Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan

with female sexuality. She told herself that she knew nothing in the world more beautiful or worthier of being loved. The absence of hair revealed the slit of Bee’s sex, which rose high and was deeply and sharply cut, offering itself to the spectator’s gaze without ambiguity. There was a kind of defiance in the fact that her boyish chest was tanned the same as the rest of her body, so that one could not help assuming that it had also been exposed to the sun and that others had been able to contemplate that hermaphroditic nudity at leisure. And, despite her distant grace, the smooth, split bulge at the bottom of her belly was so sensual, and thrust itself forward so invitingly, that Emmanuelle felt as if her own sex were being probed by a hand. She knew she had to possess Bee without delay; that voluptuous furrow, that crack, had to be opened to her . . . Oh, that crack! The sight of it made her tremble. She opened her mouth to say what she wanted, but just then Bee turned toward the bathroom.
    “What about that shower?” she asked.
    The artifice now seemed superfluous to Emmanuelle. “Come to bed,” she ordered, to cut Bee’s movement short.
    Bee stopped in front of the door, hesitantly. Then she made up her mind to laugh. “But I feel like cooling off, not sleeping,” she said.
    Emmanuelle wondered if she really thought she had been invited to take a nap, or if she was only pretending innocence. Looking at her as she stood there naked, she was dismayed to see no veiled meaning in her eyes.
    She went over to Bee and opened the door. “Then we’ll make love in the shower,” she said firmly.

4
    Cavatina,
or the Love of Bee
Stop, moment: thou art so beautiful!
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
I shall leave the bed as she left it, unmade and disrupted,
with the sheets tangled, so that the form of her body
will remain imprinted beside mine.
Until tomorrow, I shall not go to the bath, I shall wear no
garments and I shall not comb my hair, lest I efface her caresses.
I shall not eat this morning, nor this evening, and on my lips
I shall put neither rouge nor powder, so that her kiss will remain.
I shall leave the shutters closed and I shall not open the door,
lest the lingering memory be carried away by the wind.
—Pierre Louÿs, Les Chansons de Bilitis,
“Le passé qui survit”
    The big white bathroom was equipped with several kinds of showers. One was attached to the ceiling, another to the wall, a third and smaller one at the end of a long, flexible tube that could be held in the hand and bent in any direction. The two women stood beside each other under the crossed streams of water. Emmanuelle had drawn her hair up to the top of her head to protect it, and that made her look as tall as Bee.
    She told Bee that she was going to show her how to use the flexible shower. She took the tube in her right hand, put her left arm around Bee’s hips, and ordered her to spread her legs.
    Bee smiled and obeyed. Emmanuelle sent the warm jet slanting downward to Bee’s sex, then moved it closer, sometimes making it quiver slightly, sometimes giving it a spiral motion. She seemed thoroughly familiar with the rules of that game. The water cascaded between Bee’s legs. Emmanuelle looked up. “Does it feel good?” she asked.
    Bee seemed to consider the question incongruous. She hesitated a moment, apparently wanting to say something, then she changed her mind and finally contented herself with nodding. A moment later, however, she admitted, “Yes, very good.”
    Without ceasing to direct the shower with a sure hand, Emmanuelle leaned forward and took one of Bee’s little nipples in her mouth. She felt a hand touch her hair. Was it to push her away? Was it to draw her closer? She pressed the miniature bud between her lips, provoked it with the tip of her tongue, sucked it. It immediately became hard and more than doubled its size. She lifted her head, triumphantly. “You see . . .”
    She stopped short. Bee’s