Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan Read Free Book Online

wanted to cooperate in my defloration, not submit to it passively. He made me lie on the seat of the car. The top was down and I could see the green heads of the trees. He stood in the opening of the door. He didn’t begin by caressing me. He entered me immediately, but in such a way that I don’t remember feeling any pain. Far from it! I came so much that I fainted or fell asleep, I don’t know which. In any case, I don’t remember a thing until the restaurant in the forest where we had dinner. It was wonderful! Afterward, Jean asked for a room and we went on making love until midnight. It didn’t take me long to learn!”
    “What did your parents say?”
    “Nothing. The next day I went around proclaiming that I was no longer a virgin and that I was in love. They seemed to think it was perfectly normal.”
    “And Jean asked you to marry him?”
    “Certainly not! Neither of us had any idea of getting married. I was only seventeen, and barely out of school. And I was too glad to have a lover, to be a man’s ‘mistress.’”
    “Then why did you get married?”
    “One day Jean announced to me calmly, as always, that his company was sending him to Thailand. ‘I’m going to marry you before I leave,’ he said without further ado. ‘You’ll join me later, when I have a house for you to live in.’”
    “How did you feel about it?”
    “I laughed wildly. A month later, we were married. My parents had considered it only natural for me to be Jean’s mistress, but they protested violently when he talked about marrying me. They tried to convince him that he was too old, that I was too young, even ‘too innocent’! What do you think of that? But it was Jean who convinced them. I wish I knew what he said to them. My father must have been hard to persuade. He couldn’t resign himself to seeing me drop my math.”
    “What math?”
    “I’d begun studying mathematics at the university.”
    “What ever gave you such an idea?” asked Marie-Anne, laughing.
    “Well, I love math. Jean was supposed to leave a short time after our wedding, but luckily he was delayed for six months, so we weren’t separated right away. I was able to be his wife as long as I’d been his mistress. And I found that it was as much fun to be married as it was to be a sinner, although at first it seemed odd to make love at night.”
    “What happened afterward? Where did you live while he was gone? With your parents?”
    “Of course not! I lived in his apartment, or rather our apartment.”
    “He wasn’t afraid to leave you all alone like that?”
    “Afraid? Of what?”
    “That you’d deceive him, naturally!”
    Emmanuelle laughed. “I don’t think so. We never talked about it. It must not have occurred to him. It didn’t to me, either.”
    “But you still did it, didn’t you?”
    “No. Why? Lots of men ran after me. They seemed ridiculous to me . . .”
    “Then what you told the girls wasn’t a lot of nonsense?”
    “The girls?”
    “Yesterday, have you forgotten already? You told them you’d never gone to bed with any man but your husband.”
    Emmanuelle hesitated for a fraction of a second. That was long enough to put Marie-Anne on the alert. She pivoted, knelt, and leaned over the arm of the chair, radiating suspicion.
    “There’s not one word of truth in all that,” she said accusingly. “I can tell from your face. You ought to see how frank you look!”
    Emmanuelle tried to be evasive, without conviction. “First of all, I never said any such thing . . .”
    “What? You didn’t tell Ariane that you hadn’t deceived your husband? That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to you. Because I didn’t believe you. Luckily!”
    Emmanuelle maintained her sophistry. “Well, you’re wrong. And I repeat that I didn’t say what you claim I did. I merely said that I’d been faithful to Jean the whole time I was in Paris. That’s all.”
    “What do you mean, that’s all?”
    Emmanuelle forced herself to appear nonchalant