Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man by Lawrence Block

turned up, knocking timidly at the door. I opened it, and there she was.
    “Hello,” she said.
    “Why, hello.” I said. She was wearing a knit dress. It was red, and so tight that it looked like a blush. “You look good enough to eat,” I said, and her face turned the same shade as the dress. “Come in,” I said, and she came in, and I closed the door and locked it. She winced as I turned the lock, as if it meant she couldn’t change her mind now. Which was precisely what I had been thinking.
    “Now what?” she said. “Do I just lift up my skirt and you’ll do it or what?”
    “Is that what you think you want?”
    “Well, I don’t know. I’m new at this.”
    “You silly,” I said, and kissed her.
    She really didn’t want to respond to the kiss, Steve. She wanted to get eaten and have an orgasm, but she was so tense she couldn’t have had a Coke, let alone an orgasm. So I took a lot of time kissing her, and then I put some music on the radio, good old WPAT, nice mood music that you could fuck to without listening to.
    (What do you do for music to fuck by in Cuernavaca?)
    And we gradually worked our way to the bed, and I gradually got her out of her dress and paid the proper sort of homage to various parts of her anatomy. She kept saying that she knew she could really trust me, and I kept earning that trust by taking my time with her, being very gentle, very gentle, ever so gentle.
    The poor kid had never really relaxed with sex before. She always dated these louts who would kiss her hard enough to bruise her lips, then grab her tits to test their grip, then make a beeline for her twat. She never had a chance to enjoy necking because she was too hung up with fears of what it would lead to.
    Now she had her chance, and she was making the most of it. As I ran my tongue along the undersides of those incredible breasts and listened to her purr and throb, as I stroked the satin skin on the insides of her taut thighs, I thought how incredible it was that this girl had managed to maintain her hymen to the ripe old age of twenty-six.
    “You can trust me,” I said from time to time.
    “I know I can trust you,” she said now and again.
    “I swear on my mother’s life that I shall not penetrate your quim today, even if you decide you want me to.”
    “You’re a gentleman, Larry.”
    “Of course you can change your mind at some future date, but not today. You walked into this apartment a virgin. You’ll walk out of here a virgin.”
    “A gentleman. Oh, do that some more, it’s wonderful. A real gentleman. I never met anyone like you before, never in my whole life. Oh, God, do you know what it does to me when you do that?”
    I had a fair idea.
    One thing, Steve. I meant that oath, and the fact that my mother died several years ago doesn’t detract from it a bit. I used that wording for the impression it would make, not out of some perverse streak. (You and Fran seem all too willing to believe I have a perverse streak.)
    Anyway, the oath couldn’t have been any more binding had I had a living mother. I was determined not to violate that maidenhead. Rozanne was providing me with a rare enough pleasure anyway, the pleasure of slow seduction.
    I didn’t realize until then just how much I’d grown to miss that pleasure. That’s one of the unfortunate by-products of the sexual revolution, Steve. There’s no more working up to it. A girl either fucks or she doesn’t, and the two of you decide it in front, and if she does, you both get into bed and you do it, and if she doesn’t, you go away and that’s it.
    Even with the daughters of Lancaster, the most precious angels on earth, there was no gradual pursuit. They knew the game and enjoyed playing it, and they didn’t have to be conned into anything. There were some things they had to be shown, owing to relative inexperience on their part, and it’s always fun to play teacher, especially with such willing and adept pupils, but it’s not the same