Free Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan

smoothing a piece of percale. When Emmanuelle began moaning almost inaudibly, they climbed to her nipples and made circular motions on them, sometimes barely grazing them, sometimes pushing them down into the thickness of her breasts. Waves traveled through her all the way to the base of her spine. She arched her back and cried out plaintively for long minutes. The hands continued their work on her sensitive nipples until her orgasm died down, leaving her limp and inert.
    Without wasting any time, the masseuse shifted to her shoulders, arms, and ankles. Emmanuelle was slowly returning to normal. She finally opened her eyes and smiled faintly. The masseuse smiled back at her stiffly and said something that sounded like a question. At the same time she moved her slender fingers toward Emmanuelle’s belly, looking at her with her eyebrows raised, as though waiting for permission. Emmanuelle nodded. The hand, weighted by the vibrator, carefully made practiced movements on the surface of her sex and in its folds, knowing exactly what to do at each moment in order to give the greatest pleasure. Sure of the outcome, adding the virtuosity of its quivering, rubbing, and scratching to the power of the electric vibrations, it made no effort to be gentle, and gave Emmanuelle no respite.
    She held back with all her strength, but her resistance was short-lived. She had another orgasm, so violent that even the masseuse’s face showed a certain alarm. For a long time after the hands had been withdrawn from her, Emmanuelle continued writhing, gasping, clutching the edges of the white table with her fingers.
    “The walls are supposed to be soundproof,” Ariane said as they were leaving together, “but I heard you right through them. Now I hope you won’t ever try to tell me you prefer mathematics.”
    Marie-Anne came to Emmanuelle’s house on four afternoons in a row. She interrogated her more closely each time, demanding—and getting—new details about her relations with Jean and the incontinence of Emmanuelle’s daily reveries.
    “If you’d actually given yourself to all the men you’ve imagined doing it with,” Marie-Anne observed one day, “you’d be an accomplished woman.”
    “You mean I’d be dead,” retorted Emmanuelle, laughing.
    “Why?”
    “Do you think a woman can make love with men as often as she can make herself come by her own efforts?”
    “Why not?”
    “Listen, it’s tiring to be taken by a man!”
    “And caressing yourself never tires you?”
    “No.”
    “How often do you do it now?”
    Emmanuelle smiled modestly. “I did it a lot yesterday. At least fifteen times, I think.”
    “There are some women who do it that often with men.”
    Emmanuelle nodded. “Yes, I know,” she said, though she did not seem tempted. “Men aren’t always so exciting, you know. They’re heavy, they’re hard, sometimes they even hurt you. And they don’t necessarily know the way a girl likes to come best . . .”
    Paradoxically, there was only one subject about which she could not bring herself to speak frankly. She barely alluded to it now and then, awkwardly, unable to discern whether Marie-Anne understood or not. She herself had difficulty in understanding a shyness and discretion that nothing in her visitor’s conduct seemed to justify. Marie-Anne always undressed as soon as she arrived. She had readily discarded her blouse the first time Emmanuelle had suggested it to her, and from then on they spent their time together naked, on the terrace surrounded by foliage. But Emmanuelle showed her excitement only by caressing herself more often. She did not dare to touch Marie-Anne or invite her to touch her, even though she wanted it so much that it kept her awake at night. A strange modesty and a strange immodesty were battling for her soul. She sometimes wondered—though confusedly and without allowing herself to think about it too deeply—whether that unwonted reserve was not actually a new and superior