her head to hear it, "do I have to beg you to stay?"

For a moment Beebo couldn't believe her ears. It had seemed so natural, so right, that every girl in the Colophon a few hours ago should have desired her. And now, abruptly, it seemed like a near-miracle that this exquisite stranger named Paula should reach out for her from the middle of nowhere and ask her to spend the night.

"No," Beebo said, turning around and reaching slowly for her. "No, Paula, you don't have to beg me to do anything. Just ask me.”

"I did. And you didn't want to stay."

"I didn't want to scare you. Or hurt you."

"I thought it was because of Mona," Paula said, whispering. "I thought you didn't want to cheat on her.

"Mona! Jesus, I'd forgotten all about her."

"Aren't you in love with her?" Paula asked as Beebo's big hands closed around her arms with a warm grip.

"In love?" Beebo repeated. "Mona is just a name to me, honey. I met her tonight, at the Colophon. You can't be in love with someone you just met.'

"You can't?" Paula said very softly, looking down at her oversized sleepwear.

"Not ordinarily," Beebo amended, and pulled gently on Paula. She was startled, almost alarmed, when Paula moved obediently toward her. Beebo became feverishly aware that the plaid pajamas did not conceal all of Paula Ash. The high sweeping curve of her breasts held the cotton tops out far enough to brush Beebo's chest with a feather touch. Beebo felt it through the layers of jacket and shirt with a tremor so hard and real

one

that it tumbled eighteen years of daydreams out of her head.

Beebo relaxed the hold of her hands on Paula's arms, withdrawing them slowly and looking at this lovely little red-headed princess with a mixture of misgivings and want too powerful to hide. Paula caught her hands and held them with all her quivering strength, returning Beebo's gaze. Beebo saw her own doubts mirrored in Paula's eyes. But she saw desire there, too; desire so big that it had to be brave. It hadn't any choice.

Paula kissed Beebo's hands with a quick press of her sweet mouth that electrified Beebo. She stood there while Paula kissed her hands over and over again and a passionate frenzy mounted in them both. Paula's lips, at first so chaste and cautious, almost reverent, became warm against Beebo's palms . . . and then wet as her small pink tongue came out and slipped between Beebo's fingers and over the backs of her broad firm hands until those hands trembled

perceptibly, and Paula stopped, clutching them to her face.

Beebo reclaimed them, but only to hold Paula's face between them; bringing it close to her and gazing at it in amazement.

"I never guessed," she murmured, "that I'd feel love for the first time through my hands. Oh, Paula, Paula, I would have done this all wrong. I would have man-handled you, I would have-

Paula stilled her with a finger over Beebo's mouth. "Don't talk." she whispered. "Not now."

And Beebo, who had never had a lesson in her life, except the hokum in her reveries, slipped her arms around Paula and pulled her tight. It was wonderful the way their bodies fitted together; the way Paula's head tipped back naturally at so welcoming an angle, and rested on Beebo's