The Gauthier family were having fun on their summer holiday, the days away from their home in Limoges exceeding their expectations, even those of their daughter Natalie and son Dion. The girl was into her nineteenth year and Dion getting on for eighteen. It wasn't spoken of but they all knew that, in all probability, it would be the last of such family holidays.
Recent events had already proved that to be the case, where it concerned Natalie and her mother Katrine.
The weather was uncommonly warm, even for this part of France, the sun sparkling off the stilled waters of lakes and rivers that they swam in or sailboarded on, or that they might cross while out on a daily excursion from what had become their first week's favoured holiday park where they had a special pitch for their refurbished motorhome.
It had been Matis's idea to spend the three weeks of his summer leave touring the Dordogne and beyond. The plan, eventually, was to spend time on the beach south of Bordeaux before they headed back east and to their home feeling refreshed, tanned, and their family bonds tightened once more.
"We had a good time on the river yesterday, didn't we?" Matis began, sipping on his breakfast coffee and then munching on a croissant that Katrine had bought in the camp's store before any of them had gotten up after a late night. "We could go rafting today...there are some white-water rapids close to us that someone in the cafeteria told me about."
"You guys go, I'm not feeling so good this morning."
Katrine looked with concern at her son. "You must have swallowed river water when your canoe capsized..."
"I guess so. It was difficult not to," Nico mumbled, his hands twisting the hem of his T-shirt and making it ride up over his stomach. Katrine saw her son's muscles tighten and become even more defined as he twisted in his seat. "I've got to go...I'll try and get to the sanitaire block and not mess the place up here!"
Katrine made to get up and follow him but Matis put a restraining hand on her bare arm. "Stay here and finish your breakfast. He's in the men's room and you're not dressed to go wandering about there. He'll be okay."
"I'm in my shorts and blouse!" she retorted, "and I've got my bikini on underneath. I was going to try the pool before we all went out, but our plans have changed."
"There's no time for that if we're to make a day of it," Matis sniffed, haughtily. He was somewhat relieved that Katrine had clothed herself, her biking offering scant cover for what she brought to anyone's sight. His woman was tanning nicely, but more modest swimwear had been forsaken.
"Please, don't argue again, you two," Natalie now said, choosing to intervene. "One of us will have to stay with him. We can't just leave Dion on his own here, can we?"
"I'm his mother so I'll stay if it comes to that." Katrine began to clear away their breakfast things, skipping lightly away as Matis stroked the back of her legs, behind her knees. She leaned into him, clutching the plates and plastic beaker in her hands. "Enough of that, you had your way again last night. Go and work it off by canoeing, or whatever you plan to do. I'll amuse myself here and look after our son. Off you go."
She stood up and as she did so met Natalie's look upon her, the girl's pout soon making it clear that her daughter saw through the excuse for staying behind and to look after Dion.
Natalie followed her with more of the breakfast things.
"You can't possibly be thinking of staying here and perhaps having a shower...and to see if that glory hole has anyone on the other side? I thought that one time would be enough and after what you did a couple of days ago in there?"
"And you with me," Katrine smiled in reply. "So don't you go forgetting that. Be company for your father and do that for me. There's only so much I can take of his mood swings and ordering us all about."
"Yeah, okay," Natalie sighed in evident frustration. "I was hoping to have some time with Dion, just the two of us and we met with younger people in town and we had something different to do."
"There's time, darling..."
They heard Matis call to them. "I'll go and check up on Dion! I'll also reserve two bikes, Natalie...we can cycle into town and book places on the raft ride, okay, darling?"
"Yeah okay, Father." She said it while standing in the doorway and Katrine saw her girl's beauty, the silhouette of her slender face, and the sun in her hair. She shrugged her slender shoulders when she came back to stand by Katrine's side. "That's my day organized. Don't go having all the fun without me...in whatever ways that you find it, Mother."
Katrine tapped her daughter's arm playfully. "I may leave some for you, but only if you promise me that you'll get rid of your inhibitions and live it all out. You've got to start sometime...really grow up."
"But there are right and wrong ways to do that, or am I seeing it wrong?"
"No, now just go and enjoy whatever time you have with your father. What you don't know about, where I am concerned, won't hurt you."
"But I'll still worry, Mother."
♥
"Are you sure that you don't want me to stay with you?" Katrine asked, yet knowing what her son's answer would be.
"Quite sure, Maman. I puked up the worst and I feel much better...my guts especially. I won't be rushing about because of the squits."
Her boy was nothing but direct with her. She saw Dion fill a glass with water and gulp it down, his Adam's apple working quickly under his lightly tanned skin.
"Okay," she said, hesitating, and meeting his look upon her. The white shorts she had chosen to wear that morning revealed fleshy thighs and her colourful bandeau top shaped her breasts, held firmly by a halter-neck bikini top. "I won't be too long...I promise."
"Just go for your swim, wow the guys you meet," he grinned and moved past her intent on lying back on a sun lounger. "I'm not going anywhere until I'm sure I've got rid of that bug. I may even join you later."
Katrine kissed his cheek as she pressed against him, quite why she did not know, but her boy had always had an eye for her and she'd always put it down to a pubescent crush on someone busty and that he happened to live with and saw every day. The kids witnessed how Matis was with her, and Natalie had confessed how they were often to be heard taking each other in the motorhome's bedroom.
"Okay," she said and kissed his cheek again. She delighted in how he smoothed suntan oil onto his skin, shrugging off his shirt and letting it fall to the ground. "Don't overdo the sunbathing..."
"And don't you overdo the fussing or flirt with any man who looks at you dressed like that!" Dion laughed and waved her away.
Her answering smile was all that she gave him. She had seen his lean and muscled torso, how his beach sorts shaped him and the unmistakable bulge at his groin left her in no doubt of how her 'boy' had grown into a young man. The trail of girlfriends that he left in his wake was a sure sign that he was promiscuous and she hoped that he would settle down before too long, or someone would give back, in her treatment of him, what he was known to often do to his girlfriends.
The pool area was already busy, but she found a sun lounger and threw her beach towel over it, shrugged off her top and shorts, and settled back. Her large sunglasses not only shielded her eyes from the sun, but she could also consider who it was that passed her. She would not have any man that she liked the look of knowing that her eyes were on them unless she met their gaze first.
She could also see the path that led to the sanitaire and whether any man seemed to linger and look about before he sauntered in. She thought that she would be able to identify, soon enough, any man who came and went there more frequently than to relieve himself. He would, in all probability, be checking up to see if the glory hole had any takers, on the other side of the dividing wall; a place...a place where she had been with Natalie on the second night here. She had lost herself in pleasure with a man she never saw but had learned so much of.
The sun felt warm on her tummy, her modest high-waisted bikini flattering her fulsome figure, the bikini bra shaping her pendulous breasts. Matis's woman would have her moment while Dion was recovering and she could feel all but alone here.
"Aiee...be careful!" she cried out as a frisbee skittered over the grass and crashed against her lounger.
"Sorry, madam," a man's cultured voice said in apology, "you know how kids are."
A deeply tanned young man stood over her for a moment before he knelt to pick up the frisbee. From behind her sunglasses, she took in his spiky black hair and lean face, his neatly toned body, and how his bathing shorts, white with a blue check, shaped him.
"I do know," she replied with a pouted smile and raised her sunglasses so that she could lock eyes with him. "They're much older than yours is, of course."
She saw him stroke his belly with a long-fingered hand as if he felt something down there, just as she had done on seeing him, the suddenness of being attracted to the young father gripping her.
"I wouldn't say that of you, madam. I'm sorry to disturb you."
With those few words of parting, she watched him walk away from her, his calf muscles tightening and looking down attentively at his boy who skipped along beside him. They stopped when they were a safe distance from her, but she watched the father, especially, as they played together.
"What's the matter with me?" she muttered as she thought back to her son's appraising glances upon her, and now the handsome young father who played with his boy but also had time to look her way. "You wouldn't give me a second's look if we weren't here, would you?"