleased him every time he looked at them, as did the etching on his rib cage, in flowing cursive script – the word 'free'.
He'd look at himself for a moment before running a hand through the closely shaved salt and pepper stubble on his head and walk to his car.
His friends called him 'the extremist'. Partly for his nature, this constant need to be pushing at something, chipping away at himself in some way. But it stretched back further than that, to high school – when as a budding young guitarist he worshipped the American rock virtuoso Joe Satriani. His favourite album of Satriani's was called, aptly, The Extremist, much to the amusement of his friends more content with the Top 40 of the day than some wailing instrumental guitar rock.
At 36, he seemed settled.
He'd worked at the department of public prosecutions since graduating from university with a law degree, and had finally made it to the level of prosecutor.
After serving as a junior for five years, he was now being entrusted with his own cases.
It was a job he loved, and he had put away car thieves, small scale drug dealers, muggers and thugs who had assaulted and beaten people.
He was coming up in the world, and one day he'd be asked to lead cases against rapists, murderers, drug traffickers and the like.
She knew most of this, because she watched and listened.
She was a widower, whose husband had dropped dead one morning on a golf course at the age of 46.
She'd watch him on his runs, as she read her New Weekly or Who on an exercise bike from the bank at the back of the gym.
She'd pedal, not particularly hard, but she'd pedal. She'd pedal and she'd watch.
She was a 54-year-old, pleasantly chubby up top, with red hair flecked with grey, but with strong, toned legs from all those hours spent on an exercise bike. Watching and planning.
One night she left a little early and sat in her car in the small, almost-empty car park. She must have sat there for 15 or 20 minutes until he emerged in his sweat-stained t-shirt and shorts and threw his bag in the back seat of his Ford Focus.
She waited for him to start backing out of his space before quickly reversing out of her own, clipping his car with her rear bumper.
The two of them stopped and locked eyes for a moment in their rear-view mirrors, not sure whose fault the accident had been.
They got out of their cars and met at their bumpers, still touching with the barest of damage to each.
"Oh shit," she said in an upper class English accent. "I'm sorry. I didn't see you."
He should have been angry, but after 8km on a treadmill and a sweat like the one he'd just worked up, it was hard to be angry at anything.
"Look, don't worry about it," he said. "I should have been looking, and I didn't see you either. How about we swap details and we'll get this sorted out."
He was tempted to just let it go, call it even and they could just each pay for their own cars to be fixed. But he'd only had one car accident before, much more severe, and going from that experience he knew better than to leave things to chance.
"Do you have your drivers' licence?" he asked.
"I don't, I'm sorry," she smiled apologetically. "I travel pretty light when I go to the gym. I'm just round the corner though. Gillies Street – you could follow me home and I'll give it to you."
He really just wanted to head home, shower and put his feet up. He had a long day of meetings ahead of him tomorrow, and needed the rest. But again, he thought, he should do the right thing.
"Alright, you lead the way," he smiled. He got back into his Focus and moved back into his space to let her exit the car park first.
Five minutes later he got out of his car outside a neat weatherboard home in Gillies Street, with a white picket fence and some neatly trimmed roses, and followed the woman up the driveway to the front door where she fumbled with her keys before opening.
"You must be bloody parched," she said, leading him through to the kitchen. "I think I've got a Gatorade in the fridge."
She went to the fridge and picked one of three bottles of blue Gatorade in there before handing it to him with a smile.
He opened it, not noticing that the seal was already broken, and drank quickly. He put away half of it on his first gulp and on the next swill there was barely a drop left as she pottered around the lounge trying to find her purse.
As she approached him and presented him with her driver's license, he felt his middle begin to float and at the same time his limbs began to feel heavy.
As he started to go, he looked up at her eyes and he liked the wrinkles they made when she smiled, but her smile was sad.
As his eyes fluttered open, the man he saw in the distance was naked and lying on a bare mattress, arms and legs spreadeagled.
He realised he was looking at his own reflection, in a large mirror mounted on the ceiling, when he saw that the man had an identical tattoo on his abdomen to his own.
This realisation came at precisely the instant he discovered his hands were lashed with thin leather straps to the metal headboard. Each foot had two thin girl's belts wrapped around them which were then secured tightly to the foot of the bed.
She didn't gag him because she knew he wouldn't cry out.
It took him a moment to come to his senses, and when he did he lifted his neck to see her standing at the doorway leading into the room, dressed in a white tank top and a pair of black knickers.
She began walking towards him slowly, sliding her thumbs under the waistband of the knickers and easing them off her hips. She kept walking as the knickers slowly tumbled to her bare feet and, when they got there, she stepped out of them casually, like she was discarding a towel on her way to the pool.
"My lord," she said. "You look absolutely divine."
He gave the straps securing his hands a check, but if he was truly honest with himself, his efforts were half-hearted. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew he didn't want to be anywhere else.
She stood by the side of the bed and looked him over, drinking in his musculature and those black tattoos. She ran her right hand over him, starting from his right foot, and worked her way up his leg, across his cock and up his abdomen before stroking his forehead and looking him in the eye.
Again, she looked sad, almost apologetic that things had come to this.
Almost with an air of resignation, she climbed on to the bed like a cat, and crawled to position her mouth over his cock, with her back to him.
