Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [87]
As she raised one leg to free herself from the panties, he could see fully into her sex. He kissed her there, and then she raised her other leg and rested them both on his shoulders.
He held the panties in his hand and continued to kiss her, leaving her moist and panting. Then he turned away and buried his face in the panties, in the nightgown, wrapped the stockings around his penis, laid the black silk dress over his belly. The clothes seemed to have on him the same effect as a hand. He was convulsed with excitement.
Bijou again tried to touch his penis with her mouth, her hands, but he repulsed her. She lay naked and hungry at his side, watching his pleasure. It was tantalizing and cruel. She tried to kiss the rest of his body, but he did not respond.
He continued to caress and kiss and smell the clothes until his body began to tremble. He lay back, his penis shaking in the air, with nothing to encircle it, hold it. He shook with pleasure from head to foot, biting into the panties, chewing on them, all the time his erect penis near Bijou’s mouth, yet inaccessible to her. Finally the penis shuddered violently, and as the white foam appeared at the tip of it, Bijou threw herself on it to gather the last spurts.
One afternoon when Bijou and the African were together, and Bijou had found it impossible to attract his desire to her own body, she said in exasperation, ‘Look, I am getting an over-developed vulva from your constant kissing and biting there: you pull at the lips as if they were nipples. They are growing longer.’
He took the lips between his thumb and forefinger, and examined them. He spread them open like the petals of a flower, and said, ‘One could pierce them and hang an earring on them, as we do in Africa. I want to do that to you.’
He continued to play with the vulva. It grew stiff under his touch, and he saw white moisture appear at the edge of it, like the delicate foam of some small wave. He was aroused. He touched it with the tip of his penis. But he did not enter. He was obsessed. with the idea of piercing the lips as if they were ear lobes and hanging on them a small gold earring, as he had seen done to the women of his country.
Bijou did not believe he was in earnest. She was enjoying his attentiveness. But then he rose and went to fetch a needle. Bijou fought him off and fled.
Now she was without a lover. The Basque continued to tease her, arousing great desires for revenge. She was only happy when she was deceiving him.
She walked the streets and frequented the cafés with a feeling of hunger and curiosity; she wanted something new, something she had not yet experienced. She sat at cafés and refused invitations.
One evening she walked down the stairway to the quays and the river. This part of the city was lighted only dimly by the street lamps overhead. The noise of the traffic barely reached it.
The moored barges were without lights, their occupants asleep at this time of the night. She came to a very low stone wall and stopped to watch the river. She leaned over, fascinated by the lights reflected on the water. Then she heard the most extraordinary voice speaking in her ear, a voice that immediately enchanted her.
It said, ‘I beg you not to move. I will not hurt you. But stay where you are.’
The voice was so deep, rich, refined, that she obeyed and merely turned her head. She found a tall, handsome, well-dressed man standing behind her. He was smiling in the dim light, with a friendly, disarming, gallant expression.
Then, he too leaned over the wall and said, ‘Finding you here, this way, has been one of the obsessions of my life. You don