The wave of thick and enveloping steam reached them as they opened the wooden door of the sauna. Laura and Giorgio overcame that wall of heat and waited for their gaze to adapt to the dim light of the environment. They entered decisively, looking around to see if there were other people in that small room.
Laura was glad not to find anyone. They had that environment for themselves only, at least for the moment. And it would have been easier to overcome the embarrassment of the almost necessary nudity.
The sense of freedom, the oppressive but reassuring heat that pervaded the air, the awareness that her skin was getting rid of impurities, everything gave her a sense of pleasure and well-being. She had become accustomed to that, and every once wished to recreate that feeling. She had at last accepted that inside a sauna she had to stay completely naked, but she always needed that Giulio, her husband, convinced her to free herself from the towel in which she was wrapped. That light cloth allowed her to maintain her modesty and some help was always needed to overcome it.
It was part of her. She could not do without it.
And that time too it was. Giulio had barely taken a few steps inside the room and had immediately undressed, placing the white sheet on the wooden boards and lying down, naked. Obviously satisfied with the situation.
Laura, of course, kept her own towel instead. It was like a role play: she knew that he would insistently ask her to remove it and also that, finally, she would agree to do so. But only after countering, at least for a while. She needed it, to overcome and put aside years of habits too easy was impossible for her.
And, in fact, Giulio, who was also aware of the role he was playing, gave her a questioning look. He smiled at her with a vaguely winking intent and glanced with an imperceptible movement of his head the knot that held the cloth tied over her breasts. Laura accepted that game of glances and turned to him as if she did not understand the meaning of that silent request. Obviously, he understood it very well and held the position for a few seconds, then snorted, pouting, and moving his hands towards that knot that he kept looking at.
She then lowered the cloth, uncovering her breasts, and in a few seconds she found herself almost naked as well. After all, she was happy to let her body invaded by the fire of that humid and fragrant air of wood and essences. She could not deny that she too liked intensely that freedom, making her feel projected into a world pervaded by a sensuality that was new and unusual for her. Those sensations were strange, as strange and contradictory as those she felt towards her husband.
After all, she was grateful to him for staying with her along that road, which was so far from their habits. Grateful to see in his eyes the appreciation and desire for her body so generously and freely exposed. Grateful also for the complicity that those situations managed to create between them, certainly announcing the even more intimate moments that would come later.
But, at the same time, there was still something she did not understand. How could her husband accept that she could expose herself to the gazes of unfamiliar men who, at any moment, they both knew, could enter? Men who would have found themselves in front of her female body, unreservedly shown. Would they become excited looking at the curves of her breasts, at the softness of her adult woman hips, at the slight swelling of her mons pubis? Would they intercept her embarrassed gaze?
A man, a Sicilian man, had to necessarily feel some form of stinging jealousy in knowing, and in seeing, his life partner subject to inevitably lewd looks. The exposed nakedness would have made more insistent those glances, legitimizing them to linger on every inch of skin until "social" habits would have forced them to look elsewhere. To return, after a few moments, confident of finding again that world of beauty and sensuality, available and offered to the eye.
On the contrary, he seemed to have anything against offering her to the glances and desires of unknown faces and presences. She should have felt offended, betrayed, perhaps even degraded... Or could she rather accept the game that he offered her as flattery, a particular and non-trivial form of love, possible only in a trustful and secure couple? After all, she knew the answer: she had felt it since Giulio had started to suggest behaviors and actions that were not always understandable and acceptable to her.
And here, once again, she had let herself be carried away. She was inside that sauna, half-naked, thanking the heavens for being alone. And she was aware that, if someone had entered, she could not have done anything but remain as she was, exposed to the looks of some stranger. She was just beginning to think about this possibility when a shadow was projected behind the glass of the door as she, as if in slow motion, saw the handle turn and the door inexorably open.
The man who entered, that she still did not see, greeted in a friendly and light voice while arranging his towel on the bench. He was ready to take his place in that small space, which quickly became the scene of a forced, but so natural, intimacy. Laura gathered her courage and, looking up at the intruder, parted her lips to respond to the greeting as if being half-naked in that room was the most natural condition in the world.
But her voice stopped in her throat. Of all the men who could have entered, it could not have been worse. Only a few hours earlier, in fact, she had gone to the reception of the wellness center to book the massage that her husband had given her. She had been greeted by a kind South Tyrolean girl who, once the reservation for the next morning had been made, had nonchalantly informed her that her masseur would have been Marco.
"The best in the center", the girl added with a mischievous smile.
A MASSAGER? No, she could not have a man massage her, she would not be comfortable. She had tried to object, but it was clear that she would have been considered the typical backward woman of the South. Thus, despite herself, she had swallowed the bad news. She had had to convince herself that, if it was considered normal here, she had to necessarily adapt to the rules of the place. She had limited herself to ask, as if it were a simple curiosity, if she had to show up for the massage in a bathrobe or a swimsuit or if there were different rules in that place. And, meanwhile, she had said to herself:
"If this beautiful girl tells me I have to stay naked, I will go immediately to the police station and have them arrested all, these debauched people".
The police had not been necessary, much to her relief, because the girl had reassured her by telling that each one had the massage as they preferred and that there was no particular dress code in their center.
"Of course," she then added with her winking way that every ten seconds she came back to cheerfully unsheath, "if you want the best from a massage you have to leave your body free and ... the masseur free to move on it".
In front of the shocked gaze of Laura, who had let herself be taken by surprise, not being able to show that tranquility that just didn't belong to her, the girl had gone out of character. She had let herself go to an open laugh, sufficiently complicit and friendly to finally make her nice. Laura was still suspicious, however, that those allusions might have some element of truth. But the decision was made, she would be a modern woman, confident and uninhibited. Or at least, she would have tried and, in any case, she would have kept as little inhibitions as possible ...
That determination had then become somewhat more acceptable to her when, exiting the reception, she had bumped into a beautiful blond boy. With a calm and penetrating look, the boy had apologized affably and, holding out his hand, had introduced himself smiling:
"Hello, I'm Marco! Can I be forgiven by recommending the best massage in the valley?"
Laura had heard the voice of the reception girl behind her:
"Calm down, Marco, there is no need to advertise! I've already provided that and this beautiful lady will be entrusted to your loving care tomorrow morning". In the meantime Laura had introduced herself, once again accepting those playful allusions as if everything were perfectly normal for her ...
It was him, thus, the Marco who would have massaged her the day after. She had blushed to her hair thinking that she had opted for the type of massage that the girl had called "an out of the ordinary experience, which will reconcile you with life and with every cell of your body". Every cell in her body? She couldn't leave ALL the cells of her body in that boy's hands... And she wouldn't do it, she repeated to himself. If those savages did not know modesty, she was an evolved and aware person and would have known how to interpose the necessary distances if some limit, insurmountable for her, had been put to the test.
And now that boy was there, completely naked in front of her, with his statuesque physique and his gaze free to linger on her body, which in turn was half-naked.
"Hello! Laura, right? " he addressed her in that kind way she had just met.
"Yes," she replied, almost flattered, "you remember well" and then, as if to justify that unexpected acquaintance to her husband, she introduced him:
"He is Marco, the masseur of the wellness center. We have met before when I went to book the massage for tomorrow".
"Hi, I'm Giulio, the husband of ... Laura" he answered introducing himself, just a moment before perceiving a storm of neurons, which began to process in his head with the speed of a super-computer.
