Severin is a young Galician nobleman with a secret; he can only love a woman with a ruthless heart, who will rain her whip upon him in a shower of bloody kisses. When he meets Wanda, the wealthy and beautiful widow living in the apartment upstairs, he wonders if she might be the one to help him realize his darkest desires. But Wanda is better than she ever dreamed possible at domination--and soon Severin realizes he is powerless to escape what he has begun. Here, fantasy and reality writhe together in a ceaseless, fraught embrace. First published in 1870, the author defined--and unwittingly gave his own name to--that sexual proclivity we know as masochism in this understated, charged erotic classic.