features had lost their mask of serenity. Her gray eyes were still more immense, her lips were thicker and more lustrous. With her face almost childlike, purified, a Bee whom Emmanuelle had not known till now, electrifyingly intense and beautiful, abandoned herself to orgasm without a cry, without a quiver, without letting the rhythm of her body betray the violence of her pleasure.
Her ecstasy continued so long that Emmanuelle wondered if she was still aware of her presence. Then, little by little, her marvelous expression faded away and Emmanuelle was sad that her sensual rapture could not have lasted forever. She was so intimidated by the transfiguration she had witnessed that she did not dare to speak. Bee smiled at her.
Emmanuelle put her arms around her neck and kissed her lips. She moaned with pleasure when Bee’s body fused with hers. The streaming coolness of their two skins was a caress in itself. She embraced her tightly and slowly rubbed her pubis against hers.
Bee sensed the pleasure that Emmanuelle was seeking; she put her hand on her back, pressed gently on her buttocks, and grafted her onto her belly. A singular savor penetrated her open mouth, juicy and sweet like an exotic fruit. She felt a spasm rising in the beautiful body she was holding against herself. She helped it with all her power. She heard her lips murmuring words that had the sound of love.
“Emmanuelle is intelligent, curious about everything, and always in a good humor, but that’s not why I married her,” Jean said to Christopher as the jeep rolled along, making two red ruts on the slimy road.
Their skin was sticky with sweat, the heaviness of the air inflamed their throats. They crossed a little bridge. Naked boys and girls were playing in the water, splashing each other amid shouts of laughter.
“Look. Isn’t that the Orient you see in films?”
Jean stopped the engine. They went down to the stream and cooled their faces. The children leaped with enthusiasm, pointing at them, and chirping in chorus, “ Farang! Farang! ”
“What are they saying?” Christopher asked uneasily.
“Only ‘Europeans! Europeans!’ The way European children shout, ‘Chinese! Chinese!’”
A little girl, whose wet hair caressed her shoulders with long black tongues, came over to them. She had picked up a bright, blue sarong, which contrasted with the amber of her skin, and was tying it around her waist as she walked.
“Than yak sue som-o mai tja?” she asked, giving the foreigners a bewitching smile.
“I don’t know what she wants,” Jean confessed to Christopher.
She pointed to a basket of enormous grapefruit that had been placed in the shade of a breadfruit tree.
“Ah, I see. She’s offering us some grapefruit. That’s not a bad idea.”
Jean nodded and said, “Ao ko dai!”
The girl ran over to the basket and came back with a grapefruit bigger than her head. She held up a hand with all five fingers spread apart.
“Ha baht.”
“It’s a deal,” said Jean. He handed her a five-baht note which she examined carefully. “There, are our accounts in order?”
“Kha!”
She seemed to take this bilingual conversation in stride. Christopher was surprised.
“Does she understand French?”
“Not a single word. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little chat.”
She held the fruit up to her face with a questioning expression.
“Pok hai mai tja?”
Jean spread his arms in a gesture of incomprehension. The girl’s free hand drew imaginary rings around the grainy skin of the fruit, then went through the motions of peeling it.
“Yes, of course, why not?” said Jean. “That would be nice of you.”
She went back to her basket, took out a little knife with a sharp, curved, bronze blade, and sat down with the grapefruit on her skirt, which was pulled tight by her crossed legs.
The two men sat down on the grass, facing her.
“Since you didn’t marry Emmanuelle for her mind, as you’ve said, I suppose it must have
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