Monsieur by Emma Becker Page B

to vice. As my hands neared your hips without touching them, I was almost fearful of looking you in the eye. You held me tightly against you, stroking my hair, quietly calming me. As if there was nothing wrong with you freely coming over my face, then being playfully tender with me. Lying motionless by your side for a few minutes, I felt as if my whole body was burning from the inside. You didn’t understand: my frequent little treks from bed to window annoyed you as time ticked on and you were growing hard again.
    You must have known how much in awe of you I was. The day before, I had sent you a truthful text message: ‘It’s all a bit scary.’
    You had answered: ‘Don’t be scared, I’m the gentlest of them all.’
    But, Monsieur, you knew that was wrong. You knew all too well that your softness and tenderness were unconnected with your illusory gentleness. You were just readying yourself to jump. I could see it in your eyes as we talked, as we began some sort of competition to see who would lower their gaze first. A competition I lost.
    You allowed me to escape, with a grin of amusement. While you still can, your eyebrows seemed to say. Faced with silence, you took an old edition of Mandiargues from your medical bag. It was encased in a dainty ultramarine cardboard box. Oh, Monsieur, the way you made me feel just then! As if all my Christmases had come at once. OK, so I had reached out to you for your love of erotic literature, but for this to be confirmed with such elegance . . . Father Christmas had turned up in the middle of May. I hardly dared turn the yellowing pages, shrieking like a kid at a Disney movie, eyes wide. Then I handed it back to you, almost sad at having had the privilege to glimpse your world of rare books and limited editions. I worked in a flower shop for four hundred euros a month and slept surrounded by paperbacks, which was all a student could afford. And you said to me: ‘No. Keep it. It’s for you, a gift.’
    I protested, squeaking like a piglet, as I handed it back to you, but you pushed it towards my chest with a smile, and I was forced to accept it. Later I would slip it into my overnight bag between my laptop and sponge-bag. It would share the space with a tube of toothpaste.
    (Do you know what I did as soon I got home, far from parents in my pink basement room? I tore off a piece of paper and, between the divine pages of Mandiargues, I slipped a note I had scribbled with a ballpoint pen: ‘Given by C.S., on 5/5/09’. Just like a junior courtesan.)
    For a brief moment, I might have felt like a whore. But then I changed my mind: even Zola had never imagined a whore being paid for her services with rare books.
    And then you mounted me again, doggy-style, and all I could smell was the overripe mango I had brought with me, its fragrance gliding over my skin like oil, its heady odour of turpentine and alcohol blending with the Guerlain on your fingers (the persistent sweet fragrance of men who love women). I barely dared open my eyes: to see would have detracted from the magic conjured by the sensation of fullness. I felt like sobbing every time you withdrew from me. How could you know our two bodies would fit so well together? Before I knew you, the possibility of such osmosis was just a pleasing idea. It wasn’t lust that was blinding me, but the fluid way we fucked, the communion of movements orchestrated with a hypnotic sensuality, the perfect conjunction of your breath and mine. Me, Ellie, twenty, a tiny plump body still trying to get rid of its baby fat, and you, Monsieur, with so many years of caresses, together in a clandestine bed, at the time of day when all the people we knew were leaving for work. You came inside me with a final gasp, while I held you tight as a nutcracker, every muscle in my body straining.
    â€˜Good thing I have a coil,’ I said later, with a smile, as I sat in your lap. ‘A good thing I take