Emmanuelle (2 page)

The steady, subdued, almost imperceptible vibrations of the metal fuselage attuned her body to the frequency. Starting from her knees, a wave rose along her thighs, resonating on the surface, moving higher and higher, making her quiver.

Phantasms assailed her—lips pressed against her skin, genitals of men and women (whose faces remained ambiguous), penises eagerly rubbing against her, pushing their way between her knees, forcing her legs apart, opening her sex, penetrating it with laborious efforts that enraptured her. One after another, they plunged into the unknown of her body, thrusting into her unendingly, sating her flesh, and endlessly emptying their semen into her.

Thinking Emmanuelle was asleep, the stewardess cautiously tilted back her seat, transforming it into a bed, and spread a cashmere blanket over her long, languid legs. The man stood up and pushed his seat back to the same level as hers. The children had already dozed off. The stewardess wished everyone a good night and turned off the ceiling lights. Only two purple night lights prevented objects and people from losing all shape.

Emmanuelle had abandoned herself to the stewardess’s care without opening her eyes. Her reverie, however, had lost none of its intensity or urgency. Her right hand now began to move over her belly, very slowly, restraining itself, descending toward her pubis. The thin blanket undulated above it. Her fingertips, pushing down on the soft silk of her skirt, whose narrowness made it difficult for her to spread her legs, found the bud of flesh in erection that they sought and pressed it tenderly. Her middle finger began the gentle, careful motion that would bring on orgasm. Almost immediately, the man’s hand came down on hers.

She stopped breathing and felt her muscles and nerves tighten, as though her belly had been struck by a jet of ice water. Her sensations and thoughts were suspended, like a film when the projector has stopped, leaving a single image on the screen. She was neither afraid nor offended. She waited for what was going to follow her collapsed dreams.

The man’s hand did not move. Merely by its weight, it applied pressure to her clitoris, on which her own hand was resting.

Nothing else happened for some time. She then became aware that his other hand was lifting the blanket and drawing it aside. It took hold of her knee and felt its curves and hollows. It rose slowly along her thigh and soon passed over the top of her stocking.

When it touched her bare skin, she started for the first time and tried to break the spell. She sat up awkwardly and turned halfway on her side. As though they wanted to punish her for her futile revolt, the man’s hands abandoned her abruptly. But before she had time to react, they were on her again, this time at her waist. They deftly unfastened and unzipped her skirt, pulled it down to her knees, then moved up again. One of them slipped under her panties and caressed her flat, muscular belly, just above the high mound of her pubis, stroking it as though it were the neck of a thoroughbred. Its fingers ran along the folds of her groin and across the top of her pubic hair, tracing a triangle whose area they seemed to be estimating. The lower angle was very wide, a rather rare feature that had been appreciated by Greek sculptors.

Then the hand forced her thighs to spread farther apart. It closed over her warm, swollen sex, caressing it as if to soothe it, without haste, following the furrow of its lips, dipping in lightly between them, passing over her erect clitoris and coming to rest on the thick curls of her pubis. As they moved to and fro between her legs, the fingers sank deeper between her moist membranes, slowing their advance, and seeming to hesitate as her tension increased. Biting her lips to stifle the sob that was rising from her throat, she panted with desire as the man brought her closer and closer to orgasm without letting her reach it.

Then his hand stopped moving and cupped the whole part of her body that it had inflamed. He leaned toward her, extended his other hand, took one of hers, and drew it inside his trousers. He helped her to grasp his rigid penis and guided her movements, regulating their length and cadence to suit his taste, slowing or accelerating them according to his degree of excitement, until he was convinced that he could rely on her intuition and good will and let her continue the manipulation in her own way.

She sat up to let her arm do its work properly, and he moved closer to her so that she could be sprayed by the sperm he felt welling up from the depths of his glands. He succeeded in restraining himself for a long time, while her bent fingers rose and fell, becoming less timid as they prolonged their caresses, no longer limiting themselves to elementary back-and-forth motions, but opening slightly, skillfully, to slide along the big, swollen vein of his arched penis (lightly scratching it with their filed nails), as far down as possible, as close to his testicles as the tightness of his trousers would permit, then rising again with lascivious twists. His member had grown so much that it seemed endless, but she finally reached its tip and covered it with the folds of loose skin in the hollow of her damp palm before beginning another downward journey, squeezing him tightly again, stretching his foreskin, alternately strangling his tumescent flesh and relaxing her grip on it, barely grazing it or tormenting it, massaging it in broad strokes or irritating it with quick, merciless little movements . . .

When his satisfied penis finally disgorged its semen in long, white, odorous spurts, she received it with strange exaltation along her arms, on her bare belly, on her throat, face, and mouth, and in her hair. It seemed that it would never stop. She felt as if it were flowing down her throat, as if she were drinking it . . . She was seized with an unknown intoxication, a shameless delight. When she let her arm fall, he took hold of her clitoris with his fingertips and brought her to orgasm.

A buzzing sound indicated that the loudspeaker was about to be used. The stewardess’s voice, deliberately softened so the passengers would not be awakened too abruptly, announced that the plane would land at Bahrein in about twenty minutes. It would leave at midnight, local time. A light meal would be served at the airport.

The light in the compartment gradually came on again, imitating the slowness of a sunrise. Emmanuelle used the blanket, which had slipped down to her feet, to wipe away the sperm that had spattered her. She pulled her skirt up over her hips. When the stewardess came in, Emmanuelle was sitting up on her seat, without having raised its back, still trying to make herself presentable.

“Did you sleep well?” the stewardess asked.

Emmanuelle fastened the waist of her skirt. “My blouse is all wrinkled,” she said.

She looked at the damp spots that spread out in both directions from below her collar. She rolled back the lapels of her blouse and the pink tip of a breast appeared. Her neckline remained open and four pairs of English eyes were glued to the profile of her bare breast.

“Don’t you have anything to change into?” asked the stewardess.

“No,” said Emmanuelle.

The two women looked each other in the eye and recognized their complicity; they were both equally excited. The man observed them. There was not a single wrinkle in his suit, his shirt was as neat as when he had boarded the plane, his tie was perfectly straight.

“Come with me,” said the stewardess.

Emmanuelle stood up, stepped past the man, and followed the young English stewardess into the ladies’ lounge. It was filled with mirrors, cushioned footstools, white leather upholstery, and shelves laden with lotions in crystal bottles.

“Wait.”

The stewardess slipped away and returned moments later, carrying a little suitcase. She lifted its calfskin lid and removed a russet sweater of orion, wool, and silk, so light that it was crumpled into a ball that fit into her closed fist. When she shook it out it seemed to swell suddenly like a balloon. Emmanuelle clapped her hands with admiration. “You’re lending it to me?” she asked.

“No, I’m giving it to you. I’m sure it will look good on you.”

“But . . .”

The stewardess put her finger over Emmanuelle’s lips as they rounded to protest her embarrassment. Her tender eyes sparkled. Emmanuelle could not look away from them. She moved her face close to them. But the stewardess spun around and handed her a bottle of toilet water. “Rub yourself with this, it’s delightful!”

Emmanuelle refreshed her face, arms, and neck, started to wipe between her breasts with the pad she had saturated with the perfumed liquid, then changed her mind and quickly unbuttoned the rest of her blouse.

She made it fall to the white carpet by throwing back her arms. Suddenly dizzied by her half-nakedness, she took a deep breath. She turned to the stewardess and looked at her with candid jubilation. The stewardess bent down, picked up the rumpled blouse, and pressed it against her face. “Oh, it smells so good!” she said, laughing mischievously.

Emmanuelle was disconcerted. The reminder of the incredible scene in her compartment seemed out of place to her now. Her only thought, which was turning in her mind as though in a cage, was to get rid of her skirt and stockings, to be completely naked for that beautiful girl. Her fingers were already toying with the buckle of her belt.

“How thick and black your hair is!” the stewardess exclaimed, playfully running a brush over the waves that hung down Emmanuelle’s naked back to below her waist. “It’s so shiny, so silky! I wish my hair were as beautiful as yours.”

“But I like yours!” protested Emmanuelle.

Oh, if only the stewardess would undress, too! Emmanuelle desired her so much that her voice was husky when she implored: “Isn’t it possible to take a bath on this plane?”

“Of course. But you’d better wait—the bathrooms at the airport are more comfortable. Anyway, you wouldn’t have time, we’re going to land in five minutes.”

Emmanuelle was unable to resign herself. She pulled on the zipper of her skirt.

“Hurry and put on my sweet little sweater,” the English girl said reproachfully, handing it to her.

She helped her put her head through the narrow opening. The elastic sweater was clinging and thin, the tips of her breasts stood out as visibly as if they had been painted reddish brown. The stewardess seemed to notice them for the first time. “What a seductive sight!” She pressed on one of the sharp nipples with her forefinger, as though she were ringing a doorbell. Emmanuelle’s eyes twinkled.

“Is it true,” Emmanuelle asked, “that all airline stewardesses are virgins?”

The English girl burst out laughing, then, before Emmanuelle had time to react, she opened the door and pulled her outside. “Go back to your seat, quickly! The red light is on, we’re about to land.”

Emmanuelle scowled. Aside from everything else, she had no desire to sit with the man in her compartment again.

The stopover was boring. What good did it do to know she was in the Arabian desert if she could see nothing of it? The airport building, aseptic and chromed, too glaringly lighted, refrigerated, airtight, and soundproof, bore a singular resemblance to the interior of the artificial satellite in the televised newscast that was being shown in the waiting room. She glumly took a bath, then drank tea and ate pastry with four or five other passengers, one of whom was “her” man.

She looked at him with astonishment, trying to understand what had taken place between them an hour earlier. That episode did not fit in with the rest of her life. But thinking about it was too complicated, too risky. She began making diligent efforts to empty the part of her brain that persisted in asking questions.

By the time the movement of the others, rather than the incomprehensible voice of the loudspeaker, told her she had to return to the plane, she was no longer quite sure of what it was that she was trying so hard to forget.

When the passengers were back aboard the plane, they saw that it had been cleaned, tidied up, and aired. Fresh perfume had been sprayed in the compartments. The reclining seats were covered with new blankets. Big, luminously white pillows, swollen with down, made the midnight-blue velvet on which they rested still more tempting. The steward came to ask if anyone would like a drink. No? Well, then, sleep well. The stewardess also came in to wish everyone a good night. That ceremony delighted Emmanuelle. She felt herself becoming happy again—in a positive way, wholeheartedly, with certainty. She wanted the world to be exactly as it was. Everything on earth was absolutely right.

She lay back in her seat. She lifted her legs one after the other, bending and unbending her knees, working the muscles of her thighs, rubbing her ankles together with a soft rustling of nylon.

“After all,” she mused, “it’s not just my knees that are worth looking at, but all of my legs. No one can deny that they’re really pretty; they’re like two little brooks covered with dry leaves and swollen with perversity, amusing themselves by passing over each other. And they’re not the only good things about me. I also like my skin, and the way it turns golden in the sun, like a grain of corn, without ever reddening. I like my behind, too. And the tiny little raspberries at the tips of my breasts, with their collars of red sugar. I wish I could lick them . . .”

The ceiling lights dimmed. With a sigh of well-being, she pulled up the blanket, scented with a fragrance of pine needles.

When only the night lights were on, she turned over on her side and tried to see the man. Till now, when she had stretched out beside him, she had not dared to look at him directly. Her gaze met his. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, with no expression other than one of perfect tranquillity. She recognized the spark of slightly amused and protective interest that she had noticed when they first met. (When had that been, exactly? Was it only seven hours ago?) The expression on his face was what she liked most about him.