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there.”
    She climbed onto the stool, running her fingers along the side, where vines were worked into the wood, complete with roses and thorns that pricked her. Beside her was a vanity with a carving at the base of the mirror.
    There was a woman on a cliff, forlorn and haunting. Then out at sea, a ship caught in the storm with a single man at the helm. Penelope and Odysseus, she waited for her husband while he fought magic and nature to return home. Her throat felt tight. Her master’s hands should terrify her, with their ability to hurt or restrain, but those hands had made this.
    He returned to the worktable and began sanding a large contraption. At first she wasn’t sure what it was. Her mind flew to some old style machinery for weaving, but that didn’t make sense. She examined the lines across, the padding on the bottom rung— oh. It was meant to restrain a woman. She swallowed hard.
    What would he do to a slave he bound there? There was so much she didn’t know about him. Everything, really. She knew he ate sparingly for his size, he lived simply. She knew his hands were coarse but precise when they carved into wood, when they held her body down.
    She knew he wanted her.
    He said he didn’t. It had almost seemed as if he hadn’t known she was a slave. As if he hadn’t purchased her and brought her to his home. He promised to send her away every time he spoke, but still he hadn’t. Even though she had asked to go home, he had kept her.
    Possession. Servitude. This was what she had trained for, and he was a kinder Master than she would have thought possible.
    His eyebrows drew together as he worked. His movements grew slower, more careful. The hard planes of his face had softened in the glow of the lamp, a lock of black hair fell over his eyes. He raised a different sort of awareness in her than obedience, as well, one of a woman to a man.
    The way he focused on it was the way he focused on her, and she longed to see the outpouring of his intensity. In the same way she would trace any marks he granted her body, she wanted to see the wounds he cut into the wood.
    He straightened and stretched his arms. His eyes caught hers.
    “Bored, are you?” He swung his arms down, tilted his head from side to side as if to loosen tight muscles. “Told you to stay in the house. There’s books at least, if you like reading about metalworking.”
    It almost sounded like teasing, the way his voice lowered. She cocked her head to the side.
    “Come here.” He stepped aside to make room. At her hesitation, he said, “Don’t worry. I’m not planning on using this.”
    She carefully stepped down from the bench and approached him. Truly, she knew better than this. A master was capricious, unstable. Harsh on the best days, but oh, there was worse. But his quiet intensity was a balm to unseen wounds. His stark kindness more seductive than the painful vibrating wands they used to induce her orgasms.
    Looking down at the contraption, she tried to ignore his size, his heat at her side. At first it seemed that this piece had no carvings, until she cautiously circled the bench and saw the markings on the bottom rung. And they were upside down. She tilted her head, so that she could see the scene the same way a woman who was tied down on the bench would see it.
    Another scene from The Odyssey . This time a woman with long golden hair stood naked on the beach while Odysseus was tied to the mast of his ship, desperate and wanting.
    “Do you like it?” There was an uncertainty in his gruff voice that said this mattered.
    It wasn’t simply the artwork that was beautiful, it was the reverence to the person who would be imprisoned here, hurt here. I’m just as much a slave as you , this said. She nodded.
    He studied her. “I think you do understand. It’s your eyes. You speak with them.”
    She stared up into his remote brown ones and wished he did that too. Looking up at him, the way his thick lashes framed his eyes, something