The Flying Unicorn
The Flying Unicorn
Love has a thousand postures; the simplest and the
least tiring is to lie halfway over on your right side.
—Ovid, The Art of Love
Emmanuelle boarded the plane in London that was to take her to Bangkok. At first the rich smell of leather, like that preserved in British cars after years of use, the otherworldly lighting, and the thickness and silence of the carpets were all she could grasp of the environment she was entering for the first time.
She did not understand what was being said to her by the smiling man who was guiding her, but she was not upset. Although her heart may have been beating faster, it was only from a sensation of strangeness, not from apprehension. The blue uniforms, the thoughtfulness and authority of the personnel assigned to welcome and initiate her—everything combined to create a feeling of security and euphoria. A new universe was going to be hers for the next twelve hours of her life, a universe with different laws, more constraining, but perhaps more delectable for that very reason. The vigilance of freedom was replaced by the leisure and placidity of subjection.
The steward led her to her seat. It was what would normally have been a window seat, but there was no window. She could see nothing beyond the curtained walls. It made no difference to her. She did not care about anything but abandoning herself to the powers of that deep seat, drifting into drowsiness between its woolly arms, against its foam shoulder, on its long, mermaid lap.
An English stewardess stopped in the aisle. Her hands flew up to the rack above Emmanuelle’s head to put away her light, leather traveling case. She spoke French and the impression of semi-torpor that Emmanuelle had been feeling for the past two days (she had arrived in London only the day before) was dispelled.
As the stewardess leaned over her, her blondeness made Emmanuelle’s long hair seem still more nocturnal. They were both dressed nearly alike, but a brassiere showed through the English girl’s blouse, while the slightest movement revealed that Emmanuelle’s breasts were free under hers. She was glad that the stewardess was young and that her eyes were like her own—flecked with gold.
Emmanuelle tried to think of something to ask that would please her. Maybe she should show an interest in the plane. But before she could speak, two c***dren—a boy and a girl—pushed aside the velvet curtain that separated Emmanuelle’s row of seats from the row in front. They looked so much alike that one had to assume they were twins. Emmanuelle noted at a glance the graceless, conventional clothes that stamped them as English schoolc***dren, their reddish blond hair, their expression of affected coldness, and the haughtiness with which they spat out brief words to the stewardess. Although they were apparently only twelve or thirteen, their confident manner created a distance between them and her that she had no thought of reducing. They sedately planted themselves in the two seats across the aisle from Emmanuelle. At the same time the last of the four passengers for whom the compartment was reserved came in and she turned her attention to him.
He was at least a head taller than she was. His hair and mustache were black. She liked his amber-colored suit. She judged him to be elegant and well-bred, two qualities that, after all, covered most of what one hoped to find in a fellow passenger. She tried to guess his age from the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes—forty, perhaps fifty? He would be more agreeable, she thought, than the two pretentious c***dren.
The stewardess had left the compartment and, through the gap in the curtains, Emmanuelle could now see her blue hip pressed against an invisible passenger. She tried to turn her eyes away. Her black hair whipped her cheeks and flowed over her face. Then the English girl straightened up, turned toward the rear of the plane, appeared between the curtains, pushing their long legs apart with her hands, and stepped toward Emmanuelle. “Would you like me to introduce your traveling companions to you?” she asked; and, without waiting for an answer, she told her the man’s name. Emmanuelle thought she heard “Eisenhower,” which amused her and made her miss the names of the twins.
The man began talking to her in English. She had no idea what he was saying. Seeing her perplexity, the stewardess questioned the three others, then laughed, showing the tip of her tongue. “What a pity!” she said lightheartedly. “None of them knows a single word of French. This will be a good chance for you to brush up on your English!”
Before Emmanuelle could protest, the stewardess moved her fingers in a graceful, cryptic gesture to her passengers, turned on her heel, and walked away. Emmanuelle was again alone. She felt like sulking, holding herself aloof from everything.
A loudspeaker hidden behind the curtains, came to life. After a male voice had spoken in English, Emmanuelle recognized the stewardess speaking in French (“For me,” she thought), welcoming the passengers aboard the Flying Unicorn and giving flight instructions.
The awakening of the jet engines was indicated by a murmur and a slight quivering of the soundproof walls. Emmanuelle was not even aware that the plane was moving along the runway. And it was a long time before she realized that she was flying.
She did not realize it, in fact, until the red light went off and the man beside her stood up and offered, by gestures, to put away her jacket, which she had kept on her knees without knowing why. She let him take it. He smiled, opened a book, and stopped looking at her. A waiter appeared, carrying a tray of glasses. She chose a cocktail by its color, but it was not the one she expected; it was stronger.
What must have been an afternoon on the other side of the silk wall went by without Emmanuelle’s having time to do anything but eat pastry, drink tea, and leaf through a magazine that the stewardess had given her (she refused to accept a second one because she did not want to be distracted from the novelty of flying).
Then a waiter placed a little table in front of her and served various foods that were hard to identify, in unusually shaped containers. Her dinner seemed to last for hours but the discovery of the culinary game pleased her so much that she was in no hurry for it to end.
She felt light and carefree. She noticed that she had even lost her dislike of the twins. The stewardess came and went, never failing to say something cheerful to her as she passed. When she was absent, Emmanuelle was no longer impatient.
She wondered if it was time to go to sleep. But actually she was free to sleep whenever she chose in that winged cradle so far from the surface of the earth, in a region of space where there were neither winds nor clouds, and where she was not sure there was even night and day.
Emmanuelle’s knees were bare in the golden light shining down from overhead, and the man was staring at them. Under the invisible nylon, the movement of their dimples made agile shadows in the toasted-bread color of their skin. She knew the excitement they caused. They seemed more naked than ever under the spotlight which had been turned on them. She felt as if she were coming out of the water after a moonlight swim. Her temples throbbed faster and her lips filled with blood. She closed her eyes and saw herself not partially but totally naked, and she knew that once again she would be helpless against the temptation of that narcissistic contemplation.
She resisted, but only to increase the joy of gradually slipping into surrender. Its nearness was announced by a diffuse languor, a kind of warm consciousness of her whole body, a desire for abandon, for opening, for fullness; nothing very different from the physical satisfaction she would have felt from stretching out on the warm sand of a sun-drenched beach. Then, little by little, the surface of her lips became still more lustrous, her breasts swelled, and her legs tensed, attentive to the slightest contact. Her brain began experimenting with images. They were disconnected and formless at first, but were enough to moisten her mucous membranes and arch her back.
The steady, subdued, almost imperceptible vibrations of the metal fuselage attuned her body to the frequency. Starting from her knees, a wave rose along her thighs, resonating on the surface, moving higher and higher, making her quiver.
Phantasms assailed her—lips pressed against her skin, genitals of men and women (whose faces remained ambiguous), penises eagerly rubbing against her, pushing their way between her knees, forcing her legs apart, opening her sex, penetrating it with laborious efforts that enraptured her. One after another, they plunged into the unknown of her body, thrusting into her unendingly, sating her flesh, and endlessly emptying their semen into her.
Thinking Emmanuelle was asleep, the stewardess cautiously tilted back her seat, transforming it into a bed, and spread a cashmere blanket over her long, languid legs. The man stood up and pushed his seat back to the same level as hers. The c***dren had already dozed off. The stewardess wished everyone a good night and turned off the ceiling lights. Only two purple night lights prevented objects and people from losing all shape.
Emmanuelle had abandoned herself to the stewardess’s care without opening her eyes. Her reverie, however, had lost none of its intensity or urgency. Her right hand now began to move over her belly, very slowly, restraining itself, descending toward her pubis. The thin blanket undulated above it. Her fingertips, pushing down on the soft silk of her skirt, whose narrowness made it difficult for her to spread her legs, found the bud of flesh in erection that they sought and pressed it tenderly. Her middle finger began the gentle, careful motion that would bring on orgasm. Almost immediately, the man’s hand came down on hers.
She stopped breathing and felt her muscles and nerves tighten, as though her belly had been struck by a jet of ice water. Her sensations and thoughts were suspended, like a film when the projector has stopped, leaving a single image on the screen. She was neither afraid nor offended. She waited for what was going to follow her collapsed dreams.
The man’s hand did not move. Merely by its weight, it applied pressure to her clitoris, on which her own hand was resting.
Nothing else happened for some time. She then became aware that his other hand was lifting the blanket and drawing it aside. It took hold of her knee and felt its curves and hollows. It rose slowly along her thigh and soon passed over the top of her stocking.
When it touched her bare skin, she started for the first time and tried to break the spell. She sat up awkwardly and turned halfway on her side. As though they wanted to punish her for her futile revolt, the man’s hands abandoned her abruptly. But before she had time to react, they were on her again, this time at her waist. They deftly unfastened and unzipped her skirt, pulled it down to her knees, then moved up again. One of them slipped under her panties and caressed her flat, muscular belly, just above the high mound of her pubis, stroking it as though it were the neck of a thoroughbred. Its fingers ran along the folds of her groin and across the top of her pubic hair, tracing a triangle whose area they seemed to be estimating. The lower angle was very wide, a rather rare feature that had been appreciated by Greek sculptors.
Then the hand forced her thighs to spread farther apart. It closed over her warm, swollen sex, caressing it as if to soothe it, without haste, following the furrow of its lips, dipping in lightly between them, passing over her erect clitoris and coming to rest on the thick curls of her pubis. As they moved to and fro between her legs, the fingers sank deeper between her moist membranes, slowing their advance, and seeming to hesitate as her tension increased. Biting her lips to stifle the sob that was rising from her throat, she panted with desire as the man brought her closer and closer to orgasm without letting her reach it.
Then his hand stopped moving and cupped the whole part of her body that it had inflamed. He leaned toward her, extended his other hand, took one of hers, and drew it inside his trousers. He helped her to grasp his rigid penis and guided her movements, regulating their length and cadence to suit his taste, slowing or accelerating them according to his degree of excitement, until he was convinced that he could rely on her intuition and good will and let her continue the manipulation in her own way.
She sat up to let her arm do its work properly, and he moved closer to her so that she could be sprayed by the sperm he felt welling up from the depths of his glands. He succeeded in restraining himself for a long time, while her bent fingers rose and fell, becoming less timid as they prolonged their caresses, no longer limiting themselves to elementary back-and-forth motions, but opening slightly, skillfully, to slide along the big, swollen vein of his arched penis (lightly scratching it with their filed nails), as far down as possible, as close to his testicles as the tightness of his trousers would permit, then rising again with lascivious twists. His member had grown so much that it seemed endless, but she finally reached its tip and covered it with the folds of loose skin in the hollow of her damp palm before beginning another downward journey, squeezing him tightly again, stretching his foreskin, alternately strangling his tumescent flesh and relaxing her grip on it, barely grazing it or tormenting it, massaging it in broad strokes or irritating it with quick, merciless little movements . . .
When his satisfied penis finally disgorged its semen in long, white, odorous spurts, she received it with strange exaltation along her arms, on her bare belly, on her throat, face, and mouth, and in her hair. It seemed that it would never stop. She felt as if it were flowing down her throat, as if she were drinking it . . . She was seized with an unknown intoxication, a shameless delight. When she let her arm fall, he took hold of her clitoris with his fingertips and brought her to orgasm.
A buzzing sound indicated that the loudspeaker was about to be used. The stewardess’s voice, deliberately softened so the passengers would not be awakened too abruptly, announced that the plane would land at Bahrein in about twenty minutes. It would leave at midnight, local time. A light meal would be served at the airport.
The light in the compartment gradually came on again, imitating the slowness of a sunrise. Emmanuelle used the blanket, which had slipped down to her feet, to wipe away the sperm that had spattered her. She pulled her skirt up over her hips. When the stewardess came in, Emmanuelle was sitting up on her seat, without having raised its back, still trying to make herself presentable.
“Did you sleep well?” the stewardess asked.
Emmanuelle fastened the waist of her skirt. “My blouse is all wrinkled,” she said.
She looked at the damp spots that spread out in both directions from below her collar. She rolled back the lapels of her blouse and the pink tip of a breast appeared. Her neckline remained open and four pairs of English eyes were glued to the profile of her bare breast.
“Don’t you have anything to change into?” asked the stewardess.
“No,” said Emmanuelle.
The two women looked each other in the eye and recognized their complicity; they were both equally excited. The man observed them. There was not a single wrinkle in his suit, his shirt was as neat as when he had boarded the plane, his tie was perfectly straight.
“Come with me,” said the stewardess.
Emmanuelle stood up, stepped past the man, and followed the young English stewardess into the ladies’ lounge. It was filled with mirrors, cushioned footstools, white leather upholstery, and shelves laden with lotions in crystal bottles.
“Wait.”
The stewardess slipped away and returned moments later, carrying a little suitcase. She lifted its calfskin lid and removed a russet sweater of orion, wool, and silk, so light that it was crumpled into a ball that fit into her closed fist. When she shook it out it seemed to swell suddenly like a balloon. Emmanuelle clapped her hands with admiration. “You’re lending it to me?” she asked.
“No, I’m giving it to you. I’m sure it will look good on you.”
“But . . .”
The stewardess put her finger over Emmanuelle’s lips as they rounded to protest her embarrassment. Her tender eyes sparkled. Emmanuelle could not look away from them. She moved her face close to them. But the stewardess spun around and handed her a bottle of toilet water. “Rub yourself with this, it’s delightful!”
Emmanuelle refreshed her face, arms, and neck, started to wipe between her breasts with the pad she had saturated with the perfumed liquid, then changed her mind and quickly unbuttoned the rest of her blouse.
She made it fall to the white carpet by throwing back her arms. Suddenly dizzied by her half-nakedness, she took a deep breath. She turned to the stewardess and looked at her with candid jubilation. The stewardess bent down, picked up the rumpled blouse, and pressed it against her face. “Oh, it smells so good!” she said, laughing mischievously.
Emmanuelle was disconcerted. The reminder of the incredible scene in her compartment seemed out of place to her now. Her only thought, which was turning in her mind as though in a cage, was to get rid of her skirt and stockings, to be completely naked for that beautiful girl. Her fingers were already toying with the buckle of her belt.
“How thick and black your hair is!” the stewardess exclaimed, playfully running a brush over the waves that hung down Emmanuelle’s naked back to below her waist. “It’s so shiny, so silky! I wish my hair were as beautiful as yours.”
“But I like yours!” protested Emmanuelle.
Oh, if only the stewardess would undress, too! Emmanuelle desired her so much that her voice was husky when she implored: “Isn’t it possible to take a bath on this plane?”
“Of course. But you’d better wait—the bathrooms at the airport are more comfortable. Anyway, you wouldn’t have time, we’re going to land in five minutes.”
Emmanuelle was unable to resign herself. She pulled on the zipper of her skirt.
“Hurry and put on my sweet little sweater,” the English girl said reproachfully, handing it to her.
She helped her put her head through the narrow opening. The elastic sweater was clinging and thin, the tips of her breasts stood out as visibly as if they had been painted reddish brown. The stewardess seemed to notice them for the first time. “What a seductive sight!” She pressed on one of the sharp nipples with her forefinger, as though she were ringing a doorbell. Emmanuelle’s eyes twinkled.
“Is it true,” Emmanuelle asked, “that all airline stewardesses are virgins?”
The English girl burst out laughing, then, before Emmanuelle had time to react, she opened the door and pulled her outside. “Go back to your seat, quickly! The red light is on, we’re about to land.”
******************************************************************************
When the passengers were back aboard the plane, they saw that it had been cleaned, tidied up, and aired. Fresh perfume had been sprayed in the compartments. The reclining seats were covered with new blankets. Big, luminously white pillows, swollen with down, made the midnight-blue velvet on which they rested still more tempting. The steward came to ask if anyone would like a drink. No? Well, then, sleep well. The stewardess also came in to wish everyone a good night. That ceremony delighted Emmanuelle. She felt herself becoming happy again—in a positive way, wholeheartedly, with certainty. She wanted the world to be exactly as it was. Everything on earth was absolutely right.
She lay back in her seat. She lifted her legs one after the other, bending and unbending her knees, working the muscles of her thighs, rubbing her ankles together with a soft rustling of nylon.
“After all,” she mused, “it’s not just my knees that are worth looking at, but all of my legs. No one can deny that they’re really pretty; they’re like two little brooks covered with dry leaves and swollen with perversity, amusing themselves by passing over each other. And they’re not the only good things about me. I also like my skin, and the way it turns golden in the sun, like a grain of corn, without ever reddening. I like my behind, too. And the tiny little raspberries at the tips of my breasts, with their collars of red sugar. I wish I could lick them . . .”
The ceiling lights dimmed. With a sigh of well-being, she pulled up the blanket, scented with a fragrance of pine needles.
When only the night lights were on, she turned over on her side and tried to see the man. Till now, when she had stretched out beside him, she had not dared to look at him directly. Her gaze met his. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, with no expression other than one of perfect tranquillity. She recognized the spark of slightly amused and protective interest that she had noticed when they first met. (When had that been, exactly? Was it only seven hours ago?) The expression on his face was what she liked most about him.
His presence suddenly became agreeable to her again. She smiled and closed her eyes. She had a vague yearning for something, but did not know what. She found no other diversion than to resume rejoicing at being beautiful; her own image lingered in her head like a favorite refrain. Her heart beat faster as she sought in her mind the invisible cove that she knew to be buried under its promontory of black grass, where the two brooks came together, and she felt their current licking at its edges. When the man raised himself on one elbow and leaned toward her, she opened her eyes and let him kiss her. The taste of his lips on hers had the freshness of sea salt.
When he began pulling off her sweater she sat up and lifted her arms to make it easier for him. She relished the excitement of seeing her breasts emerge from under the russet garment, looking even rounder and larger in the near-darkness than in daylight. To leave him the whole pleasure of undressing her, she did not help him when he groped for the zipper of her skirt, although she did raise her hips so that he could slide it down without difficulty. This time her narrow skirt did not remain twisted around her knees—she was completely free of it.
His active hands rid her of her thin panties. When he had unhooked her garter belt, she rolled down her stockings herself and dropped them to the floor in front of her seat, where they joined her skirt and sweater.
Only when she was entirely undressed did he take her in his arms and begin caressing her from her hair to her ankles, forgetting nothing. She now had so powerful a desire to make love that her heart hurt and her throat was constricted. She thought she would never be able to breathe again, to return to daylight. She was afraid, she felt like calling out, but the man was holding her too tightly, putting one hand between her buttocks, widening the quivering little crevice, with one whole finger buried in it. At the same time he kissed her avidly, licking her tongue, and drinking her saliva.
She whimpered softly without knowing the exact cause of her distress. Was it the finger that was probing so deeply inside her, or the mouth that was feeding on her, swallowing each breath, each gasp? Was she tormented by desire or ashamed of her lasciviousness? She was haunted by the memory of the long, arched form that she had held in her hand, magnificent and erect, arrogant, hard, unbearably hot. She moaned so loudly that the man took pity on her. She at last felt his bare penis, as big as she had expected, touch her belly, and she pressed against it with all the softness of her body.
They remained like that for a long time, without moving; then, seeming to make up his mind abruptly, he lifted her in his arms, drew her over him, and put her down beside him in his seat, on the aisle.
She was less than three feet away from the English c***dren. She had forgotten they even existed; she now realized that they were not asleep and that they were looking at her. The boy was nearer to her, but the girl had huddled against him to see better. Motionless and breathless, they were staring at her with widened eyes in which she could see nothing but fascinated curiosity. At the thought of being possessed in front of them, of abandoning herself to that excess of debauchery, she felt a kind of dizziness. But at the same time she was eager to begin and let them see everything.
She was lying on her right side with her legs bent forward while the man held her by the hips from behind. He slipped one leg between hers and entered her with a straight, irresistible thrust that was made easy by the absolute rigidity of his penis and the moistness of her flesh. It was not until he had reached the deepest point of her vagina and stopped there long enough to sigh with pleasure that he began moving his member back and forth with long, regular strokes.
Delivered of her anxiety, she panted, became warmer and more liquid with each onslaught of his phallus. Through the mist of her ecstasy, she marveled at the thought that her organs had not atrophied during all the months when they had not been stimulated by a male goad. Now that she was rediscovering that pleasure, she wanted to enjoy it as long and completely as possible.
The man showed no sign of being about to tire. For a moment she wondered how long he had been in her, but there was no way for her to guess the time that had gone by.
She held back her orgasm, effortlessly and without frustration, because she had trained herself since c***dhood to prolong the pleasure of waiting. Even more than the final spasm itself, she loved that growing sensitivity, that extreme tension of her being, which she knew so well how to give herself when she was alone, and her fingers stroked the trembling stem of her clitoris for hours, with the lightness of a violin bow, refusing to yield to the supplication of her own flesh, until at last the pressure of her sensuality broke through. The explosion was as terrifying as the convulsions of death, but she was always reborn from it immediately, fresher, and more alert than ever.
She looked at the c***dren. Their faces had lost their haughtiness; they had become more human. They were neither excited nor snickering, but attentive and almost respectful. She tried to imagine what was going on in their heads, the bewilderment they must be feeling at the event they were witnessing, but her thoughts unraveled, her brain was seized with spells of faintness, and she was much too happy to care about anyone else.
When the acceleration of her partner’s movements, a certain stiffness of his hands as they gripped her buttocks, and the sudden expansion and pulsation of the organ that was piercing her made her realize that he was about to ejaculate, she let herself go. The spurting sperm whipped her pleasure to a frenzied pitch. During the whole time he was emptying himself in her he stayed deep in her vagina, pressed against her cervix, and even in the midst of her spasm she still had imagination enough to enjoy the mental image of his penis disgorging creamy torrents that were lapped up by the oval opening of her uterus, as greedy and active as a mouth.
He finished his orgasm and she too became calm, filled with a sense of well-being without remorse, increased by his sliding motion as he withdrew, the contact of the blanket that she felt him spreading over her, the comfort of the reclining seat, and the warm, increasing opacity of the sleep that was covering her.
The plane had passed through the night as though crossing a bridge, blind to the deserts of India, to the bays, estuaries, and rice paddies below. When Emmanuelle opened her eyes, the mountains of Burma were iridescent in the light of a sunrise that she could not see, while inside the compartment the purple glow of the night lights left her unaware of the exotic landscape and the time of day.
(Emmanuelle Arsan)
Love has a thousand postures; the simplest and the
least tiring is to lie halfway over on your right side.
—Ovid, The Art of Love
Emmanuelle boarded the plane in London that was to take her to Bangkok. At first the rich smell of leather, like that preserved in British cars after years of use, the otherworldly lighting, and the thickness and silence of the carpets were all she could grasp of the environment she was entering for the first time.
She did not understand what was being said to her by the smiling man who was guiding her, but she was not upset. Although her heart may have been beating faster, it was only from a sensation of strangeness, not from apprehension. The blue uniforms, the thoughtfulness and authority of the personnel assigned to welcome and initiate her—everything combined to create a feeling of security and euphoria. A new universe was going to be hers for the next twelve hours of her life, a universe with different laws, more constraining, but perhaps more delectable for that very reason. The vigilance of freedom was replaced by the leisure and placidity of subjection.
The steward led her to her seat. It was what would normally have been a window seat, but there was no window. She could see nothing beyond the curtained walls. It made no difference to her. She did not care about anything but abandoning herself to the powers of that deep seat, drifting into drowsiness between its woolly arms, against its foam shoulder, on its long, mermaid lap.
An English stewardess stopped in the aisle. Her hands flew up to the rack above Emmanuelle’s head to put away her light, leather traveling case. She spoke French and the impression of semi-torpor that Emmanuelle had been feeling for the past two days (she had arrived in London only the day before) was dispelled.
As the stewardess leaned over her, her blondeness made Emmanuelle’s long hair seem still more nocturnal. They were both dressed nearly alike, but a brassiere showed through the English girl’s blouse, while the slightest movement revealed that Emmanuelle’s breasts were free under hers. She was glad that the stewardess was young and that her eyes were like her own—flecked with gold.
Emmanuelle tried to think of something to ask that would please her. Maybe she should show an interest in the plane. But before she could speak, two c***dren—a boy and a girl—pushed aside the velvet curtain that separated Emmanuelle’s row of seats from the row in front. They looked so much alike that one had to assume they were twins. Emmanuelle noted at a glance the graceless, conventional clothes that stamped them as English schoolc***dren, their reddish blond hair, their expression of affected coldness, and the haughtiness with which they spat out brief words to the stewardess. Although they were apparently only twelve or thirteen, their confident manner created a distance between them and her that she had no thought of reducing. They sedately planted themselves in the two seats across the aisle from Emmanuelle. At the same time the last of the four passengers for whom the compartment was reserved came in and she turned her attention to him.
He was at least a head taller than she was. His hair and mustache were black. She liked his amber-colored suit. She judged him to be elegant and well-bred, two qualities that, after all, covered most of what one hoped to find in a fellow passenger. She tried to guess his age from the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes—forty, perhaps fifty? He would be more agreeable, she thought, than the two pretentious c***dren.
The stewardess had left the compartment and, through the gap in the curtains, Emmanuelle could now see her blue hip pressed against an invisible passenger. She tried to turn her eyes away. Her black hair whipped her cheeks and flowed over her face. Then the English girl straightened up, turned toward the rear of the plane, appeared between the curtains, pushing their long legs apart with her hands, and stepped toward Emmanuelle. “Would you like me to introduce your traveling companions to you?” she asked; and, without waiting for an answer, she told her the man’s name. Emmanuelle thought she heard “Eisenhower,” which amused her and made her miss the names of the twins.
The man began talking to her in English. She had no idea what he was saying. Seeing her perplexity, the stewardess questioned the three others, then laughed, showing the tip of her tongue. “What a pity!” she said lightheartedly. “None of them knows a single word of French. This will be a good chance for you to brush up on your English!”
Before Emmanuelle could protest, the stewardess moved her fingers in a graceful, cryptic gesture to her passengers, turned on her heel, and walked away. Emmanuelle was again alone. She felt like sulking, holding herself aloof from everything.
A loudspeaker hidden behind the curtains, came to life. After a male voice had spoken in English, Emmanuelle recognized the stewardess speaking in French (“For me,” she thought), welcoming the passengers aboard the Flying Unicorn and giving flight instructions.
The awakening of the jet engines was indicated by a murmur and a slight quivering of the soundproof walls. Emmanuelle was not even aware that the plane was moving along the runway. And it was a long time before she realized that she was flying.
She did not realize it, in fact, until the red light went off and the man beside her stood up and offered, by gestures, to put away her jacket, which she had kept on her knees without knowing why. She let him take it. He smiled, opened a book, and stopped looking at her. A waiter appeared, carrying a tray of glasses. She chose a cocktail by its color, but it was not the one she expected; it was stronger.
What must have been an afternoon on the other side of the silk wall went by without Emmanuelle’s having time to do anything but eat pastry, drink tea, and leaf through a magazine that the stewardess had given her (she refused to accept a second one because she did not want to be distracted from the novelty of flying).
Then a waiter placed a little table in front of her and served various foods that were hard to identify, in unusually shaped containers. Her dinner seemed to last for hours but the discovery of the culinary game pleased her so much that she was in no hurry for it to end.
She felt light and carefree. She noticed that she had even lost her dislike of the twins. The stewardess came and went, never failing to say something cheerful to her as she passed. When she was absent, Emmanuelle was no longer impatient.
She wondered if it was time to go to sleep. But actually she was free to sleep whenever she chose in that winged cradle so far from the surface of the earth, in a region of space where there were neither winds nor clouds, and where she was not sure there was even night and day.
Emmanuelle’s knees were bare in the golden light shining down from overhead, and the man was staring at them. Under the invisible nylon, the movement of their dimples made agile shadows in the toasted-bread color of their skin. She knew the excitement they caused. They seemed more naked than ever under the spotlight which had been turned on them. She felt as if she were coming out of the water after a moonlight swim. Her temples throbbed faster and her lips filled with blood. She closed her eyes and saw herself not partially but totally naked, and she knew that once again she would be helpless against the temptation of that narcissistic contemplation.
She resisted, but only to increase the joy of gradually slipping into surrender. Its nearness was announced by a diffuse languor, a kind of warm consciousness of her whole body, a desire for abandon, for opening, for fullness; nothing very different from the physical satisfaction she would have felt from stretching out on the warm sand of a sun-drenched beach. Then, little by little, the surface of her lips became still more lustrous, her breasts swelled, and her legs tensed, attentive to the slightest contact. Her brain began experimenting with images. They were disconnected and formless at first, but were enough to moisten her mucous membranes and arch her back.
The steady, subdued, almost imperceptible vibrations of the metal fuselage attuned her body to the frequency. Starting from her knees, a wave rose along her thighs, resonating on the surface, moving higher and higher, making her quiver.
Phantasms assailed her—lips pressed against her skin, genitals of men and women (whose faces remained ambiguous), penises eagerly rubbing against her, pushing their way between her knees, forcing her legs apart, opening her sex, penetrating it with laborious efforts that enraptured her. One after another, they plunged into the unknown of her body, thrusting into her unendingly, sating her flesh, and endlessly emptying their semen into her.
Thinking Emmanuelle was asleep, the stewardess cautiously tilted back her seat, transforming it into a bed, and spread a cashmere blanket over her long, languid legs. The man stood up and pushed his seat back to the same level as hers. The c***dren had already dozed off. The stewardess wished everyone a good night and turned off the ceiling lights. Only two purple night lights prevented objects and people from losing all shape.
Emmanuelle had abandoned herself to the stewardess’s care without opening her eyes. Her reverie, however, had lost none of its intensity or urgency. Her right hand now began to move over her belly, very slowly, restraining itself, descending toward her pubis. The thin blanket undulated above it. Her fingertips, pushing down on the soft silk of her skirt, whose narrowness made it difficult for her to spread her legs, found the bud of flesh in erection that they sought and pressed it tenderly. Her middle finger began the gentle, careful motion that would bring on orgasm. Almost immediately, the man’s hand came down on hers.
She stopped breathing and felt her muscles and nerves tighten, as though her belly had been struck by a jet of ice water. Her sensations and thoughts were suspended, like a film when the projector has stopped, leaving a single image on the screen. She was neither afraid nor offended. She waited for what was going to follow her collapsed dreams.
The man’s hand did not move. Merely by its weight, it applied pressure to her clitoris, on which her own hand was resting.
Nothing else happened for some time. She then became aware that his other hand was lifting the blanket and drawing it aside. It took hold of her knee and felt its curves and hollows. It rose slowly along her thigh and soon passed over the top of her stocking.
When it touched her bare skin, she started for the first time and tried to break the spell. She sat up awkwardly and turned halfway on her side. As though they wanted to punish her for her futile revolt, the man’s hands abandoned her abruptly. But before she had time to react, they were on her again, this time at her waist. They deftly unfastened and unzipped her skirt, pulled it down to her knees, then moved up again. One of them slipped under her panties and caressed her flat, muscular belly, just above the high mound of her pubis, stroking it as though it were the neck of a thoroughbred. Its fingers ran along the folds of her groin and across the top of her pubic hair, tracing a triangle whose area they seemed to be estimating. The lower angle was very wide, a rather rare feature that had been appreciated by Greek sculptors.
Then the hand forced her thighs to spread farther apart. It closed over her warm, swollen sex, caressing it as if to soothe it, without haste, following the furrow of its lips, dipping in lightly between them, passing over her erect clitoris and coming to rest on the thick curls of her pubis. As they moved to and fro between her legs, the fingers sank deeper between her moist membranes, slowing their advance, and seeming to hesitate as her tension increased. Biting her lips to stifle the sob that was rising from her throat, she panted with desire as the man brought her closer and closer to orgasm without letting her reach it.
Then his hand stopped moving and cupped the whole part of her body that it had inflamed. He leaned toward her, extended his other hand, took one of hers, and drew it inside his trousers. He helped her to grasp his rigid penis and guided her movements, regulating their length and cadence to suit his taste, slowing or accelerating them according to his degree of excitement, until he was convinced that he could rely on her intuition and good will and let her continue the manipulation in her own way.
She sat up to let her arm do its work properly, and he moved closer to her so that she could be sprayed by the sperm he felt welling up from the depths of his glands. He succeeded in restraining himself for a long time, while her bent fingers rose and fell, becoming less timid as they prolonged their caresses, no longer limiting themselves to elementary back-and-forth motions, but opening slightly, skillfully, to slide along the big, swollen vein of his arched penis (lightly scratching it with their filed nails), as far down as possible, as close to his testicles as the tightness of his trousers would permit, then rising again with lascivious twists. His member had grown so much that it seemed endless, but she finally reached its tip and covered it with the folds of loose skin in the hollow of her damp palm before beginning another downward journey, squeezing him tightly again, stretching his foreskin, alternately strangling his tumescent flesh and relaxing her grip on it, barely grazing it or tormenting it, massaging it in broad strokes or irritating it with quick, merciless little movements . . .
When his satisfied penis finally disgorged its semen in long, white, odorous spurts, she received it with strange exaltation along her arms, on her bare belly, on her throat, face, and mouth, and in her hair. It seemed that it would never stop. She felt as if it were flowing down her throat, as if she were drinking it . . . She was seized with an unknown intoxication, a shameless delight. When she let her arm fall, he took hold of her clitoris with his fingertips and brought her to orgasm.
A buzzing sound indicated that the loudspeaker was about to be used. The stewardess’s voice, deliberately softened so the passengers would not be awakened too abruptly, announced that the plane would land at Bahrein in about twenty minutes. It would leave at midnight, local time. A light meal would be served at the airport.
The light in the compartment gradually came on again, imitating the slowness of a sunrise. Emmanuelle used the blanket, which had slipped down to her feet, to wipe away the sperm that had spattered her. She pulled her skirt up over her hips. When the stewardess came in, Emmanuelle was sitting up on her seat, without having raised its back, still trying to make herself presentable.
“Did you sleep well?” the stewardess asked.
Emmanuelle fastened the waist of her skirt. “My blouse is all wrinkled,” she said.
She looked at the damp spots that spread out in both directions from below her collar. She rolled back the lapels of her blouse and the pink tip of a breast appeared. Her neckline remained open and four pairs of English eyes were glued to the profile of her bare breast.
“Don’t you have anything to change into?” asked the stewardess.
“No,” said Emmanuelle.
The two women looked each other in the eye and recognized their complicity; they were both equally excited. The man observed them. There was not a single wrinkle in his suit, his shirt was as neat as when he had boarded the plane, his tie was perfectly straight.
“Come with me,” said the stewardess.
Emmanuelle stood up, stepped past the man, and followed the young English stewardess into the ladies’ lounge. It was filled with mirrors, cushioned footstools, white leather upholstery, and shelves laden with lotions in crystal bottles.
“Wait.”
The stewardess slipped away and returned moments later, carrying a little suitcase. She lifted its calfskin lid and removed a russet sweater of orion, wool, and silk, so light that it was crumpled into a ball that fit into her closed fist. When she shook it out it seemed to swell suddenly like a balloon. Emmanuelle clapped her hands with admiration. “You’re lending it to me?” she asked.
“No, I’m giving it to you. I’m sure it will look good on you.”
“But . . .”
The stewardess put her finger over Emmanuelle’s lips as they rounded to protest her embarrassment. Her tender eyes sparkled. Emmanuelle could not look away from them. She moved her face close to them. But the stewardess spun around and handed her a bottle of toilet water. “Rub yourself with this, it’s delightful!”
Emmanuelle refreshed her face, arms, and neck, started to wipe between her breasts with the pad she had saturated with the perfumed liquid, then changed her mind and quickly unbuttoned the rest of her blouse.
She made it fall to the white carpet by throwing back her arms. Suddenly dizzied by her half-nakedness, she took a deep breath. She turned to the stewardess and looked at her with candid jubilation. The stewardess bent down, picked up the rumpled blouse, and pressed it against her face. “Oh, it smells so good!” she said, laughing mischievously.
Emmanuelle was disconcerted. The reminder of the incredible scene in her compartment seemed out of place to her now. Her only thought, which was turning in her mind as though in a cage, was to get rid of her skirt and stockings, to be completely naked for that beautiful girl. Her fingers were already toying with the buckle of her belt.
“How thick and black your hair is!” the stewardess exclaimed, playfully running a brush over the waves that hung down Emmanuelle’s naked back to below her waist. “It’s so shiny, so silky! I wish my hair were as beautiful as yours.”
“But I like yours!” protested Emmanuelle.
Oh, if only the stewardess would undress, too! Emmanuelle desired her so much that her voice was husky when she implored: “Isn’t it possible to take a bath on this plane?”
“Of course. But you’d better wait—the bathrooms at the airport are more comfortable. Anyway, you wouldn’t have time, we’re going to land in five minutes.”
Emmanuelle was unable to resign herself. She pulled on the zipper of her skirt.
“Hurry and put on my sweet little sweater,” the English girl said reproachfully, handing it to her.
She helped her put her head through the narrow opening. The elastic sweater was clinging and thin, the tips of her breasts stood out as visibly as if they had been painted reddish brown. The stewardess seemed to notice them for the first time. “What a seductive sight!” She pressed on one of the sharp nipples with her forefinger, as though she were ringing a doorbell. Emmanuelle’s eyes twinkled.
“Is it true,” Emmanuelle asked, “that all airline stewardesses are virgins?”
The English girl burst out laughing, then, before Emmanuelle had time to react, she opened the door and pulled her outside. “Go back to your seat, quickly! The red light is on, we’re about to land.”
******************************************************************************
When the passengers were back aboard the plane, they saw that it had been cleaned, tidied up, and aired. Fresh perfume had been sprayed in the compartments. The reclining seats were covered with new blankets. Big, luminously white pillows, swollen with down, made the midnight-blue velvet on which they rested still more tempting. The steward came to ask if anyone would like a drink. No? Well, then, sleep well. The stewardess also came in to wish everyone a good night. That ceremony delighted Emmanuelle. She felt herself becoming happy again—in a positive way, wholeheartedly, with certainty. She wanted the world to be exactly as it was. Everything on earth was absolutely right.
She lay back in her seat. She lifted her legs one after the other, bending and unbending her knees, working the muscles of her thighs, rubbing her ankles together with a soft rustling of nylon.
“After all,” she mused, “it’s not just my knees that are worth looking at, but all of my legs. No one can deny that they’re really pretty; they’re like two little brooks covered with dry leaves and swollen with perversity, amusing themselves by passing over each other. And they’re not the only good things about me. I also like my skin, and the way it turns golden in the sun, like a grain of corn, without ever reddening. I like my behind, too. And the tiny little raspberries at the tips of my breasts, with their collars of red sugar. I wish I could lick them . . .”
The ceiling lights dimmed. With a sigh of well-being, she pulled up the blanket, scented with a fragrance of pine needles.
When only the night lights were on, she turned over on her side and tried to see the man. Till now, when she had stretched out beside him, she had not dared to look at him directly. Her gaze met his. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, with no expression other than one of perfect tranquillity. She recognized the spark of slightly amused and protective interest that she had noticed when they first met. (When had that been, exactly? Was it only seven hours ago?) The expression on his face was what she liked most about him.
His presence suddenly became agreeable to her again. She smiled and closed her eyes. She had a vague yearning for something, but did not know what. She found no other diversion than to resume rejoicing at being beautiful; her own image lingered in her head like a favorite refrain. Her heart beat faster as she sought in her mind the invisible cove that she knew to be buried under its promontory of black grass, where the two brooks came together, and she felt their current licking at its edges. When the man raised himself on one elbow and leaned toward her, she opened her eyes and let him kiss her. The taste of his lips on hers had the freshness of sea salt.
When he began pulling off her sweater she sat up and lifted her arms to make it easier for him. She relished the excitement of seeing her breasts emerge from under the russet garment, looking even rounder and larger in the near-darkness than in daylight. To leave him the whole pleasure of undressing her, she did not help him when he groped for the zipper of her skirt, although she did raise her hips so that he could slide it down without difficulty. This time her narrow skirt did not remain twisted around her knees—she was completely free of it.
His active hands rid her of her thin panties. When he had unhooked her garter belt, she rolled down her stockings herself and dropped them to the floor in front of her seat, where they joined her skirt and sweater.
Only when she was entirely undressed did he take her in his arms and begin caressing her from her hair to her ankles, forgetting nothing. She now had so powerful a desire to make love that her heart hurt and her throat was constricted. She thought she would never be able to breathe again, to return to daylight. She was afraid, she felt like calling out, but the man was holding her too tightly, putting one hand between her buttocks, widening the quivering little crevice, with one whole finger buried in it. At the same time he kissed her avidly, licking her tongue, and drinking her saliva.
She whimpered softly without knowing the exact cause of her distress. Was it the finger that was probing so deeply inside her, or the mouth that was feeding on her, swallowing each breath, each gasp? Was she tormented by desire or ashamed of her lasciviousness? She was haunted by the memory of the long, arched form that she had held in her hand, magnificent and erect, arrogant, hard, unbearably hot. She moaned so loudly that the man took pity on her. She at last felt his bare penis, as big as she had expected, touch her belly, and she pressed against it with all the softness of her body.
They remained like that for a long time, without moving; then, seeming to make up his mind abruptly, he lifted her in his arms, drew her over him, and put her down beside him in his seat, on the aisle.
She was less than three feet away from the English c***dren. She had forgotten they even existed; she now realized that they were not asleep and that they were looking at her. The boy was nearer to her, but the girl had huddled against him to see better. Motionless and breathless, they were staring at her with widened eyes in which she could see nothing but fascinated curiosity. At the thought of being possessed in front of them, of abandoning herself to that excess of debauchery, she felt a kind of dizziness. But at the same time she was eager to begin and let them see everything.
She was lying on her right side with her legs bent forward while the man held her by the hips from behind. He slipped one leg between hers and entered her with a straight, irresistible thrust that was made easy by the absolute rigidity of his penis and the moistness of her flesh. It was not until he had reached the deepest point of her vagina and stopped there long enough to sigh with pleasure that he began moving his member back and forth with long, regular strokes.
Delivered of her anxiety, she panted, became warmer and more liquid with each onslaught of his phallus. Through the mist of her ecstasy, she marveled at the thought that her organs had not atrophied during all the months when they had not been stimulated by a male goad. Now that she was rediscovering that pleasure, she wanted to enjoy it as long and completely as possible.
The man showed no sign of being about to tire. For a moment she wondered how long he had been in her, but there was no way for her to guess the time that had gone by.
She held back her orgasm, effortlessly and without frustration, because she had trained herself since c***dhood to prolong the pleasure of waiting. Even more than the final spasm itself, she loved that growing sensitivity, that extreme tension of her being, which she knew so well how to give herself when she was alone, and her fingers stroked the trembling stem of her clitoris for hours, with the lightness of a violin bow, refusing to yield to the supplication of her own flesh, until at last the pressure of her sensuality broke through. The explosion was as terrifying as the convulsions of death, but she was always reborn from it immediately, fresher, and more alert than ever.
She looked at the c***dren. Their faces had lost their haughtiness; they had become more human. They were neither excited nor snickering, but attentive and almost respectful. She tried to imagine what was going on in their heads, the bewilderment they must be feeling at the event they were witnessing, but her thoughts unraveled, her brain was seized with spells of faintness, and she was much too happy to care about anyone else.
When the acceleration of her partner’s movements, a certain stiffness of his hands as they gripped her buttocks, and the sudden expansion and pulsation of the organ that was piercing her made her realize that he was about to ejaculate, she let herself go. The spurting sperm whipped her pleasure to a frenzied pitch. During the whole time he was emptying himself in her he stayed deep in her vagina, pressed against her cervix, and even in the midst of her spasm she still had imagination enough to enjoy the mental image of his penis disgorging creamy torrents that were lapped up by the oval opening of her uterus, as greedy and active as a mouth.
He finished his orgasm and she too became calm, filled with a sense of well-being without remorse, increased by his sliding motion as he withdrew, the contact of the blanket that she felt him spreading over her, the comfort of the reclining seat, and the warm, increasing opacity of the sleep that was covering her.
The plane had passed through the night as though crossing a bridge, blind to the deserts of India, to the bays, estuaries, and rice paddies below. When Emmanuelle opened her eyes, the mountains of Burma were iridescent in the light of a sunrise that she could not see, while inside the compartment the purple glow of the night lights left her unaware of the exotic landscape and the time of day.
(Emmanuelle Arsan)
3 years ago
