"Paul, would you like to go and house-sit for Aunty Jean on Friday evening?" his mother asked.
Engaged in trying to write a tutorial paper on the computer for next morning – a paper he should have been prepared two days before – Paul asked suspiciously, "Why?"
"Oh well, the girl she usually has can't make it, and Jean's booked a seat for the opera, and as she'll probably be home late she says you can stay overnight."
He had always been wary of Aunt Jean. She had seemed to him very serious and imperious. Nevertheless, as Paul had reached that age when he was very conscious of females, he was reluctantly prepared to at least concede that at thirty two Aunt Jean was a handsome woman in a statuesque and stately manner.
Tall and always elegantly dressed, she had a fine figure. Her face with its clearly defined features was framed in a mass of dark hair, but it was her bright emerald coloured eyes that disturbed him the most. When, with her eyelids partially masking those green orbs, she focused on him, he felt as if they were not so much looking at him, as dissecting him.
She wasn't even really his aunt, but had been a friend of his mother's before she got married and they had worked together. He'd heard that Jean had once got married, and in short order had then got divorced.
"If she looked at him like she looks at me," thought Paul, "I'll bet it was him who divorced her."
Apart from the honorary title of "Aunt" she was also Paul's godmother, and although she had never given him the religious instruction that in theory godmothers were supposed to give, she always remembered the anniversary of his baptism, plus birthdays and Christmas. Her gifts had always been lavish, so despite his wariness he had always tried to keep on the good side of Jean.
He had tentatively made an arrangement to go out with a girl on Friday evening, but his mother added the magic words, "She's willing to pay."
"Pay;" Paul, as a student was always in need of extra money so he suddenly decided that perhaps the girl wasn't really important after all and he could house-sit.
"Okay, I'll do it."
He returned to his work on the computer, and was dimly aware of his father asking his mother, "Who's she got in tow at the moment?"
"No one as far as I know," his mother replied, "She told me she'd given up on men."
His father's response was, "Humph; or they've given up on her," and then he returned to reading a magazine and his mother to her ironing, and there was silence.
On Friday evening, Paul, carrying a small case containing his weekend study work, a change of underwear and the bottom half of his summer pyjamas, rang Jean's doorbell.
Always well dressed, when she opened the door Paul was momentarily captivated. She was wearing a slack suit the colour of which matched the green of her eyes and at the same time it seemed to enhance the gleam of her dark hair.
The suit was very simple in its lines and moulded nicely to her figure. She wore no jewellery and very little makeup, and Paul, despite his slightly jaundiced view of Jean, decided that she was about to turn a few male heads at the opera that night, that is, until she focused those penetrating eyes on one of them, in which case the admiring male would probably wither up.
She said, Hello Paul," and then silently motioned for him to enter.
He'd been inside her house before but always in his mother's company. Typical of Jean the place was tastefully furnished, but in a style a few decades behind the times. He'd heard his mother refer to it as "The Scandinavian style" – the plain pinewood design.
On the walls were paintings by what Paul later learned was called the Impressionist School. He also learned that they weren't "the real thing" because even well-off Aunt Jean could never have afforded the originals; she was in fact quite comfortable financially, but not quite as comfortable as that.
Since she and her mother first got to know each other Jean had climbed the public service promotional ladder with considerable ease, and was what people referred to as, "A tough negotiator" and "A high flyer." Paul could readily agree with the "Tough" bit.
In her usual concise manner Jean told him – or rather instructed – where food and drink were to be found, where he was to sleep, and showed him the computer in her study. She also told him how to use the television and DVD, but added, "I suppose you'll be too busy with your studies to be bothered with those."
"Dream on," he thought, but smiled ingenuously and said, "Yes, I suppose I will."
"Then I'll leave you to it; I'll be back about half past eleven." With that she departed.
Although Paul had been in the house before he had never seen the bedrooms or even the kitchen. Since he had the place to himself he decided to satisfy youthful curiosity and take a look around; his look around included poking into drawers and cupboards.
He had come to the conclusion that there was nothing exceptional to be found until he opened some drawers in Jean's bedroom. First to come into view were some items of underwear that he had never imagined Jean wearing; not that he'd thought much about her underwear, but if he did he had always imagined it to be made of knitted barbed wire.
The bras and panties were of the flimsiest and definitely see-through. He tried to picture Jean wearing these delicate items, and after a minute or two of straining his imagination he discovered that he'd got a modified image of her. "Yes, I suppose with her figure she'd look fairly good," he managed to grudgingly concede.
He went on to open the drawers in her bedside table. First to catch his eye was something that was obviously a length of solid plastic shaped like a penis. He knew what it was and exclaimed out loud, "My God, she uses a dildo!"
Next to capture his attention was an electrical implement. It had a small rounded head and he noted that it had different speed settings. He plugged it in and switched it on to its slowest setting. It emitted a low buzzing sound and the head started to vibrate. He tried the other speed settings and noticed the head vibrated with ever increasing rapidity.
A dildo he knew about, but what this strange devise was he had no idea. "Wonder what she uses that for," he meditated.
Failing to find an answer he shrugged and put the implement back in the drawer. His research into Jean's drawers had at least given him a modified, more human view of Jean, especially in the light of the dildo. "She actually has sexual feelings," he concluded, "Amazing!"
He ended his exploring and made a tentative decision to get on with the work assignment he had brought with him on as floppy disc. He took the floppy disc out of its case, but still trying to delay the evil moment when he must start work, he wandered round the lounge looking idly at the paintings. It was then his attention was drawn to one he couldn't remember seeing before.
The painting was of a nude woman. She seemed to be standing in a bedroom. Behind her was a dressing table and to one side a bed with the covers drawn partially back. She was a tall woman with a superb figure. Her arms were upraised, her hands behind her head, and she seemed to be doing something with her luxuriant dark hair.
The raised arms had the effect of lifting her breasts to make them more prominent. They were not large, "About the size of a couple of half grapefruits," Paul decided, but they were a delectable ivory colour and capped by very delicious nipples looking rather like knolls of strawberry ice cream.
"Wouldn't mind getting a taste of those," he muttered.
Paul, whose knowledge of the female anatomy was limited to the occasional fumbling and groping with the girls when he had been in high school, was mesmerised by this naked woman.
He had already been stirred by Jean's underwear and dildo, and now he started to get an incipient erection.
He had a feeling that he had seen this woman and the room somewhere before, but no matter how he trawled his memory he could not remember where.
