Ellie, Naked

Author note: This story was written for the 750 Word Story Challenge 2024, below this line are exactly 750 words:

It had started when I'd read the article in the trashy magazine. It had urged the reader to 'do something that scares you', as apparently the adrenaline did something magical to your brain chemistry and hormones.

When I told Ellie, she instantly dismissed it.

"Pseudo-scientific bullshit," she pronounced. Her French was getting really good: her profanity almost sounded completely native. But long words like 'pseudo-scientific' still carried that trace of America which gave her away.

Maybe it had really started when I first met Ellie, at a photography exhibition in the ninth arrondissement. She was spending the year studying art in Paris, and as soon as I saw her, in her high-waisted, light-washed jeans and self-conscious straw hat, it was obvious she was a lesbian. Getting her into bed was easy, the work of two dates and a bottle of Burgundy. There hasn't been good art in Paris in a hundred years so I soon shifted her focus from contemporary screen prints to sweaty nights bathing my cunt in kisses.

We were spending a week on the coast. I told her I would do something that scared me: begin reading a book in English, not French. She laughed, thinking I wasn't serious, and said the one thing that scared her would be sunbathing nude.

Midway through the week we were standing overlooking the beach, the sun lazily working its way towards the western horizon and the blazing heat of the day turning to a gentle simmer. I had Wuthering Heights in my bag, half-read, as English as a cup of tea. It was scary alright. Heathcliff seemed less angry and more alluring in English, and I wasn't sure if I liked it. Ellie was wearing a translucent white dress, blowing around her legs in the sea breeze. It was a perfectly decent cover up over a bikini, but that was the best part: she wasn't wearing a bikini. She was fully nude underneath and if she stepped into the direct sun you could see her pink nipples straight through the fabric.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she murmured, looking out to sea.

"Oh, come on, forget your American prudishness. Nobody would think twice about seeing a Frenchwoman sunbathing nude," I told her, then pointed to my bikini bottoms. "You think this thong is covering much? I'm more exposed than you are."

It took another hour of gentle persuasion but eventually there was that moment when I caught my breath and watched as Ellie slipped out of the dress. We were still in the honeymoon phase so she was nude at least half the time in my apartment, but this time she stunned me all over again. She saw me staring, blushed, and her puffy nipples stood off her chest, erect.

"It's the wind," she claimed. Her sandy hair whipped around her face as she said it, giving proof, but I didn't believe her. I knew she was aroused by the handful of complete strangers who would walk past and drink in her slim, sexy body, completely uncovered. She lay down on her back and, behind my sunglasses, I peeked at her cunt. There was a glisten of wetness. I knew it: those buttoned-up American sensibilities of hers meant she was a complete sex animal once you got her clothes off.

"Your cunt says otherwise," I pointed out, bluntly, and she reacted by rolling onto her front and ignoring me. I just sat back and enjoyed the view: the soft curve of her back as it melted into her buttocks was more truly artistic than anything the postmodernists had produced. There was a delicious contrast between the dirty sluttiness of what she was doing, sand whipped up by the wind sticking to the thin layer of sweat on her thighs, and the clean, crystal blue of the sea and the sky. I wasn't the only beachgoer who noticed her: she had a trickle of admirers walking past for a better look, all those anonymous eyes on her exposed pussy and ass.

"You know, I really do admire you for doing something that scares you."

She turned her head towards me and smiled gratefully. "Thank you."

I laughed gently. "I'd also be scared if I'd been tanning my asshole without sunscreen. You'll be bright red for days."

Ellie clamped her hands over her ass and glowered at me as I laughed. "You're a shit," she said, through gritted teeth.

I told you her profanities sounded almost native. I loved hearing them.