As he watched, puzzled, she reached for two small tubes that she had placed on the bedside table. She squeezed the contents of one into her hand and began to rub it onto his penis.
"What is this all about?" he asked.
She smiled. "You'll see." She kissed him on the lips, her tongue darting into his mouth in quick bird-like movements. She pulled away and her tongue started moving toward his belly, her hair trailing across his body like light, silky fingers. He felt his organ begin to rise. She moved her tongue down his legs to his feet and began to suck gently on his toes. His organ was stiff and hard now and she mounted him as he lay there. As he felt himself penetrating her, the warmth of her vagina acted on the cream she had put on his penis and the sensation became unbearably exciting. As she rode him, moving up and down, her left hand was caressing his testicles and they began to grow hot. There was menthol in the cream on his penis and the sensation of the cold while inside her warmth, and the heat of his testicles, drove him into an absolute frenzy.
They made love all night long and each time Noelle made love to him differently. It was the most incredibly sensuous experience he had ever had.
In the morning Armand Gautier said, "If I can get up enough energy to move, I'll get dressed and take you out to breakfast."
"Lie there," Noelle said. She walked over to a closet, selected one of his robes and put it on. "You rest. I'll be back."
Thirty-five minutes later Noelle returned with a breakfast tray. On it were freshly squeezed orange juice, a delicious sausage-and-chive omelet, heated, buttered croissants and jam and a pot of black coffee. It tasted extraordinarily good.
"Aren't you having anything?" Gautier asked.
Noelle shook her head. "No." She was seated in an easy chair watching him as he ate. She looked even more beautiful wearing his dressing gown open at the top, revealing the curves of her delicious breasts. Her hair was tousled and carefree.
Armand Gautier had radically revised his earlier estimate of Noelle. She was not any man's quick lay; she was an absolute treasure. However, he had met many treasures in his career in the theater, and he was not about to spend his time and talent as a director on a starry-eyed amateur who wanted to break into the theater, no matter how beautiful she might be, or how skilled in bed. Gautier was a dedicated man who took his art seriously. He had refused to compromise it in the past, and he was not about to start now.
The evening before, he had planned to spend the night with Noelle and send her packing in the morning. Now as he ate his breakfast and studied her, he was trying to figure out a way to hold onto Noelle as a mistress until he got bored with her, without encouraging her as an actress. He knew that he had to hold out some bait. He felt his way cautiously. "Are you planning to marry Philippe Sorel?" he asked.
"Of course not," Noelle replied. "That is not what I want."
Now it was coming. "What do you want?" Gautier asked.
"I told you," Noelle said quietly. "I want to be an actress."
Gautier bit into another croissant, stalling for time. "Of course," he said. Then he added, "There are many fine dramatic coaches I could send you to, Noelle, who would..."
"No," she said. Noelle was watching him pleasantly, warmly, as though eager to accede to anything he suggested. And yet Gautier had a feeling that inside her was a core of steel. There were many ways she could have said "no." With anger, reproach, disappointment, sulking, but she had said it with softness. And absolute finality. This was going to be more difficult than he had anticipated. For a moment Armand Gautier was tempted to tell her, as he told dozens of girls every week, to go away, that he had no time to waste on her. But he thought of the incredible sensations he had experienced during the night and he knew he would be a fool to let her go so soon. She was surely worth a slight, a very slight, compromise.
"Very well," Gautier said. "I will give you a play to study. When you have memorized it, you will read it to me and we will see how much talent you have. Then we can decide what to do with you."
"Thank you, Armand," she said. There was no triumph in her words, nor even any pleasure that he could detect. Just a simple acknowledgment of the inevitable. For the first time Gautier felt a small twinge of doubt. But that of course was ridiculous. He was a master at handling women.
While Noelle was getting dressed, Armand Gautier went into his book-lined study and scanned the familiar-looking worn volumes on the shelves. Finally, with a wry smile, he selected Euripides' Andromache. It was one of the most difficult classics to act. He went back into the bedroom and handed the play to Noelle.
"Here you are, my dear," he said. "When you have memorized the part, we shall go over it together."
"Thank you, Armand. You will not be sorry."
The more he thought about it, the more pleased Gautier was with his ploy. It would take Noelle a week or two to memorize the part, or what was even more likely, she would come to him and confess that she was unable to memorize it. He would sympathize with her, explain how difficult the art of acting was, and they could assume a relationship untainted by her ambition. Gautier made a date to have dinner with Noelle that evening, and she left.
When Noelle returned to the apartment she shared with Philippe Sorel, she found him waiting for her. He was very drunk.
"You bitch," he yelled. "Where have you been all night?"
It would not matter what she said. Sorel knew that he was going to listen to her apologies, beat her up, then take her to bed and forgive her.
But instead of apologizing Noelle merely said, "With another man, Philippe. I've come to pick up my things."
And as Sorel watched her in stunned disbelief, Noelle walked into the bedroom and began to pack.
"For Christ's sake, Noelle," he pleaded. "Don't do this! We love each other. We're going to get married." He talked to her for the next half hour, arguing, threatening, cajoling, and by that time Noelle had finished packing and had left the apartment and Sorel had no idea why he had lost her, for he did not know that he had never possessed her.
Armand Gautier was in the middle of directing a new play that was to open in two weeks and he spent all day at the theater in rehearsals. As a rule when Gautier was in production, he thought of nothing else. Part of his genius was the intense concentration he was able to bring to his work. Nothing existed for him but the four walls of the theater and the actors he was working with. This day however was different. Gautier found his mind constantly wandering to Noelle and the incredible night they had had together. The actors would go through a scene and then stop and wait for his comments, and Gautier would suddenly realize that he had been paying no attention. Furious with himself he tried to focus his attention on what he was doing, but thoughts of Noelle's naked body and the amazing things it had done to him would keep coming back. In the middle of one dramatic scene he found that he was walking around the stage with an erection, and he had to excuse himself.
Because Gautier had an analytical mind he tried to figure out what it was about this girl that had affected him like this. Noelle was beautiful, but he had slept with some of the most beautiful women in the world. She was consummately skilled at lovemaking but so were other women to whom he had made love. She seemed intelligent but not brilliant; her personality was pleasant but not complex. There was something else, something the director could not quite put his finger on. And then he remembered her soft "no" and he felt that it was a clue. There was some force in her that was irresistible, that would obtain anything she wanted. There was something in her that was untouched. And like other men before him Armand Gautier felt that though Noelle had affected him more deeply than he cared to admit to himself, he had not touched her at all, and this was a challenge that his masculinity could not refuse.