Liberté, Égalité, Nudité

Liberté, Égalité, Nudité - NUDE DAY 2025

Prologue: The Storm and the Skin

There are revolutions, and then there are revelations. The former come with banners and blood; the latter, with breath and bare skin. Paris has seen both. Often in the same century. Sometimes in the same bed.

On July 14, 1789, a mob of Parisians--armed with kitchen knives, printing presses, and righteous thirst--stormed the Bastille. The fortress-prison had only seven inmates left (four forgers, two lunatics, and a disgraced aristocrat with bad manners), but that hardly mattered. It was never about who was inside. It was about what it symbolized: monarchy, repression, stone walls against soft flesh.

And so the gates fell.

Danton would rise. Robespierre would calculate. Marie Antoinette would mispronounce pastry. And somewhere amid the chaos, a different sort of revolution stirred--one not written into the pamphlets, but onto the skin of the people: a desire to be free not only from kings, but from corsets. Not only from taxes, but from shame.

It took years--and a few thousand decapitations--but the French figured it out: true liberty doesn't stop at politics. It extends to the body. To the thighs. To the nipple freed from silk. To the sigh that escapes when no one is watching--or everyone is.

And so it is no accident, perhaps no coincidence at all, that National Nude Day shares the same calendar square as Bastille Day.

Of course, in the U. S., Nude Day is largely observed by middle-aged men mowing lawns shirtless and spiritual influencers posting censored selfies with captions like "uncovering the real me." The rest of the nation stays indoors, wary of sunburn and indecency laws. Their revolutions are interior--and end, most often, in laundry.

But in Paris?

In Paris, the nude is not rebellious. It is expected. Encouraged. Composed like a poem on a lover's spine.

This is the story of Clara. An American who thought the revolution was historical, and the nude merely theoretical. Who came for the Louvre and stayed for a salon in the 11th arrondissement, where the ghosts of Danton and Robespierre may well have been watching from the mirrors, nodding approvingly as a naked woman rode a stranger in candlelight.

No one stormed the Bastille for a blowjob. But freedom comes in layers. Ask Marie Antoinette--her neck would eventually yield, but not before her bodice did.

Clara wasn't Justine. She wasn't punished. She was pleasured. Revered. Opened not by terror, but by tenderness. Her guillotine came in the form of two mouths and a finger where sin had once been imagined.

The American in her whispered, This is indecent.

The French in her moaned, Encore.

She learned that day that there is no contradiction between fireworks and flesh, between revolution and wetness.

So here we are. July 14th. Let others wave flags.

Clara waved her hips.

And as she came--for the fourth, or was it fifth time?--someone whispered, perhaps Madeleine, perhaps the Republic itself:

"Liberté, égalité... nudité."

Long live the skin.

Long live the storm.

Vive la Claire.

Chapter 1: The Invitation

Paris, July 14th. Bastille Day. The air shimmered like silk in the afternoon heat, and the city seemed to pulsate with an unspoken promise. Along the Canal Saint-Martin, the streets were strewn with tricolor ribbons, and distant brass bands marched like echoes of revolution. Clara sat alone at a café table shaded by a blue parasol, her sundress clinging to her skin in the most inconveniently erotic way. She had just turned twenty-five and come to Paris on a whim, telling herself it was for the museums. But truthfully, it was for the feeling she now had: a soft tingling under her ribs, a breathless curiosity.

Across from her, at the next table, sat a woman unlike anyone Clara had ever seen. Late fifties, perhaps early sixties, with silver-shot dark hair pinned high like a Parisian countess and the posture of a woman who had seduced history itself. She wore a cream linen dress with a plunging neckline and long sleeves that whispered with every movement. Around her throat, a delicate gold chain rested on sun-kissed skin. Her eyes were lined in subtle kohl, her mouth painted in the kind of red that demanded poetry.

"You are not from here," the woman said, not as a question but a conclusion.

Clara looked up, startled. "No, I'm from... Chicago. How did you--?"

"Your shoulders. American women carry a certain unresolved weight in them. As though they must apologize for their own beauty."

Clara laughed, a nervous sound. "I didn't mean to stare."

"You weren't. You were waiting."

There was a pause. Clara felt it like a thread winding around her spine.

"Do you know what today is?" the woman asked, sipping her pale rosé.

"Bastille Day. I watched the parade this morning. It was... grand."

The woman smiled. "Yes. The storming of the Bastille. The end of monarchy. But the beginning of something else. Something raw. Violent. Erotic, even. The first time the people said: my body, my will."

She set her glass down. "My name is Madeleine. Would you like to experience true freedom tonight?"

Clara blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Madeleine leaned in, her voice suddenly lower, more intimate.

"Not the kind of freedom printed in books. The kind you feel in your skin. The kind that strips away every borrowed thought, every inherited shame. Naked freedom."

Clara opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came. Madeleine reached into her woven purse and drew out a cream-colored envelope. It was sealed with a red wax emblem: a flame curled into a lily.

"Tonight. Nine o'clock. Rue de la Bastille, number seventeen. Come dressed in whatever makes you feel most yourself. Or nothing at all."

Clara hesitated. "What is it?"

Madeleine tilted her head. "A gathering. An old one. We call it the Salon de la Peau. The skin salon. A celebration of the body, of liberty, equality, and... nudity."

She smiled again, and it felt like velvet slipping over bone.

Clara took the envelope.

The rest of the afternoon was a haze. Clara wandered through Le Marais, the invitation heavy in her bag like a talisman. She entered boutiques, picked up silk scarves, drank espresso she couldn't taste. Her heart drummed an irregular beat that sounded like go, go, go. She imagined what might happen--guests in masks? Strange rituals? Orgies? No. That was absurd. Wasn't it?

But Madeleine's voice lingered: Naked freedom.

As the sun dipped below the zinc rooftops of the city, Clara returned to her Airbnb. She stood before the mirror, stripped off her dress, and stared at her own skin. She saw pale shoulders, small breasts, a faint scar along her hip. Not remarkable. But alive. Willing.

She ran a bath with lavender oil, shaved her legs slowly, perfumed the hollow of her neck. Then, standing before the open wardrobe, she chose a sheer cream slip with no bra. Beneath it, no panties. Just skin and breath.

At 8:40, she stepped into the street, walking slowly toward Rue de la Bastille, number seventeen, with her heart between her legs.

And then she remembered something she had read that morning online -- a curious, almost ridiculous little note in an American blog post: Today is also National Nude Day. A humorous observance, they'd said, for nudists and body-positivity. In the States, it was more of a joke. But here, in this city of revolution and art, where women like Madeleine whispered truths instead of platitudes, the coincidence suddenly felt like fate. As if two worlds -- the political and the personal -- had chosen this one day to strip away everything false.

She did not yet know that Madeleine had told the others:

"She is our Marianne tonight. And she will be gloriously unmade."

Chapter 2: The Road to the Bastille

The streets had changed. Clara noticed it the moment she stepped from the narrow stairwell of her Marais apartment into the gold-lit evening. There was something thick in the air now--something that vibrated just beneath the surface of the cobblestones, as if the old ghosts of the city had returned for their feast. Laughter echoed from café terraces. Fireworks snapped in the distance. And Clara's own footfalls sounded louder than they should, each step a beat in some invisible procession.

She carried no bag, no phone, no ID. Just the invitation in her hand, now slightly creased and warm from her palm. Rue de la Bastille, number seventeen. A palace, Madeleine had said. An old gathering. A revolution of the flesh.

Clara passed through the Place des Vosges, where couples kissed beneath the colonnades and children spun like flares across the grass. She felt eyes follow her--not in judgment, but in curiosity. As though she exuded a fragrance too rare to ignore. Or perhaps, she was imagining it.

She wore only the cream-colored slip. Thin as breath. It clung to her every curve, revealing more than it hid. The evening breeze caressed her thighs like a knowing hand. Her nipples were already stiff. Her pulse, erratic. Still, she walked.

At number seventeen, there was no sign. Just an aged wooden door with a brass handle, half-glowing in the soft light of a wrought-iron lantern above it. Clara knocked once.

The door opened immediately. A man stood there--tall, black-haired, bare-chested under a velvet robe the color of oxblood. He looked at her as one might look at a rare sculpture.

"Clara," he said in a French accent, pronouncing it Cla-ra, the R rolled like a kiss. "Welcome."

He stepped aside. She entered.

The entrance hall was dim, lit only by candle sconces. The scent of jasmine and woodsmoke coiled in the air. Soft strains of music--baroque strings, slow and aching--rose from somewhere below. The man took her hand and led her down a narrow passage lined with framed etchings: reclining bodies, entangled limbs, sighing mouths. Nothing crude. All rendered in sepia and gold.

"I am Luc," he said as they walked. "I am here to receive you. But Madeleine will be your guide."

They reached a second door. Luc paused. "From here on, you belong to the night."

He opened the door.

Light and sound poured out. Clara stepped into a room of impossible warmth.

It was the grand salon of the house--high-ceilinged, walls paneled in walnut, tall windows shrouded with gauze. Dozens of people filled the room, reclining on velvet divans, standing in corners with glasses of wine, some clothed in robes or silk, others entirely nude. But no one looked exposed. They looked... radiant.

A violinist played in one corner, eyes closed, body swaying. The music was slow, hypnotic. Conversations murmured like waves, laughter rose and fell like candlelight.

Then Clara saw her.

Madeleine.

She stood by the marble fireplace, wearing a sheer black gown that revealed the curve of her breasts, the line of her hips, the dark shadow of her sex. Around her neck, a single strand of pearls. Her hair was down now, flowing in dark waves. She turned as if she had felt Clara's gaze.

"Chérie," Madeleine said, approaching. "You came."

Clara could only nod.

Madeleine cupped her face, gently. "You are exquisite. And brave."

Clara felt herself trembling. Madeleine leaned in and kissed her--first on the cheek, then at the corner of her mouth, then slowly, fully, lips brushing lips like silk across silk. Clara moaned softly into her mouth, feeling herself melt into it. The salon vanished.

Madeleine pulled away, smiling. "Follow me."

They passed through another door, this one leading to a quieter chamber. Here, the walls were lined with mirrors, and the floor was layered in Moroccan rugs. A low bed sat in the center, covered in white linen and red rose petals. Four other figures waited.

Madeleine gestured. "These are your companions for the first act. They are here to worship you. And nothing will happen without your desire."

Clara's breath caught. Her thighs were slick.

One of the women stepped forward--a tall, statuesque brunette with warm olive skin and dark eyes. "I'm Sylvie," she said, taking Clara's hand. "May I undress you?"

Clara nodded.

With reverence, Sylvie pulled the slip up over Clara's head, revealing her bare body. Gasps of appreciation filled the room--not crude, not performative. Genuine awe.

Madeleine stepped closer, now fully nude herself, her body lithe, her breasts soft and high, her skin kissed by time.

"We begin," she whispered.

Clara lay back on the bed, her arms above her head, her breath shallow. Four pairs of hands began to touch her: lips on her neck, tongues at her nipples, fingers grazing the insides of her thighs. One of the men--a sculpted redhead named Marc--kissed down her belly and between her legs, while Sylvie kissed her mouth, soft and slow, coaxing sighs from her lips.

Madeleine knelt beside Clara, brushing her hair back. "Your body is not a secret," she whispered. "It is a language. And tonight, it will be read."

The first orgasm came like a thunderclap--Marc's tongue deep inside her, fingers pressing just right, Clara's cries muffled by Sylvie's mouth on hers. She felt herself split open, not with pain, but with pleasure that dissolved the last pieces of who she had been.

But they did not stop.

Sylvie straddled Clara's thigh, her body moving in slow, deliberate waves, while Madeleine licked a path up Clara's side, circling each breast with reverent precision. Clara reached out blindly, touching skin, hair, mouths. A hand slid between her cheeks--soft, oiled, patient. She gasped, not in fear but in ache. Madeleine leaned close.

"Let go," she said. "This is what freedom tastes like."

A finger entered her, gently, not where she expected. Madeleine guided her breathing, kissing her forehead as the digit pressed deeper. Clara trembled, her muscles opening like petals in heat. Another finger joined. Then Marc, hard and glistening, took her mouth again with kisses deep and wet, while Sylvie pinched her nipples between lips and teeth.

Clara came again, the sound animal, holy.

Her body was being played like a cello--each stroke exact, each moan drawn out like a bow across strings. Her thighs trembled. Her hips lifted. Her eyes filled with grateful tears.

Finally, Madeleine whispered, "It is time."

She helped Clara rise, draped a silken shawl around her shoulders, and led her toward the door on the far end of the mirrored room.

It opened slowly, and from below, heat and breath rose up like a blessing.

They descended together, hand in hand, toward the Salle Rouge.

Toward what Clara did not yet know would become her true Bastille.

Chapter 3: Salle Rouge

There are doors that lead inward, and doors that lead beneath. The entrance to the Salle Rouge was both. Clara felt it immediately as Madeleine led her down the narrow spiral stairs, her hand firm, her pace unhurried, like a priestess guiding a novice to a hidden altar. The air grew warmer, thicker, fragrant with sweat and incense. From somewhere below came the sound of breath--not voices, but breath itself, like the city exhaling its centuries of longing.

Clara was barefoot, a silk shawl draped over her shoulders, her skin still glowing from the ecstasy upstairs. Between her thighs, the evidence of what had passed clung to her like memory. Her legs trembled slightly--not from exhaustion, but anticipation, and something else: fear.

When they reached the bottom, the world opened.

The Salle Rouge was neither vast nor confined. It was shaped like a sanctuary--circular, with a domed ceiling painted deep crimson and hung with soft, golden lights that glowed like suspended suns. Cushions, mattresses, and bolsters in shades of garnet and burgundy lined the walls. The floor was velvet. In the center, a platform of dark wood. And around it: bodies.

Dozens of them.

Some moving slowly in pairs or trios. Some watching. Some fully entwined in acts so beautiful and primal they felt like ceremonies. There was no chaos, no noise. Only motion. Rhythm. Flesh.

Clara stopped, stunned. Her breath hitched. Madeleine turned to her, smiling gently.

"This is not performance," she said. "It is communion."

Clara nodded slowly, as though bowing before a revelation.

"Are you afraid?" Madeleine asked, brushing a finger along her collarbone.

"Yes," Clara whispered.

"Good," Madeleine murmured. "Fear is the gatekeeper. Walk through it."

She guided Clara to a low divan near the platform. A few figures approached--men and women, all nude, their skin gleaming with oil and candlelight. They bowed slightly to Madeleine, then turned their eyes to Clara.

"This is our Marianne," Madeleine said softly. "She will be unmade and reborn."

Clara sat. Her heart thundered. A dark-haired woman knelt beside her and began untying the shawl. A man--tall, golden-skinned, eyes like obsidian--knelt behind her and kissed the nape of her neck.

Madeleine crouched before her, held her face.

"You may speak. You may cry. You may stop. Or you may open."

Clara whispered, "I want to open."

"Then begin with your breath."

Madeleine kissed her, slow and firm, and in that kiss Clara gave her consent.

The first moments were like a tide. Hands, warm and steady, undid the shawl. Mouths met her skin. Someone knelt before her and lifted one leg to rest upon a cushion, exposing her fully. She was kissed there--softly, repeatedly--until her thighs trembled. A tongue entered her. Fingers stroked her spine. She gasped, arched, wept. Not from sorrow, but from awe.

Then, Madeleine whispered, "Now your other mouth."

Clara looked at her, eyes wide. She knew what was meant.

She shook slightly. "I've never--"

"I know," Madeleine said, smiling. "It's always someone's first time. In the revolution, for most, it was the first time they lost their heads."

Laughter rippled among the gathered. Warm, not mocking.

Clara exhaled. A breath that came from a deeper place than lungs.

"Will it hurt?"

"Yes," Madeleine said. "A little. Then not at all. Then it will be... beyond."

A cushion was placed beneath her hips. Her legs parted. Oil--warm, fragrant with rose and sandalwood--was poured between her cheeks, massaged with reverent hands. Fingers circled, coaxed. One slipped in, slowly. Clara gasped, clutched Madeleine's hand.

"You are doing beautifully," Madeleine murmured. "You are opening where most remain locked forever."

Another finger joined. Clara's breath stuttered, but her body responded--arching, pulsing, yielding. She felt full, stretched, trembling on the edge of something vast.

Then a body pressed behind her. She felt the weight of him--his heat, his arousal--sliding against her skin.

"Wait," she whispered.

He paused.

Madeleine kissed her ear. "He will enter only with your breath."

Clara nodded, exhaled. The man pushed gently. She cried out, not from pain, but from the flood of sensation--of being breached, filled, claimed. He moved slowly, carefully, whispering to her in French she could not understand but felt in her bones.

It was unlike anything. It was not vulgar. It was not pornographic. It was a surrender so profound, it felt like flight.

And then the rhythm came.

He moved in her, deep and slow, while a woman kissed her open mouth and fingers explored her slick heat from the front. She was penetrated completely--body and soul--her cries no longer shy, but sung.

The Salle Rouge moved with them.

Others joined--kissing her thighs, licking her breasts, offering their mouths, their bodies, their heat. Clara was lifted, turned, adored. Her legs were spread open over a man's face while another took her from behind. A woman sat on her chest and fed her wetness to Clara's mouth like a blessing.

She was nothing now but hunger and song.

Her orgasm came like a revolution--tearing through her, making her sob, arch, convulse. And again. And again.

At some point, she collapsed, panting, her body strewn across cushions like a spent flag of liberty. Her skin glistened. Her sex throbbed. Her soul was nowhere and everywhere.

Madeleine knelt beside her, kissed her forehead.

"You are free now, ma chérie."

Clara opened her eyes. And smiled.

Chapter 4: Une Nouvelle République

Morning came not with a sunrise, but with the gentle hush of silk on skin and the faint aroma of jasmine and ash. Clara lay on her side atop a wide divan, wrapped in white linen that smelled faintly of Madeleine. Her legs were slightly parted, her thighs tender. Between them, the warm ache of fullness lingered, and something slow and pleasant still ebbed in her belly, like an aftershock. A dull soreness pulsed low in her hips--constant, pulsing, not pain but remembrance.

Her mouth was dry. Her heart, quiet. Her body, changed.

She opened her eyes. The Salle Rouge was mostly empty now. A few lovers still lingered, draped over one another like sculptures left to cool. The lights had dimmed to a pale golden hush. Outside, the sounds of Bastille Day had faded. No more fireworks. Only birds.

Madeleine was seated nearby, barefoot in a pale silk robe, smoking a cigarette from a long holder. Her legs were crossed, her hair tousled into something decadent. She looked like a duchess in exile, or perhaps a general who had won a war with pleasure alone.

Clara stirred.

Madeleine looked over. "La citoyenne awakens."

Clara smiled weakly. "I feel like a different species."

"You are."

She sat up slowly, wincing. Madeleine stood, came over, and gently placed a glass of water in her hand.

"How do you feel?"

Clara drank, then said, "Tender. Open. A little broken."

Madeleine leaned in, brushed her hair from her forehead, and kissed it. "Perfect."

There was silence. Clara looked down at her naked body, the faint red marks, the sheen of sweat still caught in the hollow of her collarbone.

Then she said, with a dry laugh, "I suppose this is the part where I become Justine."

Madeleine raised an eyebrow. "Justine? Mon Dieu, no. You are far too sincere for Sade."

Clara chuckled. "Good. Because what happened last night may have been obscene, but it wasn't... perverse. Not like--"

"--Not like la pauvre Justine," Madeleine finished. She sat beside her, letting their bare knees touch.

"You are Claire," she said. "Claire, who came here looking for something she couldn't name. Claire, who opened like a gate. Not a victim. Not a puppet of cruelty. You weren't punished for virtue, my dear. You were rewarded for your courage."

Clara let out a long breath. "Still... maybe I should have saved that for Pervert Day."

Madeleine laughed, loud and rich. "Ah yes, le Jour des Pervers. Perhaps that one falls in November. No, ma chérie, what you did was far too beautiful for that. National Nude Day is about freedom. Sade would've been kicked out by the second act."

Clara smiled. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping the linen tighter around her body.

"You were right," she said softly. "Fear was the gatekeeper. And I walked through."

Madeleine nodded. "And now you walk back into the world. But you won't be the same."

Clara looked toward the entrance, where the stairs curved back up into daylight.

"No," she said. "I don't think I can ever be the same again."

But she did not walk up yet. Not just yet.

The air still held her. Her body still whispered. Something remained.

She lay back down, letting the linen slide away from her breasts, from her hips, baring herself to the soft silence of the Salle Rouge. Madeleine was beside her again, quietly, like a thought returning.

"I thought it would feel obscene," Clara murmured. "I mean--before. The idea. Being taken like that. Both at once. Back there."

Madeleine exhaled slowly. "Doppelte Penetration. Yes. The word sounds mechanical. Industrial. But it is nothing of the sort, when done as art. When done with worship."

Clara's eyes closed. "It felt like I was being... opened into two realities at once. Like I was dissolving between bodies. Inside and behind. My mind couldn't follow. So I just... gave in."

Madeleine touched her wrist gently. "Exactly. The ego collapses. The body rules. And the body knows the way."

Clara turned her head. "There was a moment--when one was in me, and the other pressed against the other place--I thought: I can't. I'll break."

"And yet," Madeleine smiled, "you didn't."

"No," Clara whispered. "I exploded. Into a thousand soft pieces."

They lay in silence.

Then Clara added, "And then I wanted more."

"Desire grows with truth," Madeleine said. "And truth lives at the edge of shame."

Clara smiled. "I don't feel shame."

Madeleine nodded. "Then you are free."

The memory of it bloomed again: how one of the men had held her hips, whispered to her in breathless French, while the other kissed her throat. How their rhythms eventually aligned, not pounding, but stroking her like waves. How Madeleine guided her, held her from above, speaking in fragments: Now... breathe... let go... all of you... all...

How she came not from pain, but from surrender. How her own moans sounded like prayers.

And how, when both men finally spilled into her--one behind, one before--her whole body went still. And in that stillness, she felt herself crowned.

Not as Justine. Not as a woman undone.

But as Claire. Undressed and divine.

She looked to Madeleine again. "Is this what you meant by une nouvelle république?"

"No," Madeleine said, smiling. "This is what you meant by it. And you meant it fully."

Clara breathed deeply, feeling the weight, the pleasure, the ache--and above all, the peace.

She would rise soon. Walk the streets again. Maybe buy croissants. Maybe cry. Maybe laugh at nothing.

But for now, she stayed.

In the aftermath of revolution.

Still pulsing. Still radiant. Still hers.

Chapter 5: Liberté Toujours

It was late afternoon when Clara finally stepped back into the sunlight. The heat had softened into something golden and forgiving. Paris seemed quieter now, like a city that had just exhaled. She walked barefoot down Rue de la Bastille, her sandals in one hand, her cream slip now tied around her waist like a banner, her skin still warm with memory.

Every step felt different--like the pavement recognized her, like the shadows had shifted in her honor. She wasn't exactly sore anymore. More... aware. She could feel the ghost of each touch. Between her thighs. In the curve of her spine. Beneath her skin. And behind her eyes, something deeper still: a fullness, as though her body had been poured into entirely.

She stopped at a small kiosk and bought a bottle of water. The vendor smiled without comment. Perhaps he knew. Or perhaps she simply glowed.

Back in her room, she collapsed onto the cool sheets and laughed. Laughed because her body had become something other. Laughed because it had all happened in one night--no, in one day. A National Day.

And then the realization struck her like a lover's hand across her mind: it hadn't just been Bastille Day. It had also been National Nude Day.

She laughed again. "Of course."

Leave it to the Americans, she thought, to come up with something as cheerfully ridiculous as National Nude Day--a holiday supposedly about body positivity, yet largely celebrated in secret backyards, behind drawn curtains, under nervous glances.

In France, it was different.

In France, they meant it.

No shame. No giggles. No euphemisms.

Only the skin, and what it contains: desire, courage, revolution.

"Vive la France," she whispered, stretching luxuriously. "Vive la nudité. Vive la... whatever the hell just happened to me."

She turned to the side, and there was Madeleine. Not a dream. Not a ghost. Just Madeleine, seated in the window, smoking naked and watching the sky like it belonged to her.

"You stayed," Clara said.

"I never left," Madeleine replied. "You did."

Clara rose, walked to her slowly. Naked again. Free again. Her body a monument to pleasure.

She stood in front of Madeleine and kissed her without permission, without apology. The kiss was slow, wet, and full of everything unspoken. Madeleine stood, pulled Clara onto her lap. Flesh against flesh, lips on throat, thighs rubbing with rising heat.

Clara mounted her like a wave, grinding slowly, her breasts brushing Madeleine's mouth. They didn't speak. They moved. They rocked. Clara's breath caught in her chest as Madeleine slipped two fingers inside her, then three.

"God," Clara moaned.

"No," Madeleine said against her nipple, "only woman."

Clara rode harder, thighs clenching, her body rolling with new command. Then she felt it--Madeleine's hand moving to her rear again, not demanding, just waiting.

Clara turned her face, whispered into her ear, "Yes. Still. Yes."

And Madeleine took her again--front and back--both hands, deep and sure, filling her utterly.

Clara screamed into Madeleine's hair as she shattered. Came again, shaking, gasping, melting.

When it was over, they stayed tangled.

Madeleine whispered, "So. You're definitely not Justine."

Clara laughed breathlessly. "God, no."

"And this was not for Pervert Day."

"No," Clara said, kissing her neck. "This was for Bastille Day. And Nude Day. And for me."

Madeleine lit a cigarette and offered her one. Clara took it. Inhaled. Naked. Sated. Queen of herself.

From somewhere outside, a brass band began to play again.

They smiled at one another, utterly nude, utterly free.

And Clara said, "Vive la liberté. Vive la nudité. And fuck it--vive la claire."

They laughed. And kissed. And then began again.