"Would you like to come to my house for a milk shake?"

Until now, Emmanuelle had not noticed the girl who had leaped to her feet. But she was already amused by the expression of firmness and almost protective self-assurance of this new face-because it was also the face of a little girl.

Not so little, she corrected herself, as the adolescent standing before her seemed to take charge of her. Around thirteen, probably, but almost as tall as Emmanuelle. The difference was in the maturity of their bodies; there was still something unfinished, something undeveloped, about the girl's. But it was perhaps the texture of her skin that made her closest to childhood. The sun had given it no patina, it was not a warm-colored, civilized, elegant skin of Ariane's.

Emmanuelle even judged it, at first sight, to be a little rough... But not really. It was as though she had a very slight case of goose flesh. On her arms, especially. It was glossier on her legs.  Beautiful boyish legs, because of the prominent tendons in their ankles, their hard knees and calves, their sinewy thighs...

She got the same impression from the girl's concave, athletic belly, hollowed by her vivacity, palpitating, like a heart, with all the tonicity of its aligned muscles. The narrowness of the cloth triangle that partially covered it--no more than what a nude dancer wears on state--did not succeed in making it indecent. Her pointed little breasts were scarcely concealed by the symbolic ribbon of her bikini top.

"They're pretty," though Emmanuelle, "but why doesn't she just leave them bare? They would look even better and I'm sure they wouldn't give anyone any lewd thoughts."

After a moment's consideration, she was no longer so sure. She wondered what sensuality such young breasts could have. Then she remembered her own and the pleasures she had drawn from them while they were still so small that they made almost no difference in her profile; they had not even been as big as the girl's, she acknowledged, for as she looked at the girl's closely they seemed more prominent.  Maybe it had been the contrast with Adriane's breasts that had influenced her judgment at first. Or the girl's narrow hips, or her childish waist...

Or perhaps also the long, thick braids that played over her pink chest. Emmanuelle had never seen such hair. So blonde, so fine that it was almost colorless... Then Emmanuelle encountered the girl's green eyes and forgot everything else.

Slanting, oblong, rising toward her temples with such a rare line that they seemed to have been placed in that light Caucasian face by mistake. But so green, it was true. So luminous... "My name is Marie-Anne."

The End