We never really know ourselves, do we? We're never truly aware of all of our hidden desires and wants and needs, and it seems to me that we don't even know that we're somehow suppressing those things. But sometimes something happens – something unplanned and unexpected – that opens our eyes to the inner self and lets us view ourselves in a whole new light.
When that happened to me just a few months ago, I didn't really believe what I was seeing. In some ways I still find it hard to comprehend that I had all of that hidden and suppressed inside me.
What that? Let me explain...
My name is Marina, which is hardly a fashionable name. There again, I'm hardly a fashionable girl. I'm twenty-seven now, going on fifty as my wonderful husband, Matt, is fond of saying. Or rather, was fond of saying. Up until last summer I was the picture of an old-fashioned girl – shy, demure, conservative and lacking in a great deal of self-confidence.
This was certainly not Matt's fault because ever since we met, he has been at pains to boost my self-belief and bring me out of my shell. He has never failed to tell me that I am beautiful – his words, you understand – and that I am desirable. Despite my shyness, we have always enjoyed a wonderful sex-life, and I was never in any doubt that he found me attractive in that way. The evidence was... well, obvious.
But for all that, I honestly believed that I was just very fortunate to have found someone with an odd taste in women – someone who likes their ladies small, slender and shy.
We had been together for five years when this all began, and in all that time Matt had never once pressured me to do anything that I didn't want to do. Well, except for going to the dentist, but that really isn't what I'm talking about. It got to the point where I was starting to fret that I wasn't being a proper wife to him, sexually, and that I wasn't exploring his desires or even giving him the opportunity to tell me about them.
Maybe I was afraid of what I'd hear, or maybe I was just too damned shy, but whatever the cause it was becoming obvious even to me that there was more to life than simple love-making, and that most men seemed to have interests in that direction – whatever 'that direction' was.
Without boring you with details of my days of preparation, worry, nervousness, mental-anguish and fits of self-denial, I finally plucked up the courage to raise the subject one evening (after a few glasses of wine). I stammered and stuttered my way through my concerns and finally managed to ask Matt directly if there was anything that he might like me to try in the interests of increasing our pleasure together.
I have no idea what I thought his answer would be. To be honest, I didn't really understand what all of the possibilities were, but I did know that I would listen to his answer carefully and react as sensibly as I possibly could no matter how outrageous his response had been. Deep down, I knew that I would be looking for any reason I could find to say 'sorry, but that's just not me', but at least I was trying.
Despite all of my preparations, when his answer came I was shocked. Oh, not by what he suggested – not in the least. No, I was shocked by my body's reaction.
We were in bed, snuggled under the duvet after a gentle session of love-making, the sweat still cooling. I had stammered my question and could hardly look at Matt as I waited for his answer.
"Well," he said, at length, "There is one little thing. Look, you know I love you, right?"
I nodded, dread seeping into my bones, "Of course."
"I'd like... if you'd be happy to... I mean it would be just for me... that is, it would mean so much..."
"Matt?" His nervousness was increasing my dread by the second and I was now desperate to hear his answer. "Tell me."
He closed his eyes and spoke quickly, "Well, I know you're shy and I know it's asking a lot but you did tell me to be honest and so here it is... I'd really, really like one little photograph of you... I mean one of you showing a little... just topless maybe or even just in kind of revealing underwear or something like that. Just for me, just to keep locked away so I can look at it when you have to work away or you go to visit your parents. But only ever for me, never to be looked at by anyone else ever, I promise that. And like I said, I know it's a lot to ask what with you... well-"
"Okay." My mouth moved before my brain fully engaged gear, simply because my body had already decided. Despite all of my preparations, all of my dread and fear, I found myself feeling something that I had not even considered possible – I was suddenly, irrefutably, turned on by the idea.
Looking back, I'm fairly sure that it was Matt's evident excitement and hope that had me reacting quite so strongly, but I can't deny that the thought of being photographed in such a way – something I'd never once considered before – brought heat to my groin.
That night there was a lot of comments along the lines of 'you sure', 'I will', 'just for me', 'it's okay' and so on, and there was also another bout of love-making. It was the latter that had my mind absolutely made up over this thing – it was intense and wild and... well, liberated, I guess.
In the days that followed, every time I thought I had got over the shock of how my body reacted to the idea of Matt pointing a camera at me, something else – the look in his eye, a glance at my reflection – had me trembling in anticipation and excitement. It was so weird, to feel something like that when there was no precedent and no hint that I could ever feel that way.
Matt's reaction was almost as unexpected as mine. When the day for the photograph came, he was shaking so much that we had to dig out his old tripod, and even then the start of the session was twice interrupted for frantic bouts of love-making.
Finally though, the photographs were taken and the three images loaded onto our computer. When I first saw them I could scarcely believe that they were of me – not because I failed to recognise the person staring – smiling! – back at me, but because I was still finding it hard to believe that I had actually gone through with it.
In the first I was wearing a translucent white bra and panties, staring coyly at the camera. In the second I had lost the bra and was sitting on the edge of the bed with a look of nervousness and anticipation mingling awkwardly on my face. Oh but the third... in that I was naked, completely, standing at the foot of the bed with one hand partially covering the pale hairs at my groin and the other covering almost nothing of my bare breasts, staring at the camera with a smile that could have been interpreted as shyness, but seemed far more lascivious when you stared harder at it.
Viewing them led to a third bout of love-making – although its wild intensity spoke little of love yet shouted lust – and the printing of the pictures brought about an unheard of fourth session. It was during the latter that I experienced a shockingly intense orgasm – my first ever during sex. If I'd had any doubts about what I had done, they scattered like mice before a combine harvester when that happened.
In the days and weeks that followed, I basked in the knowledge that I had unlocked my innermost desires. Matt and I made love more often than ever before, and the satisfaction I received made all of my nervousness seem like a bad dream. Even with the passage of time, the effect of those photographs never waned and even the quickest glance at them – or at Matt looking at them – had me doing things I'd never dreamed myself capable of, such as dragging Matt into bed, and sometimes deliberately letting him see me changing.
While these things might not seem so dramatic to you, for me they were alien and new and so desperately exciting. This was the new me, the real me, and the discovery left me reeling with delight.
