"Hades and Persephone," said Poppy. "I suppose you know the story? The god of the underworld snatched away the goddess of spring in what the poet Homer called an 'unwilling marriage'. So many painters have blushed away from the meaning of this, but I was happy to work with an artist brave enough to embrace it."
The artwork that Poppy was demonstrating was a lush oil painting that extended almost from floor to ceiling, layered with heavy shadows over an ivory-focused color scheme that resembled a bone-decorated crypt to evoke the underworld. The focus of the painting was indeed brave, although others might use the word 'obscene': an unambiguous rape, with Persephone's arms held down by grinning specters while Hades impaled her his on his fully detailed phallus. If Persephone herself did not look like a blushing maiden but a woman with full breasts and generous hips and the faint creases of laugh lines by her eyes, that was because Poppy Bristow had posed for it at the age of thirty-one. The mad painter Virgil Christoff had been beguiled by her golden hair and flushed skin, but moreover by her willingness- nay, eagerness- to pose for sketches while in the midst of intercourse with the brutish, silver-haired gamekeeper modeling for Hades. The rest of Christof's artist club The Brotherhood of Eros had proclaimed it a masterpiece, and it was immediately banned every time it was publicly exhibited.
The young man from the university (Khan, had he said that was his name?) was looking at the painting with wide eyes, magnified by his glasses. When he looked back to Poppy, his cheeks were rather pinker than before. She decided to intensify his adorable discomfort by taking his hand and physically pulling him over to the next painting.
"Persephone and Adonis," she said. "This one really must be viewed together with the last. As I'm sure a well-read gentleman like yourself would know, Persephone and Aphrodite both lusted for a beautiful mortal man, and though it was Aphrodite whom he loved, Persephone claimed him for an equal part of the year." In this painting, an auburn-haired rent boy had been recruited to play Adonis, bound and gagged in shadows as Persephone straddled him, aroused enough to penetrate her despite his clear terror. Poppy as Persephone was once again naked, but this time she wore a crown of skeletal ivory. "You see," she said, "the innocent captive has become the libertine captor. It was the only way she could survive."
Adonis's model had been worth every penny they'd paid him, she thought fondly. Although it had been dearest Virgil who had found him, she'd gifted him an emerald necklace afterwards, rendering his plump lips and cunning tongue stammering in gratitude. He'd deserved it; it wasn't every young man who could make an erection last an entire painting session. Glancing over at Mr. Khan from beneath fluttering eyelashes, she wondered if similar steel might hide beneath his delicate frame. There was only one way to find out.
"I wouldn't sell these paintings for all the world, but if you really are interested in the banned works of the Brotherhood of Eros, I have a great deal more to show you!" She took gentle hold of his cravat and pulled him down the hallway, past some artful sculptures of fauns and nymphs at play. "If I continue in my career as a muse for the Brotherhood," she said with smirk, "I shall someday cover my entire house in only the finest art! But for now, this hallway will have to do." The next two paintings she'd brought him over to were smaller than the last, but no less brave; Mr. Khan looked from one to the other, back to Poppy, and then down to the bosom which the paintings displayed so prominently. Poppy shifted in her stance to push her décolletage closer to her guest.
