Beebo reclaimed them, but only to caress Paula’s face, bringing it close to her and seeing it with amazement.
“I never guessed I’d feel love for the first time through my hands,” she murmured. “Paula, Paula, I would have done this all wrong if you hadn’t had the guts to start it for me. I would have manhandled you, I—”
Paula stilled her with a finger over Beebo’s mouth. “Don’t talk now,” she said.
And Beebo, who had never done more than dream before, slipped her arms around Paula and pulled her tight. It was a marvel the way their bodies fitted together; the way Paula’s head tipped back naturally at so beckoning an angle, and rested on Beebo’s arm; the way her eyes closed and her lips parted and her hair scattered like garnet petals around her flower-face.
Beebo kissed her mouth and kissed her mouth again, holding her against the wall with the pressure of her body. Paula submitted with a sort of wistful abandonment. Everywhere Beebo touched this sweet girl, she found thrilling surprises. And Paula, coming to life beneath Beebo’s searching hands, found them with her.
It was no news to Beebo that she was tall and strong and male-inclined. But her voluptuous 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 sensual delight. The merest touch, the merest flutter of a finger, and Beebo went under, hearing her own moans like the whistle of a distant wind. Paula had only to undo a belt buckle 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 “learning how.” The whole night passed like an ecstatic dream, punctuated with a few dead-asleep time-outs, when they were both too exhausted to move, even to make themselves comfortable.
Beebo had only a vague idea of what she was doing, beyond the overwhelming fact that she was making ardent love to Paula. She seemed to have no mind at all, or need of one. She was aware only that Paula was beautiful, she was gay, she was warmly loving, and she was there in Beebo’s arms: fragrant and soft and auburn-topped as a bouquet of tiger lilies.
Beebo couldn’t let her go. And when fatigue forced her to stop she would pull Paula close and stroke her, her heavy breath stirring Paula’s glowing hair, and think about all the girls she had wanted and been denied. She was making up, this night, for every last one of them.
Paula whispered, “Do you still believe you can’t love someone you just met?”
“I don’t know what I believe any more.”
And Paula said, “I love you, Beebo. Do you believe that?”
Beebo lifted Paula’s fine face and covered it with kisses while Paula kept repeating, “I love you, I love you,” until the words—the unadorned words—brought Beebo crashing to a climax, rolling over on Paula, embracing her with those long strong legs.
She felt Paula sobbing in the early dawn and raised up on an elbow to look at her. “Darling, did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously, not stopping to think that she had never called a girl “darling” before, either.
“No,” Paula said. “It’s just—I’ve been so unhappy, so confused. I thought the world had ended a month ago, and tonight it’s just beginning. It’s brand new. I’m so happy it scares me.”
Beebo held her tenderly and brushed the tears off her cheeks. Paula put her head in the crook of Beebo’s arm and gazed at her. “You must have been born making love, Beebo.”
“How do you know?” Beebo had no intention of setting the record straight just then.
“I don’t, really. It’s just that I never reacted to anybody the way I have to you. I never did this with anybody before.”
“Never made love?” Beebo said, surprised almost into laughter. The blind leading the blind, she thought.
“No, I’ve made love before,” Paula said thoughtfully. “With men, too. It’s just that I never…. You’ll think I’m making this up, but it’s the truth. I never—oh, God help me, I’m frigid. I mean, I was, till tonight.”
Beebo lay there in the dark, holding her, torn between the wish to accept it and the suspicion that she was fibbing.
“You don’t believe me,” Paula said resignedly. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s enough that it happened.”
Beebo petted her, smoothing her hair and letting her hands glide over Paula’s silky body. “Okay, you never came before,” she said. “Now I’ll tell you a fish story. I never made love before.”
Paula laughed good-naturedly. “All right, we’re even,” she said. “That’s a real whopper. Mine was the truth.”
Beebo laughed with her, and it didn’t matter any more whether she had been lied to or not. It was the truth in spirit, and only Paula knew if it was the truth in fact. Her attraction to Beebo was so real that it took shape in the night, surrounding her like the aura of her perfume. Beebo kissed her while she was still laughing. “You have such a mouth, Paula. Such a mouth…”
“Does it please you?”
“You please me. All of you,” Beebo said, and she meant it. Paula was wholly feminine, soft and submissive. She was finely constructed, looking somehow as breakable, as valuable—and as durable—as Limoges china. Beebo wanted to protect her, accomplish things for her.
She kept touching her admiringly. “You’re so tiny,” she said. “I’m going to feed you lasagna and put some meat on your bones.”
“Will you buy me a new wardrobe when I get too fat for my old one?”
“I’ll buy you anything. Mink coats. Meals at the Ritz. New York City,” Beebo said.
“All of it?”
“Just the good parts.”
Paula clutched at her suddenly, first laughing, then trembling. “Beebo, don’t leave
