"You're glistening!" I said, as Emily rejoined me at the bar.
Telling a woman that she is glistening could be offered as a compliment, that she is iridescent with beauty, or with desire. Emily certainly was shimmering with her own, very special loveliness. A coy, shyness to her sexuality complemented the sheer sensuality of an exquisite body, but it was not the erotic attraction that she evokes that I was describing. I meant it literally. Her slender neck, and her delectable breasts, were moist and glistening beneath the ever changing nightclub lighting.
I lowered my eyes to confirm to Emily just where, on her body, she was glistening. She followed my gaze to her breasts. Checking her neck to see how it looked would only have been possible had there been a mirror, but the way that Emily's exquisite breasts stand proud, in stubborn defiance of earth's gravity, they were well within her frame of vision. The upper slopes of each, already patterned with a light scattering of freckles, were now splashed with rivulets of recently ejaculated, creamy semen, trickling towards her light pink areoles, and reflecting the reds, blues and yellows of the nightclub's disco lights.
Emily smiled, her white-blonde, frizzy hair, cut level with her dimpled chin, framing a face so innocent that she could have been an angel, if angels were to use bright red, glossy lipstick on lips as full as hers. Her face was lightly freckled like her breasts, her eyes bright blue, the whites as clear as snow, the lashes and brows their natural white blonde, untouched by mascara, almost invisible, her nose cute, her lips full, a face so innocent it contrasted with the semen splattered just below, except those lips so red were high class call girl scarlet, and not innocent at all.
"I know," she grinned, fully aware of how she looked. "I thought you'd like to see."
I was impressed. True, we were in a swingers' club, and most women, like Emily, were dressed to expose their bodies rather than conceal them, but no one else was blatantly wearing the clear evidence, not just to me, but to everyone she had passed in coming back to join me at the bar, and to those immediately around us, that she had used those scarlet lips to pleasure someone, and bring them off, and let them spew their semen where they wished.
In three short weeks, my latest wife had come so far. Some women live whole existences in denial of their inherent sexuality. Had she lived one generation earlier, Emily would have been that woman. Born just too soon to be a true millennial, she had still come very close to that repressed, restricted life. Her parents, and the close-knit Pentecostal community where she was raised, would have wanted that for her, to cleave to one man, and just that one.
Sex, to them, if they ever allowed themselves to say that word, was for procreation, not enjoyment. Wombs are God given, part of his purpose, to be impregnated, breasts to provide milk to the each new-born in turn, but otherwise, a woman's body is a thing of shame. That was Emily's understanding all her young life, except Emily had met, and fallen deep in love, and been loved deeply in return, by a guy who saw sex to be God's gift to men and women for mutual pleasure, with no boundaries, biblical or otherwise, no restrictions or taboos, and Emily was now learning just how much pleasure could be taken, given, even shared.
Introducing Emily to Cap d'Agde, watching her discover who she truly was, had been exceptional. Few men have the privilege of initiating an ingΓ©nue into the pleasures of carnal eroticism. It had been adorable, beautifully cute, the look of raw shock on Emily's face as we drove into the naturist complex, its walkways already busy with holidaymakers from all over Europe and beyond, strolling stark naked to the beach, or to the shops, or to a bar for coffee. A startled gazelle, picking up the scent of stalking lions, would not have been so wide-eyed, horrified, or full of fear, as Emily, sitting in the front seat of my car.
"People can really go around like that?" Emily asked, in the soft tones of her Californian accent.
That might give the wrong impression. Emily was born in Pittsburg. That is not the Pennsylvanian Pittsburgh, with the final 'h', but in California, though she had never been a string bikini beach babe. Her Pittsburg was a conservative, church attending community of righteous servants of the Lord, and Emily had grown up to be a homely, smock wearing, neighbourly young woman.
"Not can," I said, in answer to her question. "It's obligatory here. Except at night. At night people like to get dressed up."
I left the details of how people got dressed up until later. She would find out.
"Ss..., so...", she almost stammered, "you want me to..., I mean..., I can't!"
I kept my voice calm. I have been teaching all my life. You learn that asserting authority is not about being loudly aggressive. It is about assured authority, and the giving of directions with conviction, confident that they will be obeyed.
"You can," I said, as I reversed into a parking bay. "And you will. We'll leave your bags in the trunk and walk to the apartment."
I have learned a few words of American over the years, and called the trunk the trunk, and not the boot, which Emily might not yet have understood.
Emily did not argue, but her nervousness was palpable. Her body was almost shivering with apprehension as she alighted from the car. The startled gazelle, instead of bounding for its life across the flat savannah, or in Emily's case, out though the complex's entrance, forced herself to stay exactly where she was, amidst the danger, and began to shed her clothes, and bare her soul, under the summer sun, right beside the car.
There was something endearing about a young woman with a figure most would give their eye teeth for, being so anxious about the prospect of being naked. Even the way she had dressed for her connecting flight from Paris to Montpellier, reflected the conservative, fundamentalist upbringing she had lived, jeans and a plain, all covering, beige, turtle neck jumper, the only visible skin anywhere, her face, hands and Jesus sandalled feet.
"Just put your clothes on the seat," I suggested, as I removed my own things by the driver's door, "but keep your sandals on to walk."
She started with her jumper, pulling it up and over her head. Her Nordic blonde hair, pulled high by the tight neckline, tumbled back into place, centre parting now uneven, hair that had pulled straight contracting, their natural curls acting like springs that when extended, would revert to their natural shape. Had it not been for its innate bubbly liveliness, her hair-style would have been quite plain, but then that was how Emily had been told to see herself, and to present herself to others, plain and unassuming.