LOUIS COULD NOT SLEEP . . .

Louis could not sleep. He turned over in his bed to lie on his stomach and, burying his face in the pillow, moved against the hot sheets as if he were lying over the woman. But when the friction increased the fever in his body, he stopped himself.

He got out of his bed and looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. What could he do to appease his fever? He left his studio. The moon was shining and he could see the roads clearly. The place, a beach town in Normandy, was full of little cottages, which people could rent for the night or a week. Louis wandered aimlessly.

Then he saw that one of the cottages was lighted. It was set into the woods, isolated. It intrigued him that anyone should be up so late. He approached it soundlessly, footsteps lost in the sand. The Venetian blinds were down but not tightly closed, so he could see right into the room. And his eyes met the most amazing sight: a very wide bed, profusely covered with pillows and rumpled sheets, as if it had already been the scene of a great battle; a man, seemingly cornered in a pile of pillows, as if pushed there after a series of attacks, reclining like a pasha in a harem, very calm and contented, naked, his legs folded out; and a woman, also naked, whom Louis could see only from the back, contorting herself before this pasha, undulating and deriving such pleasure from whatever she was doing with her head between his legs that her ass would shake tremulously, her legs tighten as if she were about to leap.

Now and then the man placed his hand over her head as if to restrain her frenzy. He tried to move away. Then she leaped with great agility and placed herself over him, kneeling over his face. He no longer moved. His face was directly under her sex, which, her stomach curved outwards, she held before him.

As he was pinned under her, she was the one to move within reach of his mouth, which had not touched her yet. Louis saw the man’s sex rise and lengthen, and he tried with an embrace to bring her down upon him. But she remained at a short distance, looking, enjoying the spectacle of her own beautiful stomach and hair and sex so near to his mouth.

Then slowly, slowly she moved towards him and, with her head bowed, watched the melting of his mouth between her legs.

For a long while they maintained this position. Louis was in such a turmoil that he left the window. Had he remained longer he would have had to throw himself on the ground and somehow satisfy his burning desire, and this he did not want to do.

He began to feel that in every cottage something was taking place that he would like to be sharing. He walked faster, haunted by the image of the man and woman, the round firm belly of the woman as she arched herself over the man …

'Little Birds' by Anaïs Nin - 'The Woman on the Dunes'