Return to the Chateau by Pauline Réage Read Free Book Online Page A

accommodating herself to the probing hand.
    “Why didn’t he say anything to me about it?” O kept repeating to herself, over and over. “Why didn’t he?”
    And sometimes she had the feeling that, quite simply, she had been abandoned, and that Sir Stephen had sent her to Roissy, turned her over to Roissy, as Anne-Marie had put it, in order to get rid of her. And then again she imagined that the opposite was true, that he had done it because he desired her all the more. Then Anne-Marie was right: whatever he wanted was of no concern of hers, nor were his reasons any of her business; all that mattered was that he had his own good reasons. And at that point the whole cycle would begin all over again: “Why didn’t he say anything to me? Why didn’t he?” And what could she do, at this juncture, to keep the tears from flowing, or at least to keep the others from seeing them flow? Noelle saw them. She gave her a slight but very tender smile and shook her finger at her, signifying that O ought to control herself. O smiled in return and dried her eyes with both her fists, the way children do when they’ve been scolded. She didn’t have any napkin, and she was naked. Luckily, Anne-Marie, who had removed the pin holding Monique’s scarf and was busy caressing the brownish tips of her breasts, was not looking at O. She was watching Monique’s face to see the nascent signs of pleasure reflected there, and even while she caressed she kept plying her with questions: How many men had entered her body since the previous evening? Who were they? Had she been as open to them as she was now?
    As she said these last words, Anne-Marie called Noelle and O, and, without letting go of Monique, had them lift and fasten the two sides of her dress. Monique had generous, golden buttocks, and finely shaped, unmarked thighs. In a monotone, Monique had answered each of Anne-Marie’s questions: Five men had taken her, three of whom she did not know; she gave the names of the other two. Yes, she had opened herself as best she could. Anne-Marie, making Monique bend over, demonstrated to the other two girls how easily she was able to plunge, one after the other, the two longest fingers of her hand first into the sex then into the rear. Each time she did they could see Monique’s buttocks contract as she closed around the fingers, moaning. Finally she gave a cry, her hands gripped her breasts, her head was thrown back, and, beneath her black veil, her eyes closed. Anne-Marie let her go.
    It was not until after midnight that O, the evening of that first day, was taken and chained in her room. She had spent the afternoon in the library, dressed in her lovely gray and yellow dress lined with matching yellow taffeta, whose voluminous folds she took in both her hands to raise whenever the order was given to her to lift her skirt. Noelle, who was dressed in a similar red dress, was with her as were two blonde girls, whose names Noelle failed to tell her until they were alone that evening: the rule of silence, in the presence of any male, were he a master or a valet, was absolute.
    It was just three o’clock in the afternoon when the four girls entered the empty room, whose windows were wide open. It was warm and pleasant; the sun struck the wall of the main building at right angles, its reflection casting a false light on one of the ivy-colored walls. And O was mistaken. The room was not empty: there was a valet standing on guard duty against a door. O knew that she had no right to look at him, but she couldn’t help doing so. Being careful not to raise her eyes any higher than the man’s waist, she found herself once again overwhelmed with the same feeling of panic and fascination which she had experienced a year earlier. No, she had forgotten nothing, and yet, in actuality, it was worse than in her memory, this sex so free in its pouch, and so visible between the thighs of the tightfitting black breeches like those one sees in sixteenth-century