that might make Alain withdraw his hand. She didn’t know what its purpose was, but each time it touched her she wanted to open her thighs in unthinkable invitation.
Alain now turned his attention toward her left breast, and the new, piercing sensations in that nipple served to further distract her from the work of his lower hand, which moved with infinite leisure and touched her so lightly on the flesh of her mound that she wasn’t sure it had done so before it had moved away. Craftily he waited for minutes before he touched her again, as lightly as before, but with a knowing precision of placement that enabled him to introduce his longest finger for a startling second to the center of her sensations. He withdrew the finger, certain that it had done its job, and waited, hovering, until he felt the mound of curly hair nudging unconsciously upward, questingly. Again his finger touched her, finding the expected reward of wetness, and this time he stayed a moment longer and rubbed her almost questioningly before he took his finger away. He lifted his head from her breast. Her eyes were still closed, her lips had fallen open, and for a second he thought she had fainted.
“I won’t do that, darling, if you don’t want me to,” he whispered. She made no sign, which was, he knew, as much an acquiescence as if she had been able to ask for it. He reached down, parted the curls and again found the exact spot in the heat between her legs that cried out for his touch. He caressed her teasingly but now maintaining the contact between his finger and her flesh, now he looked greedily at her face as his fingers moved faster and faster, now he watched her bite her lips, now he watched her pant for air, now he watched the contortions of her features as she strained toward she knew not what, now all five of his fingers had surrounded the delicious flesh because he wanted to feel every quiver, every jolt, every wild, unleashed contraction of the first spasm of a virgin’s life. When, at last, she reached the moment she hadn’t dreamed existed and madly, unknowingly screamed his name, he thrust his middle finger a few inches inside her so that she would remember, forever after, who was hermaster, so that she would be branded by his touch and would never forget him, for that was the ultimate pleasure he had been so determined to secure.
“Jules, for God’s sake, you’ve got to help me,” Alain said, grabbing the stage manager’s arm and pulling him into his dressing room so that they could talk without being overheard. “Old pal, I’m in trouble!”
“What’s wrong?” Jules had never seen Alain appear at the theater in his present unshaven, disheveled condition, nor had Alain ever shown up at the theater early in the morning.
“Christ, Jules, why did I ever make that bet with you?”
“Did I win or lose?”
“Neither—both—what difference does it make, here, take the damn money. Jules, I have to get out of Dijon on the next train to Paris.”
“Calm down, Alain! You have a matinée and an evening performance today, and the troupe isn’t leaving Dijon until Monday morning, you know that perfectly well. You can’t leave here for four more days.”
“I know all that—it changes nothing. I have to disappear , Jules, without a trace, before tonight. You have to cover for me with the management and with Eve.”
“Come on! With the girl, perhaps, but the management—what can I tell them—don’t be a fool, you’re the star—I don’t want to lose my job. What happened? You forced her, didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t even screw her—I had her all ready for it, primed, I tell you, primed to perfection, when she burst into tears of joy, and told me that she loved me, that I was the wonderful, wild thing she’d wanted all her life. And then she told me who she really is. Her father’s the most famous doctor in town—they’ll ruin me, Jules, powerful people like that, they’ll run screaming rape, to the
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