My wife has a tattoo on her left thigh. I guess that there are other men whose wives have tattoos as well, but this one is unusual, if not unique. It is on the outside of her thigh, level with her pubis, hidden by a skirt or shorts, but since I designed it, I am always conscious of it being there. When she wears stockings and a suspender belt, the tattoo is framed between stocking top and suspender straps, and all it would need is for the hem of her skirt to be raised, and the tattoo would be visible to all.
Of course, that has never happened. In the real world, outside erotic fiction, in middle class Brighton, on the south coast of conservative England, the hem of a skirt is never raised as high as that. So Laura's tattoo is rarely seen by others, and as far as I can remember, it is only on the beach that it has been bared. Then, it is visible below the inverted side curve of her bikini bottom.
With friends, or relatives, Laura's tattoo is more intriguing. On the rare weekend when the summer sun is shining, we might picnic on the beach, and invite friends to join us, other children for ours to play with, and adults for us to talk with, or we might bring Laura's parents who live nearby and love their grand-children, or my sister and her family, down from London, or Laura's brother, and his, from nearby Lewes. For them, for family and friends who see it, the tattoo is so clearly out of character with the reliably conservative, calm, collected, organised wife and mother that Laura is.
But no one comments. From the summer when it was first displayed, no one has ever asked Laura why she had herself tattooed. Nor do they realise that it was my decision, not hers, both the original, and the additions. Whether any of them has ever guessed the tattoo's significance, I do not know. To even mention it would be indiscrete.
In France, of course, the tattoo is noticed, and comments have been made. Each July, before the school term ends, Laura's parents move into our spare bedroom to take care of the children, and we have two glorious weeks to ourselves, driving to Dover, across to Calais, then heading south, to the French beaches, where bikinis are not required.
In two weeks I can work up a deep, nut brown tan. There is Italian blood in my mother's genes. Laura, even with her dark brown hair, has Irish blood, and her milk white complexion requires maximum protection, hardly tans at all, but instead a spattering of freckles appears, covering her entire body. Amongst the naked, golden or nutmeg bodies that litter the beaches there, Laura's untanned complexion stands out, like a new arrival, even after two weeks of lying in the sun. Men walk past eyeing her. At beach bars, the guys will look, overtly enjoying her nakedness, all the more stark for her pure, delicate whiteness in a sea of bronze.
Then, occasionally, someone will comment, usually when I am not there, getting the drinks or going to the gents. Someone nearby will compliment her, on her complexion, or her breasts with their wide, pink areoles and thick stubs of nipples, on her tattoo, or on the one piece of jewellery that she always wears, a small gold lock that I bought her as an anniversary present.
Once, only once, someone made a comment not to Laura, but to me, in Laura's hearing. He was French, although the beach had Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Dutch and every other European nationality. He spoke in French, the sense, if not each word, unambiguous. He thought my wife was beautiful. He liked her tattoo.
Should I wish to add to it, he would be honoured. It was only once, and I declined, but it told Laura something that she had been avoiding. He knew, and if he knew, then perhaps others knew as well.
Picture a simple, solid, black oval, on its side, an inch long and half an inch high, slightly to the front of a woman's left thigh and level with her exposed, protruding labia. Add a long tapered tail, also in solid black, maybe a quarter of an inch wide where it emerges from the oval head, rising and falling in waves as it curves around the side of her thigh and narrowing towards the under curve of her buttocks, each of the waves smaller than the one before it.
Picture this black silhouette of a simple head and tail on the pure, milk white skin of the woman's outer thigh, positioned so that if the tail could flick back and forwards, like a water snake, the whole shape would swim around the front of her leg directly to her hairless pubis, and her protruding labia. If you have that image in your mind, black ink, needle deep under white skin that can be freckled in the sun, then you will know what I decided on, in the week that followed Laura's trip to Germany.
Were you to see Laura naked now, you will see more than that single tattoo. It has been added to. The same basic shape has been used. It was chosen for a reason, and that reason is unchanged. So the additional tattoos are identical, but each is only half the length of the original, positioned one below the other, and centred on the first. There are now three of these. A fourth is in the planning. Only Laura and I know exactly what each means. And, of course, the guy on the beach in France, who worked it out, and offered his services to service her, so there may in fact be others. A member of the family or a friend who has seen the tattoo, and the additions that have one by one appeared beneath, even one of them may have solved the riddle, and never said anything to indicate their understanding of it meaning. That thought punishes my wife. But then after what happened in Germany, she deserves that punishment.
Germany was beyond my control, not that I had ever felt the need to control Laura. Our relationship was based on trust. It is only when trust has broken down that control is required. Laura understands that now. She realised herself, when she told me about Germany, that trust could no longer underpin our relationship. Trust had gone, and would have to be replaced with something different. She may not then have appreciated the full consequences of her actions, but she has accepted them. She has since abided by my decisions at every point. She may not have honoured while she was in Germany, but she does obey.
Germany came out of the blue. Then, we had been married for twelve years. Our children were eight and six. I have always earned good money, and Laura did not need to work, but she always had, and after each period of maternity leave, she went back to work again. Her mother would look after the children when they were too young for school, and once they started, she readily agreed to bring them to school and collect them afterwards, allowing Laura the time she needed to hold down her job.
Laura enjoyed working, partly for the sense of achievement she gained from managing a senior executive's office, and partly for the social interaction that went with office life. The company was an international corporation, and Laura's boss was responsible for its European operations. That was why Germany came about, although his asking Laura to come with him was the first time that that had happened. He had said that he needed her to minute some crucial meetings while he was there.
The first indication that anything untoward had happened was while Laura was undressing the evening that she returned. It was a Friday. Laura had been driven from the airport to our home by the executive she worked for, arriving around six. We had had some family time together, including a meal that I had put together with help from a supermarket's food preparation team. I have never learned to cook. After three nights without Laura, I was more looking forward to the children being asleep, and enjoying some catch up love making with my exquisite wife.
I have always enjoyed watching Laura undress. The way her full breasts still keep their shape even when she removes her bra is quite incredible. Years of marriage and two children have had little effect on them. If anything they are slightly fuller, and the nipples thicker, although the pink brown areoles have always been the width of her palm, if not my own. When she bends to slide her stockings down shapely legs, her breasts sway beneath her, transforming themselves to soft white cones of flesh, tipped with the pink brown of her areoles, and with their stubs of nipples pointing to the floor. When she stands straight again, they settle back into their perfect shape. No wonder that I love to watch.
That night, Laura was wearing black underwear with sheer black nylons. Her thong left her buttocks bare, perfect white globes. I adore her milk white complexion, and could kiss and caress her back, buttocks, legs, neck, breasts, stomach and pubis for an eternity. When we married, she had a thick copse of dark hair covering her pubic mound, which she would tame from time to time, trimming the wilder excesses, although before Germany, she had never removed her pubic hair completely.
Her back to me, she removed her bra, and then slid her thong down her stocking clad legs. She unclipped her suspenders, rolling down her stockings, one by one. I was undressing on the other side of our bed, but watching every move, and my penis was hardening at the sight of my delicious wife revealing more and more of that wonderful body, and in anticipation of what was to come. She had been away for three long nights, and I was sorely missing her. My cock was aching for her. My eyes were fixed on her as she unclipped her suspender belt, removed it from her waist, and turned towards our en suite bathroom.
What I saw, as Laura turned, made me smile with pleasure. My incredibly beautiful wife had thought of her husband while she was away, and had prepared herself for her return to him. Her pubis was shaved smooth, something she had never done before. Laura was proud of her dark pubic hair, and while she liked to keep it trimmed, she also liked the contrast of the dark triangle against the whiteness of her legs and lower belly. Now, there was only white, and the pinkness of her labia peeping from her slit. What I had suggested so many times, she had finally done.
Something about the look she gave me as she went through to the bathroom should have warned me. It was brief, checking how I was reacting, unsure of herself. I waited until she finally joined me in our bed. Then, one arm around her, I cupped her pubis with the other hand. I could feel the bare beginnings of her regrowth, but still it felt deliciously naked, a present from her trip away to let me know that she had thought of me. She had shaved herself as her gift to the husband who had been without her, and who had wanted for so many years to see and to feel her totally denuded, vulnerable and exposed.
That was when she said my name, and added, "There is something that you need to know."
