arm; the way her eyes closed and her lips parted and her hair scattered like garnet petals around her flower-face.

Beebo kissed her; kissed her with her whole body, not just her yearning mouth; kissed her with the vital ardor of youth and strength and long denial. Paula submitted with ecstatic abandonment.

She had expected a lot, just from the looks of Beebo. But there was abundantly more; more even than Beebo knew she had. Everywhere Paula touched her she found thrilling surprises; and Beebo, coming to life beneath Paula's searching hands, found them with her.

It was no news to Beebo that she was big and boyish. But her erotic reaction to Paula shocked her speechless. Paula began to undress her and Beebo felt herself half-fainting backwards on the sofa into a whirlpool of passion. The merest touch, the merest flutter of a finger, and Beebo went under. Paula had only to undo a belt buckle for her or pull off a shoe, and Beebo responded with a beautiful helpless fury of desire.

It was no longer a question of proceeding with caution, of taking lessons, of "Learning How To Make Love." The whole night passed like a radiant dream, punctuated with a few dead-asleep time-outs, when they were both too exhausted to exert themselves for a while.

Beebo had no idea what she was doing, beyond the obvious fact that she was making ardent love to Paula. She seemed to have no mind at all, nor need of one. Logic and reason and common sense melted out of her head, and the only fact she was sure of, besides the overwhelming fact of her passion, was that Paula was beautiful, she was gay, she was sensuous, and she was there in Beebo's arms; fragrant and soft and auburntopped as a bouquet of tiger lilies.

Beebo couldn't let go any more

than she could stop. And when fatigue forced her to rest briefly she would pull Paula close and stroke her, her heavy breath stirring Paula's smoldering hair.

And Paula would whisper, "Do you still believe you can't love somebody you just met?"

"I don't know what I believe any more," Beebo answered.

And Paula murmured, "I love you, Beebo. Do you believe that?"

Beebo, swallowing hard in the dark, lifted that fine face to cover it with kisses while Paula kept repeating, "I love you, I love you," until the words-the plain unadorned words brought Beebo crashing to a climax, rolling over on Paula, embracing her with those long strong marvelous legs that had never hugged anything sexier than a pony before.

She felt Paula sobbing once in the early dawn, and raised up on an elbow to look down at her in sudden fear. "Darling, did I hurt you?" she asked anxiously, not even stopping to think that she had never called a girl 'darling' before.

"No, no, no," Paula declared softly. "It's just I've been so unhappy, so confused. I thought the world. had ended a month ago, and tonight it's beginning, instead. It's brand new. I'm too happy to hold it."

"Don't cry, then," Beebo said tenderly, coming down close to her and holding her again, licking the tears off her cheeks.

"You have to express it somehow or you explode," Paula said.

"So you cry?" Beebo smiled at her. "Women," she said and she said it like a perlexed and loving husband. The parody was unintentional, unaffected, and yet it sounded funny and made them both laugh. And hold each other again. Finally Paula said, "Beebo, you're a natural. You must have been born making love."

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