Each summer, we'd go to our seaside cottage for three months. My dad had to work during the week and only came down at weekends for most of that time. So it was just me and my mother (I always called her maman although we're not French), lazy days of semi-naked meals on the balcony, and swimming and, as I got older, a growing complicity between us. Maman liked to flirt wearing nothing but the skimpiest bikini. Sometimes, I'd see her naked through the bathroom door or her bedroom door which, surely by accident, had been left ajar. The tan lines from her bikini framed her little breasts whose purse-like sagginess I loved, her plump, shapely bottom and her bush of dark pubes. Once, I caught her banding over and saw clearly her pink, curly haired cleft and a hint of the dark place between her buttocks. And yes, afterwards in the safety of my room at night, I'd masturbate for hours while thinking of those forbidden glimpses. My own mother. But if there was any shame, my desire quickly stifled it. And then, the following happened towards the middle of the wonderful summer when I was 15 and barely in control of my sexual feelings.

Six a.m. I hear maman cough quietly in her room next door. On an impulse, I go to her door and open it without knocking. The curtains are drawn but I can make out her slim form on the rumpled bed, covered below the waist with a sheet. Her pale shoulders and little breasts are bare, her blonde hair splashed across the pillow. I know she is awake but neither of us speak. I move slowly to her in the dim, greyish light and sit carefully on the side of the bed, expecting her to cover herself. She doesn't and I can feel her eyes, attentive, reading my face as I stare at her bare breasts flattened on her chest. Very gently, I lean slowly forward and take her left nipple between my lips. Her body tenses slightly but she offers no resistance. My tongue finds the tip of her nipple and pulls it further into my mouth; I begin to suckle, rolling her nipple between my tongue and upper lip and licking the liquid flesh of the surrounding breast. Her eyes are closed now and she arches her upper body slightly, offering herself to my mouth. I'm aware of her hand moving on herself under the sheet and realise that she wants to masturbate. Unobtrusively I reach down and pull my penis free of my pajama pants and begin to masturbate myself. Suckle and masturbate. My mother, plying her cunt, and her free arm clasped round my neck, locking my mouth to her breasts, is making almost inaudible moans of contentment. Suddenly we are both spurting. Afterwards, we lay quietly until she whispered to me that I should go. I feared she might be angry but when we met later in the kitchen for breakfast she smiled and hugged me, kissed me and whispered "darling". I immediately felt renewed desire and she was aware of it. She pushed me gently away to create a space between our bodies and whispered: "Sweetheart, there must be rules and you must promise to obey me." "Of course I promise," I said. She made me sit down with her and slipped her hand inside my pajama trousers cupping my cock and balls "I will caress you but you must never, ever try to touch me below the waist," she said. "You know what I mean. I mean down there in my secret place. You can play with my breasts as much as you want but never down there." It was a promise neither of us would keep.