It was unusually hot for May. The heat of the sun was never usually this strong until July, which was when Maria's birthday fell. This year she would be nineteen. A little late these days, perhaps, for a girl to finally surrender her purity, but Maria father's was a conservative man and he kept his eye on her closely. And she had been a good girl ever since she had been young, when her mother had left. Ever since then it had always been just Maria and her father. He was a good man, and often kind, but he was stern and strict too.
They lived by the lake outside our little town, and although they were friendly and polite to all of us, they kept to themselves. In this way, living quietly with her father by the lake, and outside the daily round of the life of our little town, Maria had grown up thoughtful and serious, and very self possessed. She was also now a very beautiful young woman, but none of the young men from town dared to try to approach her. There was her father for one thing; and then there was Maria's distance manner for another. And she had these blue piercing eyes that seemed to look right into you; and that makes a man uncomfortable; and his thoughts about her seem to him dishonourable and dirty. And it was difficult not to have those kinds of thought about Maria, even though she looked so young and pure and seemed to belong to the woods, by the lake where she lived.
Then this year a team of researchers; scientists they were, came to our town from the university in the city. They told our mayor that they had come to study the effects of air pollution from factories in the city. The city is where the university is, and it's at the other end of the valley in which our town lies. I didn't really understand why, because it seemed to me to be such a long way away from our lake and our woods. They explained to him that it is because of the way the winds blow.
They stayed in town, but every day they were out by the lake taking samples of water, and in the woods picking plants and leaves and cutting small pieces of bark from the trees. We were a little suspicious of them at first, but we soon realised that they had come to help us, and we hoped that their work would help to preserve our beautiful place.
One of the researchers was a young man of twenty three or twenty four. He was a very good looking young man; broody and dark. I did not like him much at first, though later I realised that it was jealousy. I think that right from the moment I saw him I understood that here was a man who might have the power to move Maria, in ways that none of us from the town had ever been able to.
I am a year younger than Maria, and I'm quite shy by nature and I am in love with her; if you can call worshipping someone from a distance, and yes, I admit, discreetly watching them from a distance, love. I think she knows that I spy on her; and spying is what it is. And it's because I watch her sometimes that I know what happened between her and that young man from the city.
That day I did not go for a walk around the lake to find her; or I did not go with that aim consciously in my mind. I was walking at the far end of it, furthest from town, and beyond the island, and way past Maria's house, where she lives with her father. When I walked by the house I saw her father and we spoke a little and then I went on. I never asked him about his daughter and I don't think he would have liked it if I had.
It takes about half an hour to walk from town, which is at one end of the lake, to the place where Maria's house is, and about another half an hour from there to the far end of the lake, beyond the island. The island is not large. It's only just big enough for the church that stands on it, but it makes it so that you can't see anything around there from anywhere else by the lakeside. Most of the townspeople don't go there; they have no reason to. It's a very private place. Maria goes there.
At the furthest point there is a corner that, because of the shape of the shoreline and the willow trees whose branches hang over the water, is like a pool, and in one corner of it there is a trench and the water is unusually deep. No one knows why it's like that, though maybe the researchers will find out and explain it to us. You only have to walk out a few paces to be in water that's over your head. I'm not a good swimmer, so I have never dared to swim in the pool.
Maria swims well though, and she swam there alone, and often, in the summertime. There is a large and wide tree not far from there on the lake side and you can see into the pool if you crouch down and hide behind it. I have watched her from there before, and although, as I said before, I think that she knows I watch her sometimes, I am sure that she does not know that I have watched her there.
The day before, I had seen Maria in town. She had come into my father's shop to buy some bread, and the young man from the city had been in the shop too. She was friendly to me, as she always was, though with her friendly meant that she said 'hello'. That was all. But I watched her, and I saw how she looked at him, and I saw it, I know I did; a flicker of desire in her eyes, just as desire for her flickered in all of our eyes. But I know that there is no chance for me with Maria. After all, she is not even interested in the young men of our town, and I am a girl.
Anyway, I had gone to the pool and Maria was there. When I arrived, I crouched down behind my tree and Maria was standing beside the pool. I knew what would happen next and my pussy was tingling with anticipation and I could feel my panties getting wet. Maria took off her shirt to reveal her naked breasts. They were beautiful and firm; not large, but perfectly shaped and coming to little points with her nipples. Her nipples and her round aureole were very dark brown, in contrast with her pale, milky skin. She unbuttoned her jeans and took them down. Just as she had not been wearing a bra, he had no panties on either and as she pulled down her jeans her slit was immediately in view. I say 'slit', because that was what you could see. She had no hair down there. Once I climbed into the tree, so that I was really close to her, looking down, and she never realised that I was there. That day I really had a good view of her naked pussy.
That was last summer, when I first saw her hairless pussy, I couldn't believe it. It seemed so sophisticated and daring to do that. It made me realise too, that just because she did not get together with the young men from our town, it did not mean that she was not interested in sex.
Of course, on the evening of the day last summer when I saw her like that, I had a shower and shaved my own. I felt like it made me more grown up, and I was so excited that I sat in front of the mirror in my room and touched my pussy. It looked so nice and it made me feel like I am horny and sexy, like Maria is to me. And of course, I shave it all the time now, and it always turns me on when I feel the cold sharp razor gliding over the delicate skin around my pussy. The fear that I might accidentally cut myself excites me.
The water would still be cold so early in the year, even though the sun was so warm, but Maria did not hesitate. She was naked and she dived into the water. She was tall and very slim and her body was all perfect curves and lines, her breasts round and prominent on her lithe frame, and her arms and legs were long and lithe and sinewy.
I watched Maria swim around in the pool and then suddenly, after watching her for a little while, I heard the cracking of a twig. Someone must be coming. Maria did not seem to have heard it and she carried on swimming and flipping about in the water. I looked around to see if it really was someone coming, and I hoped and feared that it would be the dark young man from the city. I liked him now, as I liked Maria.
It was him. He came along the path that leads to the pool and he had the look of someone who is lost. He had not come there to find Maria, I'm sure of that, though I know that he had noticed her in town.
It seemed that Maria was still not aware that he was there, as she placed her hands on the bank, ready to pull herself out of the water. At the very moment that her breasts rose out of the water, he was there, right in front of her. Maria froze for a moment, before releasing herself and falling back into the lake. He was as shocked as she was and I heard him speaking hurriedly. He was trying to apologise, and to assure her that he had not known that she was there.
In the water and with her body out of sight, or at least less clearly visible to him, Maria had gathered herself and she did not look embarrassed. In fact, she looked at him now in the way that she had looked at him in the shop the day before.
'It's ok,' she said.
Her coolness seemed to make him feel less nervous and embarrassed about finding her there. He looked down at her in the water and when he had collected himself, he said
