Various Various - Instructed to Play

‘Hmm,’ he says, frowning thoughtfully. ‘I did rather like the way you were displayed at the gallery.’

I immediately sink to my knees and drop my head, arranging myself in the submissive posture he first saw me in. He eyes me critically for a moment before shaking his head.

‘It’s still not quite right.’

He begins to position me himself. He parts my legs as he did before and I feel myself grow damp with the exposure. With a gentle hand on my bottom he urges me up off my heels a few inches so that my thighs take my weight. Then he places my arms behind my back, my wrists crossed as if bound. Finally, he presses against my back, encouraging me to arch my spine. The position forces my small breasts forwards and I blush deeply at the powerful feeling of submission the pose evokes in me. He adjusts my head by tilting my chin up until my head is level with his chest. I gaze at the pattern of his tie, a passionate design of red and black swirls.

‘Eyes down,’ he tells me.

I obey.

He nods his approval and steps away. I hear his retreating footsteps and then the opening of a drawer from somewhere behind me. When he returns to me I see he has the little bronze plaque from the gallery, the one with my name on it. He fixes it into its setting at the base of the plinth and I am still. From this moment on I am his statue. An object he has purchased to decorate his beautiful library. I must hold this pose with absolute stillness until I am released.

Warmth courses through my body at the thought of the lovely pose he has created for me and I focus all my energy on maintaining it. It’s not as easy as it looks. My thighs are working the hardest, opened wide and angled forty-five degrees up and away from the plinth, supporting my weight. After a while I know they will be aching and possibly even trembling with the effort. But it wouldn’t be considered an art if it were easy or comfortable. And it wouldn’t be so erotic if it weren’t such a challenge.

Mr Villiers moves around the room, observing me from different angles and commenting favourably on what he sees. The maid returns when summoned and I am not surprised to learn from his conversation with her that guests will shortly be arriving. I wait until he has left the room for a moment to make a minute adjustment to my position. I won’t get another chance once the room is full of people scrutinising me. The thought warms me inside and I recall the silky touch of his finger between my legs at the gallery. I replay the moment again and again in my mind as I listen to the voices of the men and women entering the room and seeing their friend’s new acquisition.

‘How lovely!’ a lady exclaims. There is a flash of colour to my left as she comes closer and then she strokes the hollow of my hip with cool fingers.

A man beside her touches me in a similar fashion. Then another. Then another. The sensation of so many hands on me is powerfully erotic but I remember my training and keep my breathing slow and steady. I can’t help the gallop of my heart but I focus on being still, being obedient.

‘Isn’t she exquisite?’ someone says.

‘I must get one like her for my study.’

‘Perhaps I can find a matching pair for the garden.’

All around me words of praise float in the air and admiring hands roam over me as they might any decorative object. A lady draws her lacquered red nails down over my thighs. A man pinches my toes. Another tickles the tender crease between buttock and thigh. But I frustrate their attempts to make me react.

‘I do feel rather like Pygmalion.’

My master’s voice cuts through the chattering of the others and I time my breathing so that my next slow exhalation comes only after he has touched me again. I would recognise his touch even with all my other senses blocked, but I can smell his cologne and the musky warmth of his skin as he stands beside me. His fingertips tease my jutting pelvic bone as he slides his hand around to caress my bottom. The others fall silent while he strokes his possession. His touch is the hardest to resist responding to.

After a while a lady speaks. ‘But your Galatea hasn’t come to life yet.’

This is both the central irony and central beauty of my art, that I am most alive when pretending to be made of stone.

‘Oh, but I think she has,’ my master says. His hand slides up along the arch of my spine and then around to my left side. He gives my breast a little squeeze before pressing his hand up underneath it, hard against my ribs. I can feel my heart beating against his fingers, as though it’s trying to reach him. Heat floods my face and radiates through the rest of me, finding a home in the silky wet folds of my sex.

As though he can smell my arousal he laughs softly and then his hand is between my legs. ‘Very alive indeed,’ he murmurs.

And he’s right. I am more alive than I have ever been. More alive than at any other time in my life. My sex pulses feverishly in time with my pounding heart as his fingers probe and explore the soft wetness. And when he slips a finger deep inside me I can’t help it – I gasp. It’s only a tiny sound but it may as well be the shattering of glass. The shattering of an illusion.

I freeze again immediately but the damage is done. And now I can’t help the trembling in my legs as my master frowns.

‘Oh, dear,’ he says, and his disappointment is agony for me.

I daren’t speak, not even to apologise. The best I can hope for is that he’ll excuse my lapse. The curator explained that I was new, after all.

A man’s laugh rings out in the silent room, as jarring as a horn. ‘Well, it looks like your Galatea has a voice!’

The others laugh at that and one by one they slip away to the dining room. Someone calls out to my master, to ask if he is coming. But he shakes his head, standing before me as still as a statue himself.

‘It would seem,’ he says calmly, ‘that you are not yet fully trained after all.’

My trembling intensifies and I feel tears pricking my eyes. My very first private exhibition and I have failed. The shame threatens to overwhelm me.

‘But no matter. What’s done is done. We’re none of us perfect, are we?’

I know better than to deepen my disgrace by responding as though he had asked the question of a person. Flawed or not, I am still a statue and must hold on to as much of my role as I can.

‘No,’ he continues, his voice kind and forgiving. I sense his smile as he smoothes a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘Not perfect. Which means I have the pleasure of teaching you how to mimic perfection.’

My heart seems to stumble in my chest as I realise he isn’t going to send me back. Immediately I regain control of myself, will my eyes to stop welling with tears, will my body to stop shaking. I focus on the red and black swirls in his tie and lose myself in the pattern as I try to disengage from my body. I think of Natasha and the other girls, so silent and still, so perfect. How can I ever hope to be as good as they are?

‘You will have to earn your submissive pose again,’ he says. Then he paces away across the room and when he returns he is holding a riding crop.

If my eyes widen slightly he doesn’t notice, as he is inspecting the looped leather tongue at the end of the crop. He slaps it against his palm a few times. Then he slices the crop through the air before me and I can’t help it: I flinch.

He tuts and shakes his head. ‘Statues do not react,’ he says, and his tone is inscrutable. ‘Not to noises or touches. Not to pleasure or pain. Not to any stimuli at all.’

I still the trembling that threatens to overwhelm me and he holds the crop out, pressing the tongue firmly against my left nipple. The leather is cool and I immediately stiffen beneath its touch. He does the same on the other side and I suppress a shiver. My focus is completely gone and I can’t seem to regain it. Quite apart from my horror at having failed him, I’m both frightened and aroused by his authority. I desperately want to please him, to earn my pose back and to be touched again like before.