Louisa's Room

I have close friends who know secrets about me but there's one that I've never found the courage to tell. Its not something I'm embarrassed about but I've never quite known how to bring it up. So I'm going to tell it here. Strangers are sometimes easier to talk to...

My name is Audre. I am a graphic arts student. I am the only daughter of a Scots architect (my Dad) and a French actress (my Mom) although she hasn't worked for many years. I have enjoyed the benefits (and sometimes suffered the confusion) of having dual cultural identities since I was a kid. We moved to England when I was very little, but I would spend long periods of my childhood staying with members of the extended family in the southern region of France. That's where this secret thing took place.

I was seventeen at the time and spending the summer of 1986 with my Uncle and Aunt at their vineyard in Languedoc. Being an only child, I was often starved of the company of others my own age (particularly during the school holidays when friends went away) so I loved to come and stay here with my Uncle. He has a beautiful daughter called Alex who has always been the closest thing I have to a sister, and is one of my best friends in all the world.

My Uncle is very wealthy and back then he owned acres of vinefields and woodland and even a large part of the village, so it was a wonderful place to wile away the summer months. The weather was sublime for virtually the whole season and my Uncle had a swimming pool in the garden where Alex and I would bathe, or we would wander through the woods and vineyards talking for hours. My Uncle had a live-in maid - a beautiful black Greek girl called Louisa - who would clean our rooms and serve us fresh lemonade by the pool. On weekends we would visit the beach nearby and make jewllery out of sea-shells. We were always so happy in this idyllic summer paradise.

During this particular summer my Aunt Ella spent some time in hospital following an operation, and my Uncle would take Alex to visit her every day. Some days I would go too whilst on others I would stay behind and explore the woods on my own, or lie with a magazine by the pool. Louisa would remain behind and clean the house before preparing lunch for my Uncle's return. On this particular morning however it was her day off and after I had said goodbye to my Uncle and cousin, I went into the garden and found Louisa lounging on a reclining chair by the pool.

It was always striking to see Lousia in a bikini because her exquisitely toned body with its gorgeous ebony coloured skin contrasted so powerfully with the sky-blue of her bikini. On this ocassion, she was glistening wet from a recent dip in the pool, and her stunning body looking like a marble-smooth reclining statue speckled with fine rain.

I smiled at her before moving one of the empty sun-loungers closer to the warmest spot by the pool. I climbed aboard, magazine in hand and put on a big pair of 80's style pink-plastic sunglasses, ready to sit and read in the warm glow of the morning sun. I wasn't really in the mood to read however and found my eyes mechanically scanning the printed words without registering their meaning. Perhaps it was too hot for reading I thought, and lay back, allowing my eyes to grow heavy.

From my new reclining position I had a clear view of Louisa. I admired her secretly from behind my sunglasses. She was so compelling with her elegant face and smooth black skin. She was tall and beautifully slender with far more of a woman's body than my own at that time. I envied how comfortable she seemed to be in her body, stretched out blissfully like a contented puma basking in the sun. You could almost hear her purr with delight at the warmth assisting her on this most simple and perfect of pleasures - a day off from work.

I would have loved to have felt as free and comfortable with my own body as Louisa always seemed to be with hers. I looked down at myself on the sun-lounger. My body didn't look so bad, tanned as it was by the Languedoc sun, in a white string-bikini. But I couldn't compete with the black goddess beside me.

After a short while Louisa sat up and stretched, once again looking like a happy big-cat, and walked along the opposite side of the pool. Her slender shadow blocked the sun for a moment as she went softly down the steps and into the clear water. She waded until it was up to her shoulders and then dipped her head beneath. She vanished for a few moments and I all I could see was the shape of her young body beneath the water. On re-emerging she looked wonderfully refreshed and pulled her long dark hair back behind her shoulders. Leaning up against the far end of the pool, with her perfectly-rounded breasts displayed, she closed her eyes with pleasure to the spotlight of the sun.

Louisa looked even more stunning all wet like this and I suddenly worried she had noticed me staring. I don't know why I felt embarrassed because it was a harmless enough thing to do, but I think I just felt a little intimidated by her more confident sexuality. Louisa didn't seem in the slightest bit surprised or offended and in fact looked rather proud that I had been watching her. She leaned her body further back on to her arms and tipped her head back, like she was posing for a photo. There had always been something I found a little intimidating about Louisa. Don't get me wrong, she was warm enough and kind to me, but she had this quality - perhaps you could call it an advanced-maturity - that made me feel as though I could never get close to her. In retrospect, it was probably no more than my own perception of her. I was childish and insecure back then. Perhaps I am still a little of those things now.

As I continued to admire Louisa reclining in the pool (although more discreetly now), I imagined how much attention she must regularly get from men as they passed her on the street. While I was lost in this thought, she turned again to see if I was still watching. I continued to lay still, hidden behind the safety of my pink sunglasses. From the outside I could have been asleep for all anyone knew, although part of me was certain Louisa knew I was wide awake.

A few moments later she started gently running her fingers over the exposed skin of her shoulder blades, making trails in the little drops of water that covered her. As she did so, her arms gently pressed her breasts together in their pale blue bikini-top. They formed an attractive cleavage that reminded me of a model in a French Vogue magazine. I couldn't help feeling I was being tested in some way by this new display from Louisa. Not that there was anything strange about what she was doing, but I sensed it was not something she would have done in the presence of my Uncle or Aunt, or even if I had been there with Alex. It occured to me to retreat to the house, on the ruse that it was too hot in the sunshine, but I was so transfixed by the behaviour of this mysterious Greek girl that I couldn't bring myself to move.

I imagined again how often men in the village must have felt magnetically drawn toward this beautiful girl. This time I imagined it as an excuse however to avoid consciously accepting the fact that it was I who was magnetically drawn to her. I was completely mesmerised by the gorgeous girl.

Suddenly the spell was broken when she quickly climbed out of the pool and announced she was going inside the house. I felt a stab of disappointment. She grabbed her towel and stepped up to the verandah. As she passed the open doors of the drawing room I watched her long, shapely legs and her tight little backside in its blue, wet bikini pants. She was as close to being a woman as any girl I knew of my own age. She glanced back at me before disappearing into her bedroom, which was the farthest of the ground floor rooms that opened on to the verandah, at the back of the house.

From where I lay in my reclining chair I could just about see into Louisa's room. Its heavy glass doors were open to the verandah and a thin linen curtain flapped gently in the delicate breeze. I could make out the dark oak of her dressing table with its beautiful oval gold mirror hanging above - the "Wicked Queen" mirror, my cousin and I called it - and I could see the side of her bed, dressed as it was in soft, clean white-cotton sheets.

After a short time I could hear the shower running from inside the en-suite bathroom of her room. I let my eyes grow heavy again as I imagined Louisa standing there naked in the spacious marble shower-room, allowing the cool water to rain upon her body. It wasn't an especially sexual thought but more innocent; it was a fairy-tale fantasy, like a young girl might have about a Princess.

I must have drifted to sleep then for a few minutes but on waking, and owing to that strange limbo of delirium one feels at the borders of sleep, it felt as though centuries could have passed. The sun had apparently been swallowed by a passing cloud and the view into Louisa's room was clearer still without its bright glare. I could see that Louisa had emerged from her shower and was dressed in a white towelling-robe. Her hair was damp and hung down her back as low as the base of her spine. She was busying herself with some sort of post-shower activity, intermittently disappearing from view into one of the parts of her room that I could not see. Soon she came and stood by her dressing table looking into the "Wicked Queen" mirror and began to comb her hair. Her face was concealed from me but I had a clear view of the back of her, from the top of her head down to the slender calves that appeared at the base of her robe.

She was combing her hair with long and careful attention and watching herself in the mirror. Every now and then she would lean forward or backward a fraction and I would get a glance of her pretty face reflected in the mirror. She must have been mindful I could see her at these moments because she would of course have been equally able to see me reflected in the mirror. It was this fact that made what happened next all the more significant.

Much to my surprise, Louisa unfastened the robe she was wearing and the next thing I knew it was sliding down her back as it fell to the floor, leaving me with a perfect rear view of her naked body. The dark chocolate colour of her skin appeared more beautiful and striking than it had ever been. I found myself with the clearest view yet of the very thing I had been picturing when she was in the shower. Her body looked even better out of clothes than it had did in a bikini. Her shoulders were so feminine and narrow, giving way to the sublime elongated curve of her back. This curve got narrower still as it reached her tiny waist, before turning outward again with the perfectly rounded contour of her exquisitely pert little buttocks. I had never before seen such a beautiful woman in the flesh.

A moment later Louisa's face again became visible in the mirror and, although I couldn't make out for certain, she seemed to be looking at me. Once again it struck me that I was being made witness to a deliberate display from the girl. I mean, after all, she could have easily pulled the curtain across or removed her clothes in any other part of the room where she would not have been visible to me. Why was she doing this?

My heart now skipped a beat as she turned from the mirror and sat herself down at the foot of the bed. Here she began again to comb her hair, not looking at me, but quite aware I was likely to be looking at her. With her right arm raised I could see her beautiful breasts exposed as she combed the knots from her hair. I could also see the clear line from her backside along her thigh and down to her knee. I could not however quite see between her legs. But suddenly I found my heart thumping with a desire that I might be able to. It felt terribly forbidden to be even entertaining such a desire, but fairly quickly my wish was granted. Suddenly Louisa stood again and I caught sight of the small, dark triangle of pubic hair between her legs. She looked directly at me again, this time with the most provocative expression. Her eyes lingered on me for a good few moments before she silently disappeared from my view into her room.

There was no mistaking this sign and, removing my sunglasses, I got up from my seat and very slowly stepped up to the verandah and approached the open doors to her room. My heart was racing and my mind was trying to use all sorts of arguments to dissuade me, but I couldn't help myself. It almost felt as though, in spite of myself, I was being drawn towards the open door to Louisa's room, in much the same way the children had all felt compelled to follow the Piper of Hamlin in the fairy tale. I stopped short a few feet from her door and waited. The wooden verandah creaked a little beneath my toes. Louisa must have heard that I was there. I waited some more. I could hear my heart thumping from the outside.

Just as I was starting to feel stupid and think that Louisa had left her room and gone elsewhere in the house, she suddenly came into view again. Still naked, and without the slightest sign of sharing my apprehension, she climbed on top of the soft white duvet on her bed and beckoned me closer. She didn't seem nervous or even in two minds about her behaviour, but I was. I took one step closer to the open door then paused again and waited. Louisa smiled teasingly and beckoned me closer again. Her dark green eyes were imploring me for something in the most devastating way. They seemed to be seeking permission for something and, although I said nothing and still did not move, I couldn't help but feel my return gaze was granting this permission, without my mind having the slightest control over the decision.

After she had beckoned me in for a third time, I picked up more courage and stepped inside the room. It was plesantly cool inside. I saw how clean and tidy the room was and my eye caught some colourful postcards on Louisa's dressing table before returning to her divinely naked body upon the white sheets.

"Take off your bikini?", she asked me in polite French and padded down the duvet beside her, indicating for me to come and lie down.