Preamble:
A mature couple are reviewing the wife's young days naughty photos, taken way before they met. The husband is curious about who was the photographer.
This is a banter-style teasing, titillating story. The action is light. If you are looking for bruising, torrenting, howling action, this is not for you.
***
Julian enjoys these moments.
Crocuses. The gardener's harbinger of spring. Spangling the turf like hundreds of two-tone sweets thrown across the lawn. It is the flower that most lives up to the idea of a spring flower carpeting the grass with its bloom.
Julian is in his study. The window overlooks his quintessentially English garden. The trees, arching low and green. Enclosed and private, it has secret corners that transport him to another spacetime.
Julian is looking at the wildflowers in the vase on his desk. The honeysuckle, the forget-me-not, the iris, they have tumbled into their symmetry on their own without anyone arranging them.
Julian tilts back his chair a little, and surveys the photos, mementos, books and CDs on his shelf, as one might a life.
He eyes drift to the centre of the shelf. A picture of Julia. His other half who makes him whole. He plays her husband and her whole world. He thinks.
He refocuses back to viewing photos of his wife on his laptop computer. Mostly photos taken before they were married, now digitised into perpetuity. Wife on a thumb drive. He admires his wife's then youthful sensual beauty. A certain bliss sets in when he immerses in such aesthetic delights.
Julia is sixty today. An attractive woman. Her most striking features are her short brown hair, lightened with some silver streaks, though the roots hint at a darker natural colour. Penetrating brown eyes. High cheekbones. A few freckles beneath her eyes. A lovely English smile. These combine to compose a most appealing face.
There is a touch of maturity in her figure. Nicely rounded, but firm. Neither overweight nor skinny. She gives signs of taking care of herself, without being obsessive over it. Her breasts, if one discerns them from beneath a t-shirt, are on the small side. Pert high-hanging fruits of tear drops. Her t-shirt will also reveal that the freckles continue on her upper chest and arms. The dusting of freckles accentuates her cleavage.
Julia had a sultry look then, as now. A comforting timelessness. Straight hair to her shoulders. She was gazing away from the camera as if captivated by a distant object. The photos highlight her pouting sensuous lips.
Thinking of the sensuality before him, and desiring more, he instinctively navigates to another folder, "Sheer Delights".
A stash of twenty lingerie photos, dating back to her uni days. Those salad days.
Three of she on a sofa in a silk robe. Each subsequent picture is teasingly more revealing, until the tops of her breasts and cleavage are exposed. And southerly, until the robe hemline covers her crotch, tantalisingly only just so.
The rest shows her wearing an upper-thigh, sheer negligee, and high-waist bikini panty, perched precariously on fuck-me high-heels.
His favourite is she posing, sitting upright, on a high chair. Her body is angled away from the camera. Her head turned just a little, ascertaining the photographer, just as the photographer is studying she. The fullness of her bosom, and eruption of nipples are visible through the sheer material. She is staring at the lens with a mildly lusty and confident expression.
In her standing shots, it is not altogether clear if the pencil shading at the vee edge of her panty is shadow, or wayward luxuriance. Just when Julian is convinced that it is shadow, the follow-on photo challenges that notion. Delightfully annoying.
The final sub-series of five photos, features Julia in various poses in the same sheer negligee. The difference now is that it is not altogether clear from the artful compositions whether Julia is pantyless. Again, just when Julian is convinced that there is evidence of textile, the follow-on photo confounds that perception. Delightfully maddening. The charm is in the ambivalence.
Julian navigates to another folder, deeply inspired by its title, "Divine Revelations". It contains some explicit shots he took on their honeymoon. The shots range from teasing in lingerie, to full unfettered glory. She was totally uninhibited and would pose any way he requested. They both got carried away, as some of the shots show her in less than ladylike postures, asserting her womanhood. Four photos feature she pleasuring herself in different writhing contortions.
Concentrating on the pictures, Julian is unaware that Julia has entered the room.
"What's up?"
He laughs, self-deprecatingly, gazing down, "Nothing just yet. But, getting there."
Julia peering over, "Hmmm..."
"Revisiting some compelling memorabilia."
Julia sits down beside Julian. She emits a soft chuckle at the folder name. She takes over the mouse.
"I've clean forgotten how decadent we were. I really got hot posing for you that time."
She leans over a little. She gently kisses his cheek.
"I seem to recall someone else getting pretty hot and bothered too."
"We did have some hot sessions, didn't we?"
Navigating back to "Sheer Delights", to some of the lusty lingerie photos, he asks, "I really like these. So artfully, calibratedly pleasing and teasing. How did you feel then, posing in front of a photographer?"
"I really felt uninhibited. I had such a feeling of freedom. It was a turn on."
"Did you ever pose topless or nude?"
"The photographer who took those wanted me to. But, I didn't. I was only twenty then, in uni at the time. I felt a little self conscious about posing nude. Besides, the lingerie didn't hide much. You're the only one who has made me uninhibited enough to pose nude."
"Well, maybe you should have then. These pictures make you look sexy and hot."
Looking at a couple of the more explicit photos, she nods, "You're right. I did sizzle in these. I can pose some more for you, if you still have interest in my now august body."
Julian gazes down at his crotch.
He chuckles, "Pointed affirmation."
"Hmmm... Of the photos we are viewing, or of my offer to model?"
"The latter primarily, the former secondarily."
"Hmmm... You're a consummate diplomat, and an inveterate liar. And I love, love, love you for that."
Curiously, "You never did tell me who the photographer was?"
Julia looks away from Julian and from the laptop screen, to nothing in particular. There is a hush, not quite amounting to silence. A bird chirping on the window sill, then, managing a birdsong. A musical melody of wind chimes.
"This was way before we met. So, it shouldn't matter who the photographer was."
Julia is quiet. And then leaves behind a little trail of silence. This is quite uncharacteristic of his open and effervescent wife. Julian is now really piqued. But, he follows his prudent instincts and holds back. Maybe this question is for another day.
"Dear, I'm sorry I've made you uncomfortable with my probing. It really makes no diff who the photographer was because it'd be someone I don't know anyway. It was all so long ago."
Julian pivots back to the photos. Julia appears somewhat disinterested now. But, she does look a little relieved, but not unburdened, adjusting the little chafing millstone around her neck.
Sheepishly, "It was Jude."
"Sorry?"
"Jude"
"Do I, or should I, know him?"
"My bro..."
"Oh!"
Jude has been mostly out of the country because of work, and associated life entanglements. He has been widowed for ten years since his Chilean wife passed away. Julian has met his brother-in-law, like, three times over the years, and even then, superficially.
"You must be thinking that this is a little weird, a bro taking racy photos of his sis."
"A little unorthodox, yes. But, I'm sure that there were good reasons. Like maybe you wanted some naughty photos to capture your youth, and you didn't want to entrust this delicate enterprise to outsiders."
