"Come on, Judy, you know you want to. All those times that you said no, you really wanted to go ahead. Let's go the last step."
"Richard, it's because I want to that I don't want to! Oh, I don't know, I'm not sure it makes sense to me either! It's just that I hate to trust someone like that until I'm really sure," she told him.
"You mean that after all this time you don't trust me?"
"Oh, oh, I guess I do, but... Oh, hold me!"
He held her body against his while she wept on his shoulder and made up her mind.
Finally she looked up and nodded slowly, as he expected. He led her over to the little iron-frame bed he had in his apartment and softly kissed her as they sat.
They lay back and he pulled her body over his. As their tongues met he reached behind to unbind her hair and let the black cloud of it settle over them. He ran his hands through the silky softness and along her face until the tears vanished. Then he tugged on the shirt she wore until a little bare skin peeped through and he touched her there. She gasped, not so much from what he did as from what it meant as a first step toward an end that she still wasn't sure she wanted.
He continued to run his hands over her lower back, then on her stomach, then to the fastening on the bra she first let him under three months before, and no one else ever. The hooks came undone and his hands slid under and around to cup her breasts. His thumbs circled her nipples and brought them erect, then she drew in her breath when his fingers twisted them.
The shirt and bra came off and he lay her back to caress her breasts and dart his tongue into her mouth. She put her hand up to unbutton his shirt then she timidly touched the hair on his chest. After a little she moved her hand down to the bulge in his pants, a thing she had never done before. To anyone.
His hand went to the top button and then to the zipper on her jeans. Here she cooperated, helping him take them off. When she lay back wearing only panties, he pulled her to him and put his hand on her hip and held her to him.