The Nanny I Helped Bathe That Last Night

I had a childhood that was comfortable and lonely in equal measure. My parents lived more for their business than for me, and from a very young age they handed over my upbringing to a woman who acted as my nanny and took care of everything they didn’t want to deal with.

As the years went by, naturally, I stopped needing her care. But I never stopped needing her.

I felt a devotion to Mariana that bordered on the sickly. I dreamed about her. I couldn’t get her out of my head for a single day. And yet I believed I had hidden that passion away in some airtight corner of myself, without letting even the slightest hint escape.

The eve of her final departure, the two of us were alone in the house. My parents were away, as they almost always were.

That was when she made a strange request.

—I’m going to take a bath. Would you mind coming with me and helping me? —she said, with that courtesy of hers that allowed no suspicion.

She walked toward the stairs and I followed her without fully understanding what she meant. She went straight into the bathroom and sat down in the same chair where, so many times, I had waited for her as a child so she could undress me before putting me in the tub.

And little by little it was I who began to remove the clothes covering her.

I took her boots by the toe and heel, pulled carefully until I freed them from her legs, and offered her my hand so she could stand. I unbuttoned her trousers, lowered the zipper, and slid them down over the curve of her hips. Then came her thigh-high stockings with elastic tops, which I removed slowly, revealing legs not very long but firm, well shaped, perfectly smooth.

I unbuttoned her blouse one by one, slowly. Out of respect. Out of fear. Out of modesty. Because that was exactly how she had done it with me when I was little.

I reached the last button. The white fabric opened in two halves, cut like a knife against the tawny tone of her skin, held together only by the bridge of her bra. I pushed the blouse back over her shoulders and let it fall awkwardly.

I lowered my eyes, embarrassed, and prepared to remove the final garment. Then I discovered that, just like her groin, everything around her sex was free of hair, except for a coquettish inverted triangle that seemed to mimic the shape of the garment I had just taken off her.

I straightened up again and put my arms around her to undo the clasp at her back. The straps lost their tension, the garment slid forward, and her breasts regained their natural shape.

I took a step back to give her back her space, and then, without thinking, I took another, just so I could see her whole, completely naked in front of me.

I managed to hold back an exclamation of amazement, but my mouth betrayed me anyway.

—You’re beautiful —I whispered, unable to stop myself.

—How sweet… —I just barely heard her say, while I remained absorbed in gazing at her.

She was proportion made flesh. Her curves, the harmony of every line, the gold of her skin: the exact opposite of my thin, wiry figure, of my milky whiteness. Her face, slightly rounded, was framed by a chestnut mane falling over her shoulders, and those two huge eyes made her unforgettable.

From neck to ankles, a dizzying succession of curves traced her silhouette. The straight back, the tiny waist, the wide hips, the sculpted legs. Her breasts rose proudly, warm, the dark areolas demanding a mouth to cover them. The flat, firm belly, with the navel sailing in that calm sea, and lower still the triangle of shadow marking the entrance to the only paradise I had ever desired in my life.

I snapped out of my daze and, clumsily, offered her my hand to accompany her to the tub.

***

Once inside, my hands began the bathing ritual on their own. I had it so deeply engraved in my body that it required no effort at all, and my mind could wander freely, in another dimension, hypnotized by her beauty.

Her calm expression, her closed eyes, her abandoned arms, her body hinted at beneath the wavering reflection of the water. The disturbing idea that that goddess body was now awaiting the same attentions she had once devoted to me kept me from focusing on anything other than her breasts crowned by two most beautiful nipples.

I caressed her face with unconscious veneration while I imagined tracing her arms the way she traced mine. I massaged her temples while fantasizing about sliding my hands down her belly until I brushed the soft hair of her mound.

Without realizing it I reached the rinsing stage. I leaned over her wet hair, ran my lathered hands along her arms, and interlaced my fingers with hers.

And I couldn’t go on.

With my eyes closed I rested my head on her damp shoulder, closed my fingers over her palms, laid my arms over hers, and stayed like that for a few seconds, my lips pressed to her neck, breathing in her scent, feeling her heat. Until I noticed how her hands closed over mine, how her lips gave me a tender kiss on the forehead, and her voice reached me from far away.

—Don’t stop, darling. Keep going.

I retraced the path with my hands and stroked the delicate skin of her armpits. Very gently, using barely two fingers, I went over them with reverence, afraid of bothering her with the ticklishness that always unsettled me. But to my surprise, I saw a shiver cross her face, and her elbows opened as if in invitation.

I repeated the gesture a couple more times and recognized in her something I knew well in myself: she twisted her face, bit her lip, in an unmistakable sign of arousal. I felt my legs weaken. Between my thighs something was betraying me, a tingling that rose without permission. My hands abandoned her armpits and finally circled her breasts, seized by a reverent tremor.

A cold sweat came over me. My hands trembled uncontrollably, my arms were cables through which jolts were running. But her sensitivity remained intact, and my fingers saturated my brain with the softness of her skin.

At that instant time stopped. I forgot Mariana, I forgot myself, I forgot everything I had lived before and everything I would have to live after.

Only my two hands existed, lovingly gathering those soft breasts around their outer contour. They sheltered them. They exchanged warmth. They felt their delicacy. And slowly I began to caress them, moving down along their perimeter until the backs of my hands met at the inner curve, then separating to complete the whole circuit.

And I repeated the movement. For an eternity I delighted in adoring their shape, their size, their warmth, the lost look possessed by the sight of her erect nipples.

I wanted so badly the moment when I would move my hands up to her areolas that I feared my own body would shake again the way it had that time at camp, when Diego and Bruno robbed me of my senses without even barely touching me.

I closed my eyes. My hands stayed still, warming her breasts from the outside. My heart was pounding wildly, my temples hurt. I pressed them one against the other and, little by little, slid my thumbs apart from the rest of my hand, tracing the divine skin until I found the warm roughness of the areola. I paused there for a moment. I sighed. And finally I touched them. Hard, firm, small, pointed. I toyed with them, bending them softly, until I closed my hands completely over her breasts, the nipples trapped between thumb and forefinger.

I began to massage all of her fullness with irreverent hunger. Two fingers held her rigid nipples; the other three opened and closed to encompass as much of her flesh as possible, which slipped through my fingers when I squeezed. And thumb and forefinger rubbed without restraint.

Some moans made me come back to myself.

I opened my eyes.

Mariana had her head tilted, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth slightly open. Her right hand was submerged between her legs, and a shiver almost knocked me over when I saw with what furious intensity she was rubbing her clit, while her left arm wrapped around her thigh to lose itself lower, two or three fingers going in and out of her sex without pause.

Overcome by an arousal I could no longer contain, I took her nipples and pulled them upward. She answered with a deep moan. Seized by a tremor that ran through me whole, I punished her breasts with one hand while the other went down her belly, caressing everything within reach: the hair of her mound, the hand that was masturbating, the warm skin on the inside of her thighs. I placed my fingers over hers, over the exact place where they were sinking in, and finally stifled my moans against hers, closing her mouth with mine, seeking her tongue with mine.

We shared a single moan that slowly faded, as strength abandoned us both. She remained inert in the water; I, kneeling behind her, my head on her shoulder, my lips on her lips, my hands sunk to the elbows resting on her still throbbing belly.

Her soaked hand tangled in my tousled hair and caressed me tenderly.

—Come here, darling —she whispered, inviting me to get into the tub with her.

I sat up, still shaken by the frenzy that had swept us away, but her tender smile —in which there wasn’t even the remotest hint of reproach— comforted me as it always had by her mere presence.

I undressed under her attentive gaze and, with timid steps, a little self-conscious, I got into the water and surrendered myself to her warm, welcoming embrace. It was the last night, and for once I did not want to think about morning.