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What You See, What You Get

By: Spinneret



Note: This is a sequel to my earlier Theory and Practise and Shocking the Family. It should stand alone, though.

*

"Hey," said Nina, "what's your opinion on nudity?"

I looked at her over the top of the book I was reading. "Is that an offer?" I asked.

"No it bloody isn't!" Nina snapped. Then she caught herself. "Sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean to bit your head off. It was a straight question, though."

I put my book aside. We were hanging out in my room, supposedly both catching up on some reading, but Nina had been distracted and fidgety ever since she'd arrived. If she wanted to talk, I wanted to give her the chance. "Do you mean in movies?" I asked. We shared a lot of interest in that subject; it was what had brought us together. "Or paintings or something? Artistic nudity, like they call it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "I mean in real life. Public nudity, I suppose you'd say. Not just two people together in private."

I shrugged. "Can't say I worry about it much," I said. "I mean, I suppose I'd have to say ... it's just bodies, right? Everyone's got one. We shouldn't have hang-ups about it, blah blah blah. But on the other hand..." I pulled a face. "I guess, well, I don't think that the world needs to see my dangly bits."

"No, said Nina, sounding as though I'd given the right answer. "And there's the sunburn problem, too."

"Uh, pardon?"

Nina pulled a face. "I burn easily," she muttered.

"Oh, right. And you don't want to lose your death pallor, after all."

Nina stuck her tongue out at me, but I reckoned that I might not have been entirely wrong there. Nina took her Goth status quite seriously, when she wasn't trying to wind up other Goths.

"Anyway, why do you ask?" I said.

She sighed. "It's about next week," she answered.

"Uh, pardon?" I said again and blinked. Next week was when I was going to be meeting her family for the first time. She'd already met mine, twice, and got along with them pretty well, considering, but she'd seemed uncertain about inviting me to her home for the next vacation. She'd been quite cagey about the whole subject, up until now.

Nina sighed. "I've told you about my mother, haven't I?" she said.

"Well, you've said she's a bit of an old hippy," I said, and then I began putting things together. "Oh... Do you mean..."

"Don't worry," Nina said quickly. "She doesn't wander around the house naked or anything. Well, not when we have visitors. You're probably safe there. But she did spend years telling me -- well, what you just said, really. Nothing to be ashamed of, wonderfully natural, all that crap."

I shrugged. "So she's a bit drippy-hippy, but not totally crazy. What's the problem?"

Nina sighed. "Grace," she muttered.

I frowned. "Your sister?" I asked, and Nina nodded. She'd said even less about her older sister than she had about her mother, except that the pair of them still lived at home together. I gathered that her father wasn't around; apparently, there'd been a fairly amicable divorce, and he now lived over in France somewhere. "What about her?"

"She's a pain in the arse," Nina said. "And since I got into university, well, she's just got worse. She didn't put the work in herself -- she's happy sponging off Mum, helping with the pottery business, supposedly -- and I reckon that me getting away annoys her somehow. She can be a bit of a bitch sometimes."

"Sorry to hear that," I said, "but you'll have me around now. I'll try and help."

"Thanks," Nina said. "but this isn't one of those things you can handle with a quick technological fix, geek-boy. I'll just have to deal with Grace head on."

"I'll try and provide moral support. But anyway, what's that got to do with nudity?"

"Nothing, I hope," Nina said, drawing a deep breath. "Though I guess that Mum's funny ideas about freedom and honesty and being natural are something else I'll just have to deal with somehow, one day. Anyhow -- you know how you asked if what I said was an invitation?"

"Yes?"

"Well, if you like..."

"Yes?"

"Feel free to get nude. If that's what you want." And with that, Nina sat down, picked up her own book, and gave me a casual look and a shrug before she started reading again.

I sighed, stood up, and began hauling my shirt off over my head. This sounded like a challenge, and one thing I'd decided was best was not to turn down any of Nina's little challenges. It was probably going to get me into trouble, sooner or later, but the truth was, I was scared that Nina might decide that I was just a wimpy geek if I backed down too easily. I'd rather take a few chances than have her decide that I was no fun.

When I was completely naked, I just stood there for a moment, until Nina looked up from her book. "Turn round," she said. "Right round."

I obeyed, and she nodded and sat forward, on the edge of her chair as if to take a better look. "Actually," she said, "your dangly bits aren't that bad."

"Thanks," I said.

She reached forward, took my still-limp cock in one hand, and began caressing it gently. Then she looked me in the face. "Do you really fancy me?" she asked.

"Wrong time to ask," I said, as calmly as I could manage. "Answer's got to be yes..."

"That's fine," she said, standing up and shifting her grip on my cock, which was getting quite hard now. "By the way, you realise that I've been on the pill for long enough now?"

"Mmm," I said. I had been counting, in fact, but it hadn't seemed cool to say anything. "You trust me, then?"

She glared at me. "Of course I fucking trust you..."

"Yeah," I said, trying to stay calm despite how my cock was now feeling, "after all, you'd kill me if I let you down."

"Don't run yourself down," she said, now simply squeezing my cock firmly but carefully. "I trust you because you're a good guy. Not because I reckon I've got you terrified."

She let go of me, took a step backwards and towards the bed, and began unfastening the tight black trousers she was wearing. Then she dropped them and her black lace knickers together to the floor, stepped out of them, and -- still in the black T-shirt and red socks she'd been wearing, and for that matter without taking her glasses off -- she sat down and then lay back on the bed. I knelt between her thighs and she guided my cock into her cunt, without a condom for the first time.

"Mmm," she said.

"Feel any different?" I asked.

"Maybe a bit. How about you?"

"Yeah, a bit." I began moving carefully, the way that seemed to work, and her soft gasps suggested I was doing okay. She wrapped her legs around mine, and I felt the soft cotton of her socks against the back of my knees.

"You fancy me?" she asked again. "I don't have to be naked? You don't think I'm too skinny?"

I frowned. This was a lot more insecure than the usual Nina. On the other hand, I was kind of distracted by her arse, as my increasingly eager balls brushed against it. "You're fine," I managed, "just fuck me."

She suddenly grinned. "Already on it, geek-boy," she said, and sank her fingernails into my back, not hard enough to draw blood. I gasped, and concentrated on moving the way she liked and not getting carried away. Then she moaned, clenched me harder with all four limbs, and shivered against me. I smiled a little uncertainly -- she didn't normally come this quickly -- but I decided not to complain. Instead, I speeded up my thrusts until, within seconds, I couldn't hold back any more, and I poured myself into her.

A few seconds after I'd collapsed with a gasp, I rolled off her. Then I turned my head to look at her.

"Fuck," I said, "you're gorgeous."

"And this gets messy without a condom," she said, but with a quick grin, as she fumbled after a box of tissues. "Still, it's fun, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said with feeling. "You and me together... We can handle your sister, you know."

"I hope so," said Nina. "Us together. Yeah."

****

But she still seemed a bit on edge, and she stayed that way most of the time, every day for the next week. She seemed doubly uncertain when the minicab we'd got from the railway station pulled up in front of the slightly shabby detached house, on the edge of a village, which I gathered was her family home. As we hauled our bags out of the boot, the door opened and a slightly overweight woman in her 40s, with large-lens glasses and dirty-blonde hair, in a linen dress and low-heeled shoes, came hurtling out.

"Nina darling!" she cried, "lovely to have you back!" The woman placed quick kisses on both Nina's cheeks, and Nina smiled cautiously. Then the woman turned to me. "And you must be the famous boyfriend!" she announced, gave me two kisses in turn -- she smelled of some kind of floral perfume with a mixture of earthy smells, and I realised that she had smears of potter's clay on the back of her hands -- and she smiled. "I'm Harriet, Nina's mother!" she proclaimed, unnecessarily. I could see some of Nina in her face, although she probably weighed twice as much as my skinny Goth girlfriend as well as being more than twice her age.

Well, she seemed a bit effusive, but nice enough, and she towed us indoors. "And this is Grace, Nina's sister," she announced as Nina closed the front door behind us.

Grace was coming down the stairs, and she fixed me with a careful gaze and a cool smile. She looked more like her mother than Nina did, although she was quite slim -- not skinny, though, certainly not where it counted. That fact was nicely emphasised by the skimpy red tank-top and hipster jeans she was wearing. She was brunette, with green eyes -- Nina and her mother both had brown eyes -- and she stared at me hard for a moment. Than she smiled, which was nice, swept down the last couple of steps, and gave me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, which all felt even nicer.

"Hi!" she said. "You're the one who caught little Nina! Amazing!"

"Hi, Grace," said Nina from behind me.

"Hi, Nina," said Grace, leaning back from the hug to throw a one-second smile over my shoulder at her sister. I looked around; Nina's smile in reply was even less convincing.

"Looks like you've done good, little sis," Grace said, looking back at me. "He's really cute."

Well, that was something I hadn't been called before. I'm afraid I probably grinned stupidly in response. But then Harriet swept Nina and myself up the stairs and (with a very small but embarrassing giggle) into what I gathered was Nina's old bedroom. This was pretty much bare -- no surprise there, I knew that Nina had taken virtually all her old decorations and souvenirs off to university with her -- but the bed was made up and covered with a patchwork bedspread, and seemed comfortable enough when I sat on it. That left me looking at Nina.

"So," she said, "you've met Mum."

"Yep. She seems okay."

"And Grace."

"Yep."

"So -- what do you make of her?"

"I haven't had much chance to judge yet. But she was nice enough to me."

"Yeah. You're honoured. She doesn't get all hug-hug kiss-kiss with just everyone. Not at first."

"Right."

"What do you think of her looks?"

"Honestly?" Nina nodded coldly. "She looks great," I said, plunging into dangerous territory but knowing that Nina's bullshit detectors would go off at anything else. "Nice figure and all that."

"Right."

"But..."

Nina looked at me carefully. "But what?" she demanded.

"But -- she's years older than me, isn't she? She must think I'm just a kid. And she's exactly the sort of girl who's never looked at me twice, even without the age difference."

"Uh-huh?" Nina sounded interested at that.

"Yeah. Not that I'm complaining," I added quickly. "I've done just fine anyway, haven't I?" Nina smiled slightly. "But her being all nice to me -- well, perhaps you've made me too suspicious with what you said about her, but..."

"You're suspicious."

"Right."

Nina definitely smiled. "Fine. You probably shouldn't take my word for this -- you probably ought to call it all bitchy kid sister stuff -- but honestly, I'm glad you feel that way." She sat on the bed beside me, took a deep breath, and looked round the room.

"How does it feel to be home?" I asked.

"Weird. I dunno if it's home or not, really. I don't wanna be the person who left this place last year."

I shrugged. "What's the difference between you then and you now?" I asked.

"What?" Nina stared at me. "You know what the difference is!"

I smiled. "Apart from that..."

"No! Not apart from that! It's important!" She jumped to her feet again and faced me. "I like that difference!" she declared. "Stand up!" she added.

I obeyed, confused, and Nina stood a foot or so from me, staring into my eyes. She was wearing a black dress with a fancy multi-layered skirt, and suddenly she pulled that up at the sides, grabbed the hem of her knickers, and pushed them down to the floor. She kicked her sandals off as she removed the knickers completely, though she left her black socks on, then she began to unfasten my belt.

"Hey," I said, "won't your mother..."

"With any luck, Mum will guess that we're fucking," Nina said. "Knowing her, she'll approve."

It's hard to rebel against an old hippy mother, I guess. But anyway, I wasn't sure how exactly to respond as Nina got my trousers unfastened and pushed half-way down my thighs. My underpants followed, and she stared at my cock. Once again, she was rushing me into sex before my body could respond, but I caressed her head, feeling the downy, soft stubble at the sides where she shaved her hair away completely, leaving only the centre strip which she always wore in a bleached ponytail.

Then she took her glasses off and dumped them on a bedside table, and leaned forward. We were still getting the hang of oral sex, and I wasn't even sure if Nina enjoyed giving it that much, if only because I could be clumsy how I responded to it, but now she engulfed my cock with her mouth and sucked, hard. My cock responded predictably, and after moving her head back and forth a couple of times, Nina released it, stood up, and more or less threw herself onto the bed.

I took the hint and joined her, and within a few seconds, I was inside her. I was trying to be slow and careful, but she grabbed me with arms and legs and pulled me close to her.

"Yes, do it," she hissed softly. "S'lovely. Fuck me hard. Deeper... Ooh, yes, deeper!"

I don't think she actually came, but after a couple of minutes of this, I couldn't hold back any more, and she didn't seem to want me to. I came in her, strangling my reaction down to a soft gasp -- well, I wasn't sure if her mother or sister might be listening.

She grinned at me. "Your come-face is still hilarious," she told me.

I collapsed on top of her and gasped. "Just so long as you're amused," I mumbled after a moment to draw breath.

"Yep. And not a virgin any more, either."

"You haven't been for months," I pointed out.

"I just wanted to make sure," she said.

I extricated myself from her and made a feeble attempt to get my underpants and trousers back up. "Hope we haven't made a mess of the bedspread," I said, looking at Nina.

"Who cares?" she said with a shrug.

We wandered downstairs after a decent interval, and found Harriet cheerfully cooking and puttering around the place and Grace lounging around, watching TV. Grace aimed another smile or two at me, and I found that I couldn't help liking that. She also tried talking to me -- while including Nina in the conversation just enough not to look obviously rude -- but we soon discovered that we had very little in common.

Dinner, when it came along, was okay in itself; it helped that I actually like cheese and vegetable bake and home-made wholemeal bread. Grace, running out of stuff to say to me, turned to the other two.

"How's Sean?" Nina asked her.

"What? Oh, Sean and I split up months ago..." Grace replied.

"Grace is going out with Laurie West now," Harriet added.

"Well, sometimes," Grace said, and Harriet pulled an amused smile.

"I thought you went out with him years ago," Nina said to Grace.

"Oh, no," Grace said. "I did go out with his brother a couple of times... Anyway, shouldn't you be telling us about your time at university?"

So Nina told them about her courses, while Grace looked bored. I was glad when we finished eating and Harriet made coffee, Grace slipped off to her room, and Nina called some old school friends to arrange to meet up later that week.

"Grace had a few boyfriends?" I eventually asked Nina when we were alone together in her room.

"You have no bloody idea," Nina muttered. "Nor does Mum, entirely."

"She didn't seem like she'd disapprove," I said.

"You didn't see some of them. And Grace was spinning two or three of them along at the same time, sometimes." Nina flopped on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "Mum did tell her off for being mean to them, believe it or not. Just not very hard." She rolled over and looked at me. "God," she said, "she's as bad as I remembered, and I'm knackered. So come to bed, lover. I'm not up to any more nookie, but it'll be nice to have you in this bed. I didn't realise how much I'd like that, when I used to sleep in it before."

So I obeyed. I didn't feel up to any more nookie myself, but she was right about sharing a bed.

In the morning, Nina and I both woke up late, and ventured downstairs straight away. Nina dug muesli and milk and bread out from somewhere and we put together some breakfast. As we were eating, Harriet breezed in, wearing some kind of work smock.   "Hi, Nina darling," she said. "Do you two mind amusing yourselves for the morning? We've got a batch of pieces due by the end of the week..."

Nina shrugged, and I nodded and tried to say something obliging, and Harriet swept out again. I finished my muesli and started making myself toast.

"What is there to see round here, anyway?" I asked.

"Not much," said Nina. "I ought to look up some old friends, but I thought that we could just chill out today..."

But then Grace swept into the kitchen, and I looked round and blinked. It looked like she was wearing a large towel and not much else.

"It's a lovely day," she said to no one in particular. "I thought that I'd go sunbathe a bit."

She strolled on through, and I got a flash of bare, tanned back down to the edge of a pair of bikini briefs. Then I saw that Nina was glaring at that back, and hastily turned my attention back to her.

"Christ," muttered Nina as Grace went into the garden. She gulped down the last of her toast, drained her coffee mug, and stomped out of the kitchen. I hastily finished my own food and went after her. She stomped upstairs and into the bedroom; I followed more carefully.

"I knew she'd do something like this! I just knew it!" Nina stormed

"What, sunbathe?" I asked.

"Oh, she just loves sunbathing." Nina hurled the curtains open, and I saw that our room overlooked the garden. Hence, I could see the topless Grace delicately lowering herself onto her towel. I tried not to get distracted. "She completely agrees with my mother about being confident in her body," Nina continued as I dragged my attention back to her. (Damnit, the fact was that Grace had gorgeous boobs.) "Especially when there are boys around. I guessed that bringing you home would set her off again!"

"You didn't say anything to me beforehand."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up!"

We stared at each other for a moment, then we both laughed, briefly. Well, I knew that this situation was manageable now. Nina hadn't lost her sense of humour.

"Look," I said, "I get it. Your sister is the pretty one who gets all the boyfriends, and she rubs your nose in that because you're the clever one who hasn't had many boyfriends before. And now she's trying to distract me, to prove a point or something. And your mother isn't going to help, what with her let-it-all-hang-out stuff."


What You See, What You Get



"Yeah," said Nina, taking a deep breath. "It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Sorry."

"No worries," I said. "But look, you said that you had to tackle all this stuff head-on."

"Yeah. I guess. Somehow."

"And I said I'd help. Which I can, if you'll trust me."

"I said I trust you."

"Yeah. I'm on your side, remember? So we'll tackle this together. Head on. Show both of them that you can handle their crap."

Nina managed a half-smile. "Thanks," she said. "Got anything in mind?"

"One idea," I said. "But you'll probably think it's stupid."

"Just tell me, okay?"

So I told her. She gasped, but then she looked thoughtful.

"Actually," she said, "that might even work. And it's just acting like I used to when I was twelve, before I started finding Mum and Grace embarrassing... But are you okay with it? Really?"

I took a deep breath. "Try everything once, except incest and morris dancing, remember? I'll do it for you."

"You're sweet," Nina said, only sounding half-sarcastic. "But I told you -- I have a practical problem ... and it is a sunny day out there. Otherwise, Grace would just be looking silly."

"I've got that covered," I said, "literally." I produced a bottle from my luggage. Nina stared at it, then smiled.

"Okay, geek-boy," she said. "You've got a quick technological fix for that."

"Sometimes, it happens," I muttered.

"But there's another problem," she said, looking at me, suddenly sounding serious. "This is only going to work if you can pay attention to me -- just to me -- while Grace is lounging around flashing her tits at you. Be honest -- you said she looks good. Don't worry, I'm used to her getting all the attention, and I can't really blame you for noticing. Can you really ignore her? Properly?"

I frowned. "Don't underestimate yourself. But okay, I can think of a way to cover that, too. But..."

"What?"

"You'll think I'm just taking advantage."

"Just spit it out, geek-boy."

So I told her. She scowled at me for a moment, then she giggled.

"Okay," she said, "I guess that I can put up with that. Just this once. I might even force myself to enjoy it."

"I'll try to help," I said.

"So what's the first step?"

"I guess we take our clothes off," I said. "All of them. We go one step beyond Grace."

Nina shrugged, dumped her glasses on the table, and pulled her T-shirt off over her head. She hadn't put a bra on yet. I followed her example, by which time she was taking off her sandals and then the baggy shorts she'd put on for the day, and then her knickers.

I got rid of my own shoes, jeans, socks, and underpants.

"Step two," Nina said, stepped close to me, and hugged me. I kissed her, and her tongue explored my mouth with some enthusiasm.

"You know," I said after we broke the kiss and I'd drawn breath, "we haven't done this naked for a week or two."

"I guess not," Nina agreed. "I've been fixating on my bloody family and their weird habits. Sorry. C'mon."

She more or less dragged me to the bed, and we lay down together. I began kissing her breasts -- no, they weren't as ripe as Grace's, but they were gorgeous, okay? -- and then I moved down to her belly. When I probed her shaven pussy with the tip of my tongue, she sighed happily, but then she grabbed my head and pulled me back up to kiss me on the mouth again. So I explored her pussy with my hand instead, sliding my middle finger inside her. She sighed softly as I caressed her clitoris with my thumb and index finger, then twisted her head a little so she could look me in the eye.

"Come on," she said. "We need to give you a good time this time, remember?"

"No problem there," I muttered, but I took the hint and knelt between her legs. I was hard by then, amazingly enough, so I was soon inside her, moving carefully.

She twisted around and moved her right leg to push us up and over, and I cooperated, so a second later I was on my back; she drew her knees up beside my hips so that she was riding me. "Okay," she whispered, "you say that you can last for longer this way up -- so let's see how much of a good time we can give you."

I smiled at that, and grabbed her hips with both hands, pulling her against me. She giggled softly and clasped her own breasts, right hand on left breast and left on right, not preserving any modesty there but teasing her nipples with her fingers. I moaned softly, let go of her hips, and levered myself up on my elbows until I could bring my face to her chest. She murmured appreciatively as I tongued her nipples, put her hands on my back, and wriggled her hips. After a few seconds of that, I gasped, collapsed backwards, and began a series of long, slow thrusts up into her. Her deep breathing told me that this was doing something for her.

Still, we were both doing this for me this time, and so after a few more moments, I found myself thrusting harder and gasping deeply. Nina smiled faintly as I came, holding the moment for as long as I could. Then I relaxed, lying still for a second -- before I noticed that she had her eyes closed and her hips were moving in short, rhythmic motions. After another few seconds, she gave a soft sigh, then relaxed and shifted position so she could lie flat on top of me.

"Mmm," she murmured, "thanks."

After a few more moments, we rolled apart. I looked at her. "Fuck," I said, "you're gorgeous."

"It's worked, then?" she asked.

"Fuck, yes."

"Good," she said, then rolled over and grabbed the bottle I'd pulled out of my luggage. She glanced at the label a moment, then opened it and poured a dollop of the contents on the palm of her hand. Then she rubbed her palms together and began applying the maximum-protection sunscreen to herself.

"I'd better put that on your back," I said.

"In a sec." She looked at me. "Do you want any of this?" she asked.

"I'd better. I do burn too." I sat up, borrowed the bottle, and began putting sunscreen on myself. After a moment, we took turns dealing with each other's hard-to-reach areas, which was fun, but I was too happily fucked-out to get seriously distracted. Then we both stood up and contemplated each other's naked bodies -- both skinny, pale, and glistening slightly with sunscreen -- for a moment.

Nina smiled suddenly, and put her glasses on. Then she rummaged in her bag, found some clip-on polaroids that went with those glasses, then produced two pairs of small rings, and fitted them to her pierced ears and nipples, while I winced slightly in sympathy. "Okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, showing the sunglasses I'd extracted from my own bag and trying to hide how uncertain I was. "I'm okay."

"Right," said Nina, "let's do this."

We both picked up the books we were currently reading, then Nina led the way out of her room and I followed. Walking naked through someone else's house felt weird, but I was still feeling good after the sex, and I concentrated on watching Nina's arse in front of me. We detoured to find a couple of large towels, then went downstairs. Stepping out of the back door and into the garden reminded me that there are some things that you don't want to tread on in bare feet, but I avoided anything sharp. Nina glanced back at me, and I winked at her.

I pulled on my sunglasses, she attached the clip-on things to her glasses, and we walked side-by-side down the badly-mown lawn to the place in full sunlight where Grace was lounging on her towel, looking casually gorgeous. She looked at us, and then definitely did a double-take and stared at Nina. I wasn't surprised; whenever she'd last seen her kid sister naked, I don't suppose Nina had had nipple rings, two tattoos, and a shaven pussy. She didn't look twice at me, I noticed.

"Hi," she said, and I think she sounded uncertain.

"Hi," Nina said. "We thought we'd join you for a while."

We put our towels on the grass, lay down, and opened our books. "Nice day," Nina said to the world in general.

"Uh, yeah," Grace said, and I glanced at her. She seemed to have got over her initial surprise. She peered at me over her own sunglasses, and I'd swear that she very subtly jiggled her boobs at me. It was a nice sight, I won't deny, but I looked back to Nina and smiled at her.

It's very simple, really. When a man has really good sex, it's a little while before he's really interested in having sex again -- but in that time, he feels huge amounts of affection for the woman he's just had sex with.

Well, it works that way with me, anyway. Nina had me safely immunised against Grace -- just for a little while, anyway. Long enough.

Nina grinned back at me, and I winked before I realised that the sunglasses probably hid that. We both turned back to our books for a few minutes, before Nina asked me something about one of the courses we were both doing, and we talked movies for a few minutes.

Grace pretended to relax for a while more, ignoring our chatter as we carefully didn't quite ignore her, but then I think the annoyance got to her. She muttered something about getting a drink, and stomped off towards the house, her towel thrown over her shoulder.

When she was safely out of earshot, Nina and I looked at each other and giggled like kids. "Well," Nina said, "I think that worked."

"Just about," I said. Then Nina shifted slightly over towards me, and kissed me on the mouth. I put an arm round her and caressed her back, running a hand down toward her tight, neat buttocks. But then she broke the kiss and looked up. I followed her gaze and saw her mother approaching.

"Hi, you two," Harriet said. "I hope that you're okay there."

"Um... We're fine, thanks," I managed to say with what I hoped was cool.

"I hope that it's warm enough," Harriet said. "Grace seemed to think it was getting cold out here."

"Hadn't noticed," Nina said. I looked at Harriet, and saw that she was staring at her daughter's body.

"Are those tattoos?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," Nina said. "D'you like them?"

"I suppose that they're ... interesting," Harriet said. "I've never had the nerve to get anything like that done."

Nina shrugged, and I tried not to show that I was watching her boobs when she did that. Though I had an excuse; her newer, larger tattoo, showing a stylised skull, was on the side of her left breast. "It's not that big a deal," she said.

I wondered if her mother had noticed that the smaller tattoo on Nina's hip was a single small cherry, and if so, whether she'd guessed what that meant. Well, she wasn't saying anything if so. Then I noticed that she threw a quick glance over me. I assume she was looking to see if I had tattoos too.

(Fat chance. Nina and I have different styles, so I don't have to let some dodgy character stick needles and ink into my skin. At least, that's my excuse. Nina is braver than me, certainly.)

"Anyway," Harriet said, "enjoy the sun. I need to get back to work, I'm afraid." And with that, she turned back to the house.

"Crap," said Nina, watching her mother re-enter the building. "She's going to think that she's won, isn't she? She's got me relaxed about my body."

"I wouldn't worry about it," I said. "I think you can call it a draw."

"Huh?" Nina looked at me.

"Oh, come on. You heard what she said about the tattoos. And I'll bet she noticed the shaven pussy, too, but she wasn't going to say anything about that. You've out-cooled her."

"Huh. Maybe."

"Well, okay, maybe having me as a boyfriend blows your credibility..."

"Oh, stop fucking fishing for compliments." Nina rolled onto her back and screened her eyes from the sun with an arm -- a gesture which left me able to admire the line of her small, neat boobs once more. (I wondered if the effects of the fuck were beginning to wear off.) "Ah, shit," Nina added. "We'll see. Thanks for the help with Grace, anyway."

****

So far as I could tell over the next few days, our little show had indeed had the desired effect; Grace stopped pouting at me, didn't sunbathe much more, and didn't seem too inclined to needle Nina, while Harriet was nice enough to Nina and myself. Gradually, Nina and I were able to relax. We even spent a few more hours "sunbathing" naked (while catching up on some reading from university), just to prove we really were comfortable with it, then came to the conclusion that we'd made our point.

It was nearly a week later that Nina and I came back from a visit to the nearest town with a cinema to discover Harriet having an argument with Grace. We'd just put the kettle on to make ourselves some tea when we heard the raised voices through two doors. So we paused for a moment and listened.

"What does Grace mean, figurative crap?" I asked after a few moments, in a whisper.

"Oh, Mum usually does pots and plates and stuff," Nina whispered back, "but occasionally she does a few little figure things -- miniature statues. She says that it's keeping her hand in. She can sell a few, but the pots are her bread and butter."

"So Grace is annoyed because the pots make more money?"

"Maybe. First time I've heard Grace sound like she cares about Mum's work, actually."

Eventually, the two other women calmed down a bit and stalked off in opposite directions, leaving the house quiet for the evening. Grace went out ("Bet she doesn't come back tonight" Nina muttered), Harriet went back to her workshop to finish something, and Nina and I grabbed some dinner and ate it while watching a DVD and arguing about movies. The film we were watching ran on, and eventually Harriet stuck her head around the door and announced she was going to bed.

A few minutes after that, the film finished. "Come on," said Nina, getting to her feet.

"Come on where?" I asked.

"Mum's workshop. I want to see this figurative crap."

Well, I hadn't been told the workshop was banned to visitors -- so I followed Nina through, and stood by the doorway as she poked around a bit. Then she stopped, and gave a very odd giggle.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Come and see," she said.

The new pieces were pretty obvious when you saw them, and definitely figurative, in a stylised sort of way. There were three sets of them, all pairs, one male and one female, all glazed bone white, all quite slender...

"Oh, fucking hell," I said.

"I think it's a compliment," Nina said.

"Just so long as nobody recognises them," I said.

"Oh, don't worry," Nina said. "Who'd know it was us?"

The figures were very stylised and simplified, to be sure, though they were anatomically complete (if you looked closely). They weren't doing anything more than holding hands, though, and maybe dancing together (which just showed that Harriet had never seen me dance). It was true that we only guessed who they were modelled on because we knew what Harriet had seen lately.

"Oh well," Nina was squinting at one pair from another angle, "I guess that it turned out to be artistic nudity after all."

"Fine with me," I said. "Your mother doing statues of us doing any other sort would be too creepy."

Nina shrugged. We spent a few more minutes looking at the miniature statues, then Nina shrugged, smiled, and grabbed my hand.

"Come on," she said.

"Where?" I asked.

"Upstairs," she said. "I want to have another go at nudity."

"The two-people-in-private sort?" I asked.

"Still my favourite kind," Nina said.

// END //