Athena tastes stone-dust and sunlight and her own honey lip balm. Her skin drinks in the honey as well, in the form of the sunbeams floating through the windows of Maria’s studio. Sensation caresses her, lulls her; she remains in the pose Maria arranged so carefully.

She will be a flawless model. She will be good, so good; she will give all of herself to those sculptor’s hands, over and over again, to be molded and fondled and praised and loved.

The slow thrumming sweetness of this knowledge makes her nipples tighten further. Heat pools inside her, low and fierce. She wants, and yearns, an abrupt coiling spring of desire. But she cannot move; Maria, her wife and her Mistress, has told her not to.

Athena’s whole body pulses, a quick flare of delicious yearning and denial. Wetness gathers, anticipatory, between her thighs. The center of pleasure there -- her sweetly sensitive clit that Maria loves to play with and tease and torment and adore -- swells and throbs. This is right, yes, this is right.

She is being good, obedient, helpful even as she grows more and more full of craving: the way Maria wants her to be. Following this order, because Maria will always give her exactly what she needs.

This is what she needs. This is all she needs: to stand here in the sunbeams, creamy satin curled around herself, barefoot and naked beneath that. She is a woman just risen from bed, in Maria’s conception of this artwork: a woman lush and sensual and quietly pleased with herself, having taken her own pleasure; the sculpture will capture her wrapped in indulgent fabric and sensation, caught mid-moment as she gathers the sheet around her body, arising. She, in marble grace, will stand at the center of Maria’s next award-winning exhibition.

Athena thinks of that future and those awards, fleetingly -- her wife is brilliant, a genius, beloved by so many audiences and critics, which is precisely as deserved -- and then ceases to think, merely drifting. Tranquility pulls her deeper: submission is peaceful, profound, shimmering.

She loves this. She adores this use: being a toy, a prop, a statue for her beloved’s art. She is stone-still and simple, simply existing, distilled to her essence: the essence that stands quiet and immobile and euphoric, free and flying.

She chooses this. She wants this. She breathes in and tastes honey; she breathes out and feels the wood planks of the floor, also honey-hued, under her naked toes. She is surrendered to desire, her own and Maria’s. Because Maria placed her here, wanted her here, desires her precisely this way.