I have close friends who know secrets about me, but there is one that I've never found the courage to tell.
So I'm going to tell it here. Strangers can be easier to talk to.
My name is Sasha and I am a graphic arts student, the only daughter of a Scots architect and a French actress. I have enjoyed the benefits (and sometimes suffered the confusion) of having dual cultural identities since I was a young child. 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 eighteen at the time and spending the summer of 1996 with my Uncle and Aunt at their vineyard in Languedoc. Being an only child, I was often starved of the company of others my age (particularly during the school holidays when friends were away), and I loved to come and stay here with my Uncle. He has a beautiful daughter called Alex, who is the closest I have to a sister, and one of my best friends in all the world.
My Uncle is a wealthy man. Back then he owned acres of vineyards 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 young, live-in housemaid - 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 jewelry out of sea-shells. We were so happy in this idyllic summer paradise.
During this one particular summer, my Aunt Ella spent some time in hospital following a surgery, and my Uncle would take Alex to visit her each day. Some days I would go too, while on others I would stay behind and explore the woods on my own, or lay with a book beside 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 recliner by the pool.
It was always striking to see Louisa in a bikini because her tall, exquisitely toned body with its gorgeous ebony skin contrasted so powerfully with the sky-blue of her swimsuit. On this occasion, she was glistening wet from a recent dip in the pool and her stunning body looked like a marble statue, speckled with fine mist.
I smiled at her and went about moving one of the empty sun-loungers to a shaded spot by the pool. I lay down, magazine in hand, and put on a pair of big, 80's style pink sunglasses. I was ready to sit and read in the warm glow of the morning, but quickly found I wasn't really in the mood for reading; 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 reclining position, I had a clear view of Louisa and I admired her secretly from behind my sunglasses. She was so compelling, with her elegant features and marble-smooth skin. She was beautifully slender, with far more of a woman's body than mine. I envied how comfortable she seemed in her own skin, stretched out like a leopard in the sun. I could almost imagine her purring with delight at this most simple and perfect of pleasures - a day without work.
I would have loved to have felt as free and comfortable with my own body as Louisa seemed to feel 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 compare with the goddess before me. She had such long legs, like a model, with a tiny waist and bottom, and although her breasts were modestly small, they struck me as far more womanly than my own.
After a while, Louisa sat up and stretched. She walked along the opposite side of the pool. Her slender body blocked the sun for a moment as she walked softly down the steps into the clear water. She waded until she was up to her shoulders and then dipped her head beneath the surface, vanishing from sight. All I could make out was the color and shape of her young body, beneath the blue. When she re-emerged, she seemed wonderfully refreshed and pulled her long dark hair behind her shoulders. Leaning up against the far wall of the pool, her small, perfectly-rounded breasts on display in their sky blue bikini, she closed her eyes with pleasure to the spotlight of the sun.
Louisa looked even more stunning, wet like this, and I suddenly worried she might have noticed me staring. I don't know why I felt embarrassed because it was a harmless enough thing to do, but looking back, I think I was intimidated by her poise and confidence. 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 her arms and tipped her head back, like she was posing for a photo in a fashion magazine.
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 perhaps no more than my own perception. Not to mention, she was at work most of the time, and this created a false illusion of distance and formality. 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 discretely now), I imagined how much attention she must regularly get from men as they passed her in the village. 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, and yet 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, which formed an attractive cleavage. I couldn't help but feel I was being tested in some way by this new display. Not that there was anything strange about what she was doing, but I sensed it wasn't something she would have done in the presence of my Uncle or Aunt, or even if I had been there with Alex. It occurred to me to retreat into the house, under the ruse that it was too hot outside, but I was so transfixed by the behavior of this mysterious Greek girl that I couldn't bring myself to move.
I imagined once again how often men must have felt magnetically drawn to her. Only this time, I realized it was I who was magnetically drawn to her. I was completely mesmerized by this gorgeous young woman.
The spell was broken suddenly when she climbed out of the pool and walked towards the house. I felt a stab of disappointment. She stepped up to the verandah and as she passed the open doors to the drawing room, I watched her long, shapely legs and tight little backside in its blue, wet bikini bottoms. She was as close to being a fully grown woman as any girl I knew of my own age. I noticed her glance back at me before disappearing into her bedroom, which was the farthest of the ground floor rooms that opened on to the verandah.
From where I lay in my reclining chair, I could 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 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 down upon her body. It wasn't an especially sexual thought, more a fairy-tale fantasy; like a young girl might have about a Princess.
I might have drifted to sleep for a few minutes, but upon waking, - and owing to the strange limbo of delirium one feels at the borders of sleep - it felt as though centuries might 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 toweling robe. Her long 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, where she began to comb her hair. Her face was concealed but I had a clear view of her back, 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 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 glass. She must have been mindful I could see her at these times, because she would equally have been 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 color 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 pictured when she was in the shower. Her body looked even better out of clothes than it had 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 a perfectly rounded contour for her exquisitely pert bottom. I had never 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 witnessing 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 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 surely quite aware that 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 damp hair.
