Poupée d'occasion

Musing #15 - Pleasure had never been lost in translation - until now.

Bonjour,

This is an inspired continuation of

Velvet Lure

’s sensually satisfying piece, My Gallery Night: Watched and Owned.

Go and check that out first - or none of this will make much sense at all.

Megs xx

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A few months later - when the sting was gone and the memory of pleasure had faded to a dull throb - my best friend Bella’s sister, Aimee, booked a spontaneous trip to Paris.

She’d said she needed to escape. To a place with culture, chaos and croissants. But I knew the real reason. Knew that she’d overheard her sister and I - half-drunk on red wine one night - whispering about Lucien. She’d pounced. Asked me to give her the gory details and I had. Had showed her his Instagram - filled with pieces of his work, feminine and raw, and flashes of him. A collarbone under white linen and five o’clock shadow framed by billowing cigarette smoke. And she’d been obsessed. Not with him, necessarily. But the idea of him.

The rawness.

The intensity.

‘I just want to look,’ she’d said with a smirk, Galerie du Soupir up on her phone screen. ‘At the art, obviously. If he flirts with me, it’s not my fault.’

I didn’t say anything. But my smile was tight - forced. I wasn’t jealous, not exactly. But the thought of her walking into that gallery - standing where I stood, seeing what I saw, touching what I…

It made my skin itch.

She texted me the minute she’d walked through the doors.

‘Bonjour, Galerie du Soupir. Going in. Wish me luck, bitch.’

And then again, three hours later.

‘Slut, he’s here and he’s fucking gorgeous. You were holding out on me.’

My stomach lurched but I didn’t respond.

It was early in the morning when she FaceTimed me. I was in the bath, enjoying a lazy Saturday morning when I didn’t have to work and I almost ignored it. But I was desperate. I had to know.

It was almost midnight in Paris, and I could hear jazz in the background, the clink of a wine glass. Aimee’s face filled my screen - flushed. Glowing and obviously tipsy.

‘Tell me everything,’ I said, trying to sound casual, though my heart started pounding like a caged animal.

She bit her lip and I hoped she wasn’t about to all of a sudden learn boundaries.

‘Bitch, he remembered you,’ she said, words loud in the stillness of my Saturday morning.

‘He what?’

She smiled - teasing me with what she knew. ‘He didn’t say your name, exactly. Just told me that he’d had an Australian muse once. Left him something pink and pretty. Then he winked at me.’ She laughed then, looking at something behind the camera. ‘He’s a lady-killer, isn’t he?’

Heat spread over my skin that had nothing to do with the water I was submerged in.

My underwear. He’d kept them. I’d known they’d made their way into his studio. Had seen them occasionally in the odd Instagram scroll - but they’d been absent for a while and I’d assumed he’d forgotten I existed.

‘He is,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, he was, I suppose.’

She smiled again at whatever - whoever - was behind her phone and it unsettled something within me.

‘And?’ I asked.

‘He asked if I wanted to see his studio. You know, for art reasons.’

Fuck.

‘Aimee!’

She shrugged a little. ‘What? You told Bella the sex was life-altering. I can’t have you lying to my sister. I’m doing field research.’ She laughed, and I tried to smile but my jaw felt suddenly tight. ‘Anyway, I thought you might wanna say hi before I went in…’ And she turned the camera.

Lucien.

He leaned against the wall outside the bar I knew to be next to his gallery. He had a glass of red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and his hair, which was longer than before, was tousled. I tried to decide if he looked freshly fucked. He didn’t - but I knew it wouldn’t be long. His eyes locked onto the screen immediately, and he smiled.

‘Bonsoir, poupée.’

I heard Aimee’s laugh. ‘What did you call her?’

She couldn’t speak French. Couldn’t even understand anything beyond the lyrics from Lady Marmalade. Didn’t bother to learn even the basics before she left.

My throat closed at the nickname. I couldn't breathe, let alone speak. My mouth opened, a noise half-formed and then–

The screen shifted. Spun wildly for a moment and landed on a hand that definitely was not Aimee’s. I could hear her giggling in the background, walking through a hallway and into a warmly lit room I could only assume was his flat.

I was about to hang up - awkward and burning - and drown myself in the tepid turning bathwater when something stopped me. The screen didn’t go black. The call didn’t end.

Instead, it dropped onto what looked like a desk and kept going. Rolling. Live.

And I froze.

I could hear them. Laughing, talking in quiet voices. His accent heating something within me. Like cigarettes and summer in Paris.

Then, in French - ‘J’ai envie de savoir si tu as le goût d’elle.’

My breath left my body in one sharp exhale. She couldn’t understand him. Couldn’t know what he’d said.

‘God, it’s so hot when you talk like that.’

Fucking idiot.

A thump. Fabric shifting. I tried desperately not to move. To not break the spell in case they heard. I still didn’t know if what I was doing was right, but there I was.

I moved my hand under the water - feeling the slick softness between my legs and holding in the deep moan that wanted to escape me.

A gasp - hers.

A growl - his.

I should have hung up. Should have closed the app and dropped my phone into the water. Or yelled. Gotten their attention. Laughed it off and started drinking at eight in the morning.

Instead, I let my fingers linger between my folds as I listened.

He continued to murmur things in French. Things that I knew she wouldn’t understand, and hoped they weren’t for her anyway. I caught poupée again. And ‘ouvre ta bouche’, which had me biting into my fist to keep from crying out. Hearing those words from his mouth - knowing somehow that they were for me - had me craving something I didn’t know I wanted.

And then, I heard her moan. High pitched and breathy - not fake because I knew the pleasure was real - but practiced. Like she didn’t appreciate what she had. He was fucking her. Hard. The way he fucked me. The way I’d memorised in my blood. In my bones.

She had no idea I was still there. But he did. I knew he did. And if I wasn’t already sure - the way he said ‘J’espère qu’elle voit ce que je te fais,’ thick with heat - would have given him away.

My whole body clenched - betraying me. My hand slid back under the water. I gasped, loudly. Who gave a fuck if they could hear, now?

The bed creaked and Aimee’s voice, gasping out little cries of, ‘yes, yes.’

And Lucien - my Lucien - grunting into her neck, saying things that really belonged to me.

‘This cunt feels so good,’ he growled in English, before continuing in his perfect French, ‘même si c’est plus la sienne.’

My whole body convulsed as I came. Alone in my bath on the other side of the world while he fucked her. And I hated how much I loved it. Hated how much I needed it.

The bath turned cold as I laid there and I didn’t notice when the sound stopped. There was a faint thud - then silence. The screen dark.

No message. No goodbye. Nothing.

Just me, alone. Breathless. Fucked up. Watching the ghost of something that refused to let me go.

He knew I’d watched. He’d wanted me to. And I didn’t know who I hated more for it - him, or myself.

But then, later, when it was the middle of my day and early, early in the morning in Paris, I got an Instagram DM.

Lucien Carreau: ‘Did you enjoy the show, mon cœur? The lines were written just for you.’

Amelia Quinn: ‘You paint well, but your performance skills could use a little work. Maybe your scene partner was all wrong. But it was cute watching you trying to replace me.’

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Translations:

‘poupée’ = Doll.

‘J’ai envie de savoir si tu as le goût d’elle’ = I want to know if you taste like her.

‘ouvre ta bouche’ = Open your mouth.

‘J’espère qu’elle voit ce que je te fais’ = I hope she sees what I’m doing to you.

‘même si c’est plus la sienne’ =Even if it’s no longer hers.

‘mon cœur’ = My heart.

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Megan Peacock, 2025

Image: Awakening Painting by Henadzi Havartsou | Saatchi Art