In the elevator going up to his apartment she stood in the circle of his arm with her head thrown back against the front of his shoulder; his hand rubbed her belly and breasts, and she murmured drowsily. He guided her into the frankly sybaritic apartment and flicked a wall switch, which turned on one softly glowing lamp and a stereo tape deck which filled the apartment with the music of soft strings. Anne went through the apartment with him, giving the place a lidded look of approval, and when they stopped in the bedroom, she turned in his arms and looked up and smiled.

He said quietly, “How does a nice girl like you find herself in a place like this?”

She grinned at him. They stood quietly face to face, his hands against her waist and rib cage; he lifted his thumbs and wiggled them against the taut, erect nipples of her breasts.

He murmured, “What would you like to do?”

She only smiled.

He said, “Say the word,” and nibbled at her ear.

He felt her shudder.

Anne felt the heavier, faster rhythms of her breathing, the sense of body flush, all the intimate sensations of arousal that had been stirring in her all night. She had wanted this, she had planned it, but now she was afraid.

She had watched him for months, wondering; today, at last, he had made the move. All night she hadn’t been able to take her mind off him, his easy athletic grace, his good masculine face. But she had only really known him these few hours, and now, knowing it was the sheer desire to sate body lust that coiled in her, she felt chilled by uncertainty. Was it nothing more than epidermal passion? She was neither a virgin nor a prude; but she put a value on herself, she didn’t want it to happen if afterward it would mean nothing at all. Now she had to ask herself at each moment’s interval if she should stop or let it continue.

She felt the press of his thighs, the movement of his soft-caressing hands from the back of her neck to her buttocks; she uttered little gasps with every touch of his hands, and she knew if it went beyond here she would not be able to stop it.

He was pulling her against him. He sucked her tongue into his mouth, and she savored the intoxication of sweet wantings. She wanted to be loved; she hated the doubts in her mind that kept trying to push desire away, hated the uncertainty that held pleasure back.

He was slipping her clothes off, her dress and bra. She felt the cups drag free where she was pressed against him; he touched the sudden softness of her naked breasts, massaging the rubbery tips of her nipples with fiery lances of delicious pain. He had shrugged off his jacket; she picked at the buttons of his shirt and pushed fear and doubt into the back of her mind. Craving, excited, trembling, she breathed against his ear, “Yes-oh, yes!” Hurry, please hurry. She wanted to fill up with him. She helped him strip off his clothes; she felt swollen and flushed, short of breath. He took her hand and placed it on his-penis, she thought. Cock, pecker, prick. What the hell. Big son of a bitch. She laughed with an open throat, feeling healthy and girlish. She ran her fingertips along it and felt it grow and throb. The pain in her was exquisite, bursting into flame at the touch of his fingers. She fell back on the bed, spreading her thighs, tugging him down. She felt his great rigid organ touch the twitching moist heat of her, felt it thrust into her alive and throbbing. She thought, in a curiously distant way, All right, then, I’m getting laid-not for the first time, anyway. Isn’t that what it’s all about? She wanted to suck him in, lock him forever inside her. Her head swirled dizzily. She heard a broken groan in her own throat, and then he was sliding into her white-hot agony, rolling and twisting. The charging, plunging rhythm drove her uncontrollably toward a peak of anguished urgency. They flailed slick together, writhing; she uttered pulsing grunts of ecstasy, rising to a crescendo of heat that grew in her to a scalding high hot wonderful flame that drenched her in sweet anguish, reached height after height, reverberated and echoed through all the halls of her quivering flesh, and at last shattered in an agonizing flash of hot joyous triumph and the slow wonderful draining away of frenzy.

She felt sated, yet still excited. When he lifted himself from her she lay naked and grinned absurdly at him. He held her close against his side, not speaking, softly rubbing her arm. She closed her eyes and felt a slow gentle kind of regret, not unpleasant.

She was smiling softly; she opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow to look fondly at him.

His face was kind and gentle. He reached out to touch the tip of her nose. “You’re a girl after my own heart.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “I am after your heart, Steve. Be warned of it.”

He picked her up, laughing quietly, and carried her across the room. They showered together, and as his hands rode over her body with soap, as he toweled her gently afterward, she felt the stirrings of desire welling again between her legs. Still damp, they clung together and made love on the bed again; and afterward she said to him in a panting whisper, “I can’t get enough of you-I can’t fill up with you!”

He came awake sometime in the night with the girl, curled against him like a child. He had been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember the dream. He could see her shape faintly in the darkness, the high rounded mound of her hip, the curve of breast and shoulder. She was all right, he thought drowsily. But as he came more clearly awake, he remembered she was Claiborne’s secretary and there was a purpose to all this. He had to have her hooked-he had to make it like a drug she couldn’t stay away from-and so, stirring gently at first, he rubbed her body with his open hands until she awakened. She blinked fuzzily and smiled; she moaned with loosening sensuality-she was easy to arouse. Her nipples came erect before his hands touched them. He brought her to a peak of desire with easy languor, but when at last he penetrated her and began to satisfy her craving need, he battered her roughly, with powerful plunging strength, not cruel but heavy and brutal, and brought her to a pitched screaming climax beyond anything she could have experienced ever before.

Afterward he took her into the shower again and brought her partway to desire again with his hands and his body under the tingling pin spray of water; but he left her unsatisfied this time; he was shaving at the bathroom mirror when she reluctantly went back to the bedroom alone.

He dried his face and splashed on after-shave cologne. He scratched his belly and stood in front of the mirror with his lips peeled back, inspecting his strong, even white teeth.

When he came into the bedroom she was dressed. She wore a look of anxiety and strain. “This is terrible,” she said. “My mother and father-it’s almost five o’clock! I’ve got to run.”

“What for? Can’t you tell them you spent the night at a girl friend’s?”

“You don’t know them-you don’t know my father. I’ve got to go.”

He said, “I’ve got to see you again-and I don’t mean in the office today. I don’t know if this meant anything to you besides a few hours’ fun and kicks, but I-”

“Oh, God, no,” she breathed, her eyes wide and moist. “Steve, this-”

“I’ve got to see you tonight,” he said, putting heavy urgency in his voice. “Darling, I’ve got to have you to keep.”

She swayed against him, turned her face, and spoke with her mouth muffled against his chest. “Oh, yes-yes. I need you, Steve darling.”

All the tired old slick-magazine dialogue, he thought petulantly; he had probably spoken these lines more often than any Hollywood screen actor. “Not half as much as I need you,” he said, making his voice tremble with sincerity, nuzzling her hair.

“I trust you,” she whispered. “Let’s make it forever, Steve darling-I don’t want to spoil it, ever.”