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Danica
“YOUR FATHER’S HERE,” the social worker says, with the same small,
pitying smile she’s been giving me all afternoon. She probably thinks it
makes her look sympathetic. To me it just looks tight and fake. It’s the same
smile everyone’s been giving me today—professionals who are trying to
look compassionate but really just doing their job. They’ve seen it all
before, I guess. She ducks back through the door, leaving it open, and I turn
to the cop standing beside me.
“That’s it, anyway,” I shrug. “She basically took everything with her.”
She gives me the same smile as the social worker and tilts her head.
“I’m sure you’ll be real happy to see your daddy. Thanks for your help,
hon.”
I walk down the shoddy hallway, my running shoes pressing down on
the too-soft, stained blue carpet, and into the living room, where the social
worker is waiting for me. A large, dark figure fills the doorway.
Jean-Luc.
It’s been a year since I saw my stepfather—a really long, fucking
difficult year—and heat rushes to my face as I step towards him, tears
threatening. He doesn’t look at me the way the social worker does, or the
cop. His jaw is tight, his gaze level, but there’s an intensity in his eyes that
tells me exactly how he’s feeling: relieved, worried, emotional.
We’ve kept in touch since he and my mom separated. Jean-Luc has
never stopped checking in on me, always concerned about how things were
going with Melanie. But he didn’t know the half of it. And now he’s about
to embark on a fast learning curve.
I dive in for a hug without saying anything and he wraps his huge,
strong arms around me, pulling me in tight. It takes everything in me not to
break down and cry. His well-made suit jacket is polished and stiff against
my cheek, so unlike everything in this apartment, where even the walls
seem to droop and sag. The solid plane of his chest is unimaginably
reassuring. And his smell! I forgot how warm, clean, and comforting it is. I
take a deep breath and let my body melt into his, enjoying the feeling of
safety and security in his arms. It’s the first respite from constant anxiety
that I’ve had in months.
“Hey, baby,” he murmurs into my hair.
“Hey, Jean-Luc.” I don’t care that the social worker is standing there
watching us. I can’t bring myself to let go.
Jean-Luc chuckles, his whole body vibrating against the length of mine.
“You used to call me Dad,” he says affectionately.
I just sigh, and wrap my arms around him tighter.
It’s true, I did used to call him Dad. Melanie had insisted on it—until
they broke up, and then suddenly it had to be Jean-Luc. I had so much
trouble calling him by his name at first that I’m surprised to realize now
that I finally broke the habit. Surprised, and disappointed. Jean-Luc is my
father in nearly every imaginable way. It feels like a betrayal that I stopped
calling him that.
We break apart and he shakes the social worker’s hand and signs a
release form. I can tell by the way she looks at him that she’s flustered by
his appearance—maybe the height and breadth of him, or the cleft in his
chin; I know women go crazy for the cleft. She’s wide-eyed and flushed as
she repeats what she told him on the phone, blinking her eyes as she tries to
stay focused: My teacher came to the apartment because I hadn’t been to
school in several weeks, and then called Family Services; I have no idea
where my mother is; Jean-Luc will have to take me home to his house;
she’ll come by to check in tomorrow.
He nods gravely through the whole thing, his jaw tight and his
expression serious. He doesn’t seem to notice the way she swallows when
she says she’ll come by the house, or the way she keeps tucking her hair
behind her ear. Then the cop comes out of my mom’s bedroom and gives
him her card, asking him to call if he hears anything, and promising to be in
touch. When they both leave, Jean-Luc takes my bony shoulders in his large
hands and looks down at me with a furrowed brow.
“You okay, kid?” he asks.
Sure. I’m fine. My mom ran off five weeks ago and the electricity just
got shut off. Couldn’t be better.
I nod and say nothing, and then he follows me to my room so I can pack
a bag. I’m keenly aware of what this apartment must look like to him, as we
enter the dingy bedroom beside the kitchen. I see it through his eyes. The
scuffed pink walls, the closet door hanging on its hinges, the worn-out
single bed. He doesn’t say anything but I see his eyes scanning, taking it all
in. It’s such a shithole here. Not at all the kind of accommodation Jean-Luc
Rochat is accustomed to.
He leans against the doorframe as I grab handfuls of my clothing from
the warped, secondhand dresser and shove them into my old hockey bag.
“Why are you living here?” he asks in his deep voice with just the
faintest trace of a French accent. I shove the last of my clothing into the bag
and zip it up.
It’s the question I wish I could avoid answering, the reason I didn’t call
him when I began to wonder how long I could make the canned food last. I
was ashamed to have him find out that we were here, ashamed of my
mother’s behaviour, her tricks. I reach for the stuffed, white bunny on my
bed, Bunners, and Jean-Luc smiles softly. He gave Bunners to me when he
first started dating my mom, and I’ve been sleeping with it ever since.
“Melanie rented out the house,” I admit.
“What?” He frowns. “What do you mean she rented it?”
“She rented it,” I repeat, and try to lift the bag off the floor. It’s too
heavy for me and I drop it with a thud. “Can we…can we talk about this
later?”
He blinks his eyes, drawing himself back to the matter at hand, and
pushes himself off the wall. “Of course, honey.” He reaches down and grabs
the handles of my bag, swinging it over one powerful shoulder easily. “I’m
sorry. Let’s just get you home.”

Home.
I’ve never been to Jean-Luc’s new house, the one he bought after he and
my mom broke up, because Melanie didn’t want us to stay in touch. ‘Just
leave him in the past where he belongs!’ she’d said flippantly, as if I could
just forget about the one person who was ever really a parent to me. Jean-
Luc, who’d been my dad since I was eight years old.
The old house, the one he’d left to me and Melanie after the break-up,
and which she’d rented out, was a beautiful three-storey house with a pool.
This new house, further away from Vancouver’s city centre in its most
expensive neighbourhood, is even more stunning. Sleek, modern, and
imposing, it’s exactly the right style for my Swiss architect stepfather, with
his expensive taste and exacting attention to detail. My running shoes
squeak on the shiny black floor as I follow him through the massive double
front door, down the entry hallway, and into the cavernous, open space of
the main area, still clutching Bunners in my hand as if I were eight years
old. The far wall in front of us is entirely glass, spanning the full height of
the house, and looking out over a ravine of tall pine trees. Bright, natural
light dapples the austere, modern furniture and futuristic-looking kitchen.
It’s gorgeously appointed, impeccably designed, and perfectly Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc has always had money. No doubt that’s what drew Melanie to
him in the first place, as much as his stunning good looks. Tall and
powerful-looking, with thick, wavy hair, dark brown eyes, and that cleft
right in the centre of his chin, I know that my mom was proud to be on his
arm at one point. Looking at him now, I still can’t imagine why she ever
wanted to be with those other men. At forty years old, Jean-Luc is
exceptionally handsome, even to my seventeen year old eyes.
Women were always wild for him, I think, remembering the social
worker today, and for one bizarre, fucked-up second, my mind briefly
imagines him in a naked embrace—what he would look like gazing deep
into a woman’s eyes. How much softer, how intense, his gaze would be.
How powerful his shoulders and arms would look.
Shame sears through me, and I look down at the polished floor, chasing
away the thought. What’s wrong with me?
“I’ll show you to your room,” says Jean-Luc, still effortlessly carrying
my bag over his shoulder, and I follow him up a circular metal staircase
leading to a second floor mezzanine that overlooks the living room and the
view through the windows. There’s nothing to see but the tops of huge,
ancient pine trees, and beyond them, the ocean. Three large wooden doors
face the bannister, and at the far end, there’s an open area with a desk. Jean-
Luc indicates each in turn. “Guest room, your room, my room, office.” I
love that he’s already calling it my room.
The doors are all at least eight feet high, and he swings the second one
open and waves me into an airy, industrial-looking room, nearly the size of
the entire apartment I’ve been living in with Melanie. It has polished
cement floors and a skylight and its own small washroom with a sink and
toilet. Several potted trees are gathered in one corner, soaking up the light
from above. There’s a large bed dressed in white linen against the wall, and
a padded reading bench under the window.
 It’s an incredible room, better even than my room at the old house, and I
beam with happiness as he places my hockey bag on the floor and runs a
big hand affectionately over my hair. “You get settled in,” he says, his dark
eyes crinkling with warmth. “And I’ll start dinner.”
When he closes the door behind me, I take a deep inhale, drawing in the
peaceful energy of my stepfather’s home. It doesn’t smell anything like the
apartment, with its damp mildew smells and the constant odour of the
neighbour’s cooking. It smells fresh and clean—faintly like Jean-Luc
himself, and slightly like sage.
It’s the nicest place I’ve been in since I last saw Jean-Luc. Since the last
time I was home.
I sit down on the bed and clutch Bunners to me, lowering my nose to
the rabbit’s head and inhaling its familiar scent. Melanie tried hard to get
me to part with the stuffed toy, even going so far as to throw it in the
kitchen garbage one time. But I’d always found it and retrieved it. I refuse
to give it up, no matter how juvenile it is. Bunners was the first piece of
Jean-Luc I could grasp and hold on to, and even now it reminds me so
comfortingly of being a child in Jean-Luc’s care. How safe he always made
me feel, how he was always there for me.
There for me even now, after my mother has left both of us. Ironically,
the one parent I’m not biologically related to is the one I have the deepest
bond with.
I should have called him a long time ago, I think.
I could have been home all this time.
Jean-Luc
ONE BY ONE, I drop shrimps into the skillet, each one making the hot
garlic butter spit and hiss. Then I lift my cold glass of riesling and take a
sip, watching the shrimp sear with satisfaction. The hot, kinetic drama in
the skillet reflects the tumult of my feelings. Feelings I need to keep
carefully controlled around Dani.
It’s the old song and dance of parenthood. I got all too used to this in my
eight years with Melanie. She would do something crazy, something
impulsive and selfish, and I would tamp all my feelings down and act like
everything was fine for Dani’s sake, to protect her from the chaos of her
mother. To protect her from the frightening intensity of adult emotions: fear
and pain and anger.
I’m raging inside at Melanie’s negligence, burning up like the pan-
seared shrimp, but on the outside I’m as cool as my crisp, clear glass of
wine. I lift the bottle, and top up my glass.
When dinner is ready, I call up the stairs to Dani and turn my attention
to plating the food. It’s comforting to hear the sound of her feet padding
down the stairs, her gait somehow still familiar to me. But when I carry the
dishes to the table, I nearly trip over my own feet at the sight of her back.
For half a second, I think she’s Melanie. She has Melanie’s hair exactly.
Mel’s pride and joy was her thick, loosely curly, bright red hair that she
always wore long. Dani’s grown up in the year since I’ve seen her. She has
her mother’s straight, slender shoulders, and her lean arms. It jolts me,
briefly, this image of Melanie at the table, and I can almost let myself
imagine, for a second, that my wife has come back to me.
I serve the pasta, and pour myself another glass of riesling, giving my
stepdaughter an encouraging smile and telling her to eat. She’s so like Mel,
it’s astounding.
Melanie is an exceptional beauty, and in the past year, Danica has really
blossomed into her spitting image. Her face is more angular and she’s too
thin, but her body has filled out. Tiny waist, slim arms, full breasts—she’s
clearly inherited her mother’s unholy proportions.
But…lifting my eyes to her face, I can’t deny that she’s even prettier
than Melanie ever was. Her mouth is plumper. Her eyes, the same shade of
icy blue, are wider and more innocent. She doesn’t have Mel’s jaded,
suspicious look.
She’s youthful, untainted…my sweet little girl, even if she is on the
cusp of womanhood.
I take a sip of my wine and twist the watch on my wrist as Dani scarfs
down the food. I’m too on edge to eat, and I watch her hoovering the food
off her plate with bitter concern. She’s clearly starving. I wonder how long
it’s been since she ate a proper meal; what her last meal even was. And with
no less shock and horror than I felt this morning when I first found out, I
wonder yet again how Melanie could actually abandon her own child.
“What did your mom say before she left?” I eventually ask, pointlessly.
Whatever the reason, I already know it won’t be a good one. But I can’t
stop myself from asking, from wondering what excuse Melanie provided.
“She said she was going to New Mexico for the weekend with—“
Dani’s eyes flick briefly up to me, “—with her new boyfriend. She’s texted
a couple of times but she doesn’t pick up if I call. A couple of weeks ago
she just said she was going to stay for a while longer.”
I inhale and lift my wine glass. “What about money? Did she leave you
any?”
She laughs—a little bitterly, I think. “No. And she didn’t answer any
texts about that. So yeah…no.”
My hand tightens around the glass, whitening my knuckles, and I inhale
again—a deep, steadying breath to relax my fingers, so I don’t break the
delicate Waterford crystal. “You should have called me. You know you can
always call me.”
“I know.” She stares at her plate. “I just didn’t want to have to tell you
that she rented out the house. I kept thinking if I could just make it through
one more day…”
“She’d come home.” I nod. I know exactly what that feels like. “I hope
you know you never have to hide anything from me. I’m always going to
come to your rescue, no matter what.”
She lifts brilliant blue eyes at me then, a hopeful, untroubled expression
on her face. She’s so easy to please. So quick to be reassured. “Yes, Dad. I
should have called. It was silly not to. She just kept telling me…that it was
over, you know? That I had to forget about you. And that you couldn’t find
out about the house, no matter what.”
The house. I make a mental addition to the list of things I have to take
care of tomorrow: find out who’s living in my fucking house. I also need to
cancel the monthly e-transfers I set up to help Melanie provide for Danica’s
care. Clearly that money isn’t being used as intended.
But there’s plenty of time to worry about the gruesome details
tomorrow. Tonight is all about helping Dani settle in here, and making her
feel safe again. Five weeks on her own, when she’s still basically a child. It
makes my blood boil.
I take a sip of wine and pat her hand. “I’m so happy you’re here,
sweetheart. And I’m going to take care of absolutely everything. There’s
nothing you have to worry about.”

In the morning, I let myself into Dani’s bedroom and sit on the edge of her
bed, the way I used to wake her up in the old days. I push the red curls off
her forehead, gazing tenderly at her soft, flawless face, slack in repose. At
my touch, her eyelids flutter lightly and then still, her long, thick lashes
resting on her cheeks.
I almost can’t believe this is Dani, this little creature who is somehow so
much like my wife and so much like my daughter, and yet somehow isn’t
either of them. She’s changed so much in the past year. She has the same
eyebrows and cheekbones and mouth, but her face looks more defined, as if
the past year has chiselled away some of the cherubic roundness she had as
a child. I lift a hand to her face, cradling the line of her jaw and running a
thumb over her chin, just grazing the swell of her lower lip, and she furrows
her brow, mumbling something about it being too early. She’s a true
teenager now, more so even than when I last saw her, when she was sixteen.
Back then, she was an early riser, and we would share a quiet breakfast
while Melanie slept through the morning.
“Wake up, sweetie,” I murmur. I wish I could give her the day off to
settle in, but she’s missed three weeks of school already, and I spent an hour
on the phone last night with her social worker and the school principal.
They were very clear that getting back up to speed at school is Dani’s
number one priority.
“What time is it?” she groans.
 I lean forward to kiss her on the forehead, before standing up to pull the
curtains back, letting the bright morning light into the room. “Time to get
up. I’ll get breakfast started.”

An hour later, Dani is perched at the kitchen island, scarfing down a second
bagel, the long, thick mass of her hair pulled into a ponytail behind her.
She’s wearing her school uniform—white blouse and green plaid skirt with
white knee socks—and the effect is so innocent it makes my heart ache. She
is my little girl still.
“I can take the bus,” she says politely, when I tell her I’ll drive her to
school.
“I’ll drive you,” I repeat, shaking my head. My new house is much
farther from North Vancouver than the old one, but my office is practically
around the corner from her high school. “Doesn’t make any sense to take
the bus.” I pick up her knapsack, and carry it out to the car to wait for her.
When she finally emerges from the house, my eyes are glued to her.
She’s so beautiful, with her mother’s incredible hair, and her clear, rosy
complexion. But there’s something else, too. Something different.
It’s the shapely definition of muscle in her bare thigh, the roll of her
hips as she walks, and the bounce of her breasts under her blouse. The
waistband of her skirt is rolled over so many times the hem is barely
covering her ass, and she’s tied her shirt at her waist so that if she lifts her
arms, skin will be exposed. For a moment, I’m transfixed—staring at her
body.
But when I feel my cock start to stiffen in my pants, I’m yanked back
into reality with a searing sense of shame.
I grip the leather steering wheel as Dani gets in the car. It’s myself I’m
angry with, for the way I looked at her—for the way I felt as I looked at her
—but I direct my anger at her as I say primly, “Dani, there’s no way that’s
an approved way of wearing your uniform.”
She blinks ice-blue eyes at me, defiance making the line of her mouth
hard for just a moment before she relents. I know the look well, she’s the
spitting image of Melanie with that expression. There’s a whisper of
exasperation in her tone as she mutters, “It’s just what all the girls do.”
She unties her shirt and shimmies her skirt down, smoothing the rough
wool fabric over her knees modestly as I start the car.
 We drive in silence as my thoughts churn. She’s changed so much. The
Danica I knew, the one I said goodbye to almost exactly a year ago, was
still a child—her thin body straight and angular, that stuffed bunny still
grasped tightly in her hand more often than not.
What else has changed in the past year? With only Melanie for
supervision, who knows what kind of trouble Dani’s been getting into.
Melanie’s a dangerous role model at best.
I was always the strict parent. The one who had to act tough when it
was called for; the bad cop. Mel was the fun, vivacious one, happy to let
Dani watch an R-rated movie or eat junk food instead of dinner. At her best,
she brought colour, excitement, and joy into Dani’s life. At her worst, she
fostered moodiness, recklessness, and disobedience in her.
When Dani was a child, recklessness meant riding her bike on the road
when she was specifically told not to, or staying out past her curfew. But
now that she’s a beautiful young woman, what does recklessness look like?
An image of her shitty bedroom in that rundown apartment flashes to
mind, with her crooked dresser and the dirty carpet. Is it possible that she
took some boy into that cheap twin bed?
I look over at her in profile as I drive. My beautiful girl. At least she’s
here with me, where she’s safe. She catches me looking at her and gives me
a small, quizzical smile.
“It’s good to see you, Dani. I missed you.” My heart tugs a little as I say
the words, realizing how true they are. Every day that we’ve been apart,
I’ve worried about her. And with good reason, obviously. Melanie has
proven without a doubt what an incompetent parent she is.
“Missed you too,” she says, the end of her sentence dropping
awkwardly. I think she stopped herself from saying my name, which is
good. But I wish she’d call me ‘Dad’.
I pull up in front of her high school, grateful, at least, that Melanie
hasn’t taken her out of this school on some whim—as she’s been wont to do
in the past. It’s an expensive private school, the best in Vancouver, and the
only reason Dani attends is because I pay for it. Melanie would just as soon
use the money for anything else. “I’ll be here at three-thirty to pick you up,
okay?”
She nods, looking pleased, and I’m glad she doesn’t suggest taking the
bus again.
 I look out the car window at the mass of uniformed teenagers milling
around the school’s sprawling lawn. I hate to think of her going into that
old, ivy-covered mansion alone, facing questions about her prolonged
absence. I had a conference call with the social worker and school principal
last night, and I know her teachers have been notified about her situation,
but I wish I could walk her in and protect her from the curiosity of her
peers.
She leans over and kisses me on the cheek before grabbing her
knapsack. “Thanks for the drive, Jean-Luc.”
I can’t help myself. “Thanks for the drive, who?” I ask, cocking a grin.
It’s so weird to hear her addressing me by my name. Weird…and sad. I’d
gotten used to filling a certain role in her life.
She rolls her eyes. “Thanks for the drive, Daddy,” she says cutely,
lacing her fingers under her chin to ham it up and making me chuckle.
“Good girl. Have a good day, sweetheart.”
She blows me a kiss and gets out of the car, and I frown as I pull away
from the curb, my heart full of love and concern. I’d almost forgotten how
much love can make your heart ache; how tender this kind of love can be.
She’s not a child anymore, I remind myself. She spent five weeks
fending for herself, and she’ll be turning eighteen soon. But it’s hard to
think of her as a grown woman…even if my body has undeniably noticed.
Danica
AT 3:29 p.m. on the dot, Jean-Luc’s champagne-coloured Jaguar pulls up
out front of the school, as expected. Swiss by birth, and Type A by nature,
Jean-Luc is never late.
“Give me a sec,” I say to Kye.
“Sure, babe.” Our high school’s champion point guard and most eligible
bachelor gives me a slow, overly-confident smile as I get up from the
school steps, like he has no doubt I’ll be running right back to him. Kye
Knight does not suffer from low self-esteem.
I open the car door and lean in. “Hey, Jean-Luc—Dad,” I quickly
correct myself. “If it’s okay with you, my friend Kye is going to drive me
home.”
I’ve known Jean-Luc for so long that I sometimes forget people find
him intimidating. Looking at him now in his perfectly tailored suit, leaning
back in the cream leather interior of his car and frowning at me, I’m
suddenly reminded. He lifts one dark, heavy eyebrow without a hint of a
smile on his face, and a muscle in his jaw flexes. “That’s not okay with
me.”
“What? Why not?”
“For a few reasons, Danica. Because I came here to pick you up,
because I have no idea who Kye is, and because we need to get home. The
social worker will be there in an hour.”
All at once, he really does feel like my dad again. Dear old Dad. We’re
right back to old times. My teeth grit against each other as I try to swallow
my exasperation.
I love my dad, I remind myself. He came to get me after my mom
abandoned me. He cares for and loves me. He wants what’s best for me.
“It’s just a drive home,” I huff, trying not to roll my eyes. I don’t see
what difference it makes whether it’s him or Kye that drives me. Either
way, it’s the same distance, and Jean-Luc works near here anyway. It’s not
like he went out of his way.
 He blows out a breath, frowning. “I left the office early to come get you,
Danica. Tell your…friend you’ll see him in class.”
He’s pissed, and I can tell I’m not going to win this argument. I don’t
want to fight. I’m still so grateful to Jean-Luc for being there for me. But I
can’t hide the irritation in my voice.
“Fine,” I grumble, turning on my heel and leaving the car door wide
open just because I know it will irritate him. I stalk over to the school steps
and pick up my knapsack.
I try to compose my face before speaking to Kye, embarrassed that he
might be witnessing me being treated like a child.
“Sorry, Kye,” I say casually, my cheeks warming. “I forgot I have an
appointment my dad needs to take me to.”
“No problem.” He shrugs, letting his eyes wander down my body before
lifting them back up to my eyes. “See you tomorrow.”
I press my lips together as I turn back to the car.
Kye Knight. He’s the hottest guy at my school. Right before my mom
took off, Kye and I made out at a party, and we texted for a little while after.
I can’t blame him for letting the communication drop off—I became
unavailable real fast as soon as I started grappling with the fact that I had
basically no food or money. But I’d been hoping we could reconnect. His
offer to drive me home today was my chance. Now that I’ve turned him
down, I’m sure he’ll give up on me.
I get into the car and slam the door shut. I know I should tone down the
drama, but I can’t help but feel like my stepfather has completely cock-
blocked me.
He pulls away from the curb and drives out of the school grounds
without saying anything for a few minutes.
“So who’s Kye?” he finally asks, turning left onto the 99 with one
smooth sweep of his well-manicured hand around the steering wheel. It’s a
strange thing to notice, but he has nice hands, I think. Well-proportioned
and strong-looking, with clean, trim nails, and the giant silver watch he
always wears around his wrist.
I’m not sure how to answer, and I feel a blush creeping up my cheeks
that I hope he doesn’t notice. “Just a friend,” I say, quietly and
unconvincingly. He looks over at me and raises an eyebrow, like he’s not
falling for it. “Just someone I…” I falter and shake my head. “I don’t know,
Dad. Just a guy.”
 “Just a guy, hm?” He fixes his eyes on the road, amusement tugging at
the corner of his mouth. “And how long has Kye been…just a guy in your
life for?”
Yup, okay. Now I am officially embarrassed.
“It’s not a thing, honest,” I say quickly. My foot starts tapping nervously
of its own accord. “We just, um…we just kissed once, and now we’re
friends.”
I turn my face to the window, heat fully spreading over my cheeks. Why
am I even telling him this? That I was kissing someone? Where are my
boundaries?
“You kissed?” He sounds surprised. For a moment neither of us says
anything, and the awkwardness in the car gets hot and palpable. “That’s not
nothing, sweetheart,” he finally continues. “Kissing is, well, it means
something.”
“Oh my God, stop please.” I cringe and turn further towards the
window. This is too uncomfortable. I cannot have this conversation with my
dad.
Luckily for me, he doesn’t push it. He laughs, probably not wanting to
have this conversation either, and says, “Okay, fine.”
I turn on the radio and he asks me about my day, and when we get home
and get out of the car, he looks over at me with a curious look and says,
“Kye, eh?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh my God, stop.”
But he just laughs affectionately, taking my knapsack from my hand and
wrapping an arm around me as he leads me to the front door. I lean into the
solid mass of him, feeling grateful, suddenly, to have had the time with him
on the way home instead of Kye. Kye might be the hottest guy in school but
there’s something about Jean-Luc that makes me so happy. He’s so warm
and strong and safe. Is it weird that I’d rather spend time with my dad than
with boys my own age? I wonder absent-mindedly. He opens the door and
winks at me as I walk in and I realize I don’t care if it is weird. I’d rather be
with Jean-Luc than most anybody.
Jean-Luc
“WOULD YOU SAY this is characteristic of your wife, Mr. Rochat?” the
social worker, Annette, asks me, her pen scrawling over the page as she
takes notes. She looks up at me. “To leave on a whim, I mean? Is she
impulsive?”
I bite back my smile at her question. Is Melanie impulsive? Is grass
green? Is fire hot? Calling my wife impulsive is putting it kindly. Melanie is
selfish, chaotic, and destructive in the immediate pursuit of whatever has
caught her fancy. I close my eyes for a second, summoning patience, and
reply, “Yes. This has happened before.”
Dani, sitting beside me on the couch, slips her small hand into mine and
I squeeze it but let go. I don’t think we should sit in front of a social worker
holding hands, but I know that Dani is trying to comfort me—as if it’s the
job of a child to comfort her father.
Dani was twelve the first time it happened. Melanie had gone to the
wrap party for the movie she’d been doing makeup on and gotten into drugs
with the lead actor. They ended up flying to Los Angeles for a week,
binging on coke and sex, until his PR agent broke up the party and Melanie
came home with her tail between her legs, begging for my forgiveness.
It was the same story when Dani was fifteen.
When she was sixteen, Melanie didn’t go anywhere, but she’d decided
to stop hiding the fact that she was cheating. We were in an open
relationship, she told me. Whether I liked it or not.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t stay anymore, not even to protect Dani.
Melanie had crossed too many lines for me to pretend that things might ever
go back to the way they were. I let Mel keep the house so that Dani
wouldn’t have to move, and I bought the new one. I didn’t want to leave
Dani with her mother, but there was no way I could win custody from her
biological parent.
Sitting here with the social worker now, though, I can’t help but blame
myself for not trying harder. I should never have let it come to this. Being
afraid of overstepping my boundaries with Danica is what led to her being
abandoned. I find Dani’s hand again and squeeze it.
“You and your stepdad are pretty close,” says Annette, speaking directly
to Dani. She drops her eyes down to our hands, and I relax my grip, even
though she’s smiling.
“Yes,” answers Dani. “I feel safe with him.”
The comment takes me by surprise, but pleases me. I know I can never
really be Danica’s father, but all I’ve ever wanted is to make her feel safe.
“Okay, good.” Annette closes her notebook and slips it into the large
tote bag at her feet, standing up. “You have my number.” She looks at me.
“If you hear from Ms. Holland in the next few days, please give me a call.
Otherwise, I’m happy to know that Dani has a safe place to be, and this is
our goodbye, since somebody is turning eighteen soon.” She grins at Dani,
who smiles back.
Eighteen years old. Technically an adult. Maybe that’s what Melanie
was thinking when she left. That Dani was old enough. That they’d gotten
close enough to the finish line that Dani could make it on her own from
there.
I shake the social worker’s hand and walk her to the door, feeling a
surge of protectiveness for my stepdaughter. I want Annette to leave so that
I can be alone with Dani, so that I can enfold her in my arms and never let
her go.
Eighteen is not old enough. But then again, I would never abandon
Danica at any age.

The next day, I spend the morning taking care of personal affairs. I call my
lawyer, Patrick, and let him know I want the Kitsilano house put up for sale,
and the tenants evicted. I have him call my wealth manager to stop the
monthly payments to Melanie. By the time Dani needs to wake up for
school, I’ve severed the generous income Melanie has been enjoying at my
expense.
She’s been M.I.A. for more than five weeks, but I expect now I’ll hear
from her soon.
The housekeeper was in yesterday, and I head downstairs to the laundry
room where she often leaves my shirts hanging after she’s ironed them. On
top of the dryer, I find a folded stack of Dani’s clothes, which Gisele must
not have known what to do with. She doesn’t even know I have a daughter,
and glancing at the clothing in the pile I’m sure she’s wondering who the
new woman in my life is.
At the top of the small pile of folded shirts and pants is a neat stack of
small silk triangles. Lifting one up, I’m shocked to realize that I’m holding
Melanie’s panties in my hand, a lacy red g-string I have enough X-rated
memories of to recognize immediately. I lift up two more pairs, both
Melanie’s, both slinky and inappropriate for a teenager, and before I know it
I’m tearing through the pile of folded clothing looking for any evidence that
Dani has panties of her own.
This is a mistake, I think finally, when I find nothing. She’s grabbed her
mother’s underpants instead of her own. But even as I think it, I know it
can’t be true. I watched her pack her bag myself.
Stuffing the panties into my pocket, I grab an ironed shirt and head back
upstairs. I don’t want Dani wearing her oversexed mother’s indecent
lingerie. It’s unsuitable…but, worst of all, it’s causing a low ache in my
groin as I imagine her young, firm ass in the very panties I once pushed to
the side and fucked her mother in.
I go into my bedroom first and shove the panties into a corner of my
sock drawer, to be dealt with later, then I head over to Danica’s room to
wake her up, trying to clear my head of inappropriate thoughts.
I give the door a knock before I push it open, but I know the sound will
be muted by the heavy Bubinga wood of the doors, custom designed by the
home’s original architect. When I walk into the dark room, Dani is fast
asleep. I open the thick curtains and she protests cutely as the sunlight
blasts into the room, burrowing under the covers.
I walk over to her dresser and open the top drawer, rifling through it. To
one side are several balled-up pairs of socks. To the other, several more
pairs of Melanie’s panties.
What the fuck.
“Sweetheart, where are your underpants?”
“What?” she groans plaintively.
“Your underpants. Are you wearing your mother’s?”
She pulls the covers down to her chin and squints at me. “Why are you
looking at my underwear?”
“I saw them in the laundry room. Where are yours?”
She shrugs. “Those are mine. Melanie threw my old ones out and gave
me those.” I blink at her. It doesn’t make any sense yet it’s perfectly
Melanie. “She said they were more grown-up and she was getting new ones
anyway.”
Tension pulls at my shoulders and my jaw. Everything about this is
fucked up, but if I speak I’m afraid I’ll say something I regret. I close the
drawer without further comment and manage to say, “Get up and get
dressed, and then come down for breakfast.”
Then I grit my teeth as I leave the room, biting back the confusing tide
of both anger and arousal that’s rising up in me.

Later that week, I decide to work from home to take care of a few things
around the house. I’ve been working from home more since Dani arrived—
leaving the office shortly after three o’clock every day to pick her up at
school, and then working in my home office until nine or ten at night after
dinner. But today I want to put aside some time to make sure Danica has
everything she needs to feel settled.
I drive Dani to school and then return home, picking up extra groceries
on the way. When I get back, I respond to a few emails and then go up to
Dani’s room, checking through her closets and drawers, and making a list of
things she needs. By the looks of it, Melanie hasn’t purchased a single thing
for Danica in a year and she needs new everything.
I open the underwear drawer and look disdainfully at the three or four
pairs of Melanie’s g-strings Dani still has in there. Only Melanie would
prioritize getting new panties for herself over whatever her daughter needs
—not to mention feel that it’s in any way normal to give her used panties to
her teenage daughter. I lift a pair with my index finger, a deep purple silk,
only a scrap of fabric really, with a troublesome and forbidden longing.
It shouldn’t turn me on to remember my wife’s ass in this scrap of silk.
It shouldn’t turn me on to think about her daughter wearing it, either. But it
does.
I stand there for a while, grappling with my complex feelings and
staring, mesmerized, at the soft fabric. The silk itself is erotic. I imagine it
caressing Melanie’s and Danica’s skin, swishing softly between legs,
rushing smoothly back and forth with every step and every action.
A forbidden idea comes to me, a terrible idea, and I try to talk myself
out of it to no avail. Once it has a hold of me, I can’t let it go.
Eventually, with equal parts guilt and anticipation, I unzip my pants and
push down my boxers, laying out on Danica’s bed on my back. I’m hard—
I’m so inappropriately hard—and I circle the soft silk of the purple panties
around my shaft and then use my hand to stroke it up and down, the fabric
so smooth and soft it’s almost like a mouth.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Not in Danica’s room. But it feels so good
stroking my cock with her mother’s panties, moving the silk up over the
head of my dick, squeezing my shaft harder and moving faster until I’m
moaning with pleasure.
When I come, I cup the panties around the head of my cock, coming
into them like it’s a willing mouth, gasping for breath on my stepdaughter’s
bed.
Once the ecstasy wears off, it’s shame.
Purchasing new underpants for Danica is a top priority, I decide.
Jean-Luc
“DO YOU HAVE any plain cotton underpants?”
The cashier, overly made-up, with long, straight hair and equally long
nails, gives me a blank look. “Like, for women?”
“Yes, for women.” It’s a women’s lingerie store, but suddenly I realize
she thinks I’m shopping for myself. “They’re for my daughter,” I add.
I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth. Curiosity sparks in
the cashier’s eyes, but I simply arch an eyebrow in a way I’ve learned often
gets me my way.
“Maybe in the back. With the bathrobes and pyjamas.” She looks past
me to the next customer, but I catch another furtive glance in my direction
as I turn towards the back of the store.
I need to watch the language I use about Danica. What kind of a man
buys panties in a store like this for his daughter?
But is she my daughter, though? It certainly felt that way for years when
I was with her mother. But now Dani seems like a different person to me.
…One I can’t keep my eyes off of.
I find a small section of sensible undergarments, and hone in on a row
of modest white cotton panties, picking a pair up to examine them.
…And one whose panties I seem to have become preoccupied with.
They’re perfect. I grab several pairs and take them back to the cash
where the woman rings them through without comment, and when I get
back home I replace all the panties in Danica’s drawer with the new ones.

I’m disappointed when I arrive at school that afternoon to see Kye and Dani
standing close to each other on the lawn near the sidewalk. Kye is leaning
in towards her, speaking intensely, with one hand on her shoulder. I honk
the horn, making Dani jump with surprise, and she looks over at me and
then at him, saying something that makes him drop his hand.
She gets in the car, tossing her book bag on the floor between her feet,
and the first thing I notice is her long, taut thighs—bare because her skirt is
hitched up too high. If she bent over at school like that, anyone would have
been able to see the lacy panties I know she’s wearing underneath.
“Hey, Dad,” she greets me.
“Hi, honey,” I say evenly, trying to hide the tension I feel creeping over
me at the sight of her legs. I rub one eyebrow with my finger while I debate
whether I should say anything. I can see the soft, tender flesh of her inner
thighs pooling on the seat; how the skin there is slightly paler than the front
of her thighs. “Did something happen to your skirt today?” I finally ask.
“What?” She looks down at her lap and quickly realizes what I’m
talking about. “Oh.” She breathes a guilty laugh as she tugs the plaid skirt
down until it reaches her knees.
I start the car, refusing to match Dani’s smile. I don’t want to argue, but
I’m annoyed that Dani is naive about her own sexual power, and the effect
she may have on the boys at school—hell, the teachers at school—with her
exposed thighs and mid-riff.
Kids grow up, I know. I was eighteen once myself, but that’s part of
what worries me. I was like Kye in high school—tallest kid in my class,
athletic and considered handsome, and I used my unearned gifts to get the
only thing I wanted from the girls that threw themselves at me. I fucked
without conscience, bragged about my conquests, and refused to get ‘tied
down’ to one person. I didn’t know anything about love beyond sex. I
didn’t know the pleasure of caring for someone, of nurturing them, how
much it changes everything to bring that element of reverence to a
relationship. I was just horny all the time.
I don’t want Dani to end up getting involved with someone like that—
someone like me. She’s too pure, too perfect, and I want her to stay that
way. My little girl forever.

When we get to the house, I insist that Dani sit at the dining room table and
start her homework, a habit I’m trying to re-instill. In so many ways, her
year away with Melanie has rusticated her; she’s like an escaped animal
who’s gone feral. I have to retrain her on all her old, good habits.
I sit across from her where my laptop is already open on the table, and
take a moment to watch her. She’s completely unselfconscious, her head
bent over her work thoughtfully as she scrawls notes on a page. She bites
her bottom lip, two white teeth stabbing the swollen flesh of her full lip, and
her hair—pulled back but coming loose—drapes over the sides of her face.
Her mother’s brilliant red hair. A little Melanie, but one who’s sweet, and
unjaded, and sincere.
When she finishes her work, I close my laptop, too. “Spaghetti for
dinner?” I ask, and she nods happily. I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure it
is to cook for her, how making dinner for her night after night had always
been one of my great joys. She climbs the stairs to her bedroom to change
and I wish I could ask her not to. Her school uniform reminds me so much
of the little girl she still is inside. The white knee socks, in particular, I can’t
take my eyes off of as she mounts the circular, metal stairs. They’re so
perfectly innocent, virtuously masking her legs up to the knee, her bare
thighs only hinted at below the rough, plaid skirt. I make a mental note to
visit the school uniform website after dinner tonight, and purchase one or
two new ones.

I’m in the kitchen setting the sauce on simmer when Dani comes down
looking perplexed.
“Did you get rid of my underwear?” she asks.
I cover the pan and set the wooden spoon on a plate, turning to face her.
She’s changed into a t-shirt and leggings, her hair combed out and loose
behind her, and she looks more like a typical teenager and less like a child
than she does in her ponytail and knee socks.
“Yes. You need a lot of new things, Danica. I’m going to order you a
new school uniform tonight, too.”
She isn’t accusing, just confused. “But where are the old underwear?”
“I’ve put them away,” I answer, without saying where. “I don’t want
you wearing your mother’s old underpants, and they’re too sexy for a girl
your age anyway. You need new, clean underwear that belongs to you
alone.”
“Dad!” she laughs. “I’m eighteen! Don’t you think these underpants are
a little young, though?” She holds up a pair to show me, draped over her
pointer finger. It’s white cotton spattered with tiny pink flowers, and a
miniature pink bow at the front of the waistband. They’re cute.
“You’re seventeen,” I answer emphatically. “And no.” I frown, but I
know she can see the amusement in my eyes. “Those are proper underpants.
Anyway, is there someone looking at your panties who’s going to care?”
My comment hits the mark, making her blush. “No!” she protests. “Of
course not. It’s not that. It’s just that girls are my age are wearing things
from Victoria’s Secret, you know.”
“Well, not you. I’m not your mother, and I don’t want you wearing sexy
panties to school. Now go put that away and wash your hands. Dinner will
be ready in a minute.”
She leaves the kitchen with an exaggerated huff and I strain the
spaghetti noodles, aware of a low heat swirling in my groin.
Dani wanting to appear sexy isn’t new. She was hitching up her school
skirt before Mel and I separated, and she’s had a precocious interest in boys
for almost as long as I can remember. But I don’t think Dani realizes that
the stakes are different now. She’s not a gawky little girl trying to grow up
anymore, she’s grown.
She’s got undeniable sex appeal, pure sin on legs. The kind of walking
temptation men will do dangerous things for. Plump, kissable lips, full,
bouncing breasts—every inch of her holds erotic promise. I can’t turn off
the genes that made her such a teenage sexpot. All I can do is try to keep
her safe, and guard her childish innocence.
Even if, for some reason, that’s what I find most dangerously tempting
of all.
Jean-Luc
IT’S NICE TO have Danica in the house again, although it keeps catching
me off guard. I’ve gotten used to living alone, especially in this new house,
where there are no memories of Melanie and Danica. Catching Danica’s red
head as she prepares a snack in the kitchen or sprawls out on the couch
keeps giving me visions of Melanie. For half a second she’s my wife before
I realize she’s my daughter. Grown up and filled out. Although she’ll
always be my little girl, she’s become a woman in so many ways in the past
year.
I find myself noticing Danica’s figure, or breathing in her scent when
she’s near me. She smells like vanilla and coconut, like a sweet confection.
With her pale white skin, crystal blue eyes and bright fiery hair, she looks
like one, too. Something delicate and rich, like spun sugar.
My eyes wander to the fine bones of her wrists, or the long stretch of
her neck, or the surprisingly full globes of her breasts, and I have to blink
and look away, catching myself with shame.
She may look like Melanie, but she’s not Melanie. Where Melanie can
be cruel, jaded, and selfish, Danica is bright, energetic, and kind. There’s a
lighter energy to the house with her in it, and I realize how much I missed
her loud, sudden laugh, or the way it feels between us when we share a
special moment. The way she looks at me like my approval is the only thing
that matters to her in the world, the way we can smile at each other without
saying a word and we each know it’s love.

By the time Friday rolls around, I know it will do me good to get out of the
house and break this new awareness of Danica that’s verging on a fixation.
When we get home from school, I prepare Dani’s dinner, shower and get
dressed, and I’m almost out the door when she casually lets me know that
Kye is coming over to watch a movie.
I freeze in place and turn around to face her, slowly. “Excuse me?”
She bats wide blue eyes at me, looking confused. “Is that a problem?”
 “Yes it’s a problem,” I respond tersely. “You waited until the last minute
to tell me this because you know it’s a problem.”
She blinks, a guilty look flashing over her face. “We’re just watching a
movie. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Dani.” I tilt my head at her. She can’t honestly think I believe that.
For a minute, I consider cancelling the date I have this evening. I just
don’t trust this kid, Kye. As I debate my options, I stand there staring at
Danica, working my jaw as I think.
Dani has her beautiful hair down, flowing in curls over her shoulders
and down her back. She’s wearing a tight white tank top that sets off the
flawless porcelain of her skin and clings to the round curves of her breasts,
which are full in proportion to her stick-thin frame. She’s gorgeous. At
eighteen, I would have devoured her alive. There’s no chance Kye is going
to keep his hands off of her.
My pulse flutters as I run my eyes down her neck and over her curves,
and I’m ashamed to feel my own blood heat up.
I should go out. It will do me good. I can’t watch Danica every minute,
trying to protect her virginity. She’s practically an adult.
“I don’t want him coming over, and that’s final,” I say with authority,
glaring down my nose at her. I hate that so many of our interactions have
been this way since she got here—me the domineering father, her the bratty
kid. But after a year with only Melanie to supervise her, she’s gotten more
used to getting her way. It’s natural that we would struggle to re-establish
healthy boundaries.
“Dad, c’mon,” she protests. Two angry red spots bloom on her cheeks.
“If I find out that kid has so much as stepped foot on this property,” I
growl, “you’re grounded.” I march through the foyer and out the door
before she can try another plea.

I’m tense as I arrive at the restaurant to meet Cynthia, the new Junior
Architect at my firm, but my shoulders drop a little when I spot her at a
table across the room, waving to me.
Cynthia is young, maybe thirty at the most, and extremely hot. I know
it’s not wise to date someone from work, but agreeing to take Cynthia out
for dinner ended up being the path of least resistance. She made her interest
in me very clear only days after starting her new job. It hasn’t been unusual
in my professional life for junior women to flirt with me, women with
fantasies about fucking the boss, and I usually manage it professionally and
courteously, but there’s something kind of naughty about Cynthia that
intrigues me. Even as I approach the table, the way she watches me
seductively, boldly holding my gaze with her feline, almond-shaped eyes,
holds the promise of excitement. I find myself looking forward to this date
more than I have looked forward to any date for a while now.
We start with martinis and apps. Cynthia drinks quickly, I notice, and
barely touches the food. We talk about her career and education, and I learn
that she’s twenty-six, born to immigrant parents, and did some modelling
before her parents insisted she quit to focus on school.
“How about you?” she asks. “Marriage? Kids? Thwarted life dreams?”
I smile at her joke. “Uh, separated, for a year now. So I guess my
marriage was a thwarted dream. One kid. Danica. She’s with me full-time
right now while her mother…I don’t know…is off finding herself, I guess.”
“Oh!” Cynthia’s eyes widen with interest. “A kid, eh? So you’re
Daddy.” She says it coquettishly, swirling the toothpick of olives around in
her glass, and it gives me an odd rush. Heat rises to my cheeks. “How old is
Danica?”
Not old enough, I think, images of Kye flashing in my mind. So help me
God, he better not be at my house.
“Seventeen,” I answer. “She’ll be eighteen next week.”
“Ooh, eighteen. Legal. Daddy’s going to have his hands full.”
It’s the most inappropriate thing to say about someone’s daughter, yet it
elicits a hot, throbbing arousal in me. Maybe it’s the way she says it, her
cat’s eyes narrowing, the slow, suggestive smile creeping over her face. She
runs a hand over her sleek, black hair, tucking it behind her shoulder and
revealing the smooth skin of her cleavage.
She’s wearing a loose, low-cut red dress that only brushes over her
breasts. They’re small but perky and it looks like she has no bra on. With
sudden certainty, I know I’m going to fuck her tonight. I’m half desperate
and I need it. I smile, and signal to the waiter for another round of drinks.

After dinner, we walk through the parking lot to my car and I offer to drive
Cynthia home.
She looks disappointed. “I’d like that, thanks, but…I thought maybe we
could go to your house.”
 “I’d love to spend some more time together,” I tell her. “But my
daughter’s at my house. Could we go to yours?”
She shakes her head. “Can’t. I live with my parents.”
Oh.
God.
She’s young enough to live with her parents. The thought gives me a
pang of guilt, but then I remind myself: she’s twenty-six. And she clearly is
no innocent late bloomer. For a split second, I think about suggesting a
hotel as a solution, but it’s too tacky. I put a hand on her lower back and
guide her to my car, disappointed to realize our night is ending.
I unlock the car and we get in, turning to look at each other.
“Where do you live?” I ask.
“I’m near Nelson and Thurlow,” she answers.
I don’t lift a hand to the ignition. “It’s too bad we couldn’t spend more
time together. I had a really nice time tonight, Cynthia. I would have been
nice to, you know…keep getting to know each other.” I flash a smile, which
she returns.
“Yeah. I was really looking forward to getting to know you better, too.”
She tilts her head up towards me, ever so subtly, and I take the hint, lifting a
hand to her cheek and bending forward to kiss her.
She makes a little ‘Mmm’ sound as she parts her lips, meeting my
tongue with hers, and I slide my hand around the back of her neck,
threading my fingers up into her hair and feeling heat coil through me.
The eagerness of her kiss heats my blood. She runs her hands up my
arms and over my shoulders, linking her arms around my neck and pressing
her small breasts against me. I chuckle softly as she climbs over the console
between us and straddles my lap, and then I try not to moan as she presses
down against the growing bulge of my cock.
“Have you ever done it in a parking lot?” She peppers me with kisses,
grinding herself against me until I swell to my full girth.
“No.” I lay my palms flat against her back. She’s muscular and toned.
“But I’m open to it.” I need this woman right here, right now, and
consequences be damned. I couldn’t care less that she works with me.
Couldn’t care less that we frankly didn’t connect over dinner. I can already
tell that there’s no future for Cynthia and I but the way she’s moving on my
lap is making my thinking foggy.
 I run a hand over the silky fabric of her dress, to the small mound of one
breast, feeling her nipple pebble under my touch. She doesn’t have a bra on,
and the realization makes my balls tighten.
She reaches down and unzips my pants and then slides a hand inside,
over the outside of my briefs and along my hard shaft, making me groan. I
close my eyes and exhale a shivery breath as she runs her fingers back up
and then dips them into the waistband of my briefs, making contact with the
sensitive head of my cock. “Daddy’s got such a big, hard dick,” she purrs.
Oh fuck. My cock twitches in her hands as the first drop of precum
moistens the head.
“Does Daddy like that?” she whispers provocatively in my ear.
“Yes.” My voice sounds as strained and urgent as I suddenly feel.
She swivels her palm over my balls and slides her hand back up,
sending shockwaves of pleasure through me.
“Tell me, Daddy. Tell me how much you like that.”
Holy shit. “That’s really good, sweetie,” I manage, my eyes rolling back
in my head. “You’re making Daddy feel really good.” My own words
threaten to send me over the edge. “You’re such a good girl.”
“Yes.” I can hear the smile in her words. “You like that, don’t you? I
knew you would. You’re a dirty daddy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I huff. “Yes.” Fuck, I’m going to come already. I’m going to
come too fast.
“We could do this regularly if you wanted, Daddy. If you wanted a little
girl to play with. I could be your little girl as a long-term thing.”
I’m right on the edge, a hair’s breath away from coming, when I feel my
release ebb away, just out of reach.
No, I think desperately. No—come back.
“No,” I breathe out loud. Fuck no, I can feel my orgasm receding and I
need it so bad. My cock is starting to soften. I was so close.
“No?” she asks, her tone radically different, sharper and less velvet.
“What do you mean?” Her hand stops moving.
“No, I mean…” I blow out a frustrated breath as my dick becomes
noticeably soft. “Fuck. I don’t know what happened. I was so close.”
She sighs, and pulls her hands out of my pants. “Was it the words long-
term thing or regularly that killed it for you?”
Now it’s my turn to sigh. “No,” I say, “it’s not that.” Then, “I don’t
know. Maybe a little. Sorry. I think I just got in my head a bit.”
 The truth is, Cynthia’s commentary has got me thinking way too much
about my stepdaughter—thoughts that are making me feel guilty and
confused.
She bats thick fake eyelashes at me. “About what? What is it?”
“I think…” I take a long breath. “I think we need to slow down,
Cynthia. Sorry. I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“What? Are you serious? Now? This didn’t occur to you until my hand
was down your pants?”
“I’m sorry.” Fuck. “I’m really so sorry. I think I just got carried away
and I wasn’t really thinking straight.”
“Yeah,” she scoffs, climbing back over the console to the passenger
seat. “That Daddy talk really got you from zero to sixty, huh? Couldn’t
think straight until I ruined it?”
“Cynthia,” I reach for her arm and touch it lightly. She looks petulant
and hurt. “I’m so sorry. You’re a beautiful woman—“
“But you don’t want to fuck me,” she interrupts me, crossing her arms
over her chest and pursing her lips. “Or date me.”
“You deserve better than first-date sex in a parking lot,” I try, but she
scoffs. “We have to work together every day, and you’re young. Really
young. I’m forty.” I sigh. “I think I’ve made a big mess of this. I’m sorry.”
This doesn’t feel good. “I just think we’re moving a little fast,” I add,
lamely.
She lifts an eyebrow. “Did I go too far? You got really hard when I
called you Daddy.”
“No,” I answer emphatically. “Not too far. That was…really sexy. I
don’t know. I guess that got me in my head a little bit, too, because of our
age difference.”
Because you can’t be my little girl. Because I already have one.
She doesn’t say anything else, so I start the car and pull out of the
parking lot. She gives me directions, but otherwise we drive in silence until
I turn onto her street.
“It’s fine, you know,” she says. “To be honest, I don’t think you’re old
enough for me.”
My eyebrows jump up in surprise. “Not old enough?”
She indicates with her hand and I pull up in front of a small tidy home
with a white picket fence.
“I’m just looking for someone to have fun with, Mr. Rochat.”
 I cringe at her use of my last name—a deliberate formality.
“If you ever just want to have fun,” she continues, opening the car door.
“Just give me a call.”
She closes the door before I have a chance to respond and I watch her
open the fence and walk up towards the front door. The front window
curtain parts and an old man looks out, first at Cynthia, then over at me.
He’s looking at me the way I look at Kye. The protective-dad look. I
know it well.
It’s been a long time since a father gave me the hairy eyeball. I turn the
ignition and drive off before she’s reached the front door.
Danica
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN a good kid, especially for Jean-Luc, whom I would
never want to disappoint, but his order that Kye not step foot on this
property seems irrational and unfair. Why shouldn’t I be able to have a
friend over? Jean-Luc’s made a point of saying that his home is my home,
too. If that’s true, I rationalize, then I should be allowed to invite people
over.
So in defiance of Jean-Luc’s orders, I don’t cancel my plans with Kye,
figuring I can count on my dad to be out for dinner for at least three or four
hours, and there’s no reason he ever has to know.
It’s a bit awkward when Kye arrives. He’s chill as ever, but I second-
guess everything I say, wondering if I even know how to talk to my own
peers anymore after spending so many weeks alone, killing time in an
apartment I couldn’t afford to leave. We go downstairs to the den and put a
dumb Will Ferrell movie on, and it’s easier when we don’t have to speak.
After a while, Kye puts his arm around me, and somehow, by the time the
credits are rolling on the movie, we’re making out.
The last time we did this was just days before my mom left. I barely
remember what it felt like. We’d been drinking beer and all I remember is
the taste of beer in his mouth and mine.
This time everything is vivid. His tongue is rough and smooth at the
same time, probing deeply into my mouth, moving quickly. I slide my
hands across his back as he starts moving towards me, backing me down
onto the couch until I’m lying down with him on top of me. He presses the
length of his body down on mine and grinds himself between my legs, and I
can feel the hard length of his erection. Hot tension coils inside me.
I’ve had sex with one person before. Dante was an eighteen year old
actor on a show my mom was doing makeup on last fall, and she invited
him over for dinner. The three of us had pizza, and then she suddenly stood
up and announced she was going out and left. Dante and I made out that
night and then hung out a few times after. I lost my virginity to him on the
couch of the apartment he shared with four roommates when everyone was
asleep, and then we did it another time in the back of his car. It was all
rather unexceptional, but now, with Kye dry-humping me in my dad’s
basement, I find myself wondering if it will be better this time.
Sleeping with Kye would be strategic more than anything else. He’s hot,
and he’s popular, yet somehow he’s not my type. There’s something
immature and cruel about him. He’s a rich jerk. But being his girlfriend
would make things easier for me at school. People would stop wondering
why I wasn’t in class for three weeks and start wondering instead how I’d
landed the untameable Kye Knight.
My head is spinning. He’s not a great kisser, but Kye smells good, like
cut grass and after shave, and I’m pleased knowing that Kye Knight has his
tongue in my mouth right now and his hard cock pressing against me, like
it’s an accomplishment. I can’t stop kissing him, even though a small part of
me is starting to wonder what time Jean-Luc is liable to get home at.
“Kye,” I finally say, pulling my mouth away from his to speak, “Kye,
my dad.”
“Your dad what?” he breathes, still pressing his erection against me.
“He’s…he’s going to be home soon. I’m not supposed to have anyone
over.”
“Are you serious?” He looks pained. “You want to stop?”
“No. I don’t want to stop. I just…I don’t know. What if we get caught?”
“Let’s go to your room, then. Can you lock the door?”
Oh my God, if Jean-Luc found out I had a boy in my room… “No, we
can’t. I don’t know. Maybe we should stop.”
“C’mon,” he presses his mouth against mine again, as if he can distract
me with a kiss.
I pull away. “You don’t know my dad. He’s strict.”
“Dude,” he whines. “You got me hard.” He grinds his crotch against me
to show me.
“I know, I’m sorry.” I turn my face to the side as he leans down to kiss
me, and he takes the hint, sitting up with a huff.
“Can’t you at least suck me off? It won’t take long.”
I weigh my options quickly. I really don’t want Jean-Luc to come home
and find Kye here, but we’re in the basement, and if I keep my clothes on I
could sneak him out the patio doors quickly and rush upstairs to pretend I
was just watching a movie if I heard Jean-Luc come in.
 And I’m turned on and horny. The idea of seeing Kye Knight’s dick, of
having it in my mouth, is exciting. Things would never be the same
between us after that.
“C’mon,” he says, sensing my indecision, and I quirk my mouth as I
stand up and kneel between his legs.
“Okay.”
“Fuck yes,” he breathes, unzipping his pants and pulling out his cock.
He fists it, holding it at the ready and directs it towards my mouth.
It looks surprisingly unremarkable, somehow less than I expected even
though I’ve only ever seen Dante’s cock, but I bend forward and lick my
lips before taking it in my mouth.
“Yes,” he breathes, pumping himself back and forth in a way that
catches me off guard and throws off my rhythm. I wrap a hand around his
shaft to hold him in place, but he just thrusts harder against my hand, until I
feel like a helpless participant in something I’m not actually needed for. I
press down with my hand, trying to be subtle but regain control so I can do
my thing.
He puts a hand around the back of my head. “I’m going to come really
soon,” he groans, and it sounds more like a plea for patience than dirty talk.
He pumps himself harder and faster into my mouth and I give up trying,
freezing in place uselessly while he uses my mouth.
For a moment the only sound is a wet slapping, punctuated by Kye’s
heavy breathing, until a furious booming voice splits the air.
“Danica!”
Panic jolts through me so fast I almost bite down on Kye’s dick as I
whip my head around. Kye swears in shock and I can hear him fumbling to
zip up his pants.
My stepdad is standing in the doorway of the den, a terrifying look of
holy hellfire on his face. I’ve never seen him look so angry in my life. A
muscle is jumping in his jaw, his eyes are flinty and hard, and he actually
looks…dangerous.
“Dad!” The blood drains from my face. I was paying at least partial
attention to any sounds that might alert me to his arrival. His perfectly
designed house must be so soundproof there wasn’t even so much as a
creak when he walked down the stairs to the basement.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holland!” Kye blurts out, addressing Jean-Luc by my
last name. There’s more fumbling, and maybe the sound of him standing up,
but I still can’t take my eyes off Jean-Luc.
“Upstairs, right now,” says Jean-Luc, in a murderously cold voice.
“Both of you.”
He turns and heads up the stairs without another word and I get up to
follow him without looking back.
“Dad,” I plead as I climb the stairs after him. “I’m sorry.”
He ignores me, stalking up the staircase to the first floor and striding
across the living room floor.
I can’t remember the last time I was so mortified. My rib cage is
imploding, suffocating my lungs. My stepdad just caught me giving a
blowjob. I’m mortified for myself, mortified for Kye, even mortified for
Jean-Luc. I’m mortified that I was caught in a lie in the worst way—not
only because Kye did come over, but because I’d also sworn that nothing
would happen. Shame is coming at me from every direction.
Jean-Luc turns to wait for us at the entrance hallway. Behind me, Kye’s
footsteps are rapid and surprisingly light.
“Time to go, son,” says Jean-Luc, folding his arms over his chest as Kye
scurries past him and picks up his shoes.
“Right. Yes. I’m really sorry, again, sir,” he gushes. “I’ll, um, I’ll call
you, Dani.”
He swings the door open and waves to me weakly before letting it close
behind him with a solid, perfectly-weighted click. Jean-Luc’s eyes shift to
me.
He wasn’t even this mad when I took the Jaguar out without asking
when I was sixteen. His nostrils flare, and his chest heaves under the weight
of his arms.
“Dad, I’m sorry!” Tears are threatening.
His eyes widen, blazing furiously. “How dare you?” he bites out,
unfolding his arms and pointing a finger at me. “I was very clear that he
was not to come over, Danica, and I come home to find you…to find you
—”
“It just…kind of happened!” Everything I say sounds whiny and
plaintive, but I feel frantic. This could be the worst thing I’ve ever done.
What if Jean-Luc is so disgusted with me he can never forgive me? What if
he kicks me out of his house? Where will I go then?
He takes a step towards me and his face is so thunderous I instinctively
step back, feeling my heel hit the wall behind me. “Just kind of happened?”
His face is right up in mine. “Was it just an accident, then? You fell to your
knees?”
I blink, my breath coming quickly. I’m not sure what to say, and I’ve
never seen him so angry.
It’s scary.
A muscle in his jaw jumps as he glares at me, his breath coming as
quickly as mine; I can feel it in front of my face.
He places a hand against the wall, leaning closer. “Do you think I want
to see that?”
“No, Daddy,” I shake my head. It’s been so long since Jean-Luc was
mad at me it’s evoking something childlike in me. Daddy.
“Do you know how that makes me feel?”
I shake my head again. His body is so close I can feel the heat coming
off it, the sheer size and power of him overwhelming me as he closes off the
space around me, and all I can think is that he’s so much bigger than Kye.
Bigger than Kye, probably, everywhere.
I flush hotly at the thought.
He doesn’t say anything and I keep my gaze lowered, afraid to look him
in the eye. I’m excruciatingly conscious of his chest rising and falling, and
the familiar and soapy smell of him. For a split second, I wonder how I
would feel if I walked in on him in the same situation. If I walked into a
room to find some woman on her knees in front of him?
Then I wonder, would he pump himself hard and thoughtlessly into her
mouth until she felt like she was barely participating, or would it be slow
and erotic with him?
That I would even wonder about that is so shameful, on top of
everything that’s already happened tonight, that my cheeks burn as heat
crawls up my neck.
As if he can sense my shifting discomfort, Jean-Luc pulls away,
dropping his arm. Cooler air seems to pass between us.
“Go to your room. You’re grounded.”
“Dad!” I can’t hide my outrage. I broke his rules, and I shocked him
with my behaviour, but I’m not a child anymore. My eyes dart upwards to
his. “I’m going to be eighteen next week!”
“I don’t care how old you’re going to be, you better get up to that room
right now, Danica. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the night.”
 Hot tears sting at my eyes—tears that I don’t want him to see. Tears of
frustration. Tears of shame. I spin on my heel and stomp angrily across the
room, taking the stairs two at a time. By the time I reach the second floor, a
powerful sob breaks through me. I run into my room and try to slam the
large, heavy door. It sweeps evenly and smoothly across the cement floor,
resisting the force I exert on it, and closes in peaceful silence.
When I was a kid, Jean-Luc was a demi-god to me. I loved my mother
—I didn’t really start to compute how off the rails she was until I was
twelve—but Jean-Luc especially could do no wrong.
My mother was the fun one, the artistic one, the wild one. She
encouraged me to do whatever I wanted, to be whatever I wanted. Jean-Luc
set all the rules.
But I loved his structure and his reliability. When we moved in with
Jean-Luc, I started having dinner every night. I had a bedtime routine for
the first time in my life. I loved the way he would tuck me in and read me a
story and kiss me on my forehead right between my eyebrows. Sometimes
my mother was there, sometimes she wasn’t. But once Jean-Luc came into
my life, everything became stable…at least for eight years, until Melanie
had to blow it all up.
That stability, that rigidity that I loved, I needed it as a kid. It was
security in a frightening world. But a lot has happened in the past year. I’m
not a kid anymore, and I’ve gone a long time without living by anybody’s
rules.
I shift onto my stomach and stare at my phone. It’s been an hour, and
Kye lives less than ten minutes away. I thought he might have texted.
Sorry, I finally text him, and then stare at my phone awhile, willing him
to text back. Nothing happens. I put the phone down and roll over onto my
back with a sigh.
Maybe rules are just what I need. One moment I had Kye Knight’s dick
in my mouth and the next I was wishing it was my stepfather’s. It’s not
normal to think that way, but as I remember Jean-Luc leaning over me the
feeling comes right back. The heat and the tension; how desire had me so
possessed it felt like one more second was all it would take to make me do
something impulsive and crazy.
Like lean forward and kiss him.
And then I think the most fucked-up thing. He’s kissed my mom a
thousand times. In all that time, I wonder, did he ever think about what it
would be like to kiss me?
Jean-Luc
I TAKE A highball of scotch up to my room with me, pausing for just a
moment in front of Danica’s door. If she were a child, I would walk into her
room and sit on the edge of her bed so we could talk it out. So that no one
was going to bed angry.
But she’s not a child. She so very clearly is not a child, since I caught
her giving a boy a blowjob in my basement, and I have no idea how to talk
about this with her.
Kids have sex at Dani’s age. Lord knows I did. She’s not eight years old
anymore, and I feel like now I don’t know the rules.
I drink my scotch in bed, watching the news and trying to distract
myself from the irritating events of the night. I should never have agreed to
go out with Cynthia. The truth is I’m lonely. I’ve been lonely since Melanie
and I separated. But that’s no excuse for my lapse in judgment.
I stare mindlessly at the TV, thinking bitter thoughts about the teenage
douchebag sniffing around my daughter and my own loneliness, but not
even the endlessly bad news of the world can take my mind off things.
Eventually I get ready for bed, and drift off into a restless sleep.
I dream about Cynthia.
We’re in the car and she has her head between my knees.
“Mm, Daddy,” she murmurs, wrapping her lips around my shaft and
sucking me down deep into the warm embrace of her mouth.
“Good girl,” I tell her, squeezing my eyes shut and running my fingers
through her hair.
But her hair doesn’t feel as straight and slippery as I’m expecting. It’s
soft and thick, and I open my eyes and look down to see Melanie’s red hair
in my lap. It’s not Cynthia, it’s my wife.
“Mel,” I breathe, groaning and grinding my cock deeper into her
mouth. I’ve missed my wife’s mouth.
She raises her head, lifting her eyes to me and pulling back as she runs
her tongue up my shaft. Big, bright blue eyes framed by surprisingly dark
lashes…
“Daddy,” she purrs.
It’s not Melanie.
It’s Danica.
Danica running her tongue over the head of my cock and then sitting up
and looking at me with a delicious smile on her face. Precocious and self-
satisfied, like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Danica!” I shout, and wake myself up…
My eyes fly open in alarm. For a moment, I’m frozen, unable to move. I
take a deep breath, aware that my heart is racing, and try to calm down. I
have that feeling you sometimes get after a dream where you’re still not
sure it isn’t real, and I shift my eyes over to the side without moving my
head, for fear that Danica might really be there.
“Fuck.”
Of course it’s not real. It’s just the sickest fucking dream. It’s my own
sick fucking head making up twisted fantasies. Goddamn it.
I run my fingers into my hair, pulling on it and feeling the tiny pinpricks
of pain across my scalp with satisfaction. I deserve all the tiny pinpricks of
pain.
It doesn’t help that I have a raging fucking erection. My cock is
throbbing, a pulsing, aching, needy thing, and when I wrap my hand around
it it jolts in my hand.
Fuck, I’m hard. I haven’t come tonight and clearly I need to, so I start
stroking my dick knowing it’s just what I need to fall back asleep.
I jerk myself to the memory of Cynthia in the car, grinding against me.
Cynthia in the restaurant telling me that “Daddy’s going to have his hands
full.” I liked the way she said that.
The memory of Cynthia in her little red dress is nice. Imagining her in
something even naughtier is better. I imagine Cynthia wearing a little
school girl uniform. We’re outside the car now, and she’s bending over the
hood, showing me her little white panties under her skirt.
“Oh fuck,” I breathe out loud, my need building like a pressure inside
of me. I stroke myself faster still, harder, needing to come, imagining
myself pushing those little panties to the side to expose her sweet, tight
little cunt.
But it’s not Cynthia I’m imagining now. Cynthia, who’s twenty-six and
who’s had lots of sex before. It’s Danica. Danica who, in white panties,
would truly be all innocence. Danica, my stepdaughter. Danica, who is
completely forbidden.
In my fantasy, I grab all that long red hair and make a ponytail of it in
my fist, pulling her head back and rubbing the head of my cock against the
tiny, tight, wet entrance of her pussy. Before I can even imagine plunging
myself into her, I come with a gasp, my hot, sticky seed spurting over my
hand and euphoria washing over me in waves. I have to breathe deeply—
one, two, three big gulps of air—as my heart rate comes back down to
normal and the waves of heat pass over me.
When I finally do wipe myself clean and roll over to sleep, it’s under a
cloud of shame.
There’s something wrong with me. There’s something very fucking
wrong with me.
Danica
I STAY IN bed longer than usual in the morning, wanting to put off seeing
Jean-Luc. I’m equal parts angry at him for grounding me, and guilty for
disobeying him.
Sigh.
Eventually, I pull my hair—too much hair, I think, as usual—into a
messy bun and pull on some yoga pants and head downstairs.
Jean-Luc is in the kitchen hovering over the Nespresso machine, which
roars as it spits out his coffee.
“Morning.”
“Morning, Danica.” He raises his eyes to me without turning his head,
his expression condescending as fuck. My shoulders tense with irritation. I
don’t want to have this confrontation. I wish last night had never happened.
It’s a Saturday morning and for once Jean-Luc isn’t dressed for work in
his usual crisp button-down and suit jacket. He’s wearing grey sweatpants
and a white t-shirt that clings to the rock solid muscle of his chest and arms.
My stepfather doesn’t sleep much, which is how he manages to be
extraordinarily fit for someone who’s a workaholic. His secret is that before
he starts his twelve-hour day at a desk, he gets up before dawn and works
out for almost two hours. He’s exhausting just to think about.
He looks fit in a suit, his shoulders and arms lending definition to
anything he wears, but in a t-shirt it’s even more obvious. The bulges in his
biceps are differentiated by strong lines, and when I find myself staring at
them I have to rip my eyes away.
I pull the orange juice out of the fridge and grab a heavy, expensive
water glass from a cabinet lined with matching glasses. It’s such a contrast
to how mornings were only a week ago in the apartment. The shitty faucet
that leaked around the base when I poured water, which was the only thing I
had to drink. There certainly wasn’t any freshly-squeezed orange juice.
There wasn’t a bread box neatly stacked with organic bread and a package
of fresh brioche buns.
 If ever there was a time I was truly grounded, it was the five weeks I
spent on my own in that apartment with no money for food or anything else.
Nothing could ever be like that around Jean-Luc. He would never
abandon me.
Or at least, he never has before. But what happened last night feels like
the worst thing I’ve ever done. After last night, I don’t know if he can ever
see me in the same way again.
I grab a bun as the last of Jean-Luc’s coffee spits out into his cup, and
he lifts it from the machine and turns around with a tight, tense breath.
Despite myself, I notice the flat washboard of his stomach underneath
his shirt and then worse: Before I can even stop my brain from going there,
I take in the suggestion of something heavy shifting in the front of his
sweatpants as he leans back and crosses his ankles. A flash of searing heat
goes through me. It’s shame mixed with something else…shame and…oh
God, just the briefest shock of arousal. My cheeks warm and I press my lips
together and lift my chin in defiance of my own weird, inappropriately
wandering thoughts.
“Sweetheart,” he says tersely, like he’s trying to make his voice sound
soft, but failing. He sounds aggravated and tired. “Can we sit down and
have a chat, please?”
“Sure.” The tone of his voice puts me on edge. I wish for once he could
be chill, relaxed. He’s always wound tight, on the edge of some emotion,
wrestling with self-control.
He and Melanie are exact opposites, I think, following him over to the
dining room table and sitting where he indicates. I wonder if that’s what
they liked about each other. She’s free-spirited and fun; he’s rigid and
serious.
Although…the weird thing is that underneath they’re both the opposite
of themselves. Melanie is a roiling pit of rage under her big smiles and wild
ideas, and Jean-Luc is warm, loving and sincere under the surface of his
near-constant tension.
I try to bear that in mind as he pulls out the chair at the head of the table
and runs a hand over the stubble of beard across his jaw before speaking.
“I know you’ve probably gotten used to living by your own rules,” he
starts, keeping his eyes on his mug of coffee as he speaks. “And God knows
what you’ve been through. But at your age, sweetie, there still needs to be
an adult in your life—“
 I cut him off before he can continue. “I’m eighteen.”
I appreciate that he cares for me, I do, but he’s right: I have gotten used
to taking care of myself. And I’m old enough to do it.
He flicks his eyes up in annoyance and locks them on mine. “You’re
seventeen.” His thin veneer of patience evaporates. “You’re in high school.
And you snuck that boy in here against my orders and then you…you…”
He stammers and trails off, and without really meaning to, I roll my
eyes.
“Is this about sex?” I accuse. “Because I don’t know what it was like in
your day, but yes, kids my age have sex, okay? And we give blowjobs. You
might think of me as a child forever, but I happened to like giving Kye a
blowjob, okay?” My tone is angry and staccato, and I’m trying to shock
him.
I didn’t, actually, particularly like giving Kye a blowjob.
But the comment has the desired effect. His nostrils flare and his eyes
widen.
“Danica!” he exclaims. “Is that how you want to spin this? That I’m
some uptight prude? Sex has existed long before you, missy, so, yes, I
happen to know something about it. And if that’s how you want to behave
—fine. There’s not much I can do to stop you. But if you want to live under
my roof you will live by my rules.”
I don’t say anything, my heart beating wildly in my chest. Perversely,
Jean-Luc saying he knows something about sex is the only thing I can focus
on.
“I was always stricter than your mother,” he continues, his voice
infinitesimally calmer. “When I set a rule, it’s for your own good. And
when you break the rules, Danica, there are consequences. I told you Kye
couldn’t come over and you deliberately disobeyed me. Your priority needs
to be catching up on your schoolwork and completing the extra assignments
you’ve been given to make up for your absence. Not your social life. Not
boys. So for the next two weeks, there’s no going out, no one is coming
over, and you will focus on school.”
“Dad!”
“Danica.”
“So I’m grounded for my eighteenth birthday?” I stand up, kicking my
chair back. It makes a scratching sound as it skitters over the polished floor
and Jean-Luc winces. “That’s so unfair! I was better off at the apartment!”
 He stands up too, sliding his chair back more carefully, and as I storm
around the table towards the stairs, he speaks low and rough.
“Don’t say that.” The emotion in his voice stops me in my tracks. “You
should never have had to go through that,” he says emphatically, taking a
step towards me and placing his hand on my shoulder. “You’re not better
off being abandoned, Danica. You’re better off being loved.”
The last thing I wanted to happen happens. A hot rush of emotion floods
through me, and suddenly tears spring to my eyes.
What did I do to deserve this? was a question I had often asked myself.
Why would a mother leave her child? Was I really such a drag to come back
to? Me, and that shitty apartment, compared to her life in New Mexico with
whoever the hell ‘Jack’ was…
The tears in my eyes humiliatingly spill over, and suddenly I’m crying.
“Baby.” Jean-Luc pulls me in towards him, and I let him enfold me,
pressing my cheek against the soft cotton of his t-shirt, with my arms
hanging limply at my sides. For a moment I battle with myself. Something
heavy and hot swells in my chest, a balloon of grief rising up through my
rib cage and pressing against my heart.
When it bursts, it’s like a dam has broken. Sadness and relief floods
through me, and I lean in against my stepfather and wrap my small arms
around the hard column of his body and sob. He holds me tighter, his arms
so big and so firm I could let myself go limp and he would still be holding
me up, and he gently rocks me back and forth.
I cry for the weeks I was alone and scared and lost. But also for all the
time before that. All the weeks and months that I missed him. Alone with
Melanie’s impulsiveness and her whims. All the chaos and disorder and
unpredictability.
I cry for the way I’ve disappointed Jean-Luc, for the fact that he walked
in on me with my head in a boy’s lap. I cry for the fact that I’m no longer
Jean-Luc’s little girl.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m sorry I was such a bad girl.”
“It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs, pressing me tightly against the hard
plane of his chest. “You’re not a bad girl.”
“I am, though,” I sob.
I am.
From the moment Jean-Luc appeared in the doorway of the apartment, a
comforting and familiar figure in the midst of strangers, I’ve been looking
at him in a way that no daughter should ever look at her stepfather.
I told myself it was misplaced gratitude, it was the fact that
circumstances made him look like a hero, but the feelings persisted.
It was noticing things about him I’d never paid attention to before—
how strong he is, how tall. The defined angles of his face, how broad and
firm his jaw is, with the cleft right in the centre of it. And the fierce passion
in his dark eyes, so different from his cool and restrained manner, hinting at
something so powerful inside.
I know that I could never force my heart to beat for Kye the way it beats
for a grown man like Jean-Luc.
In the past six weeks, I’ve changed. I’ve grown up. I had to fend for
myself in frightening circumstances and I managed; I persevered. To me,
Kye is a boy. It was fun for a moment to make out with him and win his
attention, to think about the social capital he can help me gain at school, but
the truth is he isn’t what I want.
What I want is so much different. And completely forbidden.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, burrowing my nose in against him.
“I love you,” he whispers, brushing a soft kiss against the top of my
head, and rocking me back and forth. We stay like that for a while. Me,
pouring months of grief out, and him just holding me as the storm blows
over me. Jean-Luc, my rock. My father.
Jean-Luc
WITH A SOFT sigh, Dani lets the weight of her head droop heavily against
my chest, and I give her shoulder a small squeeze. Since her tears this
morning, something’s shifted between us, and any more firm parenting can
wait until tomorrow. Today is just about taking care of my girl.
We’re curled up on the couch watching a movie. The popcorn, long
abandoned, is getting cold in the bowl on the coffee table, and my bare feet
are extended in front of me on the ottoman. Dani’s curled up on her side,
sock-clad feet tucked up behind her, with her head on my chest and her
stuffed rabbit, Bunners, in her arms. The drama of the day has brought out
something needy in her, and my protective instinct is in overdrive. I never
want her to lift her head off my chest. I never want us to get off this couch.
When the movie ends, I turn off the TV and reach for my glass of wine,
and Dani scoots over to the other end of the couch, stretching her feet out
towards me until she can poke my thighs with her toes. I rest my free hand
on top of one foot, missing her closeness already, and run a finger along the
top of her cute little ankle sock, skimming my nail under the elastic band.
Such little girl socks.
She gives me a small smile, and I see the old Dani in her again. The
contrast reminds me of how much harder she’s become in the past year—
more grown-up, yes, but more reserved and guarded, too. It’s good to see
the soft side again. The stepdaughter I’ve missed.
Lifting my glass of wine to my lips, I take a sip as I consider what I
want to say.
I decide to start out easy. “So, my little girl has a boyfriend,” I observe
with a forced smile. I can’t get the image of that little fucker defiling my
stepdaughter’s mouth out of my mind, but I grit my teeth and try not to
show it.
Dani’s eyes widen innocently. “Oh, no,” she says emphatically, shaking
her head. “Kye is not my boyfriend.”
 I’m not sure which is worse. That Kye is fucking my kid, or that he’s
fucking my kid and he’s not her boyfriend.
I decide it’s the latter.
“What do you mean he’s not your boyfriend?” I frown.
“It’s just not like that anymore, Dad. You, like, don’t say girlfriend and
boyfriend right away at our age. Besides, I don’t even think I want him to
be my boyfriend.”
“You were sucking his cock but you don’t want him to be your
boyfriend?”
My choice of words shocks her, making her blink in surprise, but I’m
shocked myself. How many guys does she give blowjobs to?
“I…I guess,” she stammers.
“Dani, let me ask you something,” I ask on a whim. “Are you a virgin?”
She might not tell me, it’s not really any of my business, but suddenly I
need to know. Has this happened before? Does she think about sex, or want
it or crave it? Has Kye—I almost shudder at the thought—been inside of
her?
Her cheeks colour as she stares at me in disbelief. “Dad.”
I have to repress a smile at her embarrassment. “Honey. It’s okay to tell
me. Everyone does it eventually.” I’m trying to sound reassuring but I can’t
resist a tease as I add, “Even me, you know.” She may see me as an old
man, but I’ve had more sexual experiences than she could ever imagine.
She glances at her feet, cheeks flaming, and twists a lock of hair
between her fingers. “I’m not sleeping with Kye.”
“But have you ever slept with anyone?” I persist, my interest suddenly
acute. I need to know. Is Dani a virgin?
She lifts her eyes to me with a resolute look. “There was a guy. In the
summer. Dante.”
Dante? My heart starts pounding in my chest.
Who the fuck is Dante?
“And you and Dante…?” I try to sound as casual as I can, while all the
muscles across my neck and shoulders seize up. My heart is hammering so
hard in my chest I wonder if she can hear it. “You…?”
“Yeah,” she answers quietly, and swallows. “Twice.”
“And was it okay? Did you like it?”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
 Somewhere out there, in the big city of Vancouver, is a child named
Dante I now have to kill.
What the fuck kind of name is Dante?
Although…what the fuck kind of name is Kye?
Kids these days.
Jesus.
“Dad?” asks Danica, tilting her head and lifting an eyebrow. “You
okay?”
I realize I’m frowning and shake it off, giving her a rueful smile. “It’s
hard for any father to realize their daughter is growing up, is all,” I say, and
she rolls her eyes. “This Dante…”—the name tastes vile in my mouth
—“Did you, or do you, love him?”
“Love? Dad, c’mon. If you’re about to give me the birds and the bees
talk... “
“I’m not. It’s just…it’s a big deal, sex. Even if everywhere around you,
you get the message that it isn’t, it is. Does your mom know about Dante?”
“No.” No surprise there. Melanie has little interest in anyone outside
herself, even her child. “But that’s so hokey, Dad. Are you telling me
you’ve loved everyone you had sex with?”
The question surprises me. It’s adult, and cynical, and unlike the Dani I
think I know.
And she’s caught me out, of course. I’ve probably loved only a very few
of the people I’ve slept with. I’m not sure how to answer.
“See?” she scoffs, victorious, and pokes her toe into my thigh. “Can we
stop talking about this now? It’s uncomfortable.”
For a moment I don’t say anything. I eye my sweet young girl—so
beautiful, luminous, and vibrant. She’s so like her mother and yet so
different, so full of life and love. Knowing she’s had sex with someone
brings out a strange possessiveness in me. My eyes wander over the
rounded curve of her breasts under her cotton top, and the concave plane of
her stomach leading down to the secret place between her legs. To think that
a man—or a boy—has been there, has had her… I’m grappling with my
feelings, and more than that, with how inappropriate they’re verging on
being. My stepdaughter is a grown woman, even if she will always be my
little girl.
“Okay,” I concede, patting her foot and holding her bright blue gaze.
The light from the kitchen behind her catches her hair, illuminating it like a
golden halo. She’s like an angelic version of her mother when we first met,
and for a moment time seems to suspend. I let my hand run slowly up the
silky smooth skin of her calf, and have the terrible thought that she’s softer
than Melanie.
She is, though, and some dark, animal part of me wants to grab her
smooth calf and yank her towards me, so I can pin her down and find out
how much softer she is everywhere.
“Time for bed,” I manage to say. My voice comes out low, and quiet,
and still I can’t take my eyes off her. She stares back as if I haven’t said
anything. It doesn’t matter what I’ve said.
I trace small circles on her skin with my thumb and fingers. She feels so
good.
Did she feel good to Dante? To Kye? I must furrow my brow at the
thought because she sits up, breaking the moment.
“Daddy,” she says playfully, flinging her arms around my neck and
planting a kiss on my cheek. “You know no boy could ever compare to
you.” The warm cotton candy smell of her floods my nostrils and I get a
rush like a contact high, the hairs on my arms standing on end as I feel the
blood rise to the surface of my skin. My heart pounds. I hug her back and
marvel at the small, solid feel of her under my big palms. She’s thin and
wiry like her mother, all bones, and it feels shockingly familiar and
completely novel all at the same time.
When she pulls away, I’m disoriented.
“‘Night.” She stands and walks away as if it were the easiest thing in the
world to do. As if she weren’t almost in danger in my arms, as if I hadn’t
almost lost control and grabbed her and pinned her down underneath me.
“Good night,” I say in a thick voice. I watch her climb the spiral
staircase with a frozen look plastered on my face, afraid to reveal anything.
But all I can think about is her small, pale body underneath some boy’s—
some kid named Dante pumping into her for the first time; Kye fucking her
mouth. Blood roars into my cock, making it throb in my pants.
I scrub a hand over my face in shame, shocked and horrified by myself.
I need to be better. Danica deserves better.
But after checking the reflection in the highest part of the window to
make sure her bedroom door is closed, I pull down my zipper and slide a
hand down my pants, finding my cock, and rub one out fast and hard on the
couch, coming almost immediately to mental images of my stepdaughter
getting fucked.
Danica
I DON’T HEAR from Kye all weekend, so at school on Monday, when I
see him outside with his best friend Eric, I straighten my shoulders and
walk up to them confidently.
He’s barely concealing a smile as he pretends to look at his phone,
while Eric is clearly muttering to him out of the side of his mouth,
something like, ‘Here she comes.’
“Can I talk to you, Kye?” I ask tersely.
He lifts his eyes to me and shrugs nonchalantly. “Sure.”
Eric presses his lips together and looks away in a show of hiding his
laughter.
“In private?”
“Nah,” he says, lifting his chin and looking down his nose at me. “We
can talk here.”
“Okay.” I set my jaw, refusing to be intimidated. I survived five weeks
of Melanie’s abandonment, surely I can survive confronting a teenage boy
in front of his friend. “Why didn’t you text me back this weekend?”
Eric snorts with laughter.
“Oh!” Kye’s voice drips with cruel sarcasm. “I didn’t know if you were
allowed to receive texts. Doesn’t Daddy check your phone?”
“What the fuck, Kye? Like your dad wouldn’t be pissed if he walked in
on…“ My eyes flick over to Eric, and I let my sentence drop off.
“My dad doesn’t monitor my every move like some kind of bodyguard,”
Kye snaps back. “If that’s even your father…”
“What?” I exclaim, disbelieving. “He’s my stepdad! What the fuck does
that even mean?”
“That guy is your stepdad,” he deadpans. “Yeah, right.”
I’m speechless. He doesn’t believe me? “You’ve seen him pick me up at
school,” I say dumbly.
“Yeah,” he says, to Eric’s amusement. “Every single day. You’re the
only little girl whose daddy comes to pick her up after school each day.”
 Eric and Kye both start laughing then, and I step backwards, shaking
my head. I know it’s a bit extra that Jean-Luc picks me up and drops me off,
when most kids my age take the bus or walk, but Kye is completely
deflecting my question using some fucked-up gaslighting technique and I’m
actually speechless. Frustrated, I blow out a breath and walk away. Kye is
such a jerk. I can’t believe I ever fell for his bullshit.

I head directly out to the sidewalk after school, instead of waiting on the
front steps as usual, but it’s not far enough away to avoid scrutiny. When
Jean-Luc’s Jaguar rolls up, I hear Eric call out across the lawn, “Daddy’s
here!” to a cacophony of laughter. I’m scowling when I get in the car.
“Hey, baby,” says Jean-Luc, leaning over to kiss my cheek, and I flinch,
turning my face sharply away from him.
“Please don’t,” I manage to bite out, and I can sense, rather than see, his
surprise.
“Oh, okay,” he says uncertainly. “Sorry.” He shifts into drive and pulls
away from the curb, and we ride in silence until we hit the first stoplight.
“Everything okay?” he asks, eyeing me with concern.
When I turn to look at him, it’s as if a steel bar has hit my chest. The air
is knocked out of me.
The fact is, he’s hot. He’s fucking hot.
With one large, strong hand on the steering wheel, his suit jacket gapes
open, revealing the close fit of his shirt across a broad chest. His brown
eyes flash with concern and love. The dark shadow across his chiselled jaw
contrasts with the meticulousness of his suit and the ostentatiousness of his
silver watch. He’s rough and strong and polished, and so unlike high school
boys with their jeering and teasing and ignorance. It hits me all at once. My
Daddy. I’m fucking crushing on him and it’s crazy.
I close my eyes and look away, stricken suddenly, and he reaches out
and rests a hand on my shoulder, rubbing the side of my neck lightly with
his thumb.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, baby. What is it?”
The light changes and his attention shifts to the road but he keeps his
hand on my shoulder.
I shouldn’t want him to touch me, but I do. Suddenly all I want is for
him to touch me.
 I wish I didn’t have to fight this feeling. I wish he wasn’t my mom’s
husband, I wish he wasn’t the only father I’ve ever known. I wish I didn’t
have to settle for high school boys, like Kye, when what I really want is a
man. Someone kind, and thoughtful, and experienced.
I wish I could know the other sides of Jean-Luc, sides only my mother
got to see. What it’s like when Jean-Luc is intimate with somebody. How
reverential he would be with his hands on my body, how his eyes would
look if he wanted me.
I’m so fucked up. I’m so completely fucked up.
“Nothing,” I say with a sigh, turning to the window and looking out of
it, unseeing. “Just an annoying day.”

I knew Melanie wasn’t like other moms from a young age. I think I always
knew. Friends loved my mom because she was pretty and fun, but they
couldn’t understand how scared I was all the time, how unstable and
uncertain things always seemed.
She was fun at sleepovers, fun after school, but Melanie could turn on a
dime, raging and manic and unpredictable.
She pulled me out of grade school twice because of some fight she’d
had with a teacher, wrenching me away from my friends with promises that
it would be better somewhere else. Melanie was always after the new, better
thing. And usually with little consideration of how it would impact me.
When she met Jean-Luc, my life changed, and my world became full
colour. Suddenly, someone was always there for me.
With Melanie, there’d been countless incidents when she’d forgotten to
pick me up from school or hadn’t attended one of my recitals. I was so used
to it I always got nervous that moment I stepped out the school door, or the
curtain opened, revealing the audience. As often as not, there was an empty
space where my mother was supposed to be.
But once Jean-Luc was in my life, his big, strong presence was
everywhere: Sitting in the auditorium seats by himself because Melanie had
flaked out, waiting outside the school doors every time I needed him,
making sure I had something to eat every single day.
Is it any wonder I think I love him?
I’ve always known he was handsome on an intellectual level. Women
are always talking about his looks. My teachers and my friends’ mothers
tripped over themselves preening and fawning in front of Jean-Luc. But
now that I’ve started noticing it for myself, it’s changing everything.
As a child, I loved hugging him and snuggling against him. The huge
size of him, and the hard, broad planes of his muscles made me feel safe.
Now I’m craving that touch in a different way. I want to be held against him
to feel safe, but also to breathe him in and be close. I want him to feel my
body against his. And not just in the past week. When I think about it, it
feels like maybe I’ve loved Jean-Luc for a long time. Maybe longer than I
ever let myself be aware of.

After a couple of hours at our respective desks—Jean Luc in his office,

working, and me at the dining room table, completing my homework—we
reconvene in the kitchen and I help with dinner.
Jean-Luc has cooked every meal for as long as I can remember. The son
of a chef, he’s an excellent cook, with a real love for food. It’s so different
from Melanie, who barely even eats, and I’ve started thinking about trying
to learn from him.
He sets me up with a cutting board and some vegetables to prep as he
moves around the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans and gathering his tools.
He’s still dressed for work but his collar is loosened and his shirt is
untucked. When he runs a hand over his scalp and gives me a crooked
smile, his thick hair gets mussed in a sexy, effortless way.
“You’re quite a sight with that knife,” he comments, and I laugh,
holding it menacingly and then making a show of chopping the vegetables
with violence.
“Okay, okay!” he laughs. “Stop. You’re going to ruin the texture of the
vegetables.” He gives me an affectionate shake of the head, and I return to
cutting the leeks in the careful way he showed me.
“It’s good to have you here, Dani,” he says after a moment, giving me a
soft, sentimental look. “You really make me happy, sweetheart.”
It’s such a frank, honest, and loving comment—so different from any
way Melanie has ever treated me—that I’m sincerely surprised.
“Thanks,” I say kind of breathlessly, and then, impulsively, I put down
my knife and reach over to him, wrapping my arms around him and
hugging him tight. I can’t shake off this desire that overcame me in the car.
I need his closeness, even if it’s just a chaste hug.
 “Oof,” he breathes out with a laugh, and then wraps his arms around me
too, squeezing me in against him.
I lean my cheek against his chest, breathing in the smell of him, and
don’t let go. My breasts are pressed against him, it’s a tight, intimate hug,
and once I’m in it I can’t pull away. It feels so good to be close to him, to
smell him and be hugged by him, I can’t bring myself to break the embrace.
I don’t feel like he wants me to, either. He leans back against the
counter, pulling me against him, and lifts a hand to cup my head, and kisses
the top of my hair.
“I love you, Dani-girl,” he murmurs.
“I love you too, Dad,” I whisper. I can feel his chest rising and falling
against me as he breathes.
“And you’ll always be my little girl.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
It’s a weird thing to say when all I’m thinking about is how fucking
good his body feels against mine, how I’d do anything to be in this embrace
in a different context, but my feelings for Jean-Luc are complex. I’m
grappling with this growing, inappropriate attraction to him, but I still so
love being his little girl.
I drag a hand slowly up his back, grazing his shirt with my nails in a
frankly affectionate gesture, and he leans his head down and kisses my
temple, smoothing my hair back with his hand like he’s petting me. “My
baby,” he coos.
I tilt my face up, burying my nose in his neck and deeply inhaling his
scent. I wish I could tilt my face all the way up, brushing my mouth against
his and feeling his lips against mine. Jean-Luc would be an amazing kisser,
I know it.
He presses his mouth against my temple, which feels nice too, and rubs
my back. It’s all so close, so physical, so intimate, I can feel my heart
hammering in my chest and heat shimmering through my body.
I’m hyper aware of my own body, everywhere it’s pressed up against
his, and as he runs his hand down over my back my nipples get hard. So
hard I get self-conscious that he might feel them against his chest. I should
pull away, but my body has a mind of its own. As if on instinct, I tilt my
pelvis towards him so that the whole plane of my body is against his and
that’s when I think I feel something.
 Maybe…possibly…I’m not entirely sure, but I think I might feel…a
bulge.
There’s a slight protrusion of some kind that meets my lower belly as I
press myself against him, and just as my mind starts to process that, Jean-
Luc separates us, pulling himself back as he lifts me away.
“I have to go to the washroom,” he says nonchalantly. “Do the potatoes
after the leeks, please.”
He walks out of the kitchen as if we haven’t just had the most intimate
hug we’ve ever had and I try to focus on the vegetables, chopping them
evenly and piling them into the little bowls he’s put out for them.
By the time he comes back, I’ve prepped everything and taken a seat at
the kitchen island, distracted by my phone. Kye has sent me a text I don’t
know how to respond to.
Sorry I was a jerk today, it reads.
I’m staring at it as Jean-Luc returns to the kitchen, patting my back as
he walks past me.
“Who’re you texting?” he asks casually.
“No one,” I answer quickly. “Christine.” I don’t know why, but it seems
better to lie than admit it’s Kye. “What’s next?”
“Time to cook,” says my stepdad happily. “I’m going to teach you how
to make a very good traditional Swiss papet vaudois.”
He’s in his element, walking me through the process as he measures out
the wine and soup stock and shows me how to puncture the sausages. In the
kitchen with Jean-Luc, away from the rest of the world and free to just
enjoy his company, I’m happier than I’ve been all day.
Danica
THIS IS THE face of an eighteen year old, I think as I look in the mirror.
It doesn’t feel any different, today versus yesterday, but while I may
look and feel the same, I’m not. Something changed overnight. At the
stroke of midnight I transformed from a child to a woman. Age of majority.
It’s just a number, but it carries a lot of weight.
Tonight, for my birthday, Jean-Luc is taking me out to one of the best
restaurants in Vancouver. My friend Christine can’t believe I’m grounded
for my eighteenth birthday, and I feel like I should be more upset than I am,
but truthfully, I’d much rather have a fancy dinner with Jean-Luc than
spend a drunken night at the beach with kids. The prospect of dressing up
and and being seen on Jean-Luc’s arm doesn’t make me feel like I am
missing anything at all.
People will think we’re a couple, I think.
I wonder what it’s like to be on a real date with a man like Jean-Luc—to
have him pick you up in his Jaguar, impeccably dressed in a suit, perfectly
trimmed beard and perfectly mussed hair. How he would know exactly
what to do, how to pull out the chair for you in the restaurant, how to listen
to you like you were the only woman in the world. How charmed the wait
staff would be by him, how he would know exactly the best thing to order
and just the right wine to drink…
I have no idea if Jean-Luc is currently dating. Occasionally he has late
night meetings, or he goes out with clients or friends. I’ve never wondered
if any of these clients or friends were women, but the idea that they might
be makes my stomach churn.
If Jean-Luc were dating, I could imagine the kind of women he would
be interested in: beautiful women, probably much younger than him, with
long legs in slinky dresses and sky-high heels.
Women like my mother. She’s actually close in age to Jean-Luc but
she’s always looked much younger. She must have seemed so fun and
vivacious to him when they met. It makes me wonder if he ever misses her.
 At least when he was with my mother, Jean-Luc still always had eyes
for me. I was his special little girl. Another woman, someone new, might
not understand the bond between us. Another woman might think she had
something to offer Jean-Luc that I don’t. The idea makes me sick.
With a sigh, I turn to the bathroom mirror and pin a stray curl back into
my chignon. My hair is the feature that is most like my mother’s, yet
somehow with it pulled back off my face I look even more like her. I know
she’s beautiful, but even seeing the resemblance I don’t see her beauty in
me. I don’t have the same almond tilt to my eyes, the same sharp boniness
of her nose, or the same lively charisma. Everything that’s soft about me is
all that’s left of my father—whoever he is. Melanie’s always refused to
acknowledge he even exists, deflecting anyone with questions by making
wild declarations like, ‘Danica sprung fully formed from the earth.’ It’s the
kind of inanity only Melanie gets away with. Stepping back from the mirror
to look at myself, I wonder in passing—as I often do—about this man who
preceded Jean-Luc, the man who made me.
Turning sideways and tilting my head, I have to admit that I like what I
see, even if I’m not the great beauty my mother is. I lift my chin. I’m
wearing a fitted white sheath dress with textured fabric that belongs to
Melanie. It had been hanging in my closet at the apartment and I’d packed it
with my things. It’s nicer than anything I’ve ever owned, and I’m surprised
I can fit in it.
I could almost pass for a grown woman who gets taken out to fancy
restaurants, I think, admiring the way the fabric clings to my hips and the
way my legs look in my only high heel shoes. I spritz on a bit of Melanie’s
perfume, adjust my new necklace, and head downstairs with excitement and
anticipation.

Jean-Luc gave me my gift this morning when I woke up, after a goofy show
of singing Happy Birthday and presenting my breakfast to me with a candle
on top.
Sitting on the kitchen stool with a ridiculous smile on my face, I felt shy
but pleased about the attention. I yawned as he lit the candle, hugging my
arms against the morning chill.
“You’re cold,” he’d observed, coming up behind me to wrap strong,
warm arms around me and rest his chin on the top of my head. I placed my
hands on his forearms and pulled him closer around me, feeling sleepy and
affectionate, and he kissed my hair just above my ear, murmuring, “Blow
out your candle.”
Taking a deep breath, I blew the candle out and then turned my head to
smile at Jean-Luc. He smiled back, and before I even knew what I was
doing, I lifted my chin and kissed him, quickly and chastely, on the lips.
For one moment, I was flooded with the warm smell of him, with the
soft pressure of his mouth on mine, and the next he was moving away, the
warmth of his body gone, his back to me as he walked up to the coffee
machine and filled it with water.
It’s a completely normal thing for a parent and child to do, to kiss on the
mouth, but it left me breathless and heated.
No matter how hard I try to fight this growing feeling of attraction, it
just won’t go away. If anything, boundaries seem to be slipping and blurring
between us, making it worse. In the past few days since I’ve been grounded,
we’ve spent more and more time together—laughing, touching, hugging…
Every night this week Jean-Luc has shut his computer early, and we’ve
watched television together while snuggling on the couch.
I tell myself that I’m craving love. That, as my father, Jean-Luc wants to
give it to me. He wants to hold me and make me feel safe and secure. But
the truth is, I’ve become obsessed with these hours on the couch, breathing
in his smell and feeling the rise and fall of his rib cage against me. Every
day we’ve gotten a little bit closer, stayed up a little bit later. It feels easier
each day to curl in against him and nuzzle into his warmth. It’s become
easier for me to lay my hand across his chest, easier for him to rest his
cheek against the top of my head. Last night, preoccupied with the police
drama we were watching, he’d been mindlessly and unknowingly tracing
light circles on the bare skin of my hip where my t-shirt and shorts left a
gap. Just the graze of his thumb felt like fire.
I know things can’t go on like this, but I’ve started to crave the touch of
his skin so much it’s like a fever. I want to run my hand under his shirt and
feel the hair there, feel the electric contact of his bare skin under my
fingertips. I’m possessed by a growing and extremely inappropriate
physical attraction. It’s not just that Jean-Luc is a hulking specimen of a
man, it’s the way he takes care of me, the shelter of his arms, the strength of
his commitment to me. On the one hand, I wish things could change
between us, that he could somehow see me as a woman. And on the other
hand, there’s nothing I love more than being his little girl. I want both,
simultaneously, and there’s no way it ever makes sense or is anything less
than creepy. I’m perverted.
I tried to chase away those thoughts as I removed the candle from the
bun and took a bite, remembering how Jean-Luc was always big on
birthdays. Before he and my mom met, my birthday had occasionally been
forgotten. But never with Jean-Luc. He always acts like it’s the most
important day of the year.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, Jean-Luc produced a card and
small, iconic blue box—jewellery from Tiffany’s. I blushed with pleasure
and surprise as I read the card: ‘To Dani, love Daddy xo,’ it said in his
scrawling handwriting, the word Daddy an embarrassing barometer of how
fucked up my thoughts have been lately.
He poked the jewellery box with a finger, pushing it closer to me.
“Happy birthday, baby.”
Inside the box was another box, a light blue clamshell, and inside that
was a plumply cushioned diamond on a delicate platinum chain.
“Jean-Luc,” I had breathed, lifting the precious, glittering thing out of
the clamshell and dangling the chain off my finger. A million points of light
bounced off the jewel.
He’d quirked his mouth. “How about calling me Dad?”
“Dad,” I’d repeated. “It’s beautiful.”
“Do you like it?” He reached for my hand where it lay on the counter
and ran a thumb over the top of it. “Your mother always loved diamonds.”
He took the chain from my hand and walked behind me, lowering it
over my head. I lifted my hair and he closed the necklace clasp, taking a
moment to softly kiss the back of my neck just under my hair before
running his hands over my shoulders.
I got up from the stool and wrapped my arms around his neck and
kissed him again—firmly and intentionally on the lips. It was just slightly
more of a kiss than the one moments before. I had pressed my lips against
his, pulling him in tight with my arms around his neck…and he’d broken
away with a little laugh and turned his head, whispering, “I love you, Dani,”
in my ear.
“I love you too, Daddy,” I’d said, for one moment letting it be that
naughty and that wrong. I leaned into it.
I do love my Daddy, whatever that means. And tonight, now that I’m
eighteen, it feels like everything could change between us.
Jean-Luc
THE SIGHT OF Danica coming down the stairs is like a punch to the gut.
For a moment, the breath is knocked out of me.
She’s unbelievable. She’s perfect.
She’s…Melanie?
She looks like a grown-ass woman. Like her mother, actually. In a tight
white dress, with her curls loosely pinned up, and high heel shoes that
emphasize the shapely, grown-up musculature of her legs, she’s the most
beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Strikingly similar to Melanie, but so
much…
…better, I can’t help but think. She’s my Dani. Silly, brilliant, and
loving. She grins at me, her smile bright and wide, and I melt.
“How do I look?” she asks, holding her arms out to give me the full
view.
Like your mother, I almost answer. I’ve seen this dress before, and
suddenly I have a vivid memory of Melanie in it—at a party for my partner,
Bob, just before Mel and I broke up. It’s the last dress I ever saw her in.
“You look incredible,” I say sincerely.
Following her out to the car, I can’t take my eyes off of her. She’s so
elegant. I can’t believe she was ever the gawky kid who was perpetually
singing in the backseat of my car. She’s the kind of woman I’ll be proud to
have on my arm at the most upscale restaurant in town, and the minute I
have the thought I cringe.
She’s not a woman on my arm. She’s my stepdaughter.
Nonetheless, when we arrive at the restaurant and the valet opens her
car door, I have a moment of pride, knowing he’ll have taken in the sight of
her long, lean thighs and the press of her full breasts against the fitted fabric
of her dress. Knowing that he probably wants what I have. I hand him the
keys to the Jaguar, silently recriminating myself for my thoughts.
Eyes flick surreptitiously towards us as Dani and I follow the Maître D’
through the restaurant to our table, eyes that run up Dani’s perfect legs and
tight waist, and then over to me, to see the man who’s with her. I lay a
possessive hand on her lower back as I guide her through the watchful
diners to her seat.
I’ve booked one of the circular booths that line the perimeter of the
restaurant. It’s extremely hard to get a reservation for one of the booths, but
my firm designed the restaurant space and I know the owner. In the past
year, I’ve booked a booth a few times to impress a date, although this time
feels more special.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Rochat,” says a white-shirt clad waiter, bowing his
head as he fills our water glasses from a tall, thin bottle. He sets a wine list
on the table and asks, “May I make some recommendations for an aperitif
for you and your date?”
Dani flushes with pleasure, thrilled, no doubt, at the prospect of being
taken for legal drinking age.
“I’ll have a vodka soda,” I say, a little archly, “but my daughter is only
eighteen. What will you have, sweetheart?”
She gives me a small pout, and I lift an eyebrow. Birthday or not, I’m
not supporting underage drinking.
“I’ll have a Coke,” she tells the waiter, who bows and takes his leave.
“Your date,” repeats Dani, with a little laugh, making me smile.
“I should be so lucky to have such a beautiful date,” I tell her, reaching
for her hand and stroking the soft skin over her knuckles. The diamond
necklace winks brilliantly from where it rests on her sternum. As the waiter
returns to the table with our drinks, I drop my eyes and pull my hand away,
feeling self-conscious.
“Do you ever?” asks Dani, bending down to sip from her straw after the
waiter leaves. “Date anyone, I mean?”
I hesitate for a moment before answering. Divorce is hard on kids. I
don’t want her to think I got over her mother easily, but I don’t want to lie
to her either.
“Yes, I date occasionally,” I tell her, eyeing her to gauge her response.
She nods and looks down at her drink, and I can’t tell if the revelation
upsets her or not. “How do you feel about that?” I ask. “I know it must be
hard to feel like your mother and I got over each other.”
“No.” She shakes her head emphatically. “Not at all. I don’t know how
you…how you put up with her for so long. I’m glad you did, for my sake.
But I can understand how you might want to move on.”
 Dani was always an insightful child, who frequently surprised me with
what she perceived of adult life. I guess growing up with Melanie taught
her to be observant and vigilant. But strangely, her acceptance of the fact
that I’ve been dating doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. In a way, I
feel guilty about it.
“I haven’t met anyone I’ve really clicked with,” I add, and a very subtle
look of relief passes over her face. “How about you? What’s happening
with Kye?” I almost choke on my words saying his name but try to hide my
true feelings behind a tight smile.
She rolls her eyes up to the crystal chandelier above us. “Ugh, he’s a
jerk,” she groans. The idea that he’s been a jerk to her makes me equally
angry and relieved. That fucking kid. But at least he’ll be out of her life
now.
“Hmm,” I say nonchalantly. It’s not my place to get involved. I take a
sip of my drink and look out across the room. The restaurant is filling up
and there’s a hub of noise and activity in the centre, but the padded booth
seems to muffle the sound somewhat. Our table is at a peaceful remove.
I make a few suggestions to Dani and when the waiter comes back I
order for us. Oysters and champagne to start, then the braised beef cheek for
me and the pan-roasted chicken for Danica. I soften my stance on alcohol
and let her share my champagne when the oysters arrive.
She’s never had oysters before, but approaches them gamely, cringing
slightly the first time the cool, slippery flesh slides down her throat but then
smiling and widening her eyes with pleasure at the salty taste. I have a
visceral response watching her tilt her head back and swallow the briny
delicacy—a sudden, physical pull, and an extremely inappropriate gathering
of heat in my groin. I pinch my eyebrows and look away.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing, baby,” I say softly. “Everything’s perfect.”
By the time we’re on dessert—a tasteful chocolate mousse for Dani,
presented with a restrained display of fanfare from our waiter, and a
whiskey for me—we’re back on the topic of dating.
“So when’s the last time you went on a date?” Dani asks.
For some reason, I hesitate. Curiously, it feels like a betrayal. “I was on
a date last week when you had Kye over,” I answer, taking a sip of my
drink.
Dani flashes her eyes at me. “You were? Last week?”
 “Mm-hm,” I nod, trying not to think too much about it. ‘Daddy’s gonna
have his hands full,’ Cynthia’s voice whispers from my memory.
“So you’re dating someone?”
“No. It was a first date. It wasn’t a…” I search for my words, “a match.”
“I guess not,” she says wickedly, “considering how early you got
home.”
I train my eyes on her for a moment, not reacting and not looking away.
It’s the provocative comment of a grown woman, and to be honest, it
catches me off guard. It’s Dani fishing for information about my sex life. I
rest my elbow on the table and run a finger across my lower lip thoughtfully
until a flush spreads on her cheeks and she ducks her eyes.
“What would have happened if I didn’t get home when I did?” I ask her,
still watching her intently. My voice is low and quiet; serious. She blinks
her big blue eyes up at me.
“Nothing,” she says shyly. “Nothing more than…what did happen.”
Dani’s red head bobbing in that kid’s lap is an image I’ll never forget.
The idea of what her mouth might have felt like, her tongue, makes my
balls ache.
“You’re saying you wouldn’t have had sex with him?”
She shakes her head mutely. I wonder how I would have felt if I had
walked in the room to find her naked underneath him.
“It made me jealous to see that,” I say, suddenly and unexpectedly. The
comment seems to come from nowhere, I didn’t expect to say it, but now
that I have, I don’t back away from it. I keep my eyes on her face to see her
reaction.
The colour spreads on her cheeks, but she doesn’t seem upset. She
blinks. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It’s the rawest I’ve ever felt. For a moment, we hold each other’s eyes,
saying nothing. My blood is thundering through my veins. I’ve crossed a
line, broken down a boundary, but I don’t know how far I’ve gone, where
this leads. Nowhere, maybe. Regardless, I’ve said something forbidden.
I’ve forced a change.
Gritting my teeth, I take a breath and reach for my little girl’s hand.
“Dani,” I say, my voice husky and low. But before I can say anything more,
the waiter’s voice interrupts us.
“Will there be anything else for you tonight?”
 I wrench my eyes to the side to see him standing at the table, innocently
unaware of the moment he just interrupted.
“Nothing else,” I answer, releasing Dani’s hand. “Just the bill.”
He turns to leave and I look back at her, a sense of horror settling over
me. She gives me a half-smile, expectant and inquisitive, and I run my hand
through my hair and compose myself.
I’m on the verge of making a move on my stepdaughter. The heat that’s
been coursing through my veins turns to pure, burning shame.
“Time to go,” I say, once I’ve signed the bill. I’m brusque now, all
business.
“Yes, Daddy,” she says sweetly, swinging her long legs to the side of the
bench to stand up and absolutely gutting me.
Danica
WE WAIT IN silence for the valet to pull the car up, and when he does,
Jean-Luc tips him and walks over to the driver’s side. He doesn’t open the
door for me, or give me a smile, or even so much as flash a glare at the
valet when he clearly runs his eyes over my body, checking me out.
I’m still reeling from the moment in the restaurant.
Jean-Luc is jealous? Of Kye?
But now it’s as if nothing’s happened, and the functioning part of my
brain kicks in to remind me that there’s no way my stepfather was going to
say something inappropriate to me, and I’m fucked up for even thinking and
hoping so.
Isn’t it more likely, I torment myself, that he meant ‘jealous’ about
something else, and you misunderstood it and now he’s angry?
We drive in uncomfortable silence for a while until Jean-Luc finally
speaks. His tone is casual, fatherly, like no weird moment has passed
between us.
“I hope you had a nice birthday, sweetheart,” he says.
“The nicest, thank you.” My fingers reach up and clasp the diamond
around my neck. It was a good birthday. Better than last year. Jean-Luc had
called and mailed a gift to the house—we were still living in the old house
at the time—but Melanie was away the whole weekend and never
acknowledged it, having clearly forgotten.
“When we get home,” I ask tentatively. “Do you want to watch TV for a
while?”
He swallows, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “Maybe that’s not
such a great idea, sweetie. I have a lot of work to do.”

“Please don’t make me hang out alone on my birthday,” I plead when we

get home, until Jean-Luc relents, and even opens a bottle of champagne and
lets me have a glass.
 We sit on the living room couch at opposite ends, facing each other.
Jean-Luc has taken his dinner jacket off, and his tie, and unbuttoned the top
of his shirt, exposing a hint of dark chest hair. I can’t ignore the way the
bulk of his arms and shoulders strain the fabric of his dress shirt. He rests
one arm along the back of the couch, and lifts his champagne flute with the
other, initiating a toast.
“To you, on your birthday.” We clink glasses and drink, and before long
the sweet, bubbly liquid is making warmth radiate out from my centre. I
feel happy, more relaxed and confident than I’ve felt in a long time, and it
feels nice to get a little drunk with Jean-Luc. Better than drinking beers on
the beach with the kids from my high school. Longing to be closer, and
feeling impulsive, I scooch over beside him, inserting myself under his arm
and leaning my head on his shoulder.
His shoulder stiffens underneath me. “Dani, baby, I don’t think this is
such a great idea.” He places a hand under my shoulder, as if to lift me up.
“Why not?” I ask, sitting up and looking at him, only inches from his
face. We’ve been snuggling like this on the couch all week, and I know I
can fall back on that as a rationale for my behaviour if I have to. That we’ve
normalized this.
He lowers his eyes, avoiding my gaze. “You’re getting a bit old for this,
don’t you think?”
“No.” The champagne imbues me with a new sense of courage. “I…I
like when we’re close. Don’t you?”
He sighs, looking troubled, and then relaxes his hand on my shoulder
and kisses my temple. “Yes, sweetie,” he says with resignation. “I do.”
I nuzzle in closer and lay a hand across his stomach. It’s hard and flat.
“Is that why you were jealous before? Of Kye? Because you like being
close to me?” I stare at my hand as I speak, grateful he can’t see me
blushing, and hopeful that he can’t feel my heart hammering against his
body.
“Dani...” He sounds pained. “I shouldn’t have said that. That was so
inappropriate.”
He takes a deep breath and, summoning even more courage, I lift my
face to look at him. The eyes that look back at me aren’t Jean-Luc’s—not as
I know him anyway. His dark brown eyes have an intensity I’ve never seen:
Vulnerability, and desire… A look that maybe he’s given my mother before,
but he’s never given me. And quickly, before I have time to talk myself out
of it, I tilt my face up, lay my hand on his cheek, and kiss him.
I press my lips against his and hold them there for what feels like a
second, a minute, an hour—I don’t know, but I don’t pull away. I trace my
fingernails over his ear, behind his head, and then cup his head with my
hand, letting him know I don’t want him to pull away. With my mouth
against his, I breathe in the clean, warm smell of him. I feel the tactile
pressure of his lips with acute sensitivity. The heat and the softness of them.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t pull back, and I part my lips slightly to take in
a breath. That’s when I feel his hand come around my back, and the
unthinkable happens.
He kisses me back.
Long, slow, and languorous, his mouth moves over mine until our lips
part and I feel his tongue stroke into my mouth.
It’s crazy. It’s unthinkable. And it’s so sweet, I couldn’t pull away if I
wanted to. He moves slowly, kissing me tenderly, but there’s an urgency in
the firmness of his hand against my back and the rise and fall of his chest as
he breathes. My body roars to life, heat spreading over my skin and rushing
down between my legs.
With his other hand, he cups the back of my neck, threading fingers into
my pinned up hair, and when I tilt my hips, intending to straddle his lap, he
helps lift me. Melanie’s sheath dress rolls up my thighs as I place one on
either side of Jean-Luc, so that I can feel his crotch through the thin layer of
my panties and my legs are fully exposed. I’m wearing the last pair of
Melanie’s panties that he has yet to confiscate—the pair I had on when he
took away the others.
He runs his hands up my thighs and the touch of his palms against my
skin feels electric.
“Dad,” I murmur without thinking, and immediately wish I’d thought of
any other word to say. But Jean-Luc doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Dani,” he murmurs back, covering my mouth with kisses and
squeezing the tops of my thighs. “Oh, sweetheart.” He pulls me down
against him and the growing need between my legs makes me arch my back
and roll my hips until I’m pressing my crotch against him, and he’s hard—
my stepfather is hard—and soon I’m breathless as the friction arouses me.
“Careful, little girl,” he warns. He lifts his hands to my upper arms and
in one swift motion has me up off his lap and on my back on the couch. His
face hovering over mine is lit up and lustful, a smile playing in his eyes.
“You’re going to make me lose control.”
With one hand, he grabs the top of Melanie’s strapless sheath dress and
pulls it down, exposing my breasts, and a shock of arousal goes through me.
I want this. I want him to see me. But it’s still new and overwhelming.
“Fuck, Dani,” he says under his breath, staring at my chest as if he
wasn’t expecting this. “Fuck.” With slow reverence, he palms a breast,
massaging the weight of it, and then rubs his thumb over my nipple. It
pebbles under his touch.
He raises his eyes at me, looking pained and speechless. His mouth falls
open. And with a sharp exhale, he leans back, up and away from me,
closing his eyes for a moment before looking back down at me and pulling
my dress back up over my breasts.
“Dani.” When he says it this time, it’s different than it was before. Less
desperate and amazed. This time it’s solemn and resolute. He sits up and
lifts my legs by the ankles, dropping them on the floor so I’m forced to sit
up. Then he scrubs his face with his hands.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmurs into his hands. “I’m sorry.”
He stands up and picks the champagne glasses up off the coffee table
before walking away. Mine is still half full. From the kitchen he says, “You
should probably go to bed, sweetheart.”
“Dad!” I plead. “Jean-Luc…”
“Now, Dani.” He looks at me with a heavy, pained look on his face.
“Please just go to your room.”
“No!” It can’t end like this. I don’t know what happened. Was it me?
Did I do something wrong?
“Just go to your fucking room.” He raises his voice. He sounds tense
and agitated. “Now please.”
I get off the couch quickly and close the distance to the staircase,
suddenly eager to get away.
“You did it, too!” I cry out as I run up the stairs. It’s the only thing I can
think of to say, and it feels real and true. “You did it, too!”
Jean-Luc
“HEY, MAN.” COMES Bob’s voice from the doorway to my office.
I look up from my desk in surprise to see my partner Bob leaning in the
doorway. I was so deep in thought I didn’t even notice him open the door.
“Hey…” he says again, more gently this time. His expression changes
to one of concern. “You all right, man? You have a late night or
something?”
Christ. I must look like shit.
“Yeah,” I say half-heartedly. “Couldn’t sleep last night.”
He nods, only partially concealing his concern. “That’s rough, man.
You’ll have a good sleep tonight if you power through today.”
“Yup,” I run my fingers through my hair, wondering how tired I really
look. I don’t think I even looked in a mirror this morning.
“Hey, uh, apparently Sarah needs the name of your plus-one?”
“Huh?” For a moment I really have no idea what he’s talking about. All
I can think about is how much I want him to leave.
“For the wedding,” he prompts. “It’s next month, remember?”
“Oh, right, of course.” I shake my head quickly, feeling like an idiot. I
received the invitation to his daughter Sarah’s wedding months ago. In
deference to my newly-single status, I’d been granted some leeway on
providing the name of my date for the occasion…but apparently, the time
was up.
And unfortunately, I hadn’t fulfilled my end of the bargain. I’d been so
preoccupied with Dani’s situation and return to the house that I’d barely had
dating on my mind—a little surprisingly, considering that when Melanie
and I first separated, I’d been very busy trying to keep my bed warm.
“I, um, I’m actually still not sure,” I stammer. “Sorry.”
“Oh?” He leans forward through the doorway, in a pantomime of
whispering. “I thought…you and the new Junior Architect, maybe…?”
For a second, I’m not following. Then I realize what he’s saying. “Oh!
You mean Cynthia? No. That’s…that didn’t really pan out.”
 “Ah.” He presses his lips together as he nods, and I can read his concern
all over his face.
“It’s all good,” I add quickly. “We had a nice time but I realized it
wasn’t a good fit. Besides, I don’t think I should date anyone we’ve hired.”
Unable to resist the bait, Bob steps all the way into the office and closes
the door behind him, leaning against it. “Fuck, that’s too bad. I was hoping
to live vicariously through you.”
“She is hot,” I concede with a laugh.
“Dude,” he stage-whispers. “I had a meeting with her in my office
yesterday, and after she left I jerked off under my desk—right there in my
office! Something about her perfume or something, I don’t know. I’m lucky
no one walked in.”
I force a laugh, and refrain from rolling my eyes. Ten years older than
me, Bob is a distinguished, respected architect. Married, two kids, paragon
of society. Until you get him behind closed doors. Then Bob is a fucking
dog.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Damn,” he shakes his head, and opens the door again. “Anyway, I need
to give Sarah a name for the seating chart. Why don’t you bring Danica? It
would be nice to see her and the food is going to be amazing. At least…it
fucking better be. It cost a fortune.”
Danica. Jesus. Just hearing her name is enough to twist my guts.
“Sure,” I answer, unable to think of a reason why Dani shouldn’t be my
date. “She’d like that.”
“Great.” He raps the doorframe twice with the palm of his hand. His
right hand. The one he probably jacked off with in the office just next to
mine. “I’ll let Sarah know.”
When he leaves, I stand and look at my reflection in the mirror above
the console against the wall. Besides the dark circles, and redness of my
eyes, I don’t think my appearance merits any concern about my well-being.
Maybe it was my expression.
But I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t slept the night before. I hadn’t.
Nor the night before that.
Ever since I’d flipped my stepdaughter onto her back and pulled down
her dress, I’d been having a lot of fucking trouble sleeping.
Just thinking about it makes blood rush to my cock again and I nearly
groan in despair. I’ve been in an absolute state since Dani’s birthday, locked
in a vicious inner battle between crippling guilt and utter, nearly debilitating
arousal. My cock has been throbbing painfully ever since she first pressed
her young, firm lips to mine—ever since she straddled my lap and gave me
that juicy taste of the forbidden. Christ, what it was like to feel her small,
bony hips under my hands…to press the pulsing need of my erection up
against her…to imagine for one second…
Fuck.
I screw my eyes tight, suppressing a scream, and when I open them I
take a deep, calming breath.
Don’t panic, I tell myself. They’re just dirty thoughts. You haven’t gone
too far.
Yet.
What I did was bad, and wrong. There’s no justifying it. But it could’ve
been worse. At least it didn’t go any further.

Picking Dani up from school is agony. We barely speak in the car. I’m all
business—professional Dad. And I know it’s breaking her heart but I don’t
know what to do about it. I can barely control my lust around her. It takes
everything in my power to push the beast down.
When we get home, Dani heads up to her bedroom and I take chicken
out of the fridge and marinate it before heading up to mine. She usually
does her homework at the dining room table; I usually work in the den. But
I guess we both need privacy from each other as we try to sort out what the
fuck is happening.
I open up my laptop and catch up on a few emails before undressing and
running a hot shower. There are signs of Dani everywhere in the bathroom.
She uses mine because her bathroom only has a toilet and sink, and mine
has not only a shower, but the whirlpool tub she likes. A pink body wash
and two expensive hair products stand on the shower floor. I know her
products are expensive because I pay for them. I get under the hot spray of
water and run my fingers through my hair, thoroughly dampening it, and let
the heat of the shower work into the knotted muscles of my shoulders and
back.
I’m letting stress get to me and I need to relax. It’s like every muscle in
my body seized up when Dani sat on my lap and kissed me and they
haven’t released since.
 At the memory, my cock begins to swell—again. I turn my face to the
stream of water and let it pour over me, soothing my furrowed brow. A low
heat starts swirling in my groin at the pleasurable, relaxing warmth of the
water, and the arousing memory of Dani’s mouth, the feel of her breast. My
dick is aching for relief, and here, alone in the privacy of my shower,
instead of every other inappropriate place I’ve found myself getting hard
today—in the car with Dani or at the office, for example—it feels good. I
need to come.
With a sudden, illicit curiosity, I pick Dani’s pink body wash up from
the floor and pop the cap to smell it. Instantly, it sends tingles over my skin.
It smells like her. Sweet, youthful, fresh. I breathe out a low groan at the
smell of it, feeling myself get harder in some fucked-up Pavlovian response.
I squirt some of the liquid soap out into my hand with a sick idea. A sick
idea that I immediately justify. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing
overtly wrong about it. The bottle of soap is just there. When I need it.
Cupping the soap in my palm, I wrap my hand around my dick and start
running it up and down, using the soap to lubricate my shaft—Dani’s soap.
The scent of her wafts softly upwards in the steam of the shower and it’s
making me so hard, my cock is twitching in my hand.
It’s so fucking wrong what I’m doing, so fucking wrong, but I’m alone
and I need to vent out the filthy thoughts that have been consuming me for
the past four days. I picture Dani in her school uniform, kneeling in front of
me as I jerk it. Her shirt tied at the waist and the skirt rolled up too high just
like I know she’s wearing it at school when I’m not looking. Clasping her
hands by her knees so that her arms press both her full breasts together,
emphasizing the cleavage where her shirt is unbuttoned. Those full, high,
firm breasts…as gorgeous as her mother’s but even firmer and fuller. So
young and so perfect…
I start working myself harder, my breath already ragged, my balls
tightening, everything tightening up deep in my centre. My little girl, my
sweet little girl, on her knees in front of me, begging for Daddy’s cum.
Parting those full lips and looking up at me with those big blue eyes.
Fucking begging for it.
“Oh, God,” I whisper, right on the edge—so hot and hard and intense
that I’m seeing red behind my eyes. I imagine what it would be like to cup
her jaw, to lift that plump, willing mouth up to face me, and let her know
that Daddy has a big load of cum he’s going to give her. I’m about to blow,
my face is burning, my heart hammering, and I’m going to fucking come…
when I suddenly hear her voice.
Her real voice.
“Dad?” It’s inquisitive and casual. My eyes dart to the bathroom door in
a panic just as she swings it open only a split-second after calling for me.
Our eyes meet through the glass doors of the shower.
Holy fuck.
My orgasm happens. It fucking happens anyway. Muted and ruined. My
dick jerks involuntarily in my frozen hand, and cum spurts out against the
shower wall. A shudder goes through me, and my eyelids flutter, but
sensation is repressed, blunted by the shock. For a second I can’t breathe. I
can’t move. Dani stares at my cock, then lifts wide eyes to look at me. It all
seems to be happening in slow motion. What is actually happening in a
second seems to take whole minutes.
“Oh my God,” she says, stunned. “Sorry!”
She just stands there, gaping.
“Dani!” I gasp. “Please get out.”
“Yes!” She jumps. “Yes, sorry.” Spinning on her heel, she leaves
without closing the door. Cool air billows in over the top of the shower
enclosure.
Danica
FUCK.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I swing my bedroom closed behind and then lean my back against it—
my breathing coming hard and my palms sweaty.
Not me who just walked in on my stepfather in the shower.
Not me who just saw…
Oh my God.

After a minute, I manage to push myself off the door and stumble over to
my bed, where I sit down in a daze.
I can’t get the mental image out of my mind. His dick in his hand,
and…
…Oh my God.
He was ejaculating. Holy fuck, he was ejaculating and seeing him in
that abject sexual posture is the single most arousing thing I’ve ever seen in
my life.
I will never get this mental image out of my mind.
I wouldn’t want to.
Laying down on my bed, looking up at the rough, untreated wooden
ceiling, an electric sexual heat is pulsing through me. My nipples, rubbing
lightly against the fabric of my bra as they harden, are exquisitely sensitive.
Heat is pooling down below. I want to have some release but I don’t know
how, exactly. It’s never worked for me. I could try anyway. Although I’m
sure Jean-Luc will come knocking at my door in a minute, wanting to have
a chat about what just happened. I just walked in on him. He can’t walk in
on me.
Can he?
The idea is intriguing, though—him walking in and finding me
fingering myself. Him being so overcome by lust that he pins my wrists
down on the bed and just slides his cock into me, right then and there.
 Oh my God, his…huge…cock.
Jesus, I saw it.
I lift my knees and let them rest against each other, tilting my pelvis and
rolling my hips a little bit.
His hand on his cock. His broad, muscled chest… Oh God, his cum
hitting the shower wall just as I looked…
I squirm as my pussy swells. I’m so close. It feels like it would be so
easy. I’m still in my school skirt. Just lying here on the bed. With the door
closed. All I have to do is touch myself.
I lower a hand between my legs, softly rubbing the fabric of my panties.
They’re wet already, and as I trace my finger lightly over the fabric
covering my clit, my heart seizes and clenches. God, it feels so good.
Letting my knees fall open, I start rubbing light circles over my clitoris,
loving the feeling of the wet fabric between my pussy and my fingers. It
feels so good, yet so abstract, too. What exactly is an orgasm? Every time I
feel a rush of pleasure, I wonder, could that be one? Is it really so different?
Eventually I drop my hand and let my knees fall apart, aching and
unsatisfied. I don’t know how to give myself what I need.
Despite all the horrible awkwardness of the last three days—the
avoiding each other, the not speaking—ever since I kissed Jean-Luc it’s like
my hormones went into overdrive. My pussy is throbbing around the clock,
as if craving the pressure of the bulge in his pants when I straddled him. I’m
ashamed and humiliated, and yet my body doesn’t fucking care. It just
wants cock.
My stepdad’s cock.
The day after the kiss had been the worst. When I’d finally gotten out of
bed the next morning, puffy-eyed and humiliated, I’d come downstairs to an
empty first floor. I made my way down to the basement to watch TV, only
to discover that Jean-Luc was in the gym, grunting loudly in the room next
door as he bench-pressed weights. When he finally made his way to the
kitchen, where I’d retreated to drink juice and stare blankly out the window
at the pine trees, he had only wanted to have the most perfunctory of talks.
I had almost hoped that he would really want to get into it. Why we
couldn’t do this, why it was wrong. I guess I wanted to confirm that he felt
the same way, I wanted to see where we would go from there.
Instead he’d simply said: “There’s no need to worry about what
happened last night, Danica. I think a little too much champagne was
consumed, and that’s on me for not being more watchful. We can just forget
that, uh…anything happened.”
And then he’d gone about his day, keeping busy and running errands
without me.
The next day, a holiday Monday, he’d driven into his office, citing
work, and hadn’t returned until ten p.m., only speaking to me to tell me to
order a pizza for dinner.
And even that had been by text.
It’s clear that he’s horrified by what happened—and horrified by me, his
deviant, perverted child. But even after driving him away with my
behaviour, I can’t stop getting wet every time I think about him. Even
though things literally couldn’t be worse, my body keeps wanting to push it
further.
I sigh and let my hands flop over my head, knowing I should change my
panties, which are so soaked they’re beginning to get cold, and wonder if
I’ll ever hear Jean-Luc knock on the door.
In the past—before Saturday, when everything changed—Jean-Luc was
never one to sweep things under the rug, always believing that
communication was the most important thing. But now that I’ve come on to
him, now that I’ve seduced him, all bets are off, it seems.
After a while, I get up and finish my homework, watch TV on my
laptop, and text Christine for hours about nothing. Jean-Luc never knocks
on my door.
Around midnight, the house deathly quiet, I creep downstairs and find a
plate of chicken, rice and asparagus carefully wrapped up in the fridge for
me.
I feel abandoned by Jean-Luc, and sad. But at least it’s better than the
apartment, I think, digging into the chicken. At least here there’s food.
Jean-Luc
FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Jean-Luc
FOR THE REST of the week, I’m unable to face Danica. I’m paralyzed by
what happened, and ashamed. My little girl saw me come.
I should have locked the bathroom door. I shouldn’t have been jerking
off in there at all. And, although I know she can’t read my thoughts,
somehow it’s all the worse for knowing that I was jerking off fantasizing
about her on her knees in front of me.
Fantasizing about my stepdaughter begging for my cum.
At night I make dinner for her, but don’t call her to the table. How could
I dare tell her what to do, after everything I’ve done? How could I expect
her to spend time with me?
But she needs to be taken care of. So I make her meals, and drive her to
school in strained silence, and on Saturday Gisele the housekeeper comes
and does Dani’s laundry for her, washing all those little pairs of white
cotton panties I’m far too interested in and can’t let myself touch.
All the while, I’m consumed by a raging, uncontrollable lust. It’s like a
dam has broken inside of me and once released, nothing can contain the
powerful tide of desire that’s coursing through me.
On Sunday night, I walk over to Bob’s house for drinks. As business
partners, we probably spend enough time together as it is—especially
considering that Bob isn’t even a particularly close friend. But being able to
walk four doors down to Bob’s house is convenient, even if the walk is
made longer by the sheer size of the houses on Southwest Marine Drive.
It was Bob who convinced me to buy out here, Bob who knew about the
listing for my house. He knew the original architect. Maybe because of the
age difference between us, Bob is in many fundamental ways so different
from me. Different values, different humour, different interests. It’s odd to
think that when we met at my first architecture job, I could never have
imagined that we’d end up going into partnership together, starting our own
firm, becoming neighbours.
Maybe Bob is a close friend after all, it occurs to me. Just by default.
We sit out on his back terrace, enjoying the perfect, early June weather, and
his wife, Cynthia, brings out a tray of cocktails and joins us for one round.
Cynthia is a sweet woman, beautiful and accomplished, a loving mother to
their daughter, Sarah, and son, Robert, but I feel a little sad for her, knowing
how little Bob cares for her. She’s dressed smartly, in a blouse and skirt, and
her martinis are as perfect as their beautifully-appointed house. Everywhere
are signs of Cynthia trying, and Bob not trying at all.
After the first drink, she excuses herself, clearing the glasses and
bringing two more martinis out for Bob and I before politely disappearing
into the house.
“She’s lovely,” I say to Bob—purposefully goading him, I think. Or at
least trying to put in a word in her favour.
“Hmm?” He refocuses his eyes on me. “Cynthia? Oh yeah, she’s great.”
He’s blasé and indifferent.
We talk about work, and his daughter’s upcoming wedding, and the
other Cynthia, the one from the office.
“She’s a real firecracker,” says Bob, his eyes lighting up with interest.
“Speaks her mind, you know? Really keeps me on my toes. Too bad things
didn’t work out between you.” He winks.
“Oh yeah, well, she’s great,” I acknowledge, tipping back my drink.
“Just wasn’t a fit.”
But on the walk back home, I can’t help but think about Cynthia, office
Cynthia, wondering if maybe I haven’t given her enough credit. I’d been
kind of freaked out about the way she was calling me ‘Daddy,’ yet wasn’t
that exactly what I wanted? Had she intuited that in some way?
Feeling lonely, and horny, and loose after three martinis, I decide to call
Cynthia when I get home. It’s only ten o’clock. Danica is in her room, and I
brush my teeth and get undressed and climb into bed before trying
Cynthia’s cell.
She answers on the third ring. “Jean-Luc?”
“Hi. Is it too late to call?”
“No,” she says, after just the slightest hesitation. “It’s fine. How are
you?”
“I’m all right.” I don’t know how to say what I want to say. Don’t know
where to start. “I…I just wanted to talk. Is that okay?”
“Okay.” Still that questioning uncertainty in her voice. “Sure.”
 “I want to apologize again about our date. I haven’t felt comfortable
talking about it with you in the office. But I still feel like I didn’t handle it
very well, didn’t think it through. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize.”
“I just don’t want you to feel… It wasn’t you. You’re beautiful and
you’re sexy, and I just got freaked out.”
“Jean-Luc?”
“Yes?”
“I think I should tell you that I’m seeing someone.”
The band of anxiety around my chest eases and I realize I’m relieved.
That’s not why I’m calling. It’s something else. Something I have to know.
“I’m happy to hear that, Cynthia,” I say sincerely. “To be honest, I know
I can never date someone from work. So what I said in the car…I did mean
it. I’m glad you’ve found love.”
She blows out a breath. “Oh, it’s hardly love. He’s much older than me.
Not completely available. It’s just fun for now.” She says it in that same
teasing, seductive voice she used in the restaurant. ‘Daddy’s gonna have his
hands full.’ My heart beats nervously in response.
“I wanted to ask you… Is that something you like? Older men?” I
squeeze my eyes shut, cringing at my own words. I sound like a total perv.
“Yes,” she answers, her voice low and coy, without a hint of mockery at
my awkward question, and it emboldens me. “I thought you knew that.”
I laugh lightly. “I did sort of guess.”
“Is that what really freaked you out, Jean-Luc? The Daddy talk in the
car?”
I swallow. “Maybe.” My voice comes out quieter than I expected. “I
just…wasn’t sure if I was going to end up putting you in an uncomfortable
position.”
“What do you mean?” She sounds genuinely curious.
“I’m not sure how far you wanted to go.”
There’s a pause. I don’t know how to say what I’m trying to say, I’m in
unfamiliar territory. She’s my employee. She’s young. But I need to know
more about what she likes. I need to know what the rules are in her world.
“So you like it.” It’s not a question. It’s a realization. “Has nobody ever
called you Daddy before?”
A mental image of Dani flashes in my mind.
“No,” I answer.
 “Ah.” There’s a pause. “You know, being Daddy can be a lot of fun,
Jean-Luc,” she says in that low, playful voice. A responding ache builds
deep inside of me at the word. Daddy. It’s so naughty. So forbidden. So
wrong.
I don’t say anything and she continues, taking her cue. “Daddies like to
take care of their little girls, and make sure they have everything they need,
even if what their little girls want…are their daddies.”
I exhale quietly, the ache growing pleasurably down below. I want to
take care of my little girl so badly; to be her daddy.
All I want to do is hold the phone to my ear and listen to Cynthia say
those words over and over, but she’s quiet. It’s time for me to say
something.
“What else do they do?” I ask. My voice is low and gruff, but flirtatious.
I just want her to keep talking.
“They let their little girls play and have fun, and they protect them and
keep them safe. And sometimes they have to punish their little girls if
they’re naughty.”
Punishment. My cock swells, pushing against the fabric of the
bedspread. Cynthia’s teasing voice and the three martinis I had earlier are
combining into a new kind of intoxication. I close my eyes and spread my
feet apart, enjoying the low throb developing between my legs.
“Do they spank their bad little girls?”
“Yes. They might spank them over their panties, or even spank their
bare bottoms if they’re really bad. Is that what you want to do, Jean-Luc?
Do you want to spank a bad little girl who needs to be punished?”
Oh my God. My cock strains and my heart starts beating so hard I have
to take a deep breath, flooding my lungs with oxygen.
“Yes.”
She chuckles. “What are you doing right now? Where are you?”
“I’m in bed.”
“Naked?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re calling me from your bed, naked at night, to ask about
Daddy play?”
“Yes,” I admit, blowing a breath out. “I guess so.”
She pauses. “Does Daddy have a hard-on?”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Heat spreads over my entire body.
 “Yes,” I answer, reaching under the covers and wrapping my hand
around my hard dick. Fuck. It feels so good that I start stroking it right
away, wishing that Cynthia’s mouth was on it, really that any mouth at all
was on it. I’m hard, I’m really fucking hard, and I’m hoping that Cynthia
will keep talking like this until I come.
“What would you do to your little girl if she was there?”
My little girl. I picture Dani walking into the room, that striking,
innocent, pale face. The shocking mass of red hair. Walking in and asking
me what she had to do. Obedient to me.
“I would tell her to suck it,” I answer.
“Yeah?” she prompts, and then waits.
Oh fuck. I start moving my hand faster, waves of pleasure rolling over
me, my balls tightening. “She has to suck it,” I murmur, “because she made
Daddy hard. She teased Daddy too much, and he got hard because she’s so
beautiful and he loves her so much that it makes him feel good.”
“Oh yeah,” she purrs, and somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder
if she’s masturbating too.
“I would have to tell her how to do it,” I continue, absorbed by my
narrative. “‘Kiss it,’ I’d say. ‘It feels so good for Daddy when you kiss him
there.’”
“Would she like it?”
“Yes.” Oh God, yes, she would like it. My cock throbs in my hand and I
feel precum at the tip. It prompts me to throw back the covers and reach for
the hand cream in my bedside table. “She would be a little nervous at first,
but then I would tell her to suck it down in her mouth, and when she saw
how much it turned me on, she’d get excited, too.”
“Yeah?” Her voice is breathy. She’s definitely masturbating, I think,
squeezing my cock with my moisturized hand and starting to work it harder
and faster.
“Yeah. Her little pussy would be craving Daddy’s cock, but she needs to
suck me right now, I need to get off. Daddy needs to fuck his little girl’s
mouth.”
“Mm. It’s good, isn’t it? Her sweet little mouth? So good for Daddy’s
cock.”
“So good.” I’m right on the edge, so close to coming now. “It’s so much
sweeter than her mother’s mouth. Daddy needs his sweet little girl’s
mouth.”
 “Oh fuck,” she laughs in raspy surprise. “That’s dirty.”
I’m running my hand up and over the sensitive head of my cock as I
stroke, my balls lifting and tightening, and I’m just about to come. “I would
tell her ‘Daddy’s got a big load of cum for you’… Oh fuck, I’m going to
come.”
“Wait!” she exclaims. “I’m so close. Please, Daddy. Tell me about the
big load you have for me.”
Fuuuck. “Oh God, baby. Daddy has the biggest load for you. Daddy’s
going to fill your sweet little mouth with his cum. Oh fuck, baby. I’m going
to come in your mouth. Here it comes, sweetheart, oh fuck, here’s all my
cum for you.” I can’t hold back any longer. My orgasm rocks through me,
making my hips buck, and I hold my cock against my stomach as it jerks
and pulses, covering my abs in my cum.
In my ear I hear Cynthia gasp several times in rapid succession. The
sound makes me groan and squeeze my shaft with a final, small current of
pleasure. She takes a minute to recover and then speaks first.
“Well, that was fun.”
I blow out a laugh and reach for the Kleenex to wipe myself up. “Yeah.
Cynthia…thank you.” It’s suddenly uncomfortable.
I just had phone sex with Cynthia. Cynthia who isn’t exactly my type.
Cynthia I work with. Cynthia I rejected.
The intense pleasure of a moment ago recedes as the full implications of
what just happened begin to settle into my mind.
I just had phone sex with Cynthia, who now knows the full scope of my
deep perversions.
“Jean-Luc,” she says.
“Cynthia,” I try to cut her off, but she continues speaking in earnest.
“Hear me out. I just want to be clear that was just for fun, okay?”
Relief floods through me. “Right. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
“It’s…we can’t flirt in the office or anything, okay?”
“Of course.” I raise my eyebrows quizzically, wondering what I’m
missing here. This is too good to be true.
“I’m…involved with someone there.”
Ahh. “Who?” I ask with a smile. I can’t help myself.
“I shouldn’t tell you,” she answers. “But maybe it’s better you know, so
you don’t…say anything.” She takes a breath. “It’s Bob.”
 Bob? “Which Bob?” I ask dumbly, searching my mind for any other
Bob who works at Kearns & Rochat.
She laughs. “You know which Bob.”
“Oh.” Fuck. “Bob.”
“Yes,” she laughs again. “That Bob.”
There are layers here. There’s the fact that she just had phone sex with
me when she’s ‘involved’ with a friend of mine, but that’s not the first thing
that comes to mind for me. It’s Cynthia—er, Bob’s Cynthia, his wife—with
her carefully-styled hair and pearl earrings, serving us martinis and
laughing gracefully at Bob’s dumb jokes. Cynthia Kearns who gives so
hopefully of herself to Bob so that she can help him and their family have
the life they want.
“Bob’s married, you know,” I say. I can’t help myself. “You know that,
right?”
Here I am, the guy who wants to fuck his stepdaughter. I don’t have a
leg to stand on. But I can’t felt but feel dumbfounded at the revelation. Bob
is cheating on his wife.
“I know,” she says with a touch of irritation. “It just is what it is, okay?
But let’s just keep this call between us.”
“Okay,” I concede, half-relieved anyway. At least my secret won’t come
out. But I have the sinking sense I participated in something awful—that
everywhere in my life, normal boundaries are disintegrating.
Danica
KYE PARKS IN the driveway, and swings an arm over the back of my seat.
“You sure you don’t want to invite me in? Looks like Daddy’s not
home.”
The driveway is empty. Jean-Luc’s Jaguar is with him at his office, and
his other car, the Miata, is under a tarp in the garage, as usual.
For a week now, I’ve been taking the bus to school. After everything
that’s happened, I guess, Jean-Luc doesn’t feel comfortable spending all
that time alone with me in the car.
It had broken my heart when he’d placed cash beside my breakfast plate
and said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe it is time you started
taking the bus to school, after all.” Then he’d patted my head awkwardly
and picked up his briefcase, adding, “You need to leave in about ten
minutes to get there on time,” before walking out, the front door closing
smoothly behind him.
Since then, I’d been taking the bus for two hours a day between Jean-
Luc’s house on Southwest Marine Drive and my high school in North
Vancouver, so when Kye had passed me at the bus stop today and offered
me a drive home, I’d been happy to accept.
I’d never replied to the text he sent, saying sorry for being a jerk, but it
was clear in the car that we were putting all that behind us, Kye chatting
cheerfully about school stuff, peppered with the occasional unexpected
sexual innuendo, and already it feels like things are somehow right back to
where they were a couple of weeks ago.
I shake my head politely as I open the car door. “I’m meeting
Christine,” I lie. “I can’t.”
“All right.” He shrugs, looking irritated. “But when you want to fool
around, Holland, let me know.”
Jean-Luc would be furious if he saw Kye’s big Jeep Rubicon backing
out of the driveway, and me waving to him.
 Or then again, maybe he wouldn’t be. If Jean-Luc cared who drove me
home from school, he wouldn’t have stopped doing it himself.

I don’t leave my room when I hear Jean-Luc come home, or when I smell
dinner wafting up from the kitchen, and he doesn’t call me down, either. For
two weeks now, we’ve been politely ignoring each other, never
acknowledging that I walked in on him in the shower, or that we made out.
Never discussing anything at all. It’s heartbreaking and sad and I don’t
know how to fix what’s gone wrong. I just keep telling myself that it’s a
better abandonment than being left in Melanie’s apartment, that at least
there’s food and electricity here—but is this better? Are these my choices?
The lesser of two abandonments?
Around ten o’clock I hear him climb the stairs; his steps familiar as he
walks down the hall. He closes his bedroom door and I lie in bed on my
back, staring at the ceiling. I usually don’t go to sleep this early but I’m too
bored to stay awake.
I slow my breath and listen intently for some sign of Jean-Luc—the
shower running, or the creak of floorboards as he paces in his room, but this
whole damn house is so soundproof.
I wish I knew what he was doing. Does he read? Does he…touch
himself?
The memory of him in the shower floods me with heat, as it has so
many times over the past two weeks. Jean-Luc is a fit man. I always knew
he was, but I can’t remember the last time I saw him without a shirt on, let
alone naked.
And that cock. Oh my God, the length and girth of it. The slight spasm I
could see in his hand as he came. I squirm at the memory, the roll of my
hips causing a pleasant warmth, not tempered in the slightest by the guilt I
also feel. If I didn’t keep fantasizing about him, then none of this would
have happened. Things never would have gotten weird.
But right now, feeling lonely and dejected, it’s the old relationship I had
with Jean-Luc I want. I want the Jean-Luc who loved me. The Jean-Luc
who is my father.
I toss and turn for a while longer, contemplating a scary idea. He’s right
next door. Unlike Melanie, who left me to go to New Mexico, Jean-Luc is
only a few feet away. He’s right there. And maybe, instead of letting this
Cold War between us go on, I need to bite the bullet and face him. Since I
have no other option left, why shouldn’t I beg for his love? Certainly it’s
better to try when there’s nothing left to lose anyway.
Taking Bunners with me for emotional support, I flip the covers back
off my bed and pad out into the hallway to the giant wood door of Jean-
Luc’s room. The sound of my bare feet is muted by the wooden floors. ‘It’s
the tension of the wood,’ Jean-Luc had explained once. As if that would
make sense to anyone who’s not an architect.
“Dad?” I whisper, as I tiptoe into his room, involuntarily invoking
memories of the last time I called out his name in this room, seconds before
opening the bathroom door…
The room is pitch-black, and I pick my way towards the bed by
memory, blinded as my eyes adjust to the dark. “Dad?”
“Dani?” he mumbles, and I sense, more than see his movement from the
bed. “Is everything okay?”
With a click, the bedside lamp turns on, and I see Jean-Luc squint
against the light he’s not acclimated to.
He’s sitting up, the covers around his waist but his chest and torso bare,
and I’m struck, for a moment, at the sight of his body. His thick, defined
muscles, tanned skin, and the dark hair over his chest and forearms. He’s so
masculine, so strong, and noticing this gives me a kind of pride. He’s my
daddy. And he’s the best daddy.
It’s a childish thought, and I’m suddenly self-conscious about the fact
that I’m standing in his room in my sleep shorts, holding a stuffed bunny by
its ears, waking him up in the night because I need something. Because I’m
scared. It’s a position I’ve been in many times before, but usually my
mother was lying in the bed beside him, trying to sleep through my
intrusion.
This time, her side of the bed is empty.
“Can I sleep with you?” I ask impulsively. I want to be near him. More
than anything, I want us to move past everything that’s happened and just
be close again. I want my dad.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, but I persist.
“Please, Dad? Can I sleep with you?”
“Of course.” He frowns, confused and concerned, as I walk around to
my mother’s side of the bed and slide under the covers. “What’s going on,
sweetheart?”
He turns on his side to face me, worried eyebrows pinched together.
 “I just…feel sad,” I whisper, afraid to speak the words out loud. “I
know some fucked up things happened, but can we please just go back to
the way we used to be? Can we just forget it and go back to the way things
were before?”
“Oh, honey.” His face collapses into sympathy, and he reaches a hand
out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Oh, sweetheart. Of course. Please
don’t feel sad.”
His words are a relief. His soft gaze, his finger as it grazes my cheek
and runs behind my ear, his attention—it’s everything I want.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He lifts himself up on his elbow, eyebrows raised. “Baby, you have
nothing to feel sorry for. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry if I’ve made
you feel alone. I’m just trying to give you space is all. I don’t want you to
feel anything less than safe around me, do you understand? You’ll always
be safe with me, I promise.”
Not safe? That’s the last thing I could ever feel around Jean-Luc. My
eyes trail down the arm at his side—his thick bicep and powerful forearm.
It’s unusual to see him without his watch on. The skin is lighter around his
wrist, where he’s developed a tan line. “Why wouldn’t I feel safe around
you?” I ask in surprise.
“Because of…the kiss.” He hesitates. “And what happened after.
Because of what you saw in the shower. It’s not appropriate, the way I’ve
acted with you.” He lifts a hand to his eyebrows and pinches the skin above
his nose, like he has a headache. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
He’s avoiding me because of things I did? To make me feel safe? “But
that was me, Dad,” I say in surprise. “I’m the one who did those things.”
“No, honey.” He lifts dark brown eyes up to me. Beautiful eyes—
soulful eyes. The way he looks at me, as if he’s trying to read the slightest
fleeting expression on my face, it’s what I love about Jean-Luc. He can
make you feel like the most important person in the world.
He reaches a hand around me and bends down to kiss my forehead. I’m
exquisitely aware of the way his arm lies just under the swell of my breasts,
the intimacy buffered somewhat by Bunners, who lies on my chest between
us. The bare skin of his chest brushes against my shoulder.
“You’re not responsible for anything. You’re the kiddo. It’s my job to
protect you, and that includes acting appropriately.”
 I’m having an involuntary physical response to the proximity of his
body—the warm, sleepy smell of his skin, the heavy muscle of his arm, his
soft breath on my ear. My heartbeat increases and that yearning, aching
sensation starts up again between my legs. It’s all so impossible. I want
Jean-Luc to love me as my dad, but I’m afraid of how much I want him in a
different way.
It’s overwhelming, and to my own surprise, I feel tears well up and
suddenly spill over.
“Baby?” Sounding distressed, Jean-Luc lifts his arm up and moves
away. “Sweetheart! What is it? Do you need me to give you some space?”
“No,” I blubber, squeezing my eyes together and crossing my arms
tightly over my stuffy. “It’s not that. It’s, like, the opposite of that. It’s
something bad, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You can tell me anything,” he says gently.
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“What is it?” His voice has a prying edge. “Tell me.”
I lift a hand to wipe my tears and raise my eyes to the ceiling. I can’t
look at him. My voice, when it comes out, is a whisper.
“I think I’m in love with you.”
There.
I said it.
I don’t know what he’ll do with that information, but hopefully he’ll
understand that I never wanted him to stay away from me, and that none of
this is his fault. It’s all my fault.
I turn on my side away from him and weep with shame, curling my
body around the stuffed rabbit I’ve been clinging to for years; that first soft
talisman of Jean-Luc’s love. Maybe I’ve always loved him. Who’s to say? I
don’t know where on the spectrum love turns to lust, or what it means when
it does.
He’s unmoving and silent behind me, and I can’t imagine what he’s
thinking, or what happens next. Will he ask me to leave his bed? His house?
But only a beat passes before I feel him shift closer to me, and pull me in
against him.
“Sweetie,” he whispers in my ear, and his voice sounds hot and
passionate—an emotional Jean-Luc that’s unfamiliar to me. “Oh,
sweetheart…”
 He says nothing more, and neither do I. He just holds me close, and
kisses my temple in a way that makes me ache for him, before burying his
nose in my hair. My tears slow down and soon the storm passes. However
depraved the revelation, the way he holds me shows me that he still loves
me. Neither of us say anything else—there’s nothing else to say—but the
way he holds me makes me feel like everything will be okay.
Jean-Luc
IT’S BEEN A long time since I held Danica so close. We haven’t spooned
like this since she was a little girl.
And she’s not one of those anymore.
‘I think I’m in love with you.’ Her words play over and over in my head
as I think about what I can possibly say. She can’t be in love with me, just
like I can’t be in love with her. However strong the attraction may be,
however real the feeling, it’s just not allowed. She’s not my biological
daughter and I’m not her biological father, but still—the nature of our
relationship makes us off limits to each other. There can never be anything
between us.
Even if there’s nothing I want more in the world than to be as close as
possible to Danica, in every conceivable way.
She wriggles her ass against me, squirming in closer, and I groan as my
cock stiffens. It was hopeless to think I could enjoy this kind of snuggle
with her innocently, and my obvious physical response makes her giggle.
“Danica,” I say in a warning tone. “Let’s be careful here.”
“Why, Jean-Luc?”
And purely out of reflex, I respond, “Aw. What happened to Dad?”
Shit.
She doesn’t say anything to that, though. She just continues to rub her
little butt against my cock as it gets harder and harder against her, and
finally she turns her face towards me and says, “I like that I can make you
feel good.”
“Mm,” I grunt unintelligibly. I like that she can make me feel good, too.
I shouldn’t enjoy it, but I can’t fight it. The pulsing, throbbing rhythm of
pleasure she’s eliciting in me feels so good I can barely think about
anything else.
God, I want her. A wildness is rising up in me that I know I need to
control, but I don’t want to. After weeks of resisting, I just want to give in.
Fuck it.
 “I like it, too,” I growl, and turn her face towards me, lowering my
mouth to hers.
She’s indescribably soft and sweet. There aren’t words for the texture of
her lips, the little wet protrusion of her tongue, the feel of her cheek under
my hand. My dick throbs to life, hard and heavy as I stroke it against the
crack of her ass, through all the layers of clothing between us. She moans
into my mouth, and my hands move down her body until I’m fondling her
breasts through her t-shirt.
God, I’m aching for her. I want to tear her pyjama shorts down and pin
her to the mattress. I want fuck my stepdaughter on my wife’s side of the
bed, and the thought of that—thinking it in those words—makes my dick
ache even harder. It’s so wrong.
And I want it so bad.
“Good thing Mommy’s not here,” I say, out of my mind with lust.
“She’d be so mad.”
She gasps. “Dad!” But there’s a smile in her tone. She doesn’t pull
away. And in a second, I’m on top of her, kissing her neck and yanking her
t-shirt up to her armpits until I’m sucking her nipples into my mouth and
running my tongue over the hard, pebbled feel of them.
Her tits are incredible, so full and firm, and I knead the weight of them
as I suckle, fascinated by their plump, juicy resistance.
“Oh,” she breathes. “That feels good.”
I could lick every inch of her skin and never be satisfied. I want to
utterly consume her; to devour her whole. I pull myself up into a sitting
position with a monumental effort of will.
“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper, taking in the view of the flushed, half-
naked girl in my bed. I’ve been with beautiful women before…hell, I’ve
only been with beautiful women, but Dani is in another category altogether.
Her firm, perky tits, tiny waist, and absolutely flawless skin, the red flame
of her hair contrasting with the cool blue of her eyes—there’s never been
another woman like Dani in my bed.
Except her mother.
“Are we going to…have sex?” asks Dani, nervously biting her lip in a
way that makes me want to kiss her again and bite it for her.
There’s nothing I’ve ever wanted more in my life, but… “No,” I answer.
Her face falls, and before she can form the word why, I lower myself
back down over her and kiss her cheek. I grind my hard, needy cock against
her, trying desperately to summon my self-restraint.
“I want to, baby,” I murmur. “I fucking want to. But we can’t. I’m your
daddy, sweetie.”
“Not really,” she argues, squirming underneath me. “Please.”
“Yes, really.” I hold her gaze. “I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.
You’re my little girl and I love that.” She groans, helplessly, and I grind
against her again. “But you’re such a fucking sexy little girl. Look what
you’ve done to me. Look what you’ve done to your daddy.”
“Let me help,” she whispers, spreading her legs and lifting her hips so
that the base of my shaft is pressed against her pussy. Thank God for
pyjamas or I would probably be inside her already.
“No, sweetheart,” I say with finality, knowing I need to stop this and
walk away. I lift myself off her and stand up, noticing her stuffed bunny
shoved between the pillows. I pick him up and hand him to her. “You and
Bunners get some sleep. Your daddy has to go take care of himself right
now in the bathroom and I’ll be back to bed soon.”
She takes the bunny and clutches it to her, looking up at me with sweet,
pleading eyes. “But I want you.”
She’s irresistible. I run my fingers through her hair again and bend
down to kiss her softly on the lips. “You’re too young,” I say. “Maybe when
you’re older.”
Danica
I WAKE UP in the morning after a deep, dreamless sleep, briefly unsure of
where I am. I’m incredibly comfortable—cocooned in some warm, soft, but
unfamiliar nest. It’s the sound of a shower running that’s woken me, I
realize, and slowly I remember that I’m in Jean-Luc’s bed. The thought
jumpstarts my heart and I open my eyes to see that I’m alone. The shower is
running and the bathroom door is open, which surprises me. I wonder if he
always leaves the door open in the morning, and I’ve never noticed because
I’m always asleep when he gets up.
I’m starting to drift off again when the sound of the water stops abruptly
and Jean-Luc comes into the room. He’s wearing nothing but a white towel
wrapped around his waist, his ripped, muscular chest on display, and he
smiles at me as he approaches the bed.
“Time to get up, sleepyhead,” he grins, and leans over the bed to kiss
my forehead. “I put your clothes out on your bed, and you can get ready
while I make breakfast.”
He pushes some hair off my face with his thumb and almost hesitates
before speaking.
“Why don’t I brush your hair today, too, when you’re ready? I can braid
it like I used to.”
“Sure,” I say, with a flush. “That would be nice.” It’s been a long time
since Jean-Luc put out my school clothes or brushed my hair, and it makes
me feel cared for.

I return to my room to find my school uniform laid out on the bed in the
shape of a person. Blouse at the top with sleeves akimbo, skirt in the
middle, and socks carefully unrolled at the bottom. A pair of the new
underpants is laid out across the skirt.
The idea that Jean-Luc has handled my underwear, and has carefully
laid it out for me to put on causes my heart to skip a beat. I like the fact that
he’ll know what panties I have on all day.
 At the top of the bed, nestled between two pillow, is Bunners. Jean-Luc
must have carried him over here when I was sleeping, and curiously it
completes the look: my schoolgirl uniform, white panties, stuffed animal.
The combination makes me smile. There’s an innocence to it that reminds
me of how safe Jean-Luc has always made me feel. My dad. And despite
what happened last night, despite how much I want to be a woman in his
bed, I want this too: the little girl who gets taken care of.
Jean-Luc is in the kitchen when I get there, dressed in his usual attire:
grey slacks and white shirt. His jacket is folded over a dining room chair
and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows. He smiles at me
when I walk into the kitchen with a kind of wonder, and then walks right up
to me, wrapping a large hand around each of my arms. It’s intoxicating to
be so close to him, and I can smell the soap and cologne smell of him that’s
always strongest in the morning.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asks, eyes searching my face.
“Good.” I wrap my arms around his waist and step in for a hug, pressing
my face against his hard chest. “I love you, Daddy.”
He makes a low noise that makes his chest rumble against my ear. “I
love you too, sweetheart.”
I don’t let go of him, only squeezing harder, until he chuckles good-
naturedly and says, “Okay, baby, take a seat at the table.”
Orange juice and toast has been put out for me and when I take a seat,
he comes up behind me and starts to brush my hair—softly, from the ends,
the way he learned to brush my curly hair when I was a kid. When he’s
done, he deftly twines a French braid down the back and ties it off at the
end.
I run my fingers over my head to feel the tidy, repeating ridges of hair.
“Thanks, Jean-Luc.”
“Jean-Luc!” he scoffs, squeezing my shoulder blades affectionately.
“Sorry. Dad.” I correct myself.
I finish my juice and take my toast out to the car, and as we pull out of
the driveway, I ask the question that’s on my mind.
“Are you sure you still want me to call you Dad? Now that we…you
know…” I have no idea what to call it. “After the stuff we’ve been doing?”
He doesn’t answer right away, but gives me a funny look and checks his
rearview mirror. When the way is clear, he pulls the car over to the curb and
parks. He turns to face me, his expression serious and thoughtful.
 “Dani.” He lays both hands on my thigh and squeezes it affectionately.
“Last night… I don’t regret a single thing that happened. You know, the
way you said you feel about me, being in love with me, well…I feel the
same way about you. I want so much more than what we have. I wish we
could have so much more than what we have. But we can’t.” He closes his
eyes for a moment and takes a breath before opening them again. “I am
your dad. I’ll always be your dad. And I don’t think…well, I don’t think it
would be good for either one of us if you talk about what happened, okay?
Like, to Christine or anyone at school. Do you understand what I’m
saying?”
I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It hasn’t even occurred to me
to tell anyone else about how I feel about him, so I don’t see why we can’t
do anything we want together.
“I won’t,” I say with heartfelt sincerity. “But why can’t we have more?
Why can’t we just have it both ways if no one knows about it?”
“Oh, honey,” he exhales, and reaches for me, pulling me in against him.
He cups my cheeks and kisses my hair, my temple, and then my mouth,
pressing firm, fast kisses to my lips. “You don’t know how badly I want
that. But it’s not that simple. It’s…complicated, what’s happening between
us.”
I laugh. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
He kisses me again and then rests his forehead against mine, his hands
holding my head. “I guess not.” He sighs and turns back towards the
steering wheel, and I smooth down my hair as he stares out the front
window. “I’m not really sure what to do, to be honest. I just know that…for
now, at least, this has to be our little secret.”
“Of course.” I fold my hands in my lap and press my knees together,
feeling happy…I think. If we can be together in secret, that’s better than not
being together at all.

Christine and I are standing by our lockers when Kye and Eric saunter up.
“Ooh.” Kye tugs my braid. “This rope coming out of the back of your
head would be perfect for holding onto if we were doing it doggy-style,
Holland.”
I snap my head away, my braid pulling for a second before he lets go,
and glare back at him. Eric bursts into a loud guffaw. “Fuck off, Kye,” I say
irritably.
 “Hey, don’t be like that, baby,” he croons with a grin. Christine, who’s
been crushing on Eric since they were in the eighth grade together, laughs
loudly as if she’s in on the joke.
“What do you guys want?”
“We want you nerds to lighten up and come cut class with us.”
I roll my eyes. “Kye, you’re so rude.”
“Kidding!” he says quickly, shifting his tone and demeanour. “I’m just
teasing. We want you smart girls,” he makes a flourishing gesture with his
hand, to more laughter from Eric, “to come with us.”
“No,” I answer, just as Christine says, “Where?”
Ugh. Her eyes are bright and shiny with interest.
The boys exchange a smile and Eric answers, “We’re going to get high.”
He raises his forefinger and his thumb to his mouth, as if he’s holding a
joint.
No.
Christine looks at me and shrugs, her eyes gleaming with hope. “We
only have Vocal Music,” she says.
“But we have another class after,” I counter. “I can’t skip both.”
“We’re all in Drama final period,” Kye points out. “You’ll actually
perform better in Drama if you’re high.” He and Eric snort, and even
Christine grins, and I get the sinking feeling that I’m on the losing side of
the battle. If I don’t go, they’ll talk about how uptight and weird I am the
whole time.
“Fine.” I open my locker to put my books back, trying to ignore my
reservations.
We head out of the school, nodding confidently to Mrs. Minic, our math
teacher, who eyes us suspiciously.
“Free period!” Christine sings out to her with a wave.
We walk around to the parking lot at the back of the main building, and
with a click from his key fob, Kye’s Jeep beeps and flashes its headlights.
“Are we driving?” If I get caught, for any of this, Jean-Luc will kill me.
“Nah.” Eric opens the back door and hops in. “We’re hotboxing.”
Christine gets in the back beside Eric and I climb into the passenger seat
with a sigh. I don’t want to get high. I’m not sure if it’s too late to bail and
go back to class.
“Wait!” cries Eric. “We didn’t get snacks. We should get them before so
we don’t have to open the doors.”
 “Yeah, man,” says Kye. “You two go. We’ll wait here.” He hands his
bank card back over the seat to Eric. “One-one-one-one,” he adds, giving
Eric his PIN.
“Let’s go,” says Eric, and he and Christine hop back out of the car,
leaving Kye and I sitting up front.
“The store’s, like, a ten minute walk,” I point out in confusion. No one
pays any attention.
I watch their backs retreat around the building until a crackling sound
pulls my attention back to Kye. He’s pulled a vape pen out of pocket and
takes a long inhale before passing it to me.
“No, thanks,” I say primly. He blows a huge billow of smoke out in a
cloud, searing my eyes and lungs.
“C’mon, Holland. Don’t be such a tight ass.”
“Don’t want to.”
He shakes his head, a smile playing on his lips. “That’s what I like
about you, you know. You’re kind of different.”
“Because I don’t want to get high after lunch?”
He snorts. “Because you know what you want, I guess. Because you do
your own thing.”
I’m not sure what to say. I think this is the nicest Kye has ever been to
me, and for a moment we’re both just looking out the front window in
silence while I debate whether or not to say thanks. Then Kye asks, “You
need a drive home today?”
I shake my head, feeling a little embarrassed. “Actually, no. Not today.
My dad’s, uh…my dad’s back at the office again, so he’s coming to get
me.”
He turns to look at me in disbelief. “Dude, seriously. What is with your
dad? You are literally on my way home. Or you could take the bus like
basically everybody else. Does he, like, not let you out of his sight or
something?”
“He just works near the school,” I explain. “It’s easy. Plus, he’s never
late. So then…neither am I.”
He lowers his voice in a mock whisper. “If you need help escaping,
Holland, just blink your eyes twice.”
“Stop!” I bat his arm playfully. “It’s honestly just easier.”
He shrugs. “It’s just weird to me that you were absent from school for,
like, a month, and then when you come back, suddenly, you’re, like, living
in a mansion with some mafia boss type who drives you around, and
there’s, like, no sign of your mom in your life anymore. Like, for real. Is
something up?”
“What?” His comment surprises me so much that I bark out a laugh.
“Mafia boss? No! They’re getting divorced. You just met me when I was
living with my mom is all.” Maybe I’m getting high from all the smoke in
the car, but seeing Jean-Luc through Kye’s eyes is giving me a case of the
helpless giggles. Mafia boss.
He laughs and hauls on his pen. “I don’t know. That guy is like eight
feet tall, man, and he’s always in a suit. Always angry, like—“ he furrows
his brow and speaks in a low baritone, “‘Get in the car, Dani,’ ‘Get out of
this house, young man.’ I just, I don’t know…you do not seem related is
all.”
“We’re not related!” I cackle, and I’m just about to explain what
stepfather means, when there’s a knock on the car window. My eyes jerk up
and Kye’s head swivels to his window, and there’s Ms. Caldwell, the school
principal, rapping on the window and frowning.
Jean-Luc
I GET OFF the phone with Principal Caldwell in a blind rage.
Drugs…school property…
…And Kye fucking Knight.
It was the mention of Kye’s name that made my blood boil. Of course
it’s him. Dani would never get high in a school parking lot, that’s not who
she is.
She’s a good girl. My sweet girl. And Kye…
If he so much as laid a hand on her I will break every one of his teenage
fingers.
I’m clenching my jaw as I storm down the school hallway only a half
hour later. For the first time in a long time, I surprise myself by wishing
Melanie was here. Melanie would know how to handle this. How to handle
the principal, how to handle Danica. How to handle me.
If Melanie were here, maybe Danica wouldn’t be getting in trouble at
school in the first place. Maybe everything would be the way it should be.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucked up and confused, and maybe Danica
wouldn’t be, either. It would be my wife in bed beside me…
Instead of her daughter.
I take a deep breath, trying to ground myself, as I round the corner to
the school’s administrative office. Danica and Kye are sitting side by side in
the waiting room, looking sheepish. They both look up guiltily at me as I
identify myself to the receptionist.
“Dad,” entreats Danica, but I stop her with a hand gesture.
“Not. One. Word,” I snarl. She closes her mouth, eyes wide, and Kye
ducks his head. Too afraid to look at me, that little shit. He thinks he’s the
big man who can put his dick in my daughter’s mouth, but he can’t even
look me in the eyes when I’m angry.

Danica’s principal, Ms. Caldwell, and I are beginning to have history. I

remember meeting her at a tour of the school when Dani was fourteen,
before she registered. She knows Mel—not well, since Danica has never
been in trouble before—but we also had a conference call last month with
Dani’s social worker to discuss Dani’s absence. She knows Dani was
abandoned by her mother, and she’s sympathetic to my exasperation,
reminding me that while smoking pot is a great offence at school, it’s not
abnormal behaviour.
“I’m sure I did the same thing when I was her age,” she tells me with a
wink.
In the end, she agrees not to suspend either child, although I was only
advocating for Dani. They’re two weeks away from graduating high school
and, “at least in Dani’s case,” she specifies, “there are no other disciplinary
issues. Now that she’s back in class,” she adds.
I shake Ms. Caldwell’s hand and storm back out into the waiting area,
indicating Dani should follow me with a gesture and not slowing my pace
to wait for her. She jumps out of her seat and whispers, “I’ll text you,” to
Kye.
In the car, she has an alert, nervous energy but doesn’t seem high. When
I speak, my voice is caustic with anger, despite my attempt to modulate my
tone. “Do you understand that special accommodations were made for you
to allow you to graduate high school this year?”
“Dad—“ she starts, but I’m too angry to let her continue. It’s not a
dialogue.
“Don’t even start with me! What the hell were you thinking, Dani?
You’re skipping school and using drugs? On school property? Do you know
how hard I had to work to convince Ms. Caldwell that you’re a good kid
who deserves a chance? And you just threw that away.”
“I didn’t use drugs!” she wails. “I didn’t! I was just in the car, okay? I
said no!”
“But why weren’t you in class? Why were you skipping school to sit
alone in a car with that boy?”
“I…I…I’m sorry, okay?” She throws her hands up uselessly. “I don’t
have a good reason. I was just succumbing to peer pressure. I’m sorry.”
Sorry. Her tone is petulant and facetious, not sorry. It’s too much like
her mother’s voice when she came back from some drug-fuelled fugue with
some toxic movie star. ‘I’m sorry, okay? Geez.’
I’m so angry I’m reckless. I can understand why they say that people
see red when they’re upset. The power of my rage is blinding me, crowding
in at the periphery of my vision.
With a sudden jerk of the steering wheel, I pull over to the side of the
road and come to a jarring halt. Dani grips the sides of her seat. It’s
uncharacteristic for me to be so angry and impulsive, but all I can think
about is her in that car with that fucking kid doing God knows what. And I
find myself wondering, suddenly, about this kid Dante that she lost her
virginity to. Dante, who fucked her. What did he look like? Some teenage
nightmare like Kye? A blond, golden-skinned douchebag?
“Show me your panties,” I command her.
The whites of her eyes show. “What?”
“Show them to me.” I’m not in the mood for games. All I can think is
that she stole the sexy panties back from my drawer. Visions of Kye’s hands
squeezing the flesh of her ass over the sheer lace of Melanie’s panties are
dancing through my head.
A bright flush rises on her cheeks as she tentatively pinches the hem of
her skirt, looking back up at me for confirmation.
“Show me.” My voice is tight, taut with the inappropriate energy of the
moment.
What the fuck am I doing?
But even as the thought passes through my mind, I don’t falter for a
second, staring intently as Dani hesitantly lifts her plaid skirt up over her
creamy, smooth thighs, and shows me the small white triangle of her
panties.
A low, urgent pressure slams through me at the sight of the thin strip of
white cotton fabric covering that tender place between her legs, and I exhale
audibly.
“What were you doing in the car with Kye?”
“N-nothing, Dad. I was just sitting there. He was the one…he was
smoking up.”
“So you were just sitting there doing nothing?” I can barely keep the
edge of sarcasm out of my voice.
“Yes!”
“You sure he wasn’t touching you?”
“No!” She’s indignant.
“No?” I reach for the exposed strip of panties and press two fingers
right at the apex, pushing them between her thighs, and her breath hitches.
“You sure he wasn’t touching you here?”
 “He wasn’t.” Her voice quavers.
I push my fingers in deeper, pushing against the softness of her pussy
and trying to find her clit. “Because don’t forget, I saw you sucking that
boy’s cock, remember? And you told me you liked it, giving him head. And
now you’re trying to tell me that you were alone in a car with him and he
wasn’t trying to get into your panties?” I feel wetness spreading against the
cotton fabric, but when she spreads her knees, rolling her head back against
the headrest, I pull my hand away.
“Dad…”
“Bad girl.” With a sharp flick of the wrist, I slap her mound, right
against her clit, and she jerks in surprise. “I don’t know what to do with
you. You’re already grounded. I’m going to have to find some other way of
punishing you.”
Danica
WHEN WE GET inside, Jean-Luc takes a seat on the couch and beckons
me over. I approach with trepidation, unsure of what to expect.
“I don’t want you spending any time with Kye.”
“I know.” My voice comes out sounding small. “I’m sorry, Jean-Luc.”
“I’m sorry, who?” He lifts one eyebrow. The line of his mouth is hard.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Good.” He shifts back into the couch and pats his legs. “Bend over my
knee.”
I freeze. “Dad?”
“I’m not playing games, Danica. Let me be very clear. If you want to be
a bad girl, there will be consequences.”
A shock of heat curls in my belly at Jean-Luc’s words, at the prospect of
his hands on my body. Is he really going to spank me?
I take a step closer and balance one knee on the couch as I tentatively
lower my stomach down over his thick thighs. I turn my face away from
him, resting a cheek on the couch, and stare at the rounded edge of the
ottoman. A heavy, pulsing sensation is growing between my legs, and I
have to fight the urge to move my hips or grind myself against him.
He lays one big, heavy hand on the back of my thigh and lifts my skirt
with the other. Then he glides his hand up over the back of my panties and
grabs my entire ass with one hand, squeezing the flesh and then rubbing it.
It’s rough but pleasurable. Heat rushes to the surface of my skin.
“Danica.” His voice is thick and gruff, and when he shifts underneath
me I can feel the hard bulge in his pants. “Danica, I don’t want any of those
boys at school touching you, do you understand?”
“I understand.”
He lifts his hand off my ass, taking the warmth of it with him, and with
a sudden jerk of his arm, a searing pain splits across on one ass cheek.
I yelp, twitching in his lap, as scorching heat spreads from the stung
flesh.
 He lets out a low, satisfied noise as he shifts against me again,
deliberately grinding his hardness against my belly.
“Bad fucking girl,” he groans. “You see what you do to me? Bad girl.”
His torso grips and flexes against my rib cage as he raises his hand again
and delivers another ripping blow. I scream as his hand hits my flesh, and
tears spring to my eyes.
“It hurts!” I protest.
“Of course it hurts.” He pinches the fabric of my panties together,
wedging the fabric into the crack of my ass so that both cheeks are exposed,
and then he tugs it so that it pulls against my clitoris, making me gasp. My
pussy swells in response—heat spreading between my legs and making me
lift my ass, wanting to feel his hand. Tingles radiate out from where his
hand struck my skin, and somehow, the pain of it shakes something free in
me. Giving myself over to his control loosens and relaxes me. To my
surprise, I find I’m almost craving the next sharp slap of his hand.
He pulls the gathered panties harder, and rubs his palm over the exposed
skin before smacking my flesh again.
“Please, Daddy,” I whimper—but it’s not a cry for him to stop. It’s a cry
for him to give me what I want, some indistinct thing I can’t name. His
hand on my ass again, or somewhere between my legs. I’m wound tight
with desire and not exactly sure what it is that I want.
He rubs his hand over my throbbing skin, but this time, his fingers trail
lower, down between my legs until they’re brushing lightly over the most
sensitive, private part of me. I arch my back and part my legs ever so
slightly, opening myself up to his touch, and he raises his hand again and
brings it down hard on one bare cheek, yanking on the panties and making
me yelp again.
“Dirty girl,” he growls, and smacks me again. “Dirty little girl getting
wet in her panties. You like this, don’t you?” He lays a hand against the
underside of my ass, gripping it firmly, and uses his thumb to start probing
my swollen pussy lips through my damp underwear.
My eyes nearly roll back in my head at his touch—right there where I
want it. I push back against him, wanting to feel it harder and deeper,
wanting his thumb to slide under the fabric and touch me directly. His
whole hand wraps around the bottom of one ass cheek and he squeezes it,
bunching up the muscle and rubbing his thumb against the wet centre of my
panties.
 He fists my hair at the base of my skull, lifting it off my face, and grinds
against me once more, moaning, “Fuck, you look delicious.”
I can only imagine the sight we make right now, Jean-Luc in his suit,
the massive power and breadth of him, and me across his lap—tiny and
pale, with my skirt around my waist and white knee socks on. An exquisite
tension is building in my core and when he finally slides his thumb under
my panties and touches my slick, sensitive pussy, I shudder.
Something is blooming inside of me, an urgency, and I’ve passed the
point of no return. Thrusting back against his hand as much I can, I breathe
out, “Jean-Luc,” panting against the couch.
He pulls his hand away and spanks me sharply, making me grunt with
surprise.
“I need you to be my good little girl, Dani,” he growls in warning.
“Daddy,” I correct myself, whispering desperately. “Daddy.”
He slips his fingers under the panties again, sliding two fingers down to
my front, and starts rubbing soft circles around my clit. Everything inside of
me seizes up. When his finger lands on the exact right spot, it’s like a
detonator. Sensation bursts through me like an explosion, and I’m only half-
aware that I’m crying out, my pelvis contracting as my vision tunnels.
Holy fuck.
I’d always sort of wondered if I’d orgasmed before but maybe didn’t do
it very powerfully. It certainly felt good to touch myself.
But not like this. Nothing has ever felt like this. I’m practically weeping
as my whole body alights with pleasure, gasping for air and grinding my
hips against my stepfather’s lap. The sensation is so incredible, so unlike
anything I’ve ever even conceived of, and I want more, now, endlessly,
forever. My God, I will do anything to stay close to Jean-Luc and to feel
that again and again.
“Good girl,” he says, and I can hear the warm smile in his voice. He
rubs his hand in soft circles around my ass. “Good girl, Danica.”
I melt at his praise.
I’m in love, is all I can think. I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love.
Jean-Luc
THE FIRST TIME I had sex with Melanie, she’d claimed to be surprised by
how raw and animalistic it was. “You have a beast inside,” she’d said,
delighted, “that I wasn’t expecting.”
She was a new-agey kind of woman, confident in her assessments of
people and with an air of spiritual superiority. We met at a party where
she’d arrived with another man, one who wore jeans and had tousled hair
and called her babe. In hindsight, the fact that she went home with me
should have been a clue to her future infidelity, but at the time it felt like a
conquest.
I’ve always been Melanie’s opposite, the stiff guy in a suit who rarely
cracks a smile, but Mel and I, we had wild sex. Crazy sex. The kind where
we tore at each other’s bodies and got off on dirty talk and even introduced
risks, like public sex and trying to get caught. In Melanie’s view, I was
more rigid than most on the outside because I was more wild than most on
the inside.
In the early days of our relationship, she loved discovering the side of
me that could completely let go. But towards the end, it was the outward
control she focused on. “You’re such a control freak,” she would tell me.
“You’re anal-retentive. You’re repressing me.”
I disliked the way she put me into two distinct boxes, Wild Jean-Luc
and Repressed Jean-Luc, the way she didn’t seem able to understand me as
a whole, complete person. But now, with her teenage daughter wet and
quivering on my lap, and my blood pounding in my ears and my heart
hammering against my chest, the term comes back to me. The beast inside.
It feels accurate.
I’m just on the brink of control, like I might transform right before
Dani’s eyes into the Incredible Hulk, clothes ripping and guttural roar
uttering from my throat as I give in to the powerful gravity of my lust. My
cock is straining against my pants, my balls tight with need, and my hand in
Dani’s hair is twitching with the urge to grab and pull. It’s as if every cell in
my body is calling to me to rip her wet panties off and slam my hard cock
deep into her still-pulsing pussy—pulling at her hair, squeezing her hips,
using her for my relief, the relief that’s screaming out for me like a siren
song.
It takes every ounce of willpower I have, every trained reflex as Control
Freak Jean-Luc, to loosen my fingers in her hair, and shift my legs, and
lower her skirt. To say—as gently as I can muster, with the rebel yell
pounding inside of me—“Up you get, sweetheart.”
I can tell she’s dazed as she stands up, cheeks flushed and eyes
gleaming. She pushes her hair off her face, which has gotten wild and curly,
and I notice that her nipples are poking two small, hard points against her
school blouse.
She’s absolutely dripping with sex. Aroused, but with that freshly-
fucked look, too, and it’s the hottest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
She’s everything.
Including—the thought enters my head with a sobering iciness—my
wife’s daughter.
And I am a beast. I am a monster, after all.
Panic claws at my throat. I wasn’t supposed to go any further. I wasn’t
supposed to spank Dani and touch her and make her come on my lap. I
went too far.
“Time for your bath,” I say abruptly, standing up with the kind of cool,
neutral demeanour I might have if I was ending a business meeting.
Surprise flickers across her eyes. It hasn’t been ‘bath time’ in our house for
years now, but she doesn’t say anything and follows me as I walk up the
stairs without looking back, fingering my cell phone in my pocket.

When I met Melanie, Danica was already eight years old, and didn’t seem
to have any established routines. She delighted in the bedtime rituals I set
up: bath time and story time. It was obvious she’d never had that kind of
structure before. I didn’t hold it against Mel at the time. I thought it was
more evidence of her free-spirited nature versus my uptight one. But I knew
instinctively that kids need routines.
She’s eighteen now and it seems like she’s in the shower three times a
day. She certainly doesn’t need bath time anymore, but the words were out
of my mouth before I could think it through.
 Perhaps, I think, if I can’t have her the way I want her, indulging my
forbidden fantasy in a safe way will help keep my urges in check. My cock,
already aching from the spanking on the couch, keeps throbbing as I pour
the bath my little girl will sit in naked.
She drops her skirt without reservation when she walks into the
bathroom and starts unbuttoning her shirt. My vision goes foggy as my
desire roars back to life. I’ll never be able to resist her, I think desperately. I
need her.
But what I really need is to be a better man—more disciplined and less
self-indulgent. With self-reproach, I back away from Dani and reach for the
door.
“I’ll get dinner started,” I choke out, and leave the room, closing the
door behind me.

I can barely focus on cooking. Filthy, obsessive thoughts are running

through my head, my hand unconsciously finding my phone in my pocket
as I turn the idea of phoning Cynthia over and over in my mind. I don’t
want to be a creep, but I desperately need an outlet for the need that’s
thundering through me. By the time Danica comes down from her bath,
every inch of me is aching and throbbing.
She’s glowing as she approaches the table—cheeks rosy, in stark
contrast to her ivory skin, her wet hair dark and heavy down her back. She’s
wearing pyjama shorts and her long, bare legs underneath are absolutely
sinful. I immediately visualize them spreading wide for me.
“Take a seat, please,” I say, as I turn off the stove. I scoop rice on a
plate, and then a chicken breast, and hear her slide a chair out with a scrape
across the floor. I really need to put felt pads under the chair legs. There are
already scratches showing in the polished floor under Dani’s chair.
When I place the plate in front of her, I run a hand affectionately over
her hair but try to hold my body away from her, as if an inch or two will
keep me from throwing her onto the table and mauling her.
“I’ve got to do some work,” I say austerely, and when I look down I see
a blank look of confusion on her face. “You made me lose work time
because you were a such a bad girl, and now Daddy’s got to make up for
lost time.” Fuck. It kind of slips out. Daddy.
“You’re not going to eat?”
“I’ll eat later.”
I climb the stairs, knowing I can’t wait another minute. I need release now.
It feels natural to hide out in the bathroom where I can have more privacy,
and I close the door, and text Cynthia.
Can you talk? It feels desperate and creepy, but I am desperate—so
hard I’m not thinking straight.
Three dots rise and wave for what feels like a long time before I get a
response.
Give me five minutes
I slump against the counter with relief.
There is a beast inside of me. Not just a passionate side that’s belied by
my cool exterior, but something uncontrollable and dangerous. No matter
how many times I try to pull myself back from the edge, things just keep
escalating. I can’t stop. And right now I’m spiralling…
The feel of Dani’s ass under my hand, the firm quiver of muscle, and
the way I could feel her arousal. The way her body moved and bent against
me, lifting herself up, wanting my touch—desperate for it. The slick and
ready slit between her legs… I squeeze my eyes shut and then undo my
pants, pulling my cock out.
It’s wrong, everything about this is so wrong… I grip my shaft and start
working myself while I wait for Cynthia to call me. I’m close already, and I
let myself indulge in the fantasy: Dani splayed out on the bed naked. Daddy
lowering himself over her, into her. Oh fuck, how tight her little pussy
would feel around me, how much she would squeeze my cock.
I give my cock a corresponding squeeze just as I notice her clothing
piled on the floor with a flicker of annoyance that briefly takes the edge off
my arousal.
How many times do I have to tell her to put her clothes in the hamper?
But right at the top of the pile are her little white panties. Her sweet
little girl panties that she’s been wearing all day, the ones I was so rough
with when I spanked her, and I barely hesitate a second before reaching
down and scooping them up, spreading the crotch of the panties out in the
palm of my hand and then wrapping it around my dick. I start stroking it
just as the phone rings.
“Hi,” I breathe into the receiver, and I’m positive the sound of my voice
gives me away. It’s rough and low—definitely the voice of a man with his
cock already in his hand. His cock in his hand, and his stepdaughter’s used
panties wrapped around it.
“Hi,” she whispers back. “I only have a minute. I’m…with someone.”
I freeze and my hand stops moving.
She’s with Bob.
“Fuck,” I exhale. “I’m sorry. I should…I shouldn’t be bothering you.”
“It’s okay,” she draws out playfully, in that silky, seductive voice. “I
said I have a minute.”
The tone of her voice makes my cock twitch, as if it has a mind of its
own. As if it’s pleading with me.
I drop my head, frozen with inertia, because everything I want I can’t
have—or shouldn’t have—but no matter what the stakes I seem incapable of
stopping myself.
Bob is my friend.
But he is cheating on his wife, I reason quickly.
“Does Daddy need to get off?” Cynthia purrs into the phone, and just
like that my pulse is thundering in my ears again and all of my awareness
re-centres around my dick.
“Yes,” I groan helplessly. Fuck, this woman just has an instinct for this.
“Ooh,” she coos. “Bad Daddy.”
Holding the phone against my ear, I lean back against the bathroom
wall, my face towards the ceiling as I finally give in and start stroking
myself to get off. I’ve been on the edge for so long that I’m almost
immediately close to coming. The fabric of Dani’s panties is rough and dry,
but oh my God, the thought that her pussy has touched this fabric. The
white cotton innocence of it…
“I am a bad Daddy,” I respond breathlessly. “I am a bad Daddy who’s
got a big, hard cock for his little girl.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. My hand works
faster and harder, rubbing the panties up and over the sensitive head of my
cock, moist with pre-cum. I am a bad Daddy who spanked his little girl and
touched her, and now I’m jerking off with her dirty panties. “Oh, fuck,” I
whisper with a shudder.
“Oh, Daddy’s close,” she intuits. “Daddy’s nice and hard tonight. You
gonna blow a load for me, Daddy?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”
Oh, God. Dani’s round, firm little ass under my hand. Her plaid skirt
and the white knee socks pulled all the way up. Fuck, the white knee
socks…
I stroke my cock two, three, four times into the dry cotton, and I
practically whimper as the unbearable tension inside of me breaks open.
“Oh, fuck. I’m coming.”
“Yes,” Cynthia encourages me. “That’s so good, Daddy. Give me all
that cum, Daddy.”
Pleasure quakes through me as I release, spurting hot jets of cum into
the cotton panties and gasping. “Oh yes,” I moan. “Fuck yes.”
“You needed that, Daddy,” she purrs.
“Yes.” Slowly, still catching my breath, I continue to stroke my dick
with the wet panties, the edge worn off now, the tension in my ribcage
broken free. I can breathe. “Yes. You’re a good girl, Cynthia,” I say, still
panting.
Her voice drops into a whisper. “I’ve got to go,” she says suddenly.
“See you Monday.”
The line beeps and I stare at the phone for a moment before dropping it
into my pocket, then I brace my hands on the counter and let my head hang
as I catch my breath. The panties are still in my grasp, and after a minute I
ball them up and toss them in the hamper.
Danica
“YOU’RE GLOWING,” CHRISTINE accuses. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen
you so happy.”
“I’m not!” I protest with a laugh. “It’s the heat. I’m telling you, nothing
happened.”
She eyes me suspiciously. Apparently, when she and Eric had gotten out
of Kye’s car yesterday, it had all been part of a plan Kye and Eric had
hatched to get us each alone. Christine had given Eric a blowjob in the
bushes behind the 7-11, and she’s convinced that at least something
happened between me and Kye before the principal showed up.
“I’m serious,” she insists. “You, like, look different. You’re smiling.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. We were in the car for two seconds
before Ms. Caldwell showed up, and then we were this close to getting
suspended. I thought my dad was going to kill me.”
“Ah,” she says knowingly, quirking her mouth and nodding her head
slowly. “Wait a minute. I know what it is. You’re in love.”
“What?” I almost drop my laptop in surprise, and swear under my
breath as I lift a knee to catch it and then hug it closer to my chest. We’re
walking down the hall to our final Biology lab and the floor in this wing of
the school is hard tile. My computer would smash if it fell.
“Mm-hm,” hums Christine, opening the classroom door and letting me
walk through. “That’s what it is. You’ve got all the symptoms. Dizzy,
distracted…dopey smile. Yup. Someone’s living in your head rent-free.”
“Well it’s not Kye,” I mutter as we take our seats. On the other side of
the room Kye and Eric are already seated at their lab table, watching us
walk in. Christine waves to Eric, who nods back.
“Wait, what?” She slides in next to me and whispers. “It’s not Kye?
There’s someone else who’s caught your eye? Oh my God, who? Spill it.”
For a second, for just a second, I have the fleeting urge to tell Christine
about Jean-Luc. I want so badly to say his name, to talk about the way he
makes me feel… But I know I can’t. Besides, I’m not even that close to
Christine. Technically she’s my best friend, but only because I have no
other close friends to speak of. Melanie moved me so much in grade school,
I didn’t really seem to make any of the long-term connections so many of
my peers have. And Christine, for her part, has a history of turning on her
friends and driving them away. I’ve managed to avoid her ire for the past
four years just by keeping a little bit of distance between us.
But I can’t resist the urge to drop just the smallest breadcrumb for my
only friend, so with only the tiniest whisper of doubt in my mind, I lean
forward with a conspiratorial smile.
“I can’t really say anything about it,” I whisper, “but yeah, there is…
someone.”
“Oh!” she gasps, fluttering her hands in front of her neck. “No way. You
have a secret boyfriend?”
I inhale sharply, unsure what to say, my momentary happiness at
revealing something swept away. A boyfriend?
That can’t be what Jean-Luc is, nothing about that sounds right.
And yet…isn’t he? Isn’t that what boyfriends and girlfriends do? Fool
around? Fall in love?
“I…I don’t know about that,” I stammer. “He’s a little bit older.”
I realize I’ve made a mistake the minute I speak.
Christine frowns. “What do you mean older? How much older?”
“It’s no big deal,” I say quickly, turning to the front of the classroom as
the teacher thankfully calls the class to order. “Just a few years.”

I’m quiet on the drive home with Jean-Luc, thinking about Christine’s
question. Boyfriend, lover, father…I don’t know which of these describes
Jean-Luc anymore, and thinking about it gives me a sinking sense of dread.
I want him to be all three, and that’s impossible. What future could I
possibly have with my mother’s husband? Where on earth do I think this is
going?
When we get home, I set up my computer at the dining room table to
study, and Jean-Luc preps dinner, but I’m sulky and silent. Eventually he
comes to stand behind me and places his hands on my shoulder, kissing the
top of my head.
“What’s wrong with my little girl?” he asks gently. I sigh, and lean back
in the chair, enjoying the feel of his hands and the warmth of his body
behind me.
 I don’t know what it is between us, where it could possibly go, but the
one thing I know for sure is that I need his love as desperately as I need
oxygen to live. Whatever that looks like. I need him to touch me, to want
me, to desire me.
I tilt my face up towards him, giving him a half-hearted smile. “I think I
need a kiss, Daddy,” I say sweetly, knowing the effect saying that will have
on him. But instead of bending down to give me the kiss I want, Jean-Luc
sucks in a breath and closes his eyes for a second.
“Danica.” He squeezes my shoulders and starts lightly massaging them,
digging his thumbs into the muscle right where I’m always the most tight,
just like he knows how to do. “I think we need to be a little careful about
our roles, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean…sometimes I have to be your dad, okay kid?”
There’s that conundrum again: boyfriend, lover, father. But I’m not able
to keep my feelings compartmentalized, at least not right now. I shimmy out
of my chair and turn to face him, feeling brazen.
“Then I don’t want to study anymore.” I hold his gaze and don’t look
away. His dark brown eyes search mine as if he’s looking for some
meaning, as if he’s trying to figure something out. I can tell he’s not going
to make me sit back down. “I want you to touch me,” I breathe, my voice
coming out wispy and soft. “Kiss me.”
There’s a hint of a smile on his mouth, a whisper of mirth in the way his
eyes crinkle and squint, even as he furrows his brow at me. “You don’t
make the rules around here, Danica,” he says in a low voice.
“I’m horny, Daddy,” I try again.
This time he lifts an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth starting to give
away his smile. I know I have him.
“You’re being a brat.” His eyes bore into mine. “I tell you what. You
can put away your studying, but it’s bath time.”
“C’mon!” I roll my eyes.
“Dani.” This time his tone is severe. “I said it’s bath time. Be a good
girl and do as you’re told.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I sigh. A spark of interest flickers in his dark eyes.

I follow Jean-Luc upstairs and sit on his bed while he runs the bath. It was
only the night before last that I slept there beside him, in his arms all night
—except for when he crept off to the bathroom to take care of himself,
leaving me wanting. I could only imagine him in there, that huge, long cock
in his hand.
I wonder if we’ll ever…do it. I want him to want me in that way, but
thinking about his size makes me nervous. Even through the shower glass I
could easily see that he’s bigger than Dante and Kye. Combined.
My eyes wander around the room and I try to imagine my mother living
here. It’s the same bed they shared at the old house. Same dresser. Same
chairs under the window. Standing up, I circle the room, lazily thinking
about how much this room looks like their old one. It’s just missing
Melanie’s clothes and all the bottles and pots of makeup and perfume that
sat on the dresser.
Out of curiosity and boredom, I open the dresser drawers to see how
much room Jean-Luc takes up on his own, and I’m surprised to find a stash
of my old underwear—Melanie’s old underwear—the forbidden panties he
doesn’t want me to wear. Underneath that there are other items in lace and
silk. I pull one out and hold it up by the straps. It’s a sheer white babydoll
nightgown trimmed with ruffles and lace, very sexy. I have no idea if it’s
Melanie’s or maybe a trophy from some other conquest, but if it’s stashed
away in this drawer, I assume he likes it.
Jean-Luc calls me into the bathroom, and I shove the nightie back into
the drawer, closing it silently before joining him. To my surprise, he doesn’t
leave when I enter the bathroom.
“Get undressed for your bath,” he instructs me, dark eyes watching me
expectantly, and with a quiver of excitement, I remove my blouse and slide
off my skirt. His eyes devour me as I roll down my socks, unclip my bra,
and step out of my panties, and then I stand there naked before him, letting
him look at me. The frank way he stares makes me feel shy and powerful at
the same time.
“Beautiful girl,” he murmurs. “Now into the bath. It’s bath time.”
He holds out a hair elastic and I knot my hair on top of my head so it
doesn’t get wet—I have too much of it to wash it every day, which he
knows—and then I step into the bathtub and lower myself down.
I’m hyper aware of Jean-Luc’s eyes on my body, hyper aware of the fact
that this is the first time he has seen me completely naked—at least since
puberty—and the awareness of that, mixed with the hot intensity of his
stare, is making a pulsing pleasure spread through my body. The warm, wet
touch of the water between my legs is like a mouth, and the thought makes
my nipples tingle as they contract into hard points. I know Jean-Luc can see
them. I’m sure my arousal is written all over my body, and I love knowing
that he’s watching me.
He kneels down beside the tub with the sponge in hand, dampening it in
the water and adding soap, and then starts scrubbing soft circles on my
back.
He moves the sponge over my shoulders and across my chest, then ever
so lightly down over my breasts. “You’ve grown up so much,” he says in a
thick voice. “I can’t believe how big your breasts are getting.” He drops the
sponge into the water, where it bobs and dips in the waves, and starts
lathering my breasts with his bare hands. “They’re so big.”
“Do you like them?” I whisper, with every ounce of courage in me. His
touch is sending electric currents throughout my body, making my nipples
squeeze tight.
“Yes.” He reaches one arm around my back so that he can place a hand
under each breast and cups the weight of them, bouncing them slightly as if
he were testing them out. “Fuck,” he groans.
“Are they bigger than Mom’s?” My voice is so low it’s barely a
whisper, and a red-hot blaze of shame goes through me even though I
wanted to say it. Even though I want to know.
What a fucked-up thing to say.
But it doesn’t seem to faze Jean-Luc at all. “Not yet,” he answers, still
squeezing and kneading them. “But they will be soon. And they’re so
perfect just as they are. So nice and full and firm. I can’t believe how
beautiful and grown-up you’ve gotten.”
Keeping one arm around me, breast in his hand, he lowers the other
over my stomach and down past my belly button, until his fingers are just a
hair’s breadth away from my clit. I take a deep breath, repressing a shudder
at the hot, urgent need coursing through me.
“Do you want to have big breasts like Mommy?”
My breath hitches. This is naughty.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“You will,” he promises. “Soon.” He runs his fingers over my mound as
if he’s exploring it. “You’re smooth,” he says with surprise.
“I shave.”
 “Good girl.” I can hear the satisfaction in his voice and it makes me
beam with pride. I know Melanie always shaved and it’s something I’ve
been trying lately. I knew he would like it. He slides his hand down
between my legs, one finger running slickly over the exquisitely sensitive
nub of my clitoris, and pleasure shocks through me. I tilt my head back as I
gasp in a breath.
“Do you ever masturbate, Danica?” His finger starts making a slow
circle around my clitoris as blood rushes down to my private parts. I feel as
though I’m swelling and growing against his finger.
“I try sometimes,” I whisper, my voice punctuated by my breathy
exhales. “But it’s never worked before. Yesterday was…was the first…”
With one hand kneading my breast, and the other softly drawing out my
pleasure between my legs, Jean-Luc has me completely at his mercy. “You
never came before yesterday?” he asks. He sounds surprised.
“No.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes. “We can’t have that. I’m going to have to
make you come again. Would you like that?”
“Yes.” I breathe, chest heaving. “Yes.”
“Good.” His finger circling my clit has me right on the edge, and my
knees fall open as the same exquisite tension as yesterday bears down on
me, making me drop my head back on his arm.
“That’s right, baby,” he murmurs—so quietly and lovingly. “That’s
right.” He tightens his hold around me, fingers rubbing lightly around my
nipple, and fingers rubbing lightly between my legs. He feels solid behind
me, the mass of his strong arm supportive and firm, and it makes it easy for
me to fall open against him. “That’s good. This is what you need, isn’t it?
Daddy’s going to help you come again.”
It’s the perfect moment. I wish I could crystallize it and hold on to it
forever. My absolute pleasure in Jean-Luc’s arms. His caring, doting love
all focused on me. I am safe and I am loved, and suddenly there’s a
starburst behind my eyes as my whole body contracts and lets go.
“Yes.” Jean-Luc flattens his palms against me as I buck and spasm in
his arms, one on my inner thigh and one across my breast, holding me tight.
“Yes, baby. Let yourself go. That’s so fucking good. That’s so fucking good.
Daddy’s so proud of you right now.”
He kisses my hair just above my ear and another tsunami wave of
pleasure rolls through me.
 It’s bliss, it’s otherworldly, it’s fucking incredible.
‘Daddy’s so proud of you.’ It’s my favourite thing when we play in this
space and I have no idea if I could ever tell him. It’s so wrong. Boyfriend,
lover, father. When he’s Daddy, he’s all of those things.
Jean-Luc
AFTER HER BATH, Dani teeters out of the bathroom to get dressed,
flushed and dizzy as if she’s drunk on pleasure, while I drain the tub and
gather up her discarded clothes on the floor. I take a moment to look at
myself in the mirror and drag my hands through my hair. I’m rock fucking
hard and I have no idea what to do with myself. I can’t keep jerking off in
the bathroom…can I? How long can this go on for?
When I step out of the bathroom into the bedroom, I’m in for a shock.
Dani is in front of the full-length mirror, admiring herself in a sheer
babydoll slip.
It’s Melanie’s bridal lingerie.
She must have found it in my drawer. I keep it stashed away there with
the panties I took away from Dani—strange and emotionally-loaded
mementos of my wife; of her daughter. Melanie only wore this particular
item once, on our wedding night, but it evokes powerful memories for me.
The incredibly loving, intense sex we had that night. The awe and wonder I
felt at knowing that this woman was my wife. I felt unreasonably lucky and
blessed.
Now, looking at her daughter wearing the same thing, a dark heat swells
in me.
Her toned legs are impossibly long under the hem of the nightgown,
which just barely skirts the bottom of her ass. A hint of frill peeks out
beneath from the matching set of panties, tantalizing and innocent all at
once. The white fabric billows around her mid-section, tucking together
under the swell of her breasts, where a large pink ribbon sits right between
the two mounds. More frilled fabric, just like the panties, modestly covers
her breasts, the whole thing suspended from two straps over her shoulders.
She looks like a stripper, and a bride, and an innocent little angel all
rolled into one, and hormones surge through my blood at the sight of her.
Something ravenous and fierce inside of me is fighting to be unleashed. A
wild yearning, a dangerous thing. Pornographic images flicker rapidly
through my mind, almost subliminal, and impossible to catch and stop.
Dani thrown back on my bed, hair splayed, the billowing white fabric of the
nightie flung up over her tits; moving the frilly panties to the side with a
rough finger; the small, pink, soft centre of her cunt inside. Dani underneath
me in this lingerie like her mother once was years ago.
My cock twitches in my pants and my face feels hot. I take a steadying
breath as she turns and beams at me.
“Do you like it?” she asks, playful and coquettish.
“Yes.” I just hope that the pounding of my heart and lungs in my ribcage
isn’t showing through my button-down. I take a seat at the edge of the bed.
From the lower angle, I can see the slightest bit more of the frilly panties
beneath, and just the idea of them is making my balls ache.
“Come sit on my lap,” I say, husky and low, and surprising even myself.
I didn’t mean to say that. It’s like the wild thing within is so close to being
free that he’s speaking through me now, controlling me. But I want—no, I
need her close. I need to feel her against me and wrap my arms around her
in some twisted conflation of protection and desire.
She’s mine. My little girl.
She sashays towards me with a small smile playing on her lips and I’m
struck by her likeness to Melanie. The sexy confidence as she shows herself
off to me, the flash of seductive knowing in her eyes. It’s as if, for the first
time, I’m truly seeing how Dani is Melanie’s daughter, after all.
They’re so different, Dani lighthearted, sincere and well-meaning, while
Melanie is manipulative and self-interested. There’s that light in Dani’s eyes
that never was in Mel’s. But now, like this, wearing the lingerie her mother
wore on our wedding night, and looking at me as if she has knowledge
beyond her years, the similarity to my wife is unmistakable and uncanny.
Maybe that’s what confuses me. Maybe that’s why I keep having these dirty
thoughts.
She turns and sits on my lap and we both look in the mirror to see each
other. The heat of her body against mine is making me ache, but I don’t
shift or try to hide my erection.
“You look so sexy,” I rasp, lifting a hand to one thigh, and softly
running it over the smooth skin, letting my thumb trail over the silky flesh.
She squirms deliberately against me and smiles shyly in the reflection in
the mirror.
 It’s the shyness that gets me. The fluctuation between an uncanny
imitation of my wife, and then a sweet, innocent girl. It’s kryptonite for me,
and I lift a hand to her other thigh, holding both legs against me as I grind
my cock against her frill-covered ass.
“You see what you do to me?” I lift my hand to her hair and gather a
thick rope of it in my fist. “Dani,” I growl. “I can’t believe what a beautiful
girl you’ve grown up to be. So beautiful and so sexy.”
She catches my eye in the mirror and gives me a devilish smile. “More
beautiful than Mom?”
My heart squeezes and skips a beat. With a observational detachment I
notice a fleeting sense of shame, as if she’s discovered some secret.
“Yes,” I whisper, nuzzling her neck. “More beautiful than Mom. My
sweet, sexy little girl.”
My hard shaft presses painfully against the fly of my pants, against
Dani. I want to unzip my pants and feel the wet readiness of her against me,
let her squirm against the bare flesh of my cock before I slide it into her and
take her right here, like this, on Daddy’s lap in front of the mirror.
The ferocity of my desire shocks me. At the very edges of my
consciousness is a cold, sobering awareness that I’ve gone too far; that I
need to come back from the brink. But I push it back down.
“Stand up,” I rasp. “And get down on your knees in front of me.”
She does as she’s told and lowers herself to her knees, looking up at me
with naughty innocence.
She knows how to do this, I think, remembering her and Kye in the
basement.
“Now you’re going to do something for me.” I unbutton my pants,
lowering them with my boxers, just enough to get my cock free, and then I
grip my shaft with one hand. Dani’s eyes are wide. Wonder…and fear, I
think. I know I’m a big guy. I’ve seen this look on women’s faces before.
“I know you know how to do this,” I say to her.
“Dad—“ she starts, and abruptly cuts herself off. The flush deepens on
her cheeks. “Jean-Luc,” she corrects herself in a hushed tone.
“You can call me Dad, sweetheart.” I run fingers through her hair until
my hand is cupped around the back of her head. “That’s what I am, and I
like being your daddy, Dani.” She blinks back at me, a shy little nymphet in
my wife’s lingerie. “Go on.” I squeeze my shaft. “Start by kissing the tip.”
“It’s just big,” she stammers.
 “That’s all right,” I say gently. “I just want you to lick it and suck it a
little, okay? You can take it slowly.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she murmurs, bending forward and pressing sweet lips to
the head of my cock. It jumps in response, precum smearing her mouth.
“That’s good,” I breathe shakily. “That’s a good girl.” A low tremor
threatens to quake through me at her soft touch.
This is too far. I’m going too far. But when she looks up at me, big
bright blue eyes gone nearly violet with lust, and runs her tongue under the
head of my cock, I groan helplessly.
“Oh sweetie. Christ.”
She laps the underside of my cock, licking it like an ice cream cone, soft
and teasing, until all my resistance is gone. I need to come. It won’t go any
further than this, this is the final frontier, but I need to come in Dani’s
mouth.
“Open your mouth wider now and suck it.” My voice is gruff and bossy.
I can’t play games or make nice. There’s no time to waste. I’m practically
shaking I’m so on edge.
Obediently, she wraps her lips around my shaft and lowers her head,
taking half of my length in her mouth. “Good. Good, sweetheart. I knew
you could do it. Just like you did with that boy I caught you with, hm? Now
it’s Daddy’s turn.”
The wet heat of her mouth makes my balls lift. I lean back on my hands
and look over Dani’s head to the mirror, where I have a full view of us as if
from a third-party perspective. It’s a bizarre repeat of the scene I interrupted
with Kye—only this time it’s me she’s taking into her mouth instead of him.
She sucks me down deeper, cheeks hollowing, and it takes every ounce
of willpower I have not to fill her mouth with my cum right now. I could
just let myself go at any minute. I’ve been craving this moment for so long,
and it’s an impossible fantasy. I can’t believe it’s suddenly real.
“Take it deeper now.” Slowly, I start rocking my hips back and forth,
moving my cock against her tongue and her lips, inching myself ever closer
to a total loss of control. With every stroke, I push deeper and deeper into
her mouth, pulling her head down against me and wanting to feel her throat.
“Oh, that’s good.” I shudder. “That’s so good. You’re being such a good girl
right now and Daddy’s so proud of you. Mm, yes—fuck. Keep moving your
mouth like that and go down lower, okay? I want you to take more. I know
Daddy has a big cock, but I want you to suck it down deep. Make me feel
good with your mouth. That’s it. That’s it.”
Her breathing is heavy, ragged with the effort of trying to breathe
around my cock, and soon she makes a gagging noise, her breath sputtering
as she struggles to regain control.
“Good,” I cajole her. “Good girl. Keep working my dick like that. Fuck,
you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this for, Danica. How long I’ve
wanted to feed you my cock like this. You’re making me feel so good. Oh,
sweetie, that’s so fucking good.”
She makes a strangled sound, partially a noise of assent, partially a gag,
and I look down at the impossible sight of my cock going in and out of my
little girl’s mouth before looking back up at the mirror again. Dani’s feet are
curled under her, toes inward, and her ass is bobbing up and down above
her heels, the frilly underpants on full display now, the little nightie
covering nothing. I hold her head a little firmer, thrusting a little bit harder,
and then look down at her again to see that she has her eyes closed.
I want to see her looking up at me, see her being subservient to my
cock. “Look at me. Look at Daddy while you suck him.”
She raises those cool blue eyes at me, tears gathering in the corner, her
lashes clumping together from moisture. Her cheeks are hot and red, her
pupils huge—dilated with desire. It’s unthinkably hot.
“That’s how I like it,” I say encouragingly.
An exquisite sensitivity starts to radiate down from the head of my cock
and I know I’m getting close. “When I come in your mouth, I want you to
swallow it down,” I tell Dani, my heart hammering against my chest. She
tries to nod. “Have you done that before? Do you know how to swallow
cum?” She tries to nods again.
“Dirty fucking girl,” I growl. “This time it’s going to be different,
though, okay? With your daddy it’s going to be different. Daddy’s going to
come in your mouth because you got him so hot he can’t control himself,
and now he’s going to give you his big fucking load because you made him
so fucking hard. Are you going to swallow all of Daddy’s cum down like a
good girl, sweetheart?”
She tries to nod a third time, tears streaming from the corners of her
eyes and running over her red cheeks.
“Good.” I’m so close I can’t repress an involuntary shiver. “I’m going to
come now.” I spread my fingers apart at the back of her head, holding her
right where I want her. “I’m going to come in your mouth, baby. Oh fuck,
Daddy’s going to come in your fucking mouth.”
With an seismic shudder, my vision tunnels, my balls contract, and I’m
shooting hard into my stepdaughter’s mouth, my little girl, my little sweetie,
on her knees in front of me, taking my load.
I can’t fucking believe it. I shudder and buck involuntarily as Dani’s
tongue and mouth work around me, desperately trying to swallow the
mouthful I’ve given her. It’s a big load, I know it is, and when I finally
recover enough to look down at her, I’m pleased and proud to see how
much she’s taken.
She smiles back at me, flushed, a little cum running over her chin.
“Did I make you feel good, Daddy?” she asks, after she swallows.
“You made me feel the best,” I exhale, spent but smiling. I collapse
backwards onto the bed and she scrambles to her feet with a giggle and
throws herself on top of me. She feels perfect against me, a soft, sinful,
perfect confection of spun sugar and lace, and I throw my arms around her,
making her grunt with happiness. I don’t care about the rules. All I want is
to hold Dani this close to me forever.
Jean Luc
IT’S ALMOST SEVEN a.m. when I wake up, the latest I’ve slept in since
Melanie and I last went on vacation—whenever that was.
The blinds aren’t drawn, and the sun is full in my face. Beside me, my
flame-haired girl is curled up on her side, her butt against my crotch, and
I’m already hard for her.
I kiss her ear and wrap my arm around her to pull her in closer. She
squirms against me like a kitten, making a small mewling sound as she
wriggles herself in.
Not for the first time, I fight back powerful thoughts about what it
would be like to be inside of her, to fuck my little stepdaughter, and soon
I’m grinding my full erection against her. She presses back harder against
me, sleepy but willing, and with a great effort of will, I force myself to roll
over and sit up.
I’m in a permanent state of breathless need, but, for the first time in a
long time, I realize, I’m happy. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my
shoulders. As I head downstairs to make coffee, I catch myself whistling.
What’s happening with Dani…I know it isn’t right. There’s a constant
nagging worry in the back of my mind: if things keep escalating, how far
will they go? But there’s no denying the simple fact that getting closer to
Dani—this teasing, flirtatious exploration—feels completely right. My love
for her is so big it encompasses all our roles. Even the forbidden one:
Daddy—the kink I never even realized I had until she came back home.
I always had a rapacious sexual appetite. When I was younger it was
about having sex a lot. As I got older it became more and more about
finding the things that turned me on. With Melanie I had explored BDSM
and discovered my dominant tendencies. What’s developing with Dani feels
like a natural extension of that.
Except that it’s wrong on every conceivable level.
But for now, as long as it’s kept in the privacy of our own home, with
nobody who knows except us, it couldn’t feel more right.
“You’re cheerful today,” observes Bob, giving me a scrutinizing look as he
pours cream into his coffee.
I lift my eyebrows innocently. “What makes you say that?”
“You were whistling.”
“I was?” The revelation surprises me. “Huh. Well, the concept
approvals for the bank on West Fourth have finally gone through, so I guess
I’m glad about that,” I venture. One of our biggest clients, a national bank,
are notoriously critical of our early design concepts. It was Bob who
brought the client in but now I work with them almost exclusively.
“That’s good. Only took, what? Six months?” he cracks. “That must be
a record.”
I slide a mug under the coffee machine and move out of the way as a
busy intern bustles in, grabbing a coffee carafe and a carton of milk before
bustling back out. Bob grins at me.
“I think you’ve been happier since Danica’s been back,” he suggests.
“Sure,” I reply. “Yeah. It’s nice having her around. And I’m relieved
knowing she’s safe.”
He nods grimly, pressing his lips together. “Any word from Mel?”
Bob’s known Melanie since day one, from the first day I confessed I met
someone special at a party, to the first time she ran off, right up to the end,
when I’d finally had enough. Other than Dani, no one has lived through my
ups and downs with Melanie more than Bob.
I shake my head. “M.I.A. To be honest, I was expecting to hear from
her. I cut off her allowance.”
He pinches his eyebrows together. “Any chance she’s missing for real
this time?”
“I don’t know.” The thought had occurred to me. In the past she’d run
off for four or five days, tops. Never longer than that. Never two months. If
something’s happened to her, if her body’s found somewhere, I don’t know
what I would do. I don’t know how Danica would handle it.
I know that, on some level, her absence has to be resolved one way or
the other. Irrationally, I wish it could just stay like this. Melanie just not in
the picture. Mommy simply absent.
Bob looks troubled. “I know a P.I. if you want one,” he offers, in a way
that makes my heart sink. Maybe I’ve been naive to not take action sooner.
“If cutting off her money doesn’t flush her out…” He shrugs. “Hard on the
kid to go through that, though.”
“Yes,” I stir my coffee and take a sip. “But she’s a tough one, Dani.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing her at the wedding.”
The clicking of her stiletto heels down the hall announces Cynthia’s
arrival before she walks in. She’s wearing a form-fitting red dress, and her
long, straight hair is swinging down her back. Her almond-shaped eyes flick
between us as she walks to the fridge. Her stride doesn’t falter for a second.
“Gentlemen,” she says smoothly, pulling out a bottle of kombucha.
“Cynthia.” I give her a nod.
“Hello,” says Bob.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bob eyeing Cynthia with a hungry
gleam. There’s a taut, ready energy to him that I can just sense, as if he’s
fixing to jump on her. She uncaps her bottle and watches us back with a
half-smile.
“Well,” I say, hoisting my mug. “Back at ‘er, I guess. See you both
later.”
Cynthia smiles at me, but Bob doesn’t take his eyes off her.

When I pull up to the school that afternoon, Dani is waiting by herself on a

bench near the curb. I’m pleased to see she’s alone—pleased especially that
there’s no sign of Kye. Her hair is in the two neat braids I set it in this
morning, and she’s the agonizing picture of innocence: white knee socks,
black shoes, plaid skirt and white blouse. She’s the quintessential innocent
schoolgirl. Her face lights up when she sees me, crystal blue eyes shining,
and her uncomplicated joy, her pure love for me, makes me feel raw, tender,
and sensitive.
When she gets into the car, I lean over and kiss her cheek, inhaling the
cotton candy scent of her hair, and scan the school’s sprawling lawn
quickly. There are pockets of students here and there, but none of them are
looking at us. I speak in a low voice in Dani’s ear.
“Show me your panties.” The soft pink that blooms on her cheeks in
response satisfies me.
“Dad.” It’s a protest. She’s shocked. But I need to know that she’s my
good little girl who does what she’s told. I need to know that she’s as
perfectly innocent as her little school uniform and her two neat braids.
“No one’s looking. Show me.”
 She casts a quick look out the window and then lifts up her skirt,
making blood rush to my cock. The small triangle of white cotton is perfect,
perfect, against the tender, soft flesh of her young thighs.
“That’s good,” I say softly. “It makes me happy when you’re a good,
obedient girl.”
I shoot another quick look out the window and then kiss her on the
cheek again, this time placing a hand on her thigh and giving it a squeeze.
I’m actively trying to ignore the voice in my head that’s shouting at me
about making a habit of checking my stepdaughter’s panties, about letting
her sleep on my wife’s side of the bed, about fucking her mouth, while
telling myself I can still somehow rein things in.
I don’t want to listen to that voice. I’d much rather listen to the
delusional one that’s telling me I have everything under control. Dani and I
have always been affectionate, that’s all. I have limits in place—at least, I
have one limit in place left—and I won’t cross it.
I straighten up and start the car, clearing my throat, and Dani lets out a
small, happy sigh.
“I want you to finish any homework you have when we get home and
then put in an hour of studying, okay?”
She rolls her eyes. “An hour? Dad, I put in an hour every night. Like,
I’m ready to take my exams now.”
“Do as you’re told, and then after your bath we can spend some special
time together. Would you like that?”
I look over at her to see a small smile playing on her lips. “Yes, Daddy.”
“That’s good.”
I pull onto the 99. Everything’s under control. I won’t go too far. But
just being in the car with her is enough to send me over the edge. Tonight
we’ll just play a little. Daddy and his little girl.

My phone buzzes several times in my pocket before we pull up to the

house. I can’t check it while I’m driving, but my mind starts running,
linking together irrational thoughts. It’s enough text messages to be
worrisome. What if Bob called his P.I. already and he found something?
What if it’s the police?
More likely, I tell myself, as I grab my briefcase and the water bottle
Dani left in the car, it’s Cynthia texting after seeing Bob and I talking in the
kitchen this morning, wondering if I’ve told him anything—because I’ve
been a fucking idiot to keep calling her when I know she’s in a…situation
with my friend.
We get inside and Dani sets herself up at the dining room table and
when I finally pull out my phone, all the blood drains out of my face.
Six text messages.
All from Melanie Holland.
She lives.
Hi JL - can you call me at this number pls?
I don’t know if this is still your # I assume it is
I need to talk to u
I’ll try your office # too
Best friends with Susie from your office now lol!! She’s great
But call me if u get a chance
The fact that she called my office and spoke to Susie makes me nervous.
Susie’s my very chatty Admin Assistant. I wonder what information
Melanie could be looking for that Susie might have given her.
Dropping the phone back into my pocket, I realize I have no energy for
making dinner.
“Sweetie,” I call out to Dani. “I’m going to order pizza for dinner.”
“Yay!” she calls out from the dining room table, flashing me a bright
smile.
I open my own computer at the dining room table as we wait for the
pizza to arrive, trying to hide my distracted thoughts behind the screen. I’m
not sure if I should tell Dani about the texts. Does she worry about her
mother? Would she want to know that Mel reached out to me? Or would she
wonder why Mel hadn’t reached out to her first?
Dani, who’s supposed to be studying, fills the silence instead with
excited chatter, and I don’t try to stop her or redirect her to her books. She’s
in a good mood tonight.
Since she missed applying to universities while she was fending for
herself in Mel’s apartment, we’ve talked about her interning at my firm
until she can apply to school again next year. She’s excited about the
prospect, trying out the idea of being an architect herself one day.
“It’s kind of perfect,” she bubbles on, “because I was actually thinking
about engineering, but I also love art.”
When the doorbell rings, anxious energy propels me to my feet, eager to
have something to do, and Dani is only a step behind, singing out “Pizza-
ahhh!” as I reach for the door.

When I was in university, I worked during the summer as a teller at a bank

that got held up at gunpoint.
A man in a ball cap and sunglasses—no ski mask—approached my
station and slipped a piece of paper towards me. I assumed it was cash or a
cheque.
If you hit the alarm, you die, the note read.
I looked up with a half smile, confused, to see the barrel of a gun
pointed directly at me. I became vaguely aware that people were screaming.
When it was all over, the story didn’t even make the news. I handed
over all the money in my till, so did the other tellers, and he left. Within the
hour, he’d been apprehended and the money was reclaimed. No one was
hurt, but it was the most frightening experience of my life, seeing the barrel
of the gun right between my eyes.
But the fear I felt that day is nothing compared to the way I feel right
now.
Adrenaline spikes my blood, driving me to run or fight. Instead I just
grip the doorknob harder, as if it can steady me somehow.
Dani speaks first.
“Mom?”
Gone is her ebullience of only a moment ago. Her voice is strained and
shocked.
On the doorstep, looking flamboyant with her wild red hair, and in a
bright blue dress, Melanie looks surprised, too. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says
to Dani, with just the slightest hint of disappointment. “You’re here.”
Jean-Luc
FOR A HEARTBEAT, no one moves. No one says anything. Nothing
happens. Then Melanie laughs breezily and says, “Well? Can I come in?”
She picks up the two suitcases at her feet and walks through the door while
Danica and I just stare at her, like she’s risen from the dead.
“You two look like you’ve seen a ghost!” she quips, and it doesn’t
escape my notice that Danica’s reaction is as frozen and restrained as mine.
She doesn’t run into her mother’s arms the way any other child might. But
she never was that way with her mother. She was always wary around
Melanie.
Right now she looks how I feel: shocked and horrified.
“Melanie,” I manage, finally. “What are you doing here?”
“I got your new address from Susie! Isn’t that great? Thought I’d
surprise you.”
“Where have you been?”
“Oh please,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “It’s always like this with you,
J.L.” Still holding her bags, she walks down the hallway, raising her voice
as she speaks over her shoulder. “You’re so focused on the literal, because
that’s all you can understand. Space, time, here, now.” She stops in the
living room and drops her bags, turning around to us with a dramatic flare.
“How about asking how I am, for once?”
“Dad,” says Danica beside me, under her breath.
“I’ll handle it,” I mutter, and follow Melanie, cursing silently.
She’s begun walking around the main room, trailing her fingers over the
furniture and taking in every inch of the space as if she’s touring a museum.
She looks good. I hate that I notice that, but I do. Her dress is short and
shows off her long legs, and her hair’s grown almost as long as Dani’s.
“Melanie, what are you doing here?”
She grins broadly and stretches out her arms to me. “I’m back, baby!”
“No.” I shake my head. “No. I filed for divorce. There’s no back. You’re
in my house.”
 She tilts her head patiently, as if I’m being unreasonable. “J.L., we’re
not divorced yet. This is my house.”
Damn this woman. It’s been two minutes and already I want to punch a
hole in the wall.
“Yes,” I bite out. “We’re not divorced because my lawyer couldn’t find
you to serve the papers. You’ve been missing for two months. What the hell
are you playing at?”
She casts a meaningful look at Danica lingering in the hallway and then
says in a theatrical whisper, “Could we have a moment alone? To talk?”
The last thing I want to do is succumb to any of her demands, but I
would also prefer to spare Danica hearing whatever it is her mother might
have to say. My jaw gripping with tension, I nod towards the doorway to
the basement stairs.
“We can talk downstairs. Honey,” I turn to Danica. “Your mom and I are
going to have a quick chat in private. If the pizza comes, my wallet’s on the
kitchen island.”
She nods, pale and serious.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Melanie hisses, as soon as we enter the
den.
I blink. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Are you two hanging out?”
“Melanie.” I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. “She lives
here.”
“Here? With you?”
I know I need to keep my emotions under control, I need to stay calm
and collected for Dani, but the question—Melanie’s absolute ignorance
about her daughter’s well-being—has me seething.
My words are venomous as I spit them out. “Your daughter has been
living here since Social Services called me to come get her from the fucking
pig sty you moved her into and then abandoned her in.”
A beat. “Social Services,” she scoffs. “That’s a lie, Jean-Luc. She’s
eighteen.”
“She’s eighteen now, Melanie. She was seventeen when you abandoned
her.”
She says nothing, and my voice gets scary low as I continue.
 “She had no money and was practically starving. She didn’t want to call
me and have me find out that you’d rented out the house. Even after
everything you did to her, she thought she was protecting you. She stopped
going to school because she didn’t have bus fare. She didn’t leave that
fucking apartment. I don’t even know what she ate. Do you have any idea at
all what you’ve done?”
Melanie throws her hands up in the air. “Everything’s always about
Danica, isn’t it? Jesus. What about me, J.L.? Do you have any idea what
I’ve been going through?”
“Unbelievable,” I hiss. I walk over to the bar at the far side of the den
and take down a glass, pouring out a shot of whiskey and taking a healthy
slug. Melanie follows me over and helps herself to a glass as well.
“This isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go,” she says, leaning her
elbows on the bar beside me and staring at herself in the mirrored wall
behind the bar. “I’ve been going through a lot, and it hasn’t been easy. Now
my friends say you had them evicted from my house, and you’ve stopped
the child support payments. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed
to look after myself?”
A deep fatigue settles over me. I’d almost forgotten how exhausting it is
to talk to Melanie. “I had your tenants evicted from my house, yes. And I
don’t pay you child support, as Dani is not my child. I voluntarily made
payments so that you could look after her—which you’re clearly not doing.
If you want my money, you’ll have to sign the damn divorce papers so you
can get your alimony.”
“J.L.” She’s calm now, lifting blue eyes to me in an appeal that’s almost
sincere. “J.L., I’m sorry. I know…I know I fucked everything up. I fucked
up our family. You think I don’t feel bad about that? I wish we could go
back. I loved it, you know? You as a dad, just the three of us against the
world? Those are some of my happiest memories.”
I clench my fist until I can feel my nails biting into my palm.
“You were always such a good dad,” she says with soft sentimentality.
“So patient with Danica, so kind. Remember when you two took those
cooking classes together?”
I know that Melanie is deliberately trying to play on my emotions. The
years we spent together as a family are my happiest memories, not hers. She
always felt constrained and imprisoned by both Danica and I. But for a
second, it stirs something sentimental in me. A memory pops into my head
of the three of us at an amusement park one summer evening. Dani was
about nine and Melanie and I had just gotten married. Melanie had a light
sunburn across her nose and Dani was skipping up ahead of us, holding the
cheap, oversize teddy bear I’d won for her, and I felt so proud—holding my
new wife’s hand and keeping a watchful, paternal eye on my new
stepdaughter. There was pride in being a husband and a father. I felt serious
at last, grown-up. My own father might have been proud of me for once if
he’d lived to see the moment.
Although he certainly wouldn’t be proud of me if he could see me now, I
think, remembering how I woke up beside my stepdaughter this morning.
“Don’t you even want to speak to her, Melanie?” There’s despair in my
voice, the anger ebbing away to a kind of sad resignation. “Don’t you even
care what happens to her?”
“Of course I do! She’s my daughter.” For a moment, I almost believe
her. For a moment, I’m almost relieved to think that she might actually love
Danica after all.
“But I’ve been going through a lot,” she continues, and the illusion
shatters. Melanie doesn’t care about anybody but herself. “I’ve been going
through a lot, but I’m doing the work, you know? I’m figuring a lot of stuff
out. Stuff that I wish I could have figured out a long time ago, so that I
never would have hurt you the way I did. I wish, I mean…I wish I could
undo those things, J.L. I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”
I don’t say anything. Months ago, I wanted to hear those exact words
more than anything. Despite everything that had happened, shortly after
Melanie left, all I wanted was for her to come back. I had delusional notions
about how we could rescue our relationship, how the cheating would stop if
I could just understand her better, if I could just love her harder.
But eventually I realized that life without Melanie is better. Melanie is
beautiful, sexy, and fun, and I was besotted with her. But she’s also selfish,
cruel, and wildly unstable. Without Melanie in my life, things are calm and
peaceful. All I really missed, I came to realize, was the sex. And as for
that…
Well. It doesn’t bear thinking about at the moment.
“I think you need to speak to Danica.”
“Eh,” she shrugs. ”You as much as said she’s mad at me.”
“Melanie! What is it that you want here? Do you think you can waltz in
here and walk out with a cheque?”
 “It’s not that.” She takes a breath and turns pleading eyes to me. “I need
a place to stay, J.L. Jack…things didn’t work out so well with the last guy,
and you’ve cut off all my money. I’m stranded.”
“No.” I slam my empty glass down on the bar with more force than is
necessary. “Absolutely not.”
“J.L., please. One night. I literally have nothing. It’s this or the streets.”
“Then it’s the streets!” I roar.
“J.L!” She reaches for my wrist, the feel of her hand familiar and
strangely recognizable, and the look in her eyes is pure desperation. “I
know you’re mad. Of course you’re mad. The way I’ve been acting…it’s
crazy. That’s why, I want you to know, I’m getting help. I’m getting help
and I’m trying to learn how to say sorry, but how can I ever say sorry for
what I’ve done? I shouldn’t be asking you for anything. I have no right. But
I’m scared, J.L. Please. One night on your couch,” she points a hand
towards the sectional. “One night and I’ll be out of here tomorrow. I’ll call
Cathy and stay with her. Please.”
“No.” I pull my hand away and turn my back to her. I don’t want her to
see it, but doubt is creeping in. I don’t want Melanie sleeping on the streets.
And she’s crazy enough to do it.
“Please.” She sniffles.
I turn back around to see that she’s crying. In the nine years I’ve known
her, I have never once seen Melanie cry.
“Please,” she says, wiping each eye quickly, as if her tears embarrass
her. “One night.”
A wave of exhaustion rolls over me. I can’t keep fighting like this. And
with a sense of futility, a dread that I may never get Melanie out of my life,
I surprise myself by conceding.
“Fine,” I say darkly, turning back around and walking out of the room.
“One night, and I want you out of here in the morning.”
Danica
I LOWER MYSELF slowly onto the couch, too stunned to know what to
do. From downstairs, I can hear my parents’ voices, which means they’re
being loud—the house is so soundproof.
Melanie’s here. She’s back. And I have no idea what that even means.
Are we supposed to go back to the way things were before?
The doorbell rings again, and it takes me a minute to even remember
that we’ve ordered a pizza. It feels like hours have passed since Melanie
arrived at the door. It feels like years since Jean-Luc picked me up from
school, his eyes dark with lust, asking to see my panties.
This past month with Jean-Luc has been the best month of my life. For
the first time ever, I truly had Jean-Luc all to myself. In the past, Melanie
was always on the horizon. Even if she was off on one of her ‘sprees,’
cheating on Jean-Luc with some dirtbag, he was still distracted and distant,
his thoughts and energy still pulled in her direction. But this time, creating a
naughty, secret world of pleasure together, it’s different. He’s been mine.
All mine.
And now she’s back.
I pay the pizza delivery guy and leave the box on the counter, unopened.
I can’t bear to keep listening to the muted agony of my parents’ arguing
voices, so I go upstairs to my room and sit on the bed.
I’m in shock. It feels as though Melanie has risen from the grave. And
just like a real ghost, she hasn’t even spoken to me.
It doesn’t surprise me, not really. Even though there’s this thread I can’t
seem to loosen that ties me to her, that says because she’s my mother she
should care for me, even though it’s hardly a secret that she doesn’t. I don’t
know if she ever did. Melanie cares for herself first, and then for any man
who’s willing to give her attention second. I was always an afterthought.
Whoever my father is, whatever the circumstances of my birth, I’m quite
certain I was an accident. An unwanted consequence for Melanie.
I lie back on the bed and pick up my phone, hoping to distract myself.
 What are you up to? I text Christine, but her response deflates me.
I’m with Eric! she replies. Omg I’m so fucking hiiiiigh
Sighing, I drop the phone onto the bed without answering. She’s busy,
and more than that, her response is a reminder that we’re just different.
Getting high with Eric Kowalski is at the bottom of my list of things that
might be fun, but she’s in her glory.
By the time Jean-Luc knocks on the door, I’m staring at the ceiling
blankly, hugging Bunners to my chest and fingering the diamond around
my neck. I’ve gone beyond boredom and despair to a kind of mindlessness.
I’m barely even thinking anymore when his knock jolts me into alert
readiness.
“Come in.”
He looks sad and resigned as he walks in, closing the tall door behind
him. When he sits on the bed, I can detect his warm, clean smell, and his
proximity sends little currents of electricity through me. I stare at his large,
tanned hand, fingers splayed over his knee, and focus on the hair at the side
of his wrist.
He takes a slow breath before speaking. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Sure,” I say nonchalantly, shrugging. “What does Melanie want?”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “She’s going to stay here
tonight.”
I blow out an aggravated breath. It’s what I was expecting, but I’m
disappointed that Jean-Luc didn’t stand up to her. Didn’t stop this.
“And every other night from now on?” I ask sarcastically. “Until she
meets her next fuckboy?”
“Dani,” he warns. “Watch your mouth.”
“You know it’s true, Dad.”
“One night, kiddo. She has nowhere else to go, and she is still your
mother.”
“She hasn’t even said a single word to me.”
He flashes dark eyes at me. “She loves you.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not ten anymore. You don’t have to lie to me.”
I hate seeing Jean-Luc try to stand up for her or protect her. He could
have any woman he wanted in the world, but for some reason, he fell for
my mom over and over. No matter how horrible she was to him, how far
she pushed it, he always forgave her and took her back. There’s no reason it
wouldn’t happen again. Of course it’s going to happen again. Melanie will
weasel her way back into his life and everything will go back to normal.
Except that this time, Jean-Luc and I will never find our way back to the
way we were. How can we go back to playing father and daughter after
what we’ve done?
He quirks his mouth into a mou of sympathy and reaches a hand out for
me as if he’s at a loss for words. Sitting up and bending over my stuffed
rabbit, I lean into the warm, hard comfort of him.
“She wants to be better,” he says quietly, his words making his chest
vibrate against my cheek, and despair burns through me.
Not this again. Not like this.
All I ever wanted was Jean-Luc’s love—all of it. And just when I
almost had it, it’s about to slip away.

Dinner is predictably awful. Jean-Luc sets the pizza box on the table with
three plates and opens a beer. It doesn’t escape my notice that he doesn’t
offer Melanie one.
We sit in our usual spots: Jean-Luc and I across from each other, and
Melanie at the head, and the mood around the table is disjointed and weird.
There’s a heavy energy between Jean-Luc and I. We’re stilted and silent.
But Melanie is completely indifferent. She’s positively incandescent as she
talks about how great it is for the three of us to be back together again, and
how New Mexico was just “faaabulous!”
“You would love New Mexico!” is the first thing she says to me when
we sit down at the table—as if I had the opportunity to go and opted out.
“For an artist like you, it’s so inspirational. I swear I did some of my best
painting work out there. Oh! I need to show you The Faces of Love. That’s
what I call it. It’s a painting of Cathedral Cliff—get it? Rock faces?”
I don’t react at all, and I don’t have to. Melanie doesn’t even pause for
breath.
She continues talking for a while about her art and then abruptly focuses
in on my neck with an alert, keen look. “Is that a diamond necklace?”
I lift my hand to the familiar chain around my neck and run a finger
down it until I find the round diamond in its smooth platinum setting.
“Jean-Luc gave it to me for my birthday.”
“Did he?” She looks directly into my eyes for the first time since she
got here as if she’s just noticed me. For one blessed moment, there’s
silence, and no one speaks. Then she reaches for her glass of wine and picks
right back up where she left off about New Mexico. “Breathtaking scenery,”
she says emphatically. “Just breathtaking.”
Jean-Luc gets up two more times to grab a fresh beer throughout dinner,
while Melanie eats barely anything at all, she’s so busy talking. After I’ve
picked at one slice long enough to have consumed half, I look up at Jean-
Luc and ask if I can be excused.
“Finish your slice,” he answers, at the same time as Melanie chimes in,
“Yes! Off to bed with you!”
I look back and forth between them and make up my own mind to stand
up and leave.
“Good night!” Melanie sings out cheerfully as I walk away. Jean-Luc
says nothing.
Jean-Luc
SHORTLY AFTER DANICA goes up to bed, I interrupt Melanie and tell
her I’ll get her set up in the basement.
“Oh, but it’s early!” she protests. “I thought we could keep talking.”
“That’s enough talking for one night.” I’m tired, irritable, and at the end
of my rope.
I gather bedding from the basement linen cupboard and make up a bed
on the sectional, while Melanie comes downstairs, helps herself to another
scotch, and watches me work.
“Are you still working out at five every morning?” she asks.
“Yes,” I grumble, tucking a flat sheet around the sofa cushions.
“Thought so.” Her voice is coy and playful. “You look good. Rock
solid.”
I flash her an irritated look.
“Does that mean I’ll be waking up at five, too?” She cocks her chin
towards the windowed wall that separates the gym and the den. There’s
little chance she’ll be able to sleep through the heavy drone of the treadmill
or the clanging of the weight machines, and I don’t care.
“Guess so. Better get some sleep.”
I make to leave but she grabs my arm, lifting imploring eyes to me. “I
miss you, you know?” She smiles, relaxing her grip and rubbing my
forearm. “I miss these massive arms. How strong you are. It’s good to see
you.”
“Goodnight, Melanie.” I turn away impatiently and leave the room
without looking back.

I lie awake for a long time, thoughts churning. For nearly eleven months,
I’ve lived in this house alone. For eleven months, I’ve stared at this ceiling
when I couldn’t sleep, thinking about Melanie or Danica, my lost family.
And now they’re both here under this roof.
 At best, it’s bittersweet. There’s something pure and sweet about my
love for Dani, but it’s corrupted by my obsessive physical desire for her. My
wife’s presence highlights that for me. How dare I accuse her of being a bad
parent? Isn’t what I’m doing worse?
Eventually, I manage to fall asleep despite my tortured thoughts—so
deeply, that when a fingernail grazes across my collarbone, and a sweet,
quiet voice whispers my name, I start violently, grabbing the intruder’s
wrist and eliciting a squeak of surprise.
“Jean-Luc!” comes a whispered protest. “It’s me!”
Her voice is a warm, honeyed purr, and in the pale light filtering
through the curtains I can just make out to her long, wild curls.
“Baby,” I respond, grateful and relieved.
She giggles and climbs onto the bed, straddling me in the darkness, and
I reach for her legs, finding the firm, muscled flesh of bare thighs and
running my hands up towards her hips. She feels good. The heat and
pressure of her body against mine makes my cock thicken.
“Mm,” she murmurs, rolling her hips against me and trailing her fingers
down my arms. Her forwardness surprises me. Danica’s usually a bit more
shy, but I like it. After the stress of the evening, I need her touch, need her
closeness.
“Sweetheart,” I groan, squeezing my eyes closed and lifting my hips up
against her. The pressure of her body, and the friction of the covers as they
slide against the underside of my hard cock makes me shiver. I slide my
fingers further up her thigh, underneath flimsy fabric, until I’m cupping her
bare ass. I dig my fingers into the firm, juicy ripeness of it, remembering
the feel of it under my hand when I spanked her, the way it quivered and
contracted when she came against my fingers.
It’s seemed important that I never fuck Danica, that there be at least
some line somewhere—one boundary that I would not cross. But feeling
her against me now, the last thread of my resolve starts to slip away. What
difference does it make at this point anyway? We’ve already gone way, way
too far.
I tug at the covers, trying to pull away the barrier between us and
making her laugh. I don’t necessarily have sex in mind—maybe not tonight,
with her mother in the house—but I need to feel her against me. She lifts
her hips and helps kick the covers away and then wraps expert hands
around the base of my cock. With a sure touch, she runs both hands up the
shaft, making my hard cock throb with urgency.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Fuck. Put your mouth on it, sweetheart.”
She chuckles. “I missed this cock.” Warmth radiates out from her hot
mouth as it encircles me. She circles her tongue around my shaft, just how I
like it, and I moan involuntarily, even as a strange awareness starts to twig
in the back of my mind.
But it’s hard to focus on the nagging uncertainty I feel as she sucks me.
She knows exactly what I like and she’s getting me so close so fast. I reach
down for her hair, entwining it through my fingers, and I’m surprised to
find that it’s crunchy and dry, like there’s hairspray in it.
“I see you missed me, too,” comes a low, sexy murmur, and finally the
information my subconscious has registered comes blasting through to full
awareness.
“Fuck!” I choke out, sitting up and pushing her off of me. “Melanie.”
She laughs, a derisive snort, and with a panicked disorientation I
wonder how I could have ever thought it was Dani. “Did you think it was
someone else?”
“No, I...I was asleep and confused. What the fuck, Melanie?”
“J.L., c’mon.” She reaches out to stroke my arm and I wrench it away
from her. I don’t want any part of this woman to touch me. To think that she
just had her lips wrapped around my cock…that I almost came in her
mouth. I’m disgusted by her touch. Suddenly my wife’s touch seems more
off limits than her daughter’s. “What’s wrong, honey?” she laughs. “A
minute ago you didn’t seem to mind so much.”
Appalled, I yank the covers back over me, covering my erection, and
turn on the lamp. “Get out of here, Melanie.”
“I can’t sleep.” She stands up, tousling the roots of her hair with both
hands, making the curls bigger and wilder. She’s wearing little sleep shorts
and a tank top, the strap of which is falling off one shoulder, and I have to
admit she looks positively luscious. It would be so easy, I think for only half
a second.
She’s a grown woman—my wife, for Christ’s sake—and the only person
in this house I actually could have sex with. But I don’t want to. I don’t
want any part of Melanie. Not now and not ever.
She turns and leans against the dresser, crossing long legs that are so
like her daughter’s. “That was our bed,” she says curiously, looking at the
mattress like she’s just noticed it. “You still sleep on your side.”
It’s true, I never started sleeping the middle of the bed even though I’ve
been sleeping alone for almost a year. “Old habits,” I shrug.
“I’ve missed sleeping beside you.”
“Don’t, Melanie.”
“Why not? Is there someone else? Someone else you wouldn’t be
surprised to have touching you in the night?”
For a terrifying moment, I think it’s an accusation, but then I see the
imploring look on her face, and understand the innocence of the question.
It’s just Melanie performing jealousy to try to get her own way. She could
care less if there’s someone else sharing my bed.
“Maybe there is,” I tease. “This isn’t like before, Mel. I’m done.”
She tilts her head and traces a finger over her shoulder, deliberately
drawing the other strap of her tank top down. Her breasts, still full and
round without a bra on, are temptingly obvious under the skimpy shirt.
“How about a final hurrah, then? For old time’s sake?”
“No. I said I’m done. Go back downstairs.”
She pouts, rolling her head back in frustration. The gesture is so like
Danica it makes me ache for her. Then she flounces back over to the bed
and throws herself down on the unoccupied side. Her side.
“I can’t sleep downstairs, J.L. It’s too quiet. And you’re going to wake
me up when you start using all that heavy gym equipment. Can’t I just sleep
here?” She wriggles under the covers and pulls them up to her chin with a
cute smile. “We don’t even have to touch each other. Unless you want to.”
“Goddamn it!” I stand up and stalk towards the door, unconcerned by
the fact that I’m naked. “Sleep in the damn bed. Just leave me the fuck
alone, Melanie.”
I storm into the hallway, flinging the door back angrily behind me, but
none of the fucking doors slam in this house. It floats slowly, with an
infuriating dignity.
Downstairs in the basement den, I lay down on the sectional and try to
ignore the subtle and familiar scent of Melanie on the pillow. One night
she’s been in my house, one night, and already she’s in the master bed and
I’m sleeping on the couch. I turn over on my side, tense with anger, and try
to force myself to fall asleep through sheer force of will.
Jean-Luc
“IT’S JUST A week,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. I’m tense and
tired, in a way I can’t hide, and I can see that Danica is frustrated and angry,
but there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Yesterday it was just one night, today it’s a week?” she says
accusingly. As if I wanted this to happen.
“She’s your mother, Danica. I can’t turn her out on the street. No matter
how you may feel about her right now, you’d never be able to forgive me
for that.”
“Yes, I would,” she answers, impassioned, “and you know it. What is
she doing here, Dad? Why is she staying?”
“Your mom’s friend is away and she has nowhere else to stay. We just
need to give her a few nights.”
“She slept in your room last night!” she keens, and her vulnerability
surprises me. I didn’t realize she might be feeling jealous.
I close my eyes for a moment. “She slept in my room, but I didn’t. It
just makes sense for her to sleep there, and for me to sleep in the basement
since I use the gym so early in the morning.”
She rolls her eyes. “This is bullshit, Dad.”
“Language,” I correct her, out of habit, but I can’t deny she’s right. It’s
bullshit on every level, but I’m trying my best to do what I think is right.

Melanie insists on cooking dinner that night, creating the kind of chaos in
the kitchen that drives me nuts and leaves me puttering and restless, not
knowing what to do with myself while she’s in there. When she’s done, she
presents us with a pasta dish with bacon and rapini that I could have
prepared with one hand tied behind my back—in half the time and with half
the mess.
Dinner passes much the same way it did the night before, with Melanie
talking about her art and her self-discovery, never saying much about the
man she went to New Mexico with, Jack—except to insinuate it ended
badly. Only tonight she’s touchy and flirtatious, batting eyelashes at me and
brushing my arm as she talks. She only speaks to Danica to make her feel
unwelcome.
“It’s about time you got your own place!” she says out of nowhere,
pointing her fork at Dani. “You could sell that diamond necklace for a few
months’ rent on a nice place. You’re what now? Eighteen? Too old to be
living with my husband—get your own!” She barks with laughter at her
joke, and I glower at her.
“Ex-husband,” I correct her. “And this is Dani’s home. She’s welcome
to live here for as long as she likes.”
“Oh, sorry,” she says with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “I forgot that you
two are BFF roommates now. Talk about an odd couple!”
Danica turns exasperated eyes to me. “Can I be excused, Dad?”
“Of course,” I answer quietly.
“Please!” adds Melanie. “It’s good vibes only at this table. We don’t
need your mopey energy.”
I keep an eye on Dani as she climbs the stairs, wondering if letting her
mother stay here is the best thing for her after all. Melanie was never a great
parent to Danica, but it seems like since she’s come back she’s worse. She
ignores Danica or treats her as an unwelcome stranger. It’s as if the minute
Danica turned eighteen—or rather, shortly before she turned eighteen, when
she decided to leave her and go to New Mexico—Melanie just washed her
hands of her daughter.

Downstairs on the sectional after dinner, I toss and turn. I spent as much
time cleaning the kitchen after dinner as I could tolerate, Melanie drinking
wine and yapping at me the entire time. When I couldn’t take it anymore I
told her I was going to bed and she gave an exaggerated pout.
“I thought we could talk, J.L. About things.”
“About money, you mean,” I’d responded bitterly. “You’re not getting
any from me until you sign the divorce papers. Then you can have the
generous alimony we already agreed on.”
“It’s not just about the money, you know!” she snapped, and I steeled
myself for a confession of love. I’d fallen for those plenty of times in the
past. But this time Melanie outdid even herself, not bothering to hide her
selfish interest. “It’s about the lifestyle! Living in this house and being the
architect’s wife…I liked that life, J.L.”
 I picked my briefcase up off the floor and pulled out a copy of the
papers I’d printed earlier that day. “Mel, the sooner you sign them, the
sooner you get the alimony.”
That’s when she’d torn the pages in half with a scream, calling me an
ignorant fucking asshole, and I’d walked away. Hours later, and I’m still
staring at the ceiling wondering what the fuck I’ve done. It feels like I’ve
invited the devil into our home.
I can’t stop thinking about Danica. All I wanted was for Melanie to
somehow heal the wound she’d ripped into Dani’s heart by leaving her, but
having her around is only making it worse. I don’t know why Melanie can’t
connect with her daughter, why she won’t, but Danica is listless and
deflated in her presence, the spark that had just started coming back to her
flickering out once again.
It breaks my heart to see the way Danica becomes a shadow around her
mother, when she’s so obviously meant to shine.
I’m aching for my stepdaughter in every way. Aching to see her happy
again, and missing the cozy little situation we’d started creating in her
mother’s absence. It’s been nearly two days since I’ve so much as touched
her and I’m craving her.
There’s a reckless part of me that doesn’t care if Melanie finds out about
Dani and me, the same part that wants to sneak into my stepdaughter’s
room right now while her mother is sleeping next door. But I hesitate,
considering that if Melanie thought I was having any kind of sexual
relationship with her daughter, our divorce could get very ugly indeed.
I debate it for a long while, trying to talk myself out of it, but it’s a
losing battle. Eventually I promise myself I’ll be so quiet Mel will never
know, and I tiptoe up the stairs and through the house and slowly push
Dani’s bedroom door open.
The moon makes a bright outline of her sleeping form on the bed,
highlighting the jutting arc of her hip and right angle of her shoulder, down
to the mass of curls tossed across her pillow.
“Dani,” I whisper. “Dani.”
“Dad?” Her voice is rough with sleep.
“Yes, sweetie.”
She sits up, rubbing her eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s late.” I take a seat on the edge of the bed and run my hand over her
hair. “Sorry to wake you.”
 “It’s okay. Is Mom asleep?”
“Yes, baby. She’s fast asleep, but I miss my girl. Is it okay if I lie here
for a while with you?”
“Yes,” she says with a sleepy smile. I lift the covers and she scoots over
to make room for me, snuggling in under my arm as I stretch out on my
back. I lower my hand around her to enfold her against me.
She slides a bare leg over my sweatpants-clad one. “What if Mom finds
you here in the morning?”
“Mm,” I make an inadvertent groaning noise as her knee rubs lightly
against my crotch. Her question sounds erotic to me. “She won’t. She sleeps
late, remember?”
“Yeah,” she whispers, running a hand over my t-shirt down to the bulge
in my pants, and cupping my package through the material.
“Fuck,” I growl. “Careful, baby, you’re going to get me hard.”
She giggles. “You’re already hard.”
“You’re a bad girl,” I admonish her, bending down to kiss her forehead.
“If Mommy knew what we were doing, she’d be furious.”
It’s a risky thing to say, a risky kink every time I try it out, but Dani
only flashes me a naughty look. “I don’t care,” she answers defiantly,
giving my cock a squeeze.
Dirty girl.
She grips the shaft of my cock, rubbing her hand up and down over the
fabric of my pants while I lie still, breathing heavily as she gets me erect.
She releases her grip, running fingers lightly up my length and wriggling
her hand under my waistband until I can feel her skin against mine. Her
hand is warm and soft as she encircles my hard cock again and starts
stroking it.
She’s so good at making me come already. So good at taking my cock.
I’m pleased and oddly proud that she’s learned so much about what I like so
quickly. What she hasn’t learned yet, though, is how much her pleasure is a
part of my arousal. Knowing I can make my stepdaughter come, when no
one ever has before, gets me harder than anything.
“Has anyone ever licked your pussy before?” I ask quietly, combing my
fingers through the hair at her temple. The idea of Dante or Kye between
her legs makes me both curiously possessive and totally hard. I hate the
idea of anyone other than me being with her, yet in the moment, getting
hard in her hand, I think it’s something I might like to see.
 “No,” she whispers.
“Mm.” I lie still for one more minute as she continues to stroke me,
allowing myself to get to the brink before changing the focus to her, then I
kiss her temple and lift her hand out of my pants. “Okay, lie down on your
back, sweetie.”
She rolls back and I sit up to climb over her, catching sight of her
stuffed bunny nestled into the pillows beside her. It’s so sweetly innocent,
the toy in her bed, and shockingly it makes my cock throb even harder. I
lean forward and kiss her softly on the lips, slipping my tongue into her
mouth and feeling the same shivery sensation I feel every time her tongue
touches mine. Her mouth is so unbelievably soft. “Would you like Daddy to
make you orgasm, sweetheart?” I ask in a throaty voice.
“Yes,” she breathes.
“Good.” I lower myself between her legs. She’s only wearing a t-shirt
and a pair of the white cotton panties I bought her. I run a finger under the
hem of the panties until the back of my nail is brushing against the
smoothly shaved skin of her pubis.
“Spread your legs for me.”
She does, and I push her knees apart even further, sliding her panties to
the side until I can see her slit, visible in the moonlight. My cock surges,
and heat rises to my face.
I run a finger around her pussy, exploring it, and she gives a little gasp. I
love that she shaves herself already and has a perfect, pink hairless little
pussy for me. I make a small groaning noise as I lay my hands over her
inner thighs, pushing her further apart and spreading her lips slightly with
my thumbs.
“Turn on the lamp.”
She stretches one arm, and soon the room is illuminated with real light.
Her pussy is a tender, soft pink, glistening for me already in anticipation
of what I might do to her. She’s ready, almost trembling, and as I stroke one
thumb up over the nub of her clitoris her pussy pulses in response.
“Ah,” she breathes, the sensation unexpected, and momentarily taking
away her self-control.
I lean forward, inhaling the sweet smell of her as I slide my tongue over
her clit, making her moan. I lick up and under her hood, running my tongue
back and forth over the centre of her pleasure until I can feel her swelling
against my mouth. She shudders, and I pull the panties further to the side,
running the slick moisture up from her tight hole with my tongue and over
the hard nub of her clitoris. Her legs part wide, and she lifts her hips up
towards me, already wanting more. Fuck, almost right away, she’s close.
I can’t help myself. I lower my pants with one hand and pull out my
cock and start stroking myself as I lick her, wanting to push myself into her
tight, wet little hole. I want to stretch her small cunt over me and come deep
inside of her, filling her up. I’m bringing myself right to the edge as I feel
her orgasm come over her.
Her pussy squeezes tight, becoming firm against my tongue, and then
her whole body shakes as she lifts her hips even higher. She takes big,
gulping breaths as she gasps out her pleasure. “Daddy!” she cries out, in
ecstasy and bewilderment, and the intensity of her pleasure, the pulsing of
my teenage stepdaughter’s cunt against my mouth, pushes me right over the
edge. My own climax comes suddenly, and I just have time to sit up and
push her t-shirt up over her tits before I come on them, groaning loudly—
loud and wild and impossible to control.
Danica
I WAKE UP what feels like hours later. The lamp is still on, and Jean-Luc
and I are both sprawled out on our backs, asleep for who knows how long.
My t-shirt is pulled up, Jean-Luc’s cum drying on my breasts, and he’s
naked from the waist down. If Melanie were to walk in, there would
certainly be no way to hide what we were doing.
I wonder idly if she could have heard anything through the wall. The
house has remarkable soundproofing, but the low, guttural roar Jean-Luc
gave as he came would be unmistakable if she heard it. I kind of hope she
did, I think meanly. It would serve her right to find out that I’m fucking her
husband.
Although… Her husband. I hate to think of Jean-Luc that way. He’s
mine in every way. Every way…except one.
The sex I had with Dante last summer felt good at the time, even though
it seemed like I couldn’t get the rhythm quite right, and I definitely didn’t
come. But being penetrated, having a man inside of me, was a kind of
pleasure I hadn’t expected—like it fulfilled a need I didn’t even know I had.
If it felt good to have Dante’s cock inside of me, I can only imagine how a
cock the size of Jean-Luc’s would feel. I want it, for so many reasons, yet
Jean-Luc seems to see it as a kind of final frontier. It’s the most forbidden
thing of all. But as long as he’s never fucked me Melanie will always have
some bigger part of him than I do.
I sit up and pull off my t-shirt, wiping his cum off my chest, and he stirs
beside me, blinking up at me sleepily.
“What time is it?” he asks.
I shrug. “Don’t know. We fell asleep.”
“Hm,” he grunts, pulling me into his arms as I lie back down. He cups a
breast with each hand and I feel his erection press against the cotton panties
I’m still wearing. I wriggle my hips against it.
“Careful, baby. You’re going to make Daddy have to come again.”
 My heart palpitates. For as long as I live, I don’t think I could ever tire
of seeing Jean-Luc come—seeing that helpless, desperate, indulgent side of
him that I’d never seen before.
I take a short breath. “I want you to come. I want to make you come…
inside of me.”
His cock twitches against my ass. “Fuck, baby,” he moans. “You don’t
know how badly I want that.” He lowers his voice and growls in my ear.
“You don’t know how badly Daddy wants to fuck his little girl, but it’s not
allowed.”
“Please, Daddy,” I whisper, arching my back to press harder against his
cock. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Fuck, Dani.” He grinds his erection against me, rolling his hips to rub
himself back and forth across my ass, my underwear the only barrier
between us. Then, with a frustrated breath, he moves away from me and
rolls onto his back. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not with your mom in the next
room. Not like this.”
I turn over to see that he has his cock in his hand. That even as he tries
to set this limit between us, he’s right at the edge of his self-control. He
closes his eyes, fist wrapped around the base of his cock.
“I think about it constantly,” he whispers. “What you would feel like.”
“I do, too,” I whisper back. He opens his eyes and looks at me, a pained
expression on his face.
“I shouldn’t want that.”
“But I want it too.” I want him to understand just how serious I am
about this. I’m not a child anymore, and I know what I want.
He groans, and grips his cock, slowing rubbing his hand up and then
down. “Christ.” He furrows his brows. “You would feel so good. Your tight
little cunt…”
My breath hitches, and he continues.
“My sweet little girl. My sweet, soft, tight little girl. Fuck. Baby. You
got me so hard.”
I love seeing his face in the lamplight as he strokes himself—eyes
closed, pleasure and pain rendering him helpless—and then he turns dark
eyes to me in a way that sends hot tingles over my scalp. “I want you do
something for me.”
“Anything,” I breathe, and mean it.
“Sit up and let me look at you.”
 “Okay.” I sit up so that I’m positioned by his hip, knees bent and butt
resting on my heels, wearing nothing but the panties he ate me out in and
the diamond necklace he gave me. He stares at my body and groans.
“Fuck, baby, you don’t know what you do to me,” he moans. “Daddy
needs to take care of himself again because of how hard you made him. You
make me so fucking hard all the time, Dani.”
His hand moves faster, his cock turgid and red in his fist, and his mouth
slackens, his eyes getting a distant look but never leaving my body.
I reach down and pull his t-shirt up, exposing the muscled ridges of his
torso, and the deep V of abdominal muscles between his hips.
“You like watching me, baby girl?” he asks. “You want to watch Daddy
come?”
I nod. I’m captivated by the utter vulnerability of my stepfather as he
rubs out his own pleasure, the pained expression crossing his face as he
gives himself over to his desire.
“How long have you been on the birth control pill, Dani?” he asks
suddenly.
I pause for a beat. He knows about it, of course, because he pays for it.
It just seems like an out of the blue question. “About a year,” I answer.
“And you take it every day? The way you’re supposed to?”
“Yes.”
He strokes harder, faster, his eyes glazed and distant as he looks at me.
“That’s good. And when you had sex with Dante, where did he come?
Inside of you?”
“Yes.” For some reason, this line of questioning makes me nervous, like
I might be in trouble. Lines seem blurred. But there’s an urgency to Jean-
Luc’s question; thinking about it is turning him on. “But in a condom,” I
add.
“That’s good,” he breathes, voice quivering. “That’s good, baby.” His
brow furrows deeply, as if he’s in pain, and his breath starts coming in hard,
rough pants. “Show me how good your tits feel. Squeeze them for me. Let
me see you play with them.”
Lifting my hands, I cup each one, rubbing and massaging them while
my stepfather stares with rapt attention. I have a terrible thought, a thought I
feel guilty about. I’m proud of my breasts. I know I have a good body
because other girls are always jealously telling me so. And if there’s any
part of my stepfather that might be thinking of his wife next door, I’m sure
he’s at least noticing that my breasts are better than hers.
I burn hot at the thought, my own horrible vanity shaming me, and out
of unconscious instinct, I lower one hand and reach for my stuffed bunny
lying within reach on the bed. The soft squeeze of Bunners under my hand
reassures me. Bunners grounds me. We all have our moments of vanity. I’m
still the same innocent person I always was.
I lean down on Bunners, hoping it just looks like I’m holding myself up,
but Jean-Luc’s eyes follow my hand, spotting the rabbit.
“Yes, baby,” he groans helplessly. “Pick up your stuffy and hold it while
you squeeze your tits for me.”
I blush furiously, understanding what he’s asking, but I’m excited, too.
A thrill of excitement goes through me. It’s forbidden, it’s taboo, and it’s
wrong. But in that moment I realize for sure: he wants what I want.
I pick up the bunny, hugging it between both breasts and pout. “Like
this, Daddy?” I ask in my sweetest voice.
“Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Holy fuck.” His hand moves faster.
His whole rhythm has changed. “Do you want to be a good girl for Daddy?”
he asks.
“Yes.” Clutching Bunners with one hand, I squeeze and rub one breast
with the other.
“Say it,” he says urgently. “Say it.”
“I want to be a good girl for Daddy.”
“Good,” he breathes, chest heaving. He releases his cock and sits up.
“That’s good.” Raising himself off the bed until he’s standing beside me, he
grips his shaft and says, “Open your mouth for Daddy.”
I clutch the rabbit to my chest and open wide, like I’m at the dentist, and
Jean-Luc quickly places a hand behind my head and thrusts his cock into
my mouth. “You’re going to take Daddy’s load,” he groans. “You’re going
to swallow Daddy’s cum.” He grunts, thrusting hard, and then I feel his hot
cum hitting the back of my throat. I close my eyes as he fills up my mouth,
and I hold it there for a moment before swallowing it down in one big gulp.
His hand loosens in my hair and I open my eyes to find him beaming down
at me. He looks proud, loving, and kind.
“Stick out your tongue and show me,” he says softly, and when I stick
my tongue all the way out, he praises me. “Good fucking girl.”
 He pulls his pants up and lies back down onto the bed, pulling me in
against him and kissing the top of my head.
“Daddy…” It’s the just-right word. Not Dad, not Jean-Luc. When we’re
like this he’s someone else.
We’re both someone else, I think, feeling my bunny still in my arms.
“Daddy, are we going to do it, though? One day? Sex, I mean.”
He sighs heavily before answering. “Is that what you want,
sweetheart?”
“Yes,” I answer. One hundred percent, completely, no doubt, there is
nothing I want more than to have Jean-Luc fully. To be loved by my daddy
in that way.
“Let’s talk it over later,” he murmurs, sounding sleepy. “It’s a big deal.
We have to be…to be careful.”
“We will be,” I promise. “Mom will never know.”
Jean-Luc
I’M SURPRISED TO find Melanie sitting at the kitchen island when I
come downstairs. I’ve worked out, showered, and done a couple of hours of
work at my desk but it’s still only ten in the morning. Melanie almost never
gets up before noon.
“Good morning,” I say civilly. “Coffee?”
“Please.” She widens her eyes emphatically. “I’ve missed good coffee.”
I don’t take the bait. I don’t ask more about her life in New Mexico or
why she didn’t have good coffee, I don’t even return her smile. I just load
up the Nespresso and pour two cups.
“Dani and I will be out today,” I tell her as I pass her a mug, and I don’t
miss how her eyes flash up at me with sudden interest. “We’re going to
Sarah Kearns’ wedding.”
“Together?”
The way she asks the question takes me by surprise, as if there’s
something unusual about it. “I don’t have a date. Thought it might be fun
for Dani.”
“Hm.” She takes a sip of her coffee, both hands wrapped around the
mug. The oversize white dress shirt she’s wearing slips off of one shoulder.
For a second, despite myself, I can’t help but notice she looks cute…but
then I realize it’s my shirt she’s wearing.
I tamp down a surge of irritation. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t wear any of
my clothes while you’re here.”
She widens her eyes in mock confusion and then looks down at the
shirt. “Oh, this? You used to love when I wore your shirts!”
“Not anymore, Melanie. I’m trying to divorce you, remember?” It
comes out with an unexpected bite, but I don’t falter, holding her gaze.
“J.L.,” she says with exasperation, as if I’m the one who’s being
difficult. “Listen. We need to sort this out. I need money. If you restart the
monthly payments and give me the house back, I can live there while you
take the space that you need to heal. But I don’t think it makes any sense to
get divorced. I’ve made some mistakes, yes, but everyone makes mistakes.
It takes two people to ruin a marriage, you know!”
“I’ve never cheated,” I point out, with just a flicker of doubt. Even
though Melanie and I aren’t technically divorced, it certainly never felt like
cheating with the women I hooked up with after we separated. But with
Dani…I’m not sure what that counts as.
Her smile falls, and her eyes turn cold. “For the millionth time, I’m
sorry! You need to learn to stop dwelling in the past.”
“The house sold, Melanie. And I’m not your piggy bank anymore. The
only way you’ll get money from me is if you sign the divorce papers. I paid
for you to have a good lawyer, and he fought for that amount of spousal
support. It’s more than the monthly e-transfers. I don’t understand your
resistance.”
Her eyes soften, and her mouth twitches, and she blinks a couple of
times before looking up at me. “Because I don’t want to give up on us,
babe. I love you.”
It’s a testament to the damage that’s been wrought in this relationship
that I don’t trust her answer. Instead of pacifying me, her confession of love
makes me suspicious and puts me on guard. Melanie has manipulated me so
many times over the course of our history that I no longer trust anything she
says. So instead of meeting her doe eyes with tenderness of my own, I lean
forward with a shrewd look. “Why don’t you want to get divorced?”
She blows out an irritable breath, and when she speaks her voice has a
hard edge. “Jean-Luc, I’m thirty-seven years old. What am I going to do if
I’m divorced? Even your alimony won’t keep me in…” she waves her hand,
“a house like this. It won’t pay for the vacations we used to take, or the
dinners we used to have.”
“It should come pretty close,” I say tersely. I’ve agreed to share a
significant portion of my family trust with Melanie for the rest of her life.
She’ll want for nothing.
“But it’s not the same!’ She reaches for my hands, covering them both
with hers in a supplicating manner. “At our age, it’s better to be married,
settled down. We have a good thing, honey. You just have to think bigger.
Your thinking is always so small, J.L., if you could just be more open-
minded—“
“What is your point, Melanie?”
 She sighs. “The point is this: We could both have what we want in this
marriage, if you can just expand your definition of what a marriage is.”
I roll my eyes, pulling my hands away. “Didn’t we try this already?”
Years ago, at Melanie’s insistence, we’d tried swinging and I’d hated it.
“See what you’re doing? You’re closing your mind already. You don’t
even know what I’m going to say!”
“Fine.”
She continues. “I miss our lifestyle. I love being the wife of big, strong,
rich Jean-Luc Rochat.” The description irks me—those three things are all I
am to her. “But we could lead separate, independent lives. Free to see or
fuck other people if we want.”
“But I don’t want that, Melanie. I’ve never wanted that.”
She leans in, a satisfied look on her face like she knows she’s about to
score the winning goal. “But don’t you? With me as your wife, J.L., it
doesn’t look weird for Dani to be living here. No one will raise an eyebrow.
What you do behind closed doors, no one will know about. I’m the perfect
beard for you.”
My blood turns to ice as fear pricks my skin. We’ve been careful…
haven’t we? How could she suspect anything?
“What are you saying?” I ask warily, thinking there could still be a
chance I’ve misunderstood something. She can’t possibly know about me
and Dani.
She smirks. “You know exactly what I’m saying. You think I don’t
know what’s going on here?”
I take a breath. My heart is pounding so loudly in my ears it’s hard to
hear anything else. “And just what do you think is going on?”
“I went down to the basement to see you last night, J.L., but you weren’t
there. You weren’t on the living room couch, you weren’t in your office.
You think I can’t guess where you’re spending your nights?” She gets up
from her stool, and walks up to me, trailing a teasing finger over my frozen
chest. “I get it, you know,” she says in a low voice. “You never wanted to
open up our relationship because I was the only one you wanted. But a
younger version of me? It’s perfect for you, isn’t it?”
Despite the ice in my veins, my face heats up. I knew that if Melanie
found out about Dani and I she would use it to manipulate me, but never in
my wildest dreams did I think she would be supportive of it in order to get
what she wants. Even though I’m the one committing the heinous act of
fooling around with her daughter, I’m offended beyond all reason.
“Don’t you even care?”
“For fuck’s sake, Jean-Luc, she’s eighteen. You’re both consenting
adults. You two can do whatever you like as far as I’m concerned. But
eventually she’ll grow up, and you’ll realize she was still never me. And
I’m saying I’m okay with that. I can be here, J.L., when you’re done with
her. We can have separate rooms, whatever you like, but as long as I stay
Mrs. Melanie Rochat, you can have your cake and eat it, too.”
Her words horrify me. When I’m done with her? Have my cake and eat
it too? My mind balks at the hellish future that Melanie is imagining.
“You’re trying to use your daughter as leverage to get what you want?”
She snorts. “Okay, that’s one way of putting it, I guess. Listen, Jean-Luc
—“
“—She’s your daughter.”
“Jesus. I’ve been a mother for eighteen years of my life, okay? I don’t
know what to tell you. Enough is enough. I need to live my own life for me,
I deserve to live my own life. I always thought she and I could be friends
later, you know? If she became more fun.” She snorts with laughter. “I
don’t mind if she’s around as long as you do the parenting. You always
liked that, anyway. But I did my part, okay? I saw her through to adulthood,
didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t see her through to adulthood. Social Services was
called, Melanie!”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic! You can’t have it both ways, J.L. She can’t
be too young to be on her own but old enough for you to fuck. So which is
it?”
I gape at her, too stunned to speak. Point Melanie.
“We haven’t…” I stutter quietly. “I’ve never…”
She rolls her eyes. “The one thing I ask is that you don’t tell me the
details.”
I’m shocked to my core. Shocked at what she’s offering, shocked at
what she already knows, shocked that I ever thought I could love this
woman. Shocked that for years I never let myself see what she’s really like
deep down inside: vindictive, cruel, and selfish.
When I do speak, I almost don’t recognize my own voice. It’s low and
serious. “Go pack your bags.”
 “Babe,” she resists, blinking nervously. She knows me well enough to
know when I won’t back down.
I take a step forward. “I’ll call Patrick to take you to a hotel tonight.”
Our family lawyer, Patrick, is well known to Melanie. “Tomorrow you’ll
find accommodations for yourself. You will not speak to Danica, you will
not show up on our doorstep, and any future communication will go
through Patrick.”
She twists her mouth, furrowing her brow. Frustration is etched all over
her face. “You could have had it all and now you’re going to throw it
away?”
I take another step forward, dwarfing her with my full height. “Could
have had what?” I ask menacingly. “You and your daughter? She’s not
yours to sell, Melanie.”
“I’ll use it against you,” she threatens. “I’ll destroy you!”
“I don’t care what you do. You think you can send any storm my way
that I can’t weather? Do your worst. But don’t you dare try to use Dani as a
pawn.”
She steps back. “You’ll have to pay me more alimony to shut me up!”
“The alimony offer is off the table,” I say quickly, turning my back to
her as I walk towards the stairs. “I want you out of here before we’re home
tonight.”
“Fuck you, Jean-Luc!” she spits out behind me.
I look up and see Danica standing on the mezzanine, wide-eyed and
mute. “Into your room, sweetie,” I say when I reach the top of the stairs,
placing a hand against the small of her back. “Grab your dress and pack an
overnight bag.”
Danica
THE WEDDING IS two and a half hours away in Nanaimo, but still I’m
surprised when Jean-Luc loads my bags into the trunk and tells me we’re
going to stay the night in a hotel.
I only heard enough of his argument with Melanie to understand that he
finally kicked her out. By the time we left, she was in his room and I didn’t
bother to say goodbye. Why would I? She’s barely spoken four words to me
since she arrived.
In the car, Jean-Luc calls his lawyer, shooting me sideways glances as
they talk over speakerphone. “Give her until nine o’clock,” he says. “And
then make sure she’s out.” He calls his assistant and says, “Book me two
rooms in Nanaimo.”
His jaw is tight and he’s unusually silent—which is really saying
something, considering that Jean-Luc is usually silent. But today I can
practically see the wheels turning in his head.
We’re on the ferry when Jean-Luc’s assistant calls again, and he holds
the phone to his ear. I can only hear snippets of what he’s saying. “I’m not
staying over there just to be an hour away from the venue…Fine, but make
sure it’s got two beds.”
While he talks, I lean over the railing, watching the water rip into two
slices as it’s cleaved apart by the boat. The boat is loud, engines whirring
and wind roaring, but the scenery is stubbornly calm, stoically resistant to
the churning chaos of the boat and the wind. I look up and take a deep
inhale of the cool lake air, scanning the hills that seem to crowd the
shoreline on every side.
When Jean-Luc hangs up the phone, he joins me, wrapping an arm
around me and kissing the top of my head. “I’m sorry for all of this,
sweetheart.”
“It’s okay.”
He runs his eyes over my face, along my hairline, a smile playing on his
lips that somehow emphasizes the cleft in his chin. I love seeing him look at
me this way. As if he’s captivated by me. As if I’m something magical or
sacred.
“You look good on a boat.” He smoothes the hair back from my
forehead, where it’s no doubt tightening into curls in the humid air. “It suits
you.”
My heart could melt looking at him. Big hand gripping the railing, big
bicep pulling the fabric of his jacket taut, big man hovering over me with
well over a foot on me.
Big in every way, I remember, with heat rising to my cheeks. The same
yearning I’ve been living with for weeks pulses to life inside of me. I want
all of Jean-Luc’s love. I want his loving, gentle protection, his mouth, his
hands, and the orgasms he’s given me. And I want that final consummation,
his cock inside of me. Jean-Luc losing all control because of how it feels to
be that close to me. I want it more than I even have words for, and I don’t
know if he’ll ever do that. It leaves me feeling raw and needy.
I imagine him pushing me back against the railing, his strong hands
ripping off my shorts and spreading my legs. I would be so small
underneath him. His big cock, which I can barely fit in my mouth, pushing
into me until he’s thrusting hard and deep, grunting like an animal while he
clutches me to him, my stepdaddy giving me everything he has, loving me
so completely.
I must be giving him some kind of look because his face darkens and he
looks away, out over the water.
“We have a reservation right near the venue,” he tells me. “But they
were almost fully booked. We have to share a room.”

The wedding is a short Uber ride from our hotel at a winery. Guests in their
finery are milling all over the place, inside and out, and it’s clear the entire
space is rented out just for the wedding. White ribbons billow from every
post, and strings of Edison bulbs sway in the wind above us. Jean-Luc
doesn’t wait for a server, and walks right into the main room, ordering a
scotch from the bar. When the bartender offers me a glass of wine, Jean-Luc
answers for me. “She’ll have a Coke.”
We head outside, towards the back where white wooden chairs have
been set out in neat rows below a makeshift ceiling of string lights, and I
trail after Jean-Luc as he circulates among the guests, introducing me to the
people I don’t know and reminding me about the people I do. It feels a little
like a game of make-believe, and I wonder if anyone would believe I’m
Jean-Luc’s date—except that he keeps introducing me to people as his
daughter.
When a woman in a headset with a clipboard starts telling us to take our
seats, we pick our way down a row about halfway back from the altar. Jean-
Luc continues to greet and say hello to the people who sit around us. It
seems like he knows everyone here.
The ceremony is sweet and informal. I’ve known the bride, the daughter
of Jean-Luc’s partner, for as long as I’ve known Jean-Luc. Sarah is only
seven years older than me, and looks breathtaking in a short, chiffon dress
with a crown of yellow flowers in her hair. Her husband appears to be in his
mid-thirties, a bit dumpy-looking in my opinion, but they radiate pure
happiness as they take their vows under a garland of flowers.
It puts me in a sentimental mood, watching the wedding ceremony, and
I find myself wondering if I’ll ever have a day like this.
The only person I could ever imagine standing at an altar with is the last
person I could ever marry. My hand wanders to my throat, finding the
diamond on the chain and twirling it between my fingers. With my other
hand, I reach for Jean-Luc’s, lacing my fingers through his and hoping he
doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t. He gives my fingers a little squeeze and I
sigh.
Forever and ever, that’s how long I wish I could be with him. As long
we both shall live.

At dinner, we sit with three other architects and their wives. The men talk
work, and the women try to engage me in conversation about school before
giving up on me and talking amongst themselves. I surreptitiously keep my
phone in my hand, swiping through TikTok and keeping an eye on the time,
until eventually the new couple comes out for their first dance and I have
something to watch.
I can’t stop thinking about a day like this for me, and what it would be
like to dance in Jean-Luc’s arms while our friends and family watched.
Jean-Luc’s family would fly in from Switzerland and welcome me into the
Rochat clan. I’ve met them before, but I’ve always had Melanie’s last name,
Holland. This time it would be different because I would be one of them.
Danica Rochat.
 Watching Sarah and her new husband holding each other so close on the
dance floor gives me the deepest longing to be up there with Jean-Luc. I
wish we could look into each other’s eyes the way the newly married
couple does. I wish we could be seen by everybody we loved—and
accepted. I wish who we are didn’t have to be such a secret.
Our relationship may never be acceptable to the people we love, but I
do get my opportunity to dance like the bride just a moment later when the
song ends.
“All right everybody!” comes the deejay’s booming voice. “It’s Father’s
Day tomorrow, and to celebrate, we’ve got the Daddy/Daughter dance for
all the fathers and the daughters in the crowd. Come on up here, Bob! Let’s
get you and the beautiful bride to kick it off.”
The crowd claps and cheers as my dad’s red-faced partner gets up from
the bridal party table. The new groom steps away from Sarah and shakes
Bob’s hand before they switch off, then the lights lower and a slow ‘80s
song with the words father figure in it starts playing.
“Aren’t you two going to dance?” asks one of the wives, evoking
smiling and nodding from the others, as they move their eyes between Jean-
Luc and me. He tilts his head and raises his hand as if to dismiss them, and
on a whim, I speak up before he has a chance to.
“C’mon, Dad,” I say, pushing my chair back and standing up. “Let’s
dance.”
He hesitates for a moment, looking surprised, then gives the couples a
tight-lipped smile before getting up to join me, and we make our way to the
dance floor.
I’m craving his touch, his proximity, and when he takes me in his arms
on the dance floor, my physical response is immediate. One hand holds
mine, almost completely enveloping it, and the other presses flat against my
lower back, drawing me forward towards him. I wish I could tilt my head
up to him, and kiss him here in front of everybody, so I do the next best
thing and step in closer, leaning my head against his chest. It’s so hard and
firm and strong, and I don’t care that none of the other father/daughter pairs
are dancing like this. This is my moment. The closest I’ll ever get to the
wedding I wish I could have.
“Honey,” Jean-Luc murmurs against my hair. “This might be a little
close for a Daddy/Daughter dance.”
 “I don’t care.” I look up at him with imploring eyes. “I miss being close
to you.”
“Dani.” His voice is soft but censorious, a father gently correcting a
child, but something inside me is breaking open; something that can’t be
contained. I love him. I love him with a kind of fierceness that can’t be
locked up or tamed.
“Jean-Luc.” I match his tone. “Don’t you know everything’s different
between us? I can’t pretend we’re the same as we were before. I can’t
pretend I don’t love you, and I don’t want to. What if it…what if it wasn’t a
secret anymore?”
He closes his eyes for a second and takes a breath. “Sweetheart. You
know how I feel about you, but look around. We don’t live in a world where
this is okay. And with your mother gone, I want you to know that I will
always be there for you, okay? As…as a father.”
“I know, Dad.” I tighten my arms around him, squeezing him before I
ask the question that might make him pull away from me. “I know you will
always be there for me. But I don’t want to stop what we’re doing. I…want
you. Even if we have to do it in secret, then fine, just please promise we’ll
never go back to the way we were before. I want…more than that.”
He pauses for a minute. “Danica,” he whispers against me. “Oh,
Danica.”
I lift my face to his. He looks concerned and worried, brow furrowed,
but his eyes are black with a dark heat.
“Don’t you want to…” I struggle to find the words, trying to sound as
grown-up as I can. “Don’t you want to make love to me?”
“Fuck, Dani,” he breathes. “Of course I do. You know I do. I think
about it every damn day. But I’m your stepfather.”
“I like both our roles,” I plead. “I love that you’re my stepdad and take
care of me, and I also like…ugh.” I duck my head, struggling to say what I
want to say, and he leans back and tucks a finger under my chin, lifting my
face up to his.
“Say it,” he says, his gaze intense.
“I like it when…you’re still my dad. When it’s naughty, like you can’t
resist me.”
“You mean that you like daddy play,” he finishes for me, eyes searching
my face.
“Yes,” I say with a slow exhale. “It turns me on.”
 A strange look comes over his face—relief, I think—and he pulls me in
once again and murmurs in my ear in a deep voice. “So do I.”

We leave the wedding shortly after the dance, something new and electric
humming between us.
“Leaving so soon?” asks my dad’s partner as we say our goodbyes.
“Got to get my little girl home,” Jean-Luc answers.
We take an Uber back to the hotel and, despite introducing me as his
daughter to the driver, Jean-Luc keeps his hand on my knee the whole way.
I’m quiet as we walk down the plushly carpeted hall of the hotel to our
suite. My belongings are already strewn across one of the queen beds, and I
walk in and sit on the edge of it while Jean-Luc pours a mini bottle of
scotch into a glass for himself.
“Can I have one?” I ask.
He frowns, cocking his head in mock disbelief at the question. “No.”
“C’mon.”
“Dani,” he says calmly, removing his jacket and unfastening his
cufflinks. “If you act like a brat, I’ll be forced to punish you.”
My heart gives a jolt, sending electricity down through my limbs. His
tone is stern, but his eyes, when they flash over to me from under his heavy
brows, are molten lava.
He loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt at the neck, and removes his
watch, laying it down carefully on the desk. Then he sits on the other bed,
facing me, and places a hand on each knee.
“Danica. If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to play games, I need
to know that it is 100% what you want. If there is even a shadow of doubt
in your mind, you can tell me, and everything stops. I will always be your
father, first and foremost.”
But there’s no doubt in my mind. “I want everything with you, Jean-
Luc,” I answer honestly.
He shakes his head. “This is so crazy,” he says. “What’s happening
between us. But I don’t think I can hold back anymore, Danica. I don’t
know if there’s any point, if we both want the same thing. The most
important thing I have to tell you is that it could never make me feel less
about you. I will love you with every last breath I have on this earth.”
I can only nod, biting back sudden and unexpected tears, as something
profound surges within me. I will love him with every last breath I have too,
I know it. I always have.
“You’re making me mental, little girl,” he says in a new kind of voice.
A deeper, more dangerous voice. “I think about you all the time. I think
about you showing me your little panties in the car. I think about the feel of
your mouth around my cock, and the taste of your sweet little cunt. The
way you breathe when you come. I think obsessively about how much I
want to be inside of you, to own you, to really make you mine. Would you
like to be mine, Danica?”
“Yes.” My voice is almost a whisper. I can hardly hear it over the
pounding of my heart. “Yes, Daddy.”
He smiles slowly. “That’s good. What I really want is to be your daddy
in every way, Danica. I want to comfort and care for you, and love you, and
I want to play games with you, games I think we will both enjoy, things
we’ve tried out a little already. I want to be your daddy in bed, and I want
you to be my little girl. Do you want that, too?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
“That’s good.” He takes another sip of his drink and then places the
glass on the nightstand between us. “Then in that case,” he says. “You’re
going to be a good little girl for me tonight.”
Jean-Luc
IT’S A RELIEF to let go, to drop the burden of self-control. To lay down
the mantle of responsibility and honour and just say, fuck it.
Danica’s safety and wellbeing comes first. I will always care for her and
protect her, but knowing that she wants what I want, that she’s as eager to
be my willing little girl as I am to be her big bad daddy, it breaks open a
flood gate in me. The beast inside of me roars to the forefront, no longer
willing to be held back. I need her—all of her. Her mouth, her skin under
my hands…her pussy. I need to be around her and inside of her. I need all
of her.
“Take your dress off.” I lean back on my hands and watch her as she
stands up and unzips her pink dress, letting it fall to her feet in a pile of
sateen. The sight of her bare skin makes my heartbeat pick up. She’s thin, a
reminder of those weeks she spent on her own, without a parent, and her
stomach is concave and her knees bony. But her breasts are beautifully full,
hips rounded. She’s a woman, standing before me in cotton bra and panties.
“Not those,” I say, when she reaches for the waistband of the panties.
“Leave those on.”
The panties, with their full coverage at the back and tiny bow at the
front, drive me wild. I want to fuck her in those panties.
She slips her bra off, revealing her firm, perfect breasts, and when I
can’t wait a minute longer, I rise and step forward to fondle one, bending
down to kiss her.
“You feel so good,” I groan against her mouth. “Your body is so
perfect.” She exhales, rolling her head back, and I pepper kisses down her
neck and over her shoulder. Her skin is velvet smooth under my mouth, her
distinctive scent so fresh and sweet.
I start to unbutton my shirt and lower my pants. “Lie down on the bed,”
I instruct her, and delight in the subtle, timid widening of her eyes as she
does what she’s told. She’s excited but nervous, like a virgin before her first
time, and it makes my already-hard dick twitch in anticipation.
 When I’m undressed I kneel between her legs at the end of the bed,
taking in her prone, naked body before me. Her hair, which she pinned up
for the wedding, is coming undone, loose curls hitting the pillow behind
her, and her ripe breasts have been softened only slightly by gravity as they
rest against her rib cage. My eyes wander down the concave hollow of her
stomach to the hairless mound of her pussy.
“Spread your legs.” She parts her ankles and I chuckle a little, lifting
them so that her knees bend and pushing them down. “Like this.”
In front of me, the crotch of her white panties modestly covers the
sacred, secret part of her. I reach down and pull it to the side, revealing her
tender pink pussy, blooming like a tiny flower with arousal.
“I love your pussy,” I breathe, bending down to inhale her scent and run
my tongue softly up her slit, feathering a kiss over her clit. She gasps and
then moans loudly.
“I can’t believe you’ve never had an orgasm by masturbation.” She’s
highly responsive. Even her mother didn’t quiver at every touch like she
does.
“Please,” she breathes, a desperate wish for something she can’t name.
“Please.”
I reach my tongue as far as I can down her slit, pulling her panties
further to the side, a fleeting thought about her tight virgin asshole flashing
through my mind, then run it all the way up until I’m softly sucking on her
clitoris. She cries incoherently, lifting her hips and tossing her head. She’s
hot and ready, I can feel it in the swell of her pussy lips and the slick
wetness of her hole. Her hole that is readying itself for me, but first I’ll
make her come, easing my passage.
I rub my tongue back and forth under her nub of her pleasure, as if I’m
drawing something out of her, and within seconds she’s arching upwards,
pussy contracting hard, and then she cries out. I feel her pulsing against my
mouth.
She drops her hips onto the bed with a shuddering breath and I sit up to
look at her. A rosy flush covers her chest and face, and her eyes gleam with
joy as she looks back at me. She’s positively radiant, alive and sensual and
fucking irresistible, and I lower myself over her, still using one hand to hold
her panties to the side while my hard cock finds her hole and presses
eagerly against it.
 “How many times did you have sex with Dante?” I ask her. I need to
know.
She blinks in surprise. “Twice.”
“And you used condoms both times?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re on the pill?”
Understanding dawns in her eyes. “Yes.”
“When I come, I want it to be inside of you, Danica.”
She pauses. “Okay, Daddy.”
I can’t help but smile. “That’s good, baby. That’s very good.” I press the
head of my cock harder against her hole, until I can feel her resistance. “I’m
not going to wear a condom, because it’s different with us, okay? I’m not
some boy doing God knows what. I’m your daddy who’s going to take care
of you.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she breathes again.
“That’s good,” I murmur, caressing her cheek with one hand. “You’re
such a good girl, Dani. You’re so good to your daddy.”
I push against her entrance, feeling the squeeze of her pussy as I slide
into her slowly. She pinches her eyebrows together, looking strained, and I
slow down. Grown women with lots of experience sometimes have trouble
taking my cock. It’s something that I’m used to.
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I’m going to go really slowly. Just relax.” I
push in a little deeper, the tight band of muscle like a fist that won’t give.
“That’s good, sweetheart. Just keep relaxing. Don’t squeeze.”
She whimpers as I keep pushing, her resistance barely giving in at all.
“Just relax. Keep relaxing. I’m going to be all the way in soon. That’s
it.”
My heart is beating like a wild drum and it’s taking everything in me to
resist the urge to pound into her, slamming and stretching her, ignoring her
whimpers. The beast in me wants to be buried in her, hard and deep, now—
immediately. But I take a steadying breath and push slowly.
“Did it hurt when Dante entered you?” I ask.
“Not like this,” she pants.
Small dick, I think to myself triumphantly. I drop my weight to my
elbows, murmuring in her ear as I plunge in to my full depth. “It will get
easier,” I promise. “You just need to relax.” Being completely sheathed
inside of her is dizzying. Every inch of my shaft is being squeezed by the
walls of her pussy.
I start pulling out, her tightness pulling against me in opposing
resistance and I have to shudder. “Fuck. Dani. You have no idea how good
you feel.”
When I slide back in, it’s easier, although I go slowly, continuing to
allow her to adjust. “Is that better, baby?” I ask when I’m in to the hilt
again.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“That’s good.” My breath catches as her tight pussy grasps and squeezes
me. “You’re being such a good girl, Dani. You’re making Daddy feel so
good.” I reach down to palm one breast and take in the sight of my big cock
half inside her, the innocent white panties bunched to one side. I lick my
thumb and press it to Dani’s clit and she inhales sharply.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this for,” I say, helplessly, as I
bury myself in her again, a little faster this time, a little harder. She cries out
but it’s not with the same keening edge of pain as before. She’s taking it.
“I’ve wanted it for longer…than you would even think,” I confess. “Longer
than I should have. My sweet little girl. Daddy wants you so bad.”
As her passage eases, her pussy walls start to pulse against my cock. I
roll my hips, circling her clit with my thumb, and drive myself in harder
and deeper, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “You feel fucking perfect.
Better than I ever even imagined. You’re so perfect for my cock, Dani.”
“Better than Mommy?” she asks, a deliberately innocent lilt to her voice
and if it’s even possible, I feel my dick swell harder inside of her. She’s so
fucking naughty.
“Yes, baby,” I murmur in her ear, feeling myself just about to go over
the edge. “So much better than Mommy. You’re just what Daddy likes. You
make Daddy want to come. Daddy’s going to come inside you now, okay
little one? Do you want to make Daddy come?”
“Yes,” she answers breathlessly.
“Good.” I rock back and forth, becoming mindless, my awareness only
in the end of my dick where I feel like I’m about to explode inside of her.
“Daddy’s going to fill you up with his cum. Daddy’s wanted to put his cum
inside his little girl for a long time now. Oh fuck, Dani. Dani, I’m going to
fucking—“
 Words trail off as my climax rips through me, the tight hug of Dani’s
cunt squeezing me as I blow hard into her, driving myself in deep as if to
fill the deepest recesses of her body, wanting to fuse myself with her to
make us one. A primal cry leaves my lips as my body seizes and I shudder
hard inside of her. My little girl, my little stepdaughter, Melanie’s
daughter…fuck.
I shake my head to clear away any returning thoughts of guilt, shame,
and morality, trying to cling to that between place where Danica’s role in
my life is a naughty fantasy and not a reality to be navigated.
Not right now, I think, collapsing beside her. Not just yet.
We’ll have to figure out where to go from here at some point, but right
now I just want to be with Dani as if there was no reason on Earth why we
shouldn’t be together—as if Dani’s just a regular young woman. As if
Dani’s someone I’m allowed to love.
Jean-Luc
WHEN WE GET home on Sunday, I haven’t given a second’s thought to
Melanie. It hasn’t occurred to me to wonder if there might be some sign of
her left behind, if she could have maybe forgotten something—maybe even
left a note. I’ve been so completely transported by the events of the past
twenty-four hours that I’ve practically forgotten about her.
So it’s a shock when I unlock the door and walk in to find Melanie
waiting in the kitchen.
“Hello!” she trills from a stool at the kitchen island, lifting both hands
and one foot in an overly-exuberant greeting, as if we’d be happy to see her.
Her phone and a glass of wine are on the island in front of her.
“Melanie,” I say, stunned. “What are you doing here?” My lawyer was
supposed to have her escorted off the premises. It occurs to me I haven’t
even looked at my phone since last night, I’ve been so utterly consumed by
Dani, fucking her again and again over the course of the night and this
morning until she complained that her pussy was sore.
“Oh,” Melanie waves a hand, as if this is all so irrelevant. “I just need
another night. Cathy’s not back till tomorrow so I don’t have anywhere to
stay. I explained it all to Patrick last night.”
Patrick, my trusted lawyer, the one who’s been working on our divorce
case for the past year, should know better. I pull my phone out of my pocket
and realize I’ve missed a whole flurry of activity. Two calls from Melanie,
three calls from Patrick, and about twenty text messages from both.
I skim through Patrick’s messages.
...angry to the point of being violent, says one. ...Not sure if you want
me to call the police.
Jesus.
“Honey, why don’t you bring your bag up your room while I talk to
your mother?” I say to Dani, who rolls her eyes as hard as only a teenager
can. She walks past her mother without looking at her, and Melanie doesn’t
look at her either. It’s like Dani doesn’t even register for Melanie.
 “Melanie, I was very clear.”
“Oh, don’t start with this!” she exclaims, with an eye roll to match her
daughter’s. “It’s one night, J.L. I’m your wife. The least you can do is give
me a place to sleep for one night when the only other option is the street.
Jesus, you can be a real asshole, you know that?”
During the course of our marriage, I have had occasion to see Melanie
in a real fit of rage. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does—when
she’s pushed too far, and feels cornered—she snaps. She screams like a
banshee and she breaks things. As I reflect on that, I notice that the couch is
slightly askew, the cushions looking scattered and out of place, and the
coffee table has been pushed to the edge of the rug. I can only imagine what
happened last night when Patrick tried to get her to leave.
It’s better not to provoke her, I decide. Not with Dani in the house, not
with the wild, slightly unhinged look I can see in her eyes.
“Fine,” I bite out. “This is the last time.”
“Of course,” she says placatingly. “Thank you. We’re going to have a
great time, you’ll see! I’m going to make dinner. A special Father’s Day
dinner just for you.”
This morning, in a cringe-worthy yet totally taboo move, Dani had
reminded me what day it is. ‘Happy Father’s Day,’ she’d whispered
devilishly as my cock softened inside her. It had been slightly
uncomfortable then, it’s even more uncomfortable now, as my wife talks
about making me a special dinner while her daughter, whom I’ve fucked
four times since yesterday, is upstairs in her room.
“Right,” I answer awkwardly. “Father’s Day.” I pick up my bag to head
upstairs just as Dani leans over the mezzanine railing.
“I need my bath, Daddy,” she calls, brazenly. There’s a challenge in her
tone. She’s threatening to draw our relationship out in front of her mother,
or willing to taunt her with it, I don’t know. Melanie shoots me a glance.
“She has trouble with the faucets,” I improvise weakly, and head
upstairs to where Dani is waiting with a smile.
“We need to be careful,” I say under my breath, once we’re both in the
bathroom.
“Why? That woman is not a mother to me. I don’t care what she
thinks.”
“Well, I do,” I answer hotly, the stress of finding Melanie in my house
getting to me. “I have no desire to be branded a sexual predator.”
 “I’m eighteen,” she says with exasperation. “I’m legal.”
“Still…I’d just rather be circumspect around your mother. Is that so
much to ask?”
I plug the tub and start the water and when I look up, Dani has stripped
completely naked, her perfect body on display in front of me. Despite the
fact that we last fucked only three or four hours ago, my cock instantly
starts to get hard.
“Dani,” I say warningly.
“What?” She bats pale eyelashes at me. “I’m just getting ready for my
bath.”
“You’re tempting Daddy is what you’re doing,” I say in a low voice,
already aching for her. “I just told you we need to be circumspect.”
“But the door’s locked,” she says sweetly. “Mommy never has to
know.”
I groan, knowing that being alone with Dani naked right now is a
terrible idea and knowing equally, as she does, that I cannot resist her. She
lowers a hand between her legs, stroking herself with her fingers and pouts
at me.
“I want your cum in me, Daddy.”
Mon dieu. “I thought you said you were sore.”
She nods. “I don’t care. If I have to sit through dinner with Melanie
pretending that everything is perfectly normal between us, I at least want
the pain to remind me that you secretly fucked me in the bathroom.”
It’s hopeless. My dick is hard already, throbbing in my pants. How has
Dani become such a filthy little girl so quickly? I’m equally shocked and
turned on at the forbidden scenario she’s imagining. The one thing I can’t
bring myself to tell her is that her mother has already guessed it—and
doesn’t care. That, more than anything, is something I never want Dani to
know.
“Turn around and put your hands on the counter,” I say in a low voice,
turning off the water and unzipping my pants. I stand behind her, lining my
cock up with her entrance and lean forward to murmur in her ear. “You’re a
dirty little girl, aren’t you? You want me to fuck you while Mommy’s
downstairs?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she whispers. I squeeze a hand around her hip as I push
into her, and the tight, wet feel of her has me seeing stars already. She’s so
wet, swollen and aching for me already, and my dick twitches and strains
inside of her. She feels fucking amazing.
“Do you like knowing that Daddy wants to fuck you instead of
Mommy?” I ask her. “Is that what you like? Do you like knowing that
Daddy loves your tight little pussy like no other?”
“Yes,” she breathes, pushing back against me. “Oh God, that feels so
good.”
“It feels so good for me too, baby.” I move a hand around to her front,
sliding fingers over her smooth mound until I find the top of her slit, then I
wriggle in deeper until I’m stroking the top of her clit.
“Oh, that’s good, Daddy,” she gasps. “Daddy, you make me feel so
good.”
“Yes, baby,” I growl in her ear. “You make Daddy feel so good, too. It
feels so good being deep inside my little girl, knowing I’m going to come
right inside her tight pussy. You feel so good for Daddy, baby. You feel so
good.”
I keep fingering her clit in gentle circles until her pussy clamps down
around me. It’s almost unthinkable that she could be any tighter and I grunt
helplessly as I start thrusting harder, the wet friction sending me right out of
my mind.
“Oh, Daddy!” she cries.
“Quiet, baby!” I say quickly, pressing a hand to her mouth. “You need
to be quiet. We don’t want Mommy to hear us.”
“Oh,” she cries against my hand. “Oh!”
Her cunt squeezes down on me just as I go over the edge, the pulsing
motion of her orgasm milking me as I shoot into her. I moan loudly, unable
to control myself, and drop my hand from her mouth.
My orgasm seems to go on forever, my dick jerking and squirting inside
of her, and I wrap an arm around her torso and pull her closely against me
until I’m finally spent, then I drop onto her back for a moment and breathe
in the scent of her bare skin.
“Sweetie,” I murmur. “That was just what I needed. God, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispers back. “I love you, too.”

Dinner is spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread—a fancy meal by

Melanie’s standards. She presents it with a flourish when Dani and I both
descend to the table.
 “Dinner is served!” she says dramatically, and lifts the bottle of wine
she’s uncorked and pours it generously into three glasses. It’s a bottle she’s
taken from my cellar, I notice. A five-hundred dollar bottle that was meant
to age for another few years before being opened.
“I prefer Dani not drink,” I bite out, irritated about the wine, and
Melanie shoots me an exasperated look.
“Oh c’mon, J.L.,” she says, and shoots a look at Dani. “She’s all grown
up.”
“Yeah, c’mon Dad,” adds Dani. Melanie’s words from yesterday run
through my head: She can’t be too young to live on her own but old enough
for you to fuck. Besides, it’s nice to see Dani and Melanie aligned on
something for once.
“Fine,” I mutter.
As usual, Melanie dominates the conversation, but when we’re about
halfway through the meal, Dani stands up and says, “I have a Father’s Day
present for you.”
“I have one, too,” Melanie jumps in. “You go first.”
Dani gets her school bag from the front hall and pulls out a card and
wrapped present for me. It’s easy to tell the present is a hardcover book.
I’m touched. “You didn’t have to do this,” I tell her. I know she doesn’t
have much money because she refuses to accept an allowance. I’ve taken to
slipping money into her knapsack, which neither of us ever acknowledges.
“I wanted to,” she beams, and wraps her arms around me. “Happy
Father’s Day, Daddy.”
Every Daddy is a reference, a hidden threat to her mother. She’s feeling
brave enough to flirt with danger, but I act like it’s perfectly natural. Like
she’s always called me Daddy.
The card is simple: ‘You’re the very best father I ever could have
imagined. Thank you so much for everything you do for me.’ The book is a
small coffee table book about architecture in Switzerland, not the most
inspired gift, but I’m touched by the sentiment. “Thank you so much,
sweetie,” I say, giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze.
“My turn,” grins Melanie, lifting a gift bag up from her feet and sliding
it over to me. It appears to contain a bottle of wine. Better be a five-hundred
dollar bottle of wine, I think to myself.
But when I open it up, it’s not. It’s a seven dollar wine at best, but one
that surprises me with the warm memories it brings up. I laugh with
genuine mirth as I pull it out of the bag.
“Almaden!” I exclaim, chuckling. “Oh my God. How did you ever find
this?”
Melanie laughs too, clapping her hands, and for a moment it’s normal,
and natural. She’s not acting or showing off. She’s just Melanie, if only for
a moment. Melanie, the hilarious and wild woman I fell in love with so
many years ago.
“Ha!” I bark out, as I pull out the other item out of the bag. It’s a DVD
of the movie Spring Breakers. “Oh wow. I can’t believe this.”
“I found the wine at the liquor store. Can you believe they still make
that? Then I knew I had to find the movie for you. The perfect pairing.”
“I think I liked this movie,” I say, and she laughs.
“C’mon! You barely saw any of it.”
“I definitely missed the ending of it.”
“What is it?” asks Dani, a weak smile plastered on her face. “Is this a
trip down Memory Lane or something?”
My laugh fades as I see the strain in her eyes, but I’m still smiling as I
say, “Yeah, this was my first date with your mother. We saw this movie and
she snuck this horrible wine into the theatre.”
Mel laughs at my description of the wine. “It was our second date,” she
corrects me. “Because we didn’t…you know…on the first date.” She jerks
her head towards Dani—whose face pales—as if she’s censoring herself
because of her.
It’s a fond memory for me, though, despite the awkwardness of sharing
it in front of Dani. Melanie and I had polished off the entire bottle of
Almaden in the theatre, despite my very vocal complaints about it, which
she found funny. The movie, which was gritty and sexy, featuring three
young girls who were almost constantly clad in bikinis, had been popular
that year but we’d waited too long to see it. We had the back row of the
theatre to ourselves, which is why Melanie felt emboldened to straddle my
lap, skirt hiked up and no panties on, and fuck me in the back row. There
were several people in front of us, but trying to stay quiet made it even
hotter. I remember thinking she had the tightest, sweetest little cunt I’d ever
fucked.
“Thank you,” I say with real warmth. “That’s a great memory. I’ll let
you keep the wine, though,” I quip.
 “Your father and I used to do some pretty wild stuff,” Melanie says to
Dani. “You don’t know. We weren’t always the old fogeys you think we are.
Your father is…a very sexual man.”
“Melanie,” I say sharply. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
“Oh, c’mon,” she says dismissively, lifting her wine glass. “She’s old
enough to figure out we’ve fucked. And it was amazing,” she adds in an
aside to Danica.
“Melanie! That’s enough!”
Dani puts her fork down on her plate and stands up. “Dad, I’m going to
excuse myself.”
“That’s fine, honey,” I say, glowering at Melanie. She laughs as Dani
leaves the table and heads upstairs. “Don’t know where you two get off
being so prudish,” she snickers.
Danica
I LIE AWAKE in bed for a long while, wondering if Jean-Luc will sneak in
at some point. I’m alternately hopeful and despairing. Last night, it felt like
nothing could ever come between us, but tonight, watching my mother flirt
so overtly with him at dinner, I’m not so certain. It made me hotly jealous
to find out they had sex on their second date. More than that, it was the fond
smile the memory evoked in Jean-Luc. What if my mother has somehow
weaved her web around him again?
I text Christine to chat but she seems standoffish and aloof.
Are you just trying to chat or is something up? she eventually asks.
Just chatting, I answer. Wanted to see how you are.
I’m fine, she answers. Now you know. Why aren’t you chatting with
your secret older boyfriend?
I sigh and don’t answer. I don’t know how to. After staring at my phone
blankly for a while, I put it down and stare at the ceiling instead.
So Jean-Luc and Melanie had sex on their second date. It’s painful to
think of them being together, but it’s not hard to do. For most of my
childhood, they were physically affectionate with each other. It pains me to
think it, but I guess they probably had a pretty good sexual relationship. I
wonder why a man like Jean-Luc would even want to be with someone
young and unsophisticated like me when he could be with a sexy grown
woman—maybe not my mom, but someone like her. I have nothing to offer
that someone experienced and confident doesn’t, and I worry that Jean-
Luc’s only attracted to me because I look like my mom and he misses her.
I want to be everything Jean-Luc has ever dreamed of. I want to be
everything to him the way he is everything to me. I crave the touch of his
skin so much it’s like a fever. I’m obsessed. But more than that, it’s the way
he takes care of me, the shelter of his arms, the strength of his commitment
to me. He gives me something nobody else ever could. With Jean-Luc I can
be a grown, sexual woman, and his little girl who gets taken care of.
 I wish I could give him something nobody else could, too, but a man
like Jean-Luc has everything he could ever want—including wealth, power,
and women. The only thing I can offer him is all I have—my mind, my
soul…my entire body.
Just thinking about him gets me hot and horny again—the sheer power
of him as he parted my knees beneath him, and the agonizing pleasure and
pain of him inside of me. Even though I’m sore, I’m still craving him. And
I’m already nostalgic for last night, when it was just the two of us. I’m
rocking my hips, feeling my pussy get wet and slippery, when the door
opens a crack.
“Dani?” comes his voice in a low whisper.
“Daddy!” I stage-whisper. “Come in.”
He takes a quiet step through the door and closes it carefully behind him
before approaching the bed. He’s breathtaking in only a pair of plaid
pyjama pants—bare feet and bare chest. He has just the right amount of
chest hair, I think. His huge, powerful upper body is so perfectly masculine.
He sits down on the edge of the bed and smiles at me, and for a brief
moment we just look at each other, expectant and kind of awkward, until he
reaches a hand around the back of my head and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s
heated and hungry, and the touch of his tongue to mine sends my hormones
soaring even though we’ve already had sex three times today. My Jean-Luc,
my daddy. He does love me. I’m sure of it.
“I fucking missed you,” he growls. “In the two hours since you went to
bed, I missed you.” He lowers me down onto the bed on my back and
hovers over me. “I can’t fucking get enough of you.”
“What about Mom? Is she still up?”
“She’s in my room,” he cocks a chin to the wall separating our
bedrooms.
“Again?”
He takes a breath. “I can’t get her to sleep in the basement. It’s one
more night, sweetie. We just have to be…quiet.”
A responding ache pulses between my legs. He wants me. “Okay,
Daddy.”
“Mm,” he chuckles low in his throat. “I like that so much.” He bends
down to kiss me again, teasing me with the feel of his erection against my
belly, until I’m squirming and moaning underneath him, trying to rub my
pussy against him through the two layers of clothing we’re wearing.
 After a moment he rolls off me onto his back and says, “Why don’t you
get undressed and come straddle me so I can look at you?” He places both
hands behind his head, making his chest look even broader and
emphasizing the bulk of his huge biceps.
I stand up and pull off my sleep shorts and tank top and feel his eyes
burning me up as I straddle his lap, lowering myself over his crotch and
grinding playfully. “Mm, little girl,” he growls, cupping my hips and ass
with heavy hands. “You’re so fucking sexy. You see how you make Daddy
feel when you sit on his lap?” He pulls me down hard against him, his
erection pressing against my sore pussy, and I wriggle against him, the
soreness almost pleasant, arousal blurring and transforming the pain.
“I want to give you something special,” I say timidly. “I wish I could
have given you a better Father’s Day gift.”
“Oh, sweetie.” He smiles. “I love your gift.”
“But I mean, I want to give you something else. If you want to.”
Suddenly I’m heating up with embarrassment. Surely this isn’t that hard to
say. “Anal sex.” I blurt it out. “I thought maybe…would you like that?”
“Sweetheart,” he says gently, then his whole face transforms as a smile
pulls at the corner of his eyes. He laughs—a delicious, low rumbling sound.
“Wait. Are you saying you want to give me anal sex for Father’s Day?”
I can’t help but laugh either, an almost hysterical and involuntary reflex.
When he puts it that way…it highlights the absurdity of this whole thing.
“I guess so,” I giggle. “I didn’t really mean it that way, but I guess so.”
“Oh, baby.” Placing one hand on the small of my back, and using the
other to lift himself up, he pulls himself up into a sitting position, back
against the wall, taking me with him so I’m still straddling him. It’s close,
and intimate, our faces only a few inches apart, mine slightly higher than
his. He raises his knees so that his thighs are against my back, and I feel
deeply, safely cocooned by him. “It’s something I would love to do with
you, but not tonight. We would have to work up to it, train you so you’re
ready. Most women…not a lot of women want to do that with me. Because
of my size.”
“I can take it,” I say bravely, and his eyes smoulder with heat.
“I know you can,” he says thickly. His cock, sandwiched between his
belly and my pussy, jerks, and I feel proud of myself for offering him
something he wants. “You take my cock so well now in your mouth and
your pussy, don’t you?”
 “Yes,” I say shyly. Then: “Have you had anal sex before?”
“Me? Yes, I’ve done it before.”
“Have you ever done it with Melanie?” It’s an impulsive question. I
shouldn’t want to know, shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t care—but I do.
“With your mother?” He’s buying time by repeating my questions. “Do
you really want to know about stuff like that?”
I nod.
“Sweetie. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to talk about that.”
“Why?” It comes out more plaintive than I mean it to. “Just tell me. I
just want to know.”
He sighs. “Yes. Yes, we’ve done it.”
“Oh.” I lower my head. I immediately regret asking. Knowing that
Melanie has already given this to him makes me feel completely deflated.
“Sweetheart,” he says gently, nudging my cheek with his nose until he
finds my mouth and planting a soft kiss to my lips. “With you it will be
different. You know you’re my special little girl.”
“That’s what I want to be,” I murmur, with a sad smile. “I want to be
special to you.”
“You are,” he says with a heated intensity. “You are everything to me,
Danica.”
He pulls my face to his, pressing his hands to my cheeks, and kisses me
warmly and passionately. “Can we fuck?” he murmurs. “Are you sore?”
“Yes,” I giggle. “And yes.”
He groans. “I don’t want to hurt you, baby. But I really want to fuck
you.”
“Please fuck me,” I whisper in his ear. “Please fuck me with your big,
hard cock.”
He groans again and lifts me up with one hand while he uses the other
to pull his pyjama pants down over his knees. His erection slaps against his
belly, and he lifts it with one hand, positioning it so that I can lower myself
over it.
“Oh shit,” he whispers as I lower myself down, his girth spreading me
apart in a way that’s half pain, half pleasure. “You’re so fucking wet.”
I can only gasp as he fills the farthest, deepest part of me, hot tension
already gathering low in my belly as he strokes into me. He rocks his hips,
fucking me from below, as I settle into the rhythm of pushing myself down
against him.
 “That’s it,” he whispers in my ear, threading fingers through my hair
and pulling it. “That’s fucking it. Ride that cock, Dani. Ride my cock.”
I can’t even form words. Incoherent moans tumble out of my mouth as I
heave and gasp against his cheek. He turns his face so that we’re mouth to
mouth and growls low, “Quiet, baby. You have to be real quiet so Mommy
doesn’t hear us.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I manage to whimper.
He sticks a finger in his mouth, and a second later I feel a warm, wet
pressure against my asshole that makes me inhale sharply and seize up.
“Easy,” he chuckles warmly, lifting his hips to resume the rhythm I’ve
interrupted and making slow, soft circles against my anus. “Easy,
sweetheart. There, there.”
I’m shocked to realize it feels good. An exquisite pressure builds as he
strokes and pushes against my ass, pressure that’s making my pussy so tight
Jean-Luc grunts as he starts ramming into me harder.
“Quiet, Daddy,” I tease. “Or Mommy will hear.”
“Jesus Christ, Dani,” he groans. “Fuck. I’m looking forward to fucking
your ass. I’m going to fuck you so deep and so hard in your tight little ass.”
He presses his finger into my hole, making little circles around the rim as
everything inside of me draws tight and suddenly I’m screaming, crying out
as I turn inside out and Jean-Luc moans loudly, rolling his head back
against the wall as he comes.
As his spasms subside, he lowers his head back down and smiles at me,
and kisses me softly. Our eyes flicker as they dance back and forth, looking
deeply into each other’s. For the first time that I can remember, he doesn’t
feel like my stepfather, and I realize that we’re becoming peers. Two
humans that hold the key to the other person’s ecstasy. He’s my lover.
With a swing of his arm, he lowers me onto my side—foreheads still
touching, legs still interlocked, his cock softening but still inside of me. I’m
dizzy with happiness, inhaling his breath and his skin. It’s the closeness I
crave and need.
“So much for being quiet,” he chuckles, and I breathe a laugh. He
doesn’t seem to care, and crazy though it may be, I don’t either. Part of me
hopes that Melanie did hear.
“I love you, Dani,” Jean-Luc whispers, dark brown eyes searching
mine.
“I love you, too, Jean-Luc,” I whisper back.
Jean-Luc
I WAKE UP in the basement den, hours after sneaking out of Dani’s room
while she slept. I do a workout, wake Dani for school, make breakfast, and
I’m pleased when we manage to get out of the house without seeing
Melanie.
Danica is irresistible in her private school uniform, red hair plaited into
two long braids down her back. Her lips look fuller than ever, swollen from
kissing, and I’m pathetically proud of myself for getting her to school
without having to pull over and fuck her in the car. I’m only semi-hard
when I drop her off at school and it feels like a triumph of willpower.
She walks into the school without stopping to talk to anyone, and I
watch a group of girls eye her as she walks past and then whisper to each
other. I frown, not for the first time thinking about how happy I am that it’s
the last week of high school. Next week these girls, whoever they are, won’t
matter anymore. Next week I won’t have to worry about Kye Knight. The
only thing I’ll miss about Dani being in high school is her uniform.

A short time later, I’m frowning at my phone, waiting for the coffee to
brew, when Cynthia walks into the office kitchen. She doesn’t walk, she
sashays like a cat. There’s something uncannily feline about Cynthia.
“Hello,” she says silkily, reaching into the fridge and pulling out one of
endless bottles of kombucha she always seems to have in there. “And how’s
Daddy this morning?”
Warmth spreads to my face as I snap my attention to her. “Cynthia…”
She grins. “No one’s around. I miss our little chats, Jean-Luc. I haven’t
heard from you for a while.”
I drop my phone into my pocket and give her my full attention. I’m
texting my lawyer, Patrick, about getting Melanie out of the house today,
and at this point I’m basically just harassing him anyway.
“No, I guess not,” I say gently. “Sorry if it feels like I dropped off the
face of the earth or something. The truth is, I met someone.”
 It feels strange to say it that way—to describe Dani and I in adult,
relationship terms—but that’s how it feels. Like I met someone. Or rather,
like I found someone. Someone who’s been there all along, just out of reach
until now.
“Oh, that’s great,” she says sincerely. “I’m happy to hear that, Jean-
Luc.”
I study her face. She’s been such a surprise, Cynthia, from those first
fumblings in my car outside the restaurant, to our wildly inappropriate
phone calls, she’s so much more complex than I originally took her for.
Complex, and unflappable. I wonder if Cynthia’s looking for love, or happy
to just keep exploring her own sexuality for now.
“Things, uh, okay with Bob?” It pains me to ask. It feels like a betrayal
to his wife, but I want to show interest in Cynthia’s life too—with no
judgment.
“Eh.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I think he’s trying to reconcile with his
wife. I’m on sugardaddy.com now.”
“Oh!” I breathe a laugh. I didn’t know so blatant a site existed, but it
sounds like a good fit for Cynthia. “Well, that sounds like it could be, uh…
very lucrative for you.”
“Yes.” She smiles. “I’m having fun.”
My phone rings and I pull it out of my pocket, heart sinking when I see
who’s calling. It’s Melanie.
I sigh. “I have to get this.”
“I’ll see you later.” She winks and struts out of the kitchen.
I watch her leave and then take a breath before answering. “What is it,
Melanie?”
“Well, hello to you, too, mister.”
“What do you want? Is Patrick there?”
“No.” She sounds offended. “Patrick is not here. You don’t need to send
your fucking henchman. I’m leaving.”
“Oh.” My shoulders drop an inch. “Great.”
She snorts. “Well, don’t sound too happy it. Christ, J.L.”
“You’re going to Cathy’s house?”
“No, actually. I’m going back to New Mexico. Jack called and we
talked it all out.”
I still have no idea why she left New Mexico, can barely retain the name
Jack. There have been so many men on the sidelines of my life with
Melanie that after a while they all started blending into meaningless noise.
Jack or no Jack, it doesn’t matter. It all comes down to Melanie. Melanie
leaving. Melanie creating drama. Melanie being all about Melanie.
“Uh, okay. Great.”
“Unlike some people, Jack is capable of learning and growing, and now
he understands that without my art, I’m nothing, J.L. I’m nothing.”
“Melanie,” I interrupt her. “What about Danica? Are you going to call
her?”
She gives a heavy sigh. “I wasn’t a bad mother, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.” I didn’t say it, no, but I’ve come to realize I’ve
been thinking it ever since I first met Melanie and Danica—at least on some
level. Ever since Danica’s hand was only big enough to wrap around one of
my fingers and I realized how little structure that child had before I met her
mother. Ever since Melanie started drifting off on her little sex escapades,
leaving us alone at home together.
Ever since she offered to help disguise my relationship with her
daughter so that she could still claim the benefits of being my wife.
“I just don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
“Okay. No argument there, but—“
“Stop.” I can almost see her rolling her eyes. “I told you, whenever you
say ‘but’ you negate everything you said before.”
“Melanie, I think you should call Danica.”
“No, J.L. Listen. What I want to say is that…I’m going to walk away
now. From you and from her. I know I’ve been more trouble in your lives
than good, and it’s not because I didn’t want what we had. I did, J.L. I loved
the three of us being a little family. But it’s not what I’m cut out for, or it’s
too late for me. Whatever happened in my childhood, I don’t know, but I
can’t be the family person you both need. I’m an artist and…a good artist
knows when their work is finished.”
I’m silent with shock. She’s already walked away from her daughter, it
shouldn’t be a surprise, but to hear her say so blatantly that she’s done is
unexpectedly jarring.
“I signed the divorce papers,” she adds. “They’re on the table.”
When I still don’t say anything, she says, “Goodbye, J.L.” and hangs up.
Danica
I SHIFT UNCOMFORTABLY in my seat, trying to keep my thoughts on
the paper in front of me. The classroom is completely silent except for the
scratch of pens on paper as two dozen students furiously try to complete the
essay portion of our final English exam. It’s the longhand that gets me most
of all, and I take a break to stretch my hand. It would be easier to text my
essay on my phone.
But it’s not the pain in my hand that’s driving me to distraction. It’s the
small metal butt plug that’s sitting in my ass and making my pussy so wet
I’m soaking my underpants. It takes all my self-control not to squirm and
moan in my seat. I shoot a look over to Christine and catch her eye. She
gives me a small, wicked smile before lowering her head back down to her
paper.
The butt plug was Christine’s idea. Even though it feels like we’ve been
growing apart lately, we haven’t been growing apart so much that she could
resist telling me that she and Eric are having anal sex ‘all the time.’ She was
the only person I could think of to go to for advice on how to do it, since
Jean-Luc seems determined that I’m not ready it for yet. But I am—or, I
could be, anyway.
Christine struck a bargain. In exchange for me telling her all about my
secret boyfriend, she would accompany me to a sex store and help me
purchase a butt plug to stretch my ass. I figured I could lie about Jean-Luc
and that it was a good idea to come up with a cover story about who I’m in
love with anyway, and we drove to The Stag Shop after school earlier this
week with our heads held high. Other than being asked for I.D. at the cash
register, no one in the store so much as gave us a second look as I purchased
the heavy plug with the red jewel at the end.
“He’s thirty-five,” I told her, shaving five years off Jean-Luc’s age but
still eliciting a shocked look from Christine. Too late, I realized I was still
too close to the truth.
“What?” she snapped indignantly. “How did you meet him?”
 “I, uh, I used to babysit for him. He’s divorced.” Christine’s eyes were
wide as saucers.
Imagine how she would react if I told her the truth, I thought.
But what’s done is done, and once I’d told her that version of the story I
had to stick to it, constantly adding new details that I thought might make it
more palatable for her. ‘He acts younger than he is,’ I told her. ‘His wife got
custody of the kids, so he doesn’t have them anymore.’ Every lie I added to
make it sound better only seemed to make it sound worse. At some point, I
started thinking the truth would look better in comparison.
When the teacher’s phone alarm rings, she orders us to put down our
pens and collects our papers, and then Christine and I head to our lockers
together to clean them out. It’s our very last day at school. Our last day in
this building, our last day as high schoolers. And, I can’t help but wonder,
maybe our last day as friends. Ever since I started telling Christine about
my older boyfriend, ‘Jack,’ it’s only seemed to make her angrier and more
judgmental, like I’ve disappointed her somehow by not dating a pathetic
teenage pothead like she is.

We’re sitting on the benches out front of the school with vinyl shopping
bags full of crap from our lockers when Kye and Eric stroll up to us,
looking cocky and confident. They must be the two tallest guys in our
school. Side by side, they make quite the sight.
“Can you believe we’re done?” asks Eric, sidling in beside Christine
and then almost immediately sticking his tongue down her throat in
greeting. I roll my eyes at Kye, who cocks a grin.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “You guys wanna hit the beach?”
“Yes!” exclaims Christine.
Three pairs of eyes turn to me. “I can’t.”
“Holland.” Kye shakes his head. “When did you become such a drag?”
I hesitate a moment too long before replying, so Christine does it for
me. “She’s got plans to lose her anal virginity to some thirty-five year old
man who likes to date teenagers.”
“Christine! What the fuck?”
“Am I wrong?” She puts one hand on her hip. “I literally guarantee you
were the only twelfth grade student writing her English exam with a butt
plug up your ass today.”
 “Whoa, Holland!” Kye’s eyes look like they’re about to burst out of his
head. Eric says nothing, staring at me with shock and fascination.
“Jesus, Christine.” It was no secret that she disapproved of everything I
told her about ‘Jack’ but I didn’t expect her to use it against me. Sharing
that information with Kye and Eric is vindictive and cruel.
Christine shrugs innocently. “Sorry if I let the cat out of the bag.”
“Who’s the thirty-five year old man?” asks Kye, barely concealing a
smirk. “Your stepdad?”
“Whoa!” Eric yells loudly, throwing his head back with laughter at
Kye’s brazen joke. The thing is, I’m not sure it is a joke. He’s grinning, but
his eyes search my face curiously.
“No,” I say hotly. “It’s none of your business.”
Kye keeps eyeing me, shrewd and curious, to the point that it makes me
uncomfortable. “So is your dad picking you up from school today, though?”
“Yes,” Christine answers for me. There’s no point denying it. They’ll
see his car pull up any minute now. She directs her question to me. “Isn’t it
weird that you’re going to be sitting beside your dad all hot and horny
thinking about getting your ass fucked?”
“He’s not my dad,” I answer. “And fuck off, Christine. You’re being a
total bitch right now.”
“Oh,” Eric chimes in theatrically, stroking an imaginary beard. “So it’s
totally normal because he’s not your biological dad, just an old man who
fucked your mom.”
“Wait!” Christine’s eyes light up. “Is he your secret boyfriend? Oh my
God,” she looks at each boy in turn. “Imagine? She told me he was hot
once.”
“I did not!” I deny quickly, thinking that, in all likelihood, I probably
did. At one point in my life, it would have seemed like an innocent
observation.
“Didn’t have you pegged as a daddyfucker, Holland,” says Kye.
“Pegged!” snorts Eric.
“Fuck off, you guys,” I say hotly, standing up and swinging my
knapsack over one shoulder. The butt plug sends hot waves of awareness
throughout my body with the sudden movement, nearly making my breath
catch. Christ, through all of this, I’m horny.
“Daddyfucker,” taunts Christine. “I bet you are, too, aren’t you? Gonna
go home and let your daddy put it in your ass?”
 I gape at her, astounded at how quickly she turned against me, just as
something catches their eye behind me and all three of them break into
comical grins.
“Here he comes now!” hoots Eric. “Lucky guy!”
I turn to see Jean-Luc’s Jaguar rolling up to the curb behind me.
It’s one thing to make fun of me, but it’s another thing altogether to see
the three of them laughing at Jean-Luc, delighting in their characterization
of him as some kind of pervert. A protective reflex snaps in me. I don’t
need these kids in my life. And after today, I’ll never see them again.
Besides, I think, catching a glimpse of Jean-Luc through the window,
what the fuck are they even laughing at? Jean-Luc is gorgeous by anyone’s
standard, one powerful hand on the steering wheel, the light highlighting his
strong jaw covered in a rough scrape of beard—a few days’ growth I find
very sexy. He’s driving a goddamn Jaguar, and what do these boys have
going for them? Kye has the Jeep that was given to him by his parents, and
Christine has already told me that Eric has trouble getting off because he
watches too much porn.
These assholes don’t have the right to say anything to me.
“Hey, it’s Daddy!” laughs Kye. “You gonna let him put it in your ass
tonight?”
“Yes,” I hiss, all the rage I feel coming to the surface. “I am.” I pout,
batting my eyelashes, and speak in a little girl voice. “I let my daddy fuck
me all the time, because you know why, Kye?” I straighten my shoulders
and look him dead on. “Because he makes me come so hard, with his big,
man’s dick, and I can’t get enough of it. He’s not some little boy who
doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t have to fumble in basements or
apologize to parents when he gets caught with his dick out. He’s a man.
And he’s amazing.”
I spin on my heel, leaving three flabbergasted faces staring at me, and
wave cheerfully at Jean-Luc’s car. “Hi Daddy!”
Jean-Luc gives me a strange look as I open the car door, like he doesn’t
understand what he’s missing. I throw my bags on the back seat and drop
my knapsack in the footwell and then wrap both arms around his neck.
“Hi sweetie,” he says with surprise.
“Hi, sexy daddy,” I purr, and give him a long, deep, passionate kiss—
right there, where everyone can see.
“What was that all about at school today?” he asks when we get home.
“What?” I ask innocently.
“Aren’t you worried about kissing me like that in front of your friends?”
“No.” I shrug. “But if you think it was naughty, maybe you should
spank me.”
He runs his eyes down over my body, and I know he’s taking in my
schoolgirl uniform, which he loves. When he raises his eyes back up to
mine they’re dark, but guarded. “Spanking is only for punishment.”
“Then punish me,” I say defiantly, a proud little smile tugging at the
corners of my mouth. I can’t wait for him to discover the little red jewel.
But he just shakes his head. “No. That’s not how this works, kiddo. You
don’t get to pull the strings, that’s being bratty.” He puts his briefcase down
on the floor and walks down the hall, away from me. For a moment I just
watch him go.
That’s not how this was supposed to play out.
“Dad!” I call after him as I follow him down the hall. “Dad, listen. It’s a
surprise.”
“Danica,” he turns around to look down at me and lifts my chin with his
hand. “Fuck, you’re delicious,” he says, almost as if to himself. Then, with
more authority: “When you are bad there will be punishments. And I will
not hesitate to punish you. But you will not demand them. You are not in
charge here. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes, Daddy.”
“Good.” He drops his hand and turns around again, continuing his way
to the kitchen.
“But Daddy, I wanted to show you something.”
“After your bath. And your dinner.”
He’s never been like this before, so cold and bossy, and I have the
distinct feeling he’s upping the stakes of the role-play, showing me how he
wants it done.
“But Daddy, I was a bad girl today,” I try.
He turns and looks at me over the kitchen island, raising an interested
eyebrow. “What did you do?”
“I told everyone about us. Kye, Christine, and Eric.”
He frowns. “Sweetheart. I thought we agreed that this was going to be
our little secret.”
 “Well, they provoked me! They guessed it themselves and they called
me a ‘daddyfucker’.”
“And so what did you do?” He narrows his eyes.
“I told them it was true. I told them I fuck my daddy all the time and I
told Kye he could never compete with you!”
His eyes burn through me. “Well, that’s very naughty. I would have
liked for us to talk about that first.”
“So what are you going to do, Daddy?”
“I’m going to punish you,” he answers. “Just like you wanted.”
Jean-Luc
I TAKE A seat on the couch and Dani obediently bends over my knee the
way she’s been taught to do. Although she’s getting what she wants, I’ve
turned it around on her, and now she’s nervous. Asserting my dominance,
something I hope we’ll incorporate into our relationship more and more,
has made this interaction even more enjoyable for me. My cock is getting
hard as she stretches out over my thighs.
I run a hand up the back of her legs, taking a minute to enjoy the sight
of her laid out like this. The uniform is so perfect, so innocent… I love the
feel of the rough wool of the skirt, and her childish little knee-high socks.
I’ve always wanted to fuck her in her school uniform, and the anticipation
of it is making my dick throb.
I run a hand up to her ass, over her panties, enjoying the feel of her
under my hand. I slide a hand under the fabric and squeeze her ass, and
that’s when I notice her panties are very wet. They’re practically soaked
through.
“Dirty girl,” I growl. “What’s got you so hot and bothered?” I pull her
panties down to her knees, rough with the urge to see her cunt, and spank
her sharply.
Her flesh quivers satisfyingly under my hand, and as I drive my fingers
down into the wetness between her legs, I see it: A beautiful red gem
glinting like a ruby between her cheeks.
She’s wearing a butt plug.
“You dirty, dirty girl,” I breathe, my cock straining hard now against my
pants. “Where did you get this?”
“I bought it,” she whispers. “At a sex shop. So I could be ready for you.
For…for anal.”
“You’ve been stretching out your ass for me all day?” My voice is low
and rough, an edge of desperation creeping into it. She’s done this for me.
To ready herself for me.
“Yes, Daddy.”
 “Holy shit,” I murmur. “And that’s why you’re so wet?” She nods.
“Because you’ve been ready for Daddy’s dick in your ass all day?” She
nods again. “Good God, Dani.”
I slide a hand further down until I find her opening, slick, swollen, and
ready for me, and I slide a finger into her. Even with how ready she is, I
have to push my finger in, and she moans breathlessly as I stroke her from
the inside.
This fucking girl. Never have I been with a woman more willing and
able to meet all my needs. Not for the first time, a deep swelling of love
rises up inside of me for her. She’s completely perfect…in every way.
I stroke a finger in and out of her tight, juicy cunt as she lifts her hips,
opening herself to me, and then I slide my middle finger forward and start
rubbing her clit. Immediately, she cries out, digging her hands into the
leather sofa cushions.
“Yes,” I murmur. “That’s good. Come for me, Dani. Come for Daddy.”
She shudders, squeezing down my finger, and cries out again as a spasm
passes through her. My cock is so hard, so sensitive, I almost think I could
come from the friction of it against my pants. This scene is too absolutely
perfect, but I want to take it further.
I tug her panties back up as I lift her off of me gently and stand. “Let’s
go upstairs, sweetheart,” I tell her. “I want to play a game.”
She’s adorably complacent as she stands up and smooths down her skirt,
cheeks rosy and eyes sparkling with happiness. She walks towards the
staircase, checking over her shoulder to make sure that I’m following, and I
stare at her ass as I climb the stairs after her.
She pauses on the mezzanine, looking to me to see where I want to go,
and I indicate her bedroom door as I walk to mine. “I’ll meet you in your
bedroom in a sec, honey.”
In my bedroom, I quickly grab the lube from my bedside drawer and
then join her in her bedroom where she’s standing by the bed, waiting for
me expectantly.
I place the lube beside her lamp and undress, carelessly dropping my
clothes on the floor. “Pick up your bunny, sweetheart,” I say in a thick
voice. “And let me see how cute you look with your toy in your arms.”
She grins then—crooked and sweet—and reaches for the stuffy, tucking
it under one arm and kissing the top of its head. “Like this, Daddy?” she
asks cutely.
 “Perfect.” I take a minute to enjoy the sight of her, stroking myself with
one hand. She’s a fantasy come true in her school uniform and braids, her
innocent pout and stuffed animal. A fantasy I never imagined could be so
real. “Now I want you to get on the bed on all fours, and keep Bunners
close in case you need him. You can hug him for reassurance, okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly, eyes wide. She’s nervous. She climbs onto the
bed on her knees, Bunners under one hand, and looks sideways at me.
“Good girl.” I smile proudly.
I walk around the bed and make her move back to the edge, positioning
myself between her feet. I tuck my fingers under the top of her panties and
pull them down to her knees, right where I want them. It’s all part of the
look. I want the plaid skirt, the knee socks, the panties right where I can see
them. I want the stuffed toy and her two braids, and her nervous blink when
she looks at me. My little girl. My wife’s daughter.
Forbidden.
I press the head of my cock against her pussy and rub it slightly against
her hole, enjoying how wet it is, before pushing myself in. She’s tighter
than ever with the jewel in her ass, and she gasps loudly as I stroke myself
in and out of her tight cunt until I have to stop myself abruptly, dropping
my head and taking ragged breaths. I’m so close to coming already. I slide
myself out with a shiver, heart hammering, and then run my thumbs over
her cheeks, admiring the beautiful jewel peeking out between the two firm
muscles of her ass.
“Do you know how to take it out?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No.”
“You need to push it out, while I pull.”
“Oh.”
“No need to worry, it will just take a minute. Now do as I say.” I hold
the sides of the jewel and pull lightly and she gasps in surprise as it slides
out.
Her asshole is perfect, tiny and dark pink from the weight of the plug. I
place the plug on her bedside table and pick up the lube, pouring it
generously over her hole, and rubbing it down my shaft, already wet from
fucking her. Then I return the lube to its spot and press the head of my cock
against her ass with glorious anticipation, taking a deep breath before
pushing in slowly and then holding, just like the first time I had sex with
her. She drops her head and breathes in sharply with pain.
 “Just relax,” I say soothingly. “Hug Bunners. It won’t hurt for long.”
Slowly, I push in a little further, noticing with pleasure that she picks the
toy up with one hand and hugs it against her. “Good girl,” I murmur,
continuing to push slowly into my little sweetheart’s ass while she grunts
and pants, my cock throbbing with exquisite sensitivity. I’m right on the
edge, and I don’t know how long I will last with the tight squeeze of her
virgin asshole.
I’m fucking my stepdaughter in the ass, I think with incredulity, the
unbelievable events of the past six weeks still somehow unreal to me. I’m
fucking her in the ass and it’s so fucking tight.
“Ow!” she cries.
“Sorry, baby.” I hold where I am, but I can’t stop my cock from
twitching inside of her, and she yelps once again. “Just try to relax.”
When I’ve managed to go in all the way, I pause, letting her get used to
it, and I take a minute to take her in: plaid skirt flung up over her back, and
two neat braids falling over her shoulder. She’s leaned over to rest one
cheek on her pillow, her mouth parted as she breathes through the
excruciating sensation. Beneath me, her two perfect white thighs quiver, her
panties around her knees, and my big cock planted deep within her most
forbidden hole.
I move slowly until she’s able to relax into the rhythm, fighting off my
orgasm as best I can, gasping and grunting and barely holding on as my
teenage stepdaughter’s virgin asshole squeezes every inch of my cock. Soon
I’m holding her hips, moving more naturally, and so far gone I’m seeing
stars as I plunge into her. “Fuck, baby,” I moan. “Your tight little asshole is
so good for my cock. Oh, sweetie. Daddy loves fucking your ass.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she gasps, little exclamations punctuating her words as I
ram into her.
“You’re going to make Daddy come in your ass. Do you want my cum
in your ass, sweetheart?”
“Yes! Daddy!” she breathes.
“That’s good. You’re such a good girl. Such a good fucking girl for
Daddy.” I groan helplessly as a tsunami wave gathers up inside of me.
“Such a good fucking girl, taking Daddy’s cum in your ass. Oh fuck, I’m
going to come, baby. Oh fuck, I’m going to come.” Blackness slams down
on me, and I’m only vaguely aware that I’m digging my fingers into Dani’s
hips, lifting myself up onto the balls of my feet as I drive myself as hard
and deep into her ass as I can. When my awareness comes back online I
realize I’m crying out in a deep, guttural wail. “Fuck!”
Everything releases. Every ounce of tension, every thought I have,
everything that I am, shakes free as I spurt violently into her. Every spasm
seems to make her ass squeeze tighter around me, and I can barely move
until I feel my own cum easing the passage out of her. When I pull out, it
pours down the inside of her leg, making her reach for it in surprise.
“I got it,” I say with a chuckle, reaching for a Kleenex. “I got it.”
I run the Kleenex up her leg, gathering my cum in it, and then use
several more to wipe us both down. When she stands and turns to face me,
her face is radiant.
“Was that good?” she asks with a hopeful smile.
“Incredible,” is all I manage. I don’t have words for what I’m feeling. I
don’t know how to articulate that Dani has just handed me my biggest
fantasy on a silver platter, that she’s everything I’ve ever wanted in one
unbelievable package.
“Incredible,” I murmur again, wrapping an arm around her neck and
pulling her down onto the bed against me. I hug her as tightly as I can,
burying my nose in the sweetly comforting smell of her hair, and notice that
she’s still hugging her toy to herself. That toy I bought her all those years
ago for her birthday. How could I ever have imagined what a role it would
go on to play in our future.
Jean-Luc
OVER THE SUMMER, Dani and I settle into a new kind of life together,
one that feels like a hybrid of our many roles.
By day, Dani takes a pre-university course at the University of British
Columbia to improve her chances of admission when she applies next
spring. I drive her to school, pack her lunch, make dinner, and take care of
her as I always have.
But at night, in the privacy of our home, we take on new forbidden
roles, exploring a taboo that fulfills something unique in each of us. For me,
being Dani’s Daddy is about more than the taboo role-play. I enjoy the way
it intersects with BDSM and allows me explore domination, as well as
satisfying my need to express my love through caretaking. Being Dani’s
protector and provider adds a dimension of meaning to my life I didn’t
know that I was missing.
In our new dynamic, Dani discovers a sense of security that I see
reflected in her confidence. She’s happy and carefree knowing that she can
count on me to look after her.
More often than not, we sleep together in my bed, unless something
about our play involves her sleeping in hers, and as time passes, I begin to
think longer and longer term. What will Dani and I look like next year? In
five years? In twenty?
We’re happy in our cocoon, playing our dirty little games in secret, but
we can’t continue like this forever. Eventually we will have to put it behind
us.
Or we will have to stop hiding our relationship from other people.

Bob comes over for dinner in mid-August, a few weeks before Dani will be
starting her internship at our firm in the fall. We haven’t seen much of each
other since his daughter’s wedding, but I expect that will change now that
he’s shared he’s divorcing his wife.
 I always thought that Bob had all the power in his marriage. His wife,
Cynthia, always seemed to be working at their relationship, while he didn’t
appear to make any effort at all. But I ran into Cynthia last week coming out
of a Soulcycle class and she was positively glowing—happier than I’d ever
seen her. Bob, conversely, seems to be spiralling into drink and depression.
When he arrives at the house, he’s carrying a good bottle of scotch I
know he’ll drink at least half of, and can’t seem to take his eyes off Danica.
“She’s really grown up, hasn’t she?” he says when she excuses herself
to use the washroom. He watches her walk away from the table.
“They grow up fast,” I say guardedly, not sure I like the way he’s
looking at her.
“Yes,” he sighs in agreement. “That’s so true. Enjoy this time while you
can. Before you know it, she’ll be getting married to some lout like her
father.”
“No offence,” I say archly.
He looks at me in surprise. “Oh sorry, no—not you. I was talking about
myself there. Sarah’s husband…well, I’m not sure I set the best example for
her.” He takes a swig of his drink. “Yours’ll do fine, though. If she meets a
man like her daddy, she can’t go wrong.” He winks, innocently enough, but
my jaw tenses at the inadvertent parallel he’s drawn.
“Yes.” I clear my throat. “Well.”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about a particular future with Dani—one with
her as my wife.
It feels like a silly, impossible fantasy, but the thought has gripped me
and I can’t let it go. If ever I loved anyone, it’s Dani. Nobody has ever made
me feel the way she does. Nobody has ever besotted me so completely. But
regardless of whether we ever get married, if we’re ever going to be
together, really be together, it starts with rewriting the script about who we
are to each other.
It starts in moments like this.
My lungs get tight as I prepare to speak, and I take a deep breath. I
know that Dani wants us to stop hiding who we are, but it seems easier to
bring it forward to Bob when she’s not at the table, to spare her whatever
his initial reaction is going to be.
“About that…” A strange, weightless feeling comes over me. “Dani and
I, uh, well, our relationship has changed into something a bit…different.”
He looks at me blankly.
 “It’s more…it’s become something, uh, more…romantic.” I stop
abruptly, unable to think of anything else to say, and then lift my drink to
my mouth and take a sip for something to do.
Bob blinks. “You and your…daughter?”
“Stepdaughter,” I correct him. “Ex-stepdaughter.” Out of the corner of
my eye, I see Dani returning to the table and cringe at my own timing. She
smiles curiously at both of us as she takes her seat, probably wondering
why we each look so uncomfortable.
I take another deep breath. “I was just telling Bob,” I explain to her.
“About us.”
There’s a half second where she looks confused, like she doesn’t
understand what I mean, and then relief washes over her face. “You were?”
She blinks incredulously.
“Yes.” Her reaction makes me care less about Bob’s. It’s pure joy for me
to see her this way. I will do anything to make her happy. It doesn’t matter
what people think.
“Wow,” Bob says, still looking stunned. “Sorry. This is taking a moment
to compute.”
“Of course.” I tear my eyes away from Dani’s glowing face to look at
him. “I didn’t mean to shock you. But I do want to be honest with you.”
“Yes,” he says emphatically, nodding his head. “Please. Always. Listen,
I can’t judge. I had…I mean, I actually had a sort of similar relationship
myself.” He waves a hand, indicating that none of the details are important,
but I’m fairly certain he’s talking about his affair with Cynthia from the
office. “I mean, she wasn’t my… But there were certain elements… It
doesn’t matter. Look, if you’ve found love with each other then I think
that’s great.”
“Thanks, Bob,” I say with surprise. I had thought this might be a longer
discussion, or a less pleasant one. He seems to be taking the revelation
rather well.
It occurs to me that while I’ve often judged Bob for his choices, some of
which have seemed immoral to me, I haven’t really given him credit for
how non-judgmental he can be of other people.
He leans in and speaks in a low voice. “But, uh, how are you going to
play this? You know, around other people. What’s the plan?”
“Well,” I scratch my chin, where I’ve been letting a beard grow in, and
lean back in my chair. I turn and look at Dani as I answer his question.
“Maybe we don’t play it anymore, you know? Maybe we’re just honest
with the world about who we are.”
Dani’s eyes light up, and she nods, pressing her lips together.
“There’s no one we really have to hide it from,” I continue, turning to
Bob. “Dani’s eighteen and we don’t even know any of Mel’s family. My
family is in Switzerland and we’re not that close. They never even knew
Mel that well. Really the most important person to tell in my life…is you,
Bob.”
He nods, like he really gets it, and says, “I’m honoured that I’m an
important person in your life, Jean-Luc, and I’m glad you shared this with
me.” He takes a deep breath and reaches for his drink again. “This, uh,
this…relationship I had, the one, ah, before. Well, it really taught me a few
things, you know? She helped me to realize that not everybody fits the same
pattern. We’re not all cookie cutter versions of people. We don’t have the
same life stories, you know, things…” he waves a hand again, “things go in
different directions. No one’s the same. If being together is what makes you
happy, then you have my complete support.”
“Thank you,” I say, with all the gravity that I feel the occasion deserves,
and Dani claps her hands.
“So that’s it, then?” she asks me. “Just like that? We’re out of the
closet?”
I laugh warmly and shrug. “We’re out.”
“Ee!” she squeals and jumps up from her chair, wrapping her arms
around my neck. “I’m happy about that, Jean-Luc.”
I pat her back. “It’s time.”
“This calls for another drink!” declares Bob, topping up our glasses
with the scotch, and pouring a little into Dani’s empty water glass.
“Hey.” I try to stop him but he gives me a solicitous look.
“Oh come on. You just finished telling me she was all grown up!”
Dani sticks her tongue out at me, victorious, and picks up her glass,
holding it out for a toast. I clink the heavy highball glass against hers, and
then Bob’s, feeling strangely unburdened for the first time for so long.
It’s out. It’s not a secret anymore. We’re just going to be who we are.
Dani puts a small arm around my shoulder and leans against me, resting her
cheek on my head.
“Look at you lovebirds,” says Bob warmly. “You’ll be the next father of
the bride…” His face freezes, stricken. “I mean…”
 Dani bursts into laughter, and I can’t help it either. “We know what you
mean,” I say, laughing.
“The next wedding could be yours!” he tries again.
“Yes,” I say, looking at Dani. My laughter trails off into a warm smile.
“It could be.” She looks back at me happily, beaming love, and I know for
certain that our day will come.
Danica
“THESE PLANS ALL need to be reviewed by Jean-Luc,” says Cynthia,
dumping a stack of folders in my arms. In the year that I’ve been interning
at Kearns & Rochat, Cynthia has become a friend, even though I maintain
that she’s far too glamorous to hang out with me. “Drinks later?” she adds,
as I turn to walk to the door.
“Sure,” I say with a smile. It’s only been a couple of months since my
nineteenth birthday, and it’s still a thrill to order drinks in a bar. Cynthia and
I have been going out after work about once a week ever since I became old
enough to drink.
It’s nice to have a friend—someone who actually likes me. With
Cynthia, I can be myself. She never judges me or turns cruel.
I haven’t spoken a word to Christine, or anyone else from high school,
since the day of our final exam. For a while, Kye was bugging me on social
media, but now I’ve deleted all my accounts. Maybe it’s strange to say, for a
nineteen year old with no social media accounts or friends my age to speak
of, but…I feel happy.
My steps are light as I walk down the elegant, silent hallway of Kearns
& Rochat towards Jean-Luc’s office. I received my acceptance letter to the
University of British Columbia’s Architecture program yesterday, and I still
can’t believe that I’ll be starting school in just a few weeks. It feels like I
have everything I’ve ever wanted: a friend and a soon-to-be career, a future,
and, of course, the love of my life…
I knock briefly on Jean-Luc’s door before opening it, and he lifts his
head to greet me with a smile. “Hello, sweetheart,” he says warmly.
“Hi, boss.” For just a minute, I want to linger in the doorway and watch
him. He’s beautiful—my love, my man. His jacket is hanging over the back
of his chair and his sleeves are rolled up, exposing thick, muscular forearms
and his treasured silver watch. His eyes glint warmly at me, deep chocolate
brown, and I can barely see the cleft in his chin since he’s been keeping a
trim beard—but I know it’s there. “These are all for review.” I drop the
folders on a corner of his desk and turn to leave.
“Hey, wait, hang on,” he calls. “What’s the rush? Don’t you have a kiss
for your boss?”
I smile indulgently as I walk over to him, remembering the role-play we
acted out in this very office last night. He turns in his chair and takes my
hips in his hands, leaning up to kiss me.
“I’m going to miss having you around all day,” he says in a low voice,
running his hands over my skirt until he’s cupping my ass.
“You can still have as much of me as you like at night.” I smile.
He groans. “Oh, but I can never get enough of you.”
“It’s only four years, Jean-Luc.” Tenderly, I run my fingers into his hair,
pushing a lock back off his forehead.
“Yes. And then you’ll be here during the day and I won’t have you at
night while you’re doing your Masters degree.” Jean-Luc has promised to
hire me at the firm once I get my architecture degree.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“And then when Bob retires you’ll take his place as partner here, and
Kearns & Rochat will become Rochat & Rochat,” he continues.
I smile curiously, cocking my head. “Rochat & Rochat? You mean
Rochat & Holland?” It’s a little fantasy we’ve talked about a lot, running
the firm together as partners, in a dream future where I’m an architect, too.
“No.” He shakes his head with a small smile. ”Because after we’re
married I’m hoping you’ll drop your mother’s name and take mine.”
Heat blooms on my cheeks. That’s something we’ve talked about too,
getting married, but it seems like such an impossibly perfect dream I almost
don’t dare hope for it.
This time, I swallow my fears, and talk about another dream I almost
don’t dare hope for. “And then, when there are little Rochats running
around it will be very clear we’re all a family.”
“That’s right,” he smiles. “Little Rochats,” he repeats dreamily.
I always wanted my last name to be Rochat when I was growing up so
that people would think Jean-Luc was my real father. Now I want it to show
I belong to him in a different way. I never really was a Holland, anyway—
what significance does my mother’s name have for me?
“Then when they grow up the firm will be called Rochat, Rochat,
Rochat, Rochat, Rochat & Rochat,” I grin.
 “Wait a minute,” he laughs. “Just how many children are you planning
on having?”
“As many as you’ll give me.”
“Funny girl,” he says, kissing the tip of my nose.
“But when you’re a daddy, Jean-Luc…will you still be my Daddy?”
He growls, pulling me towards him. “Little girl, I’ll always be your
Daddy,” he murmurs. “Don’t you forget it.”
“Yes, Sir.”
There’s a knock on the door and then Cynthia opens it, just as Jean-Luc
and I are quickly stepping apart.
“Sorry,” she says with a knowing smile. “Just wondering if you were
joining us for the two o’clock call, Jean-Luc.”
“I’ll be there,” he says, straightening his tie nonchalantly.
She smiles and ducks out and Jean-Luc turns to me. ”Lock the door.”
“But you have a meeting!”
He checks his watch. “It’s in ten minutes and right now Daddy needs
something from his little girl first.”
Heat coils in my belly. I will never be able to get enough of this man,
and luckily for me, it seems he can never get enough of me either.
“Yes, Daddy,” I say, looking up at him from under my lashes.
I lock the door, and when I get back around to the other side of his desk,
he’s pulled his cock out and is stroking his huge erection.
“I want you to suck Daddy off and make him feel good,” he says in a
low, throaty voice. “And then tonight at home Daddy’s going to return the
favour.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I say sweetly, wrapping my lips around his thick cock
and running my tongue along the underside of his shaft. He groans loudly,
rolling his head back and making wetness pool between my legs.
I take him as deeply into my mouth as I can, working his shaft with my
hand and sucking on the head of his cock while he talks a stream of filth to
me, as usual. I can never get enough of my dirty daddy’s filthy mouth.
“You like that cock, little girl?” he asks me, and my response is muffled
as I moan in the affirmative. “You like sucking your daddy’s cock, don’t
you? You want a big mouthful of Daddy’s cum?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I breathe, breaking the seal for a moment to respond, and
inhaling before I take him in my mouth even deeper than before, until the
head of his cock is hitting the back of my throat.
 “Oh, fuck, baby, you’re making Daddy feel so good. You’re going to
make Daddy come. You’re going to make Daddy come and he’s going to
give you his big load.”
“Mm,” I vocalize indistinctly.
“Here we go, baby.” I can feel his orgasm coming. His balls tighten, his
shaft quivers, and his moans become fast and helpless. “I’m going to come
in your mouth. Daddy’s going to give you all this cum.”
I pull back just enough to let his cum pool in my mouth without hitting
my throat and making me choke, and then I swallow it down, running a soft
tongue up and down his shaft while he trembles.
“Was that good, Daddy?” I ask sweetly.
Of all the roles I’ve come to play for Jean-Luc—stepdaughter, lover,
friend, subordinate, colleague, partner, future wife—this one will always be
my favourite. His cherished little plaything, the apple of his eye.
“That was perfect.” He smiles. “You’re my perfect little girl.”
 Other books by Astra Rose

Haven
Stepbully
Dominant
Daddy’s Girl
#1 - Daddy’s Girl: A Taboo Stepfather Romance
#2 - Pleasing Daddy’s Friend: A Taboo Stepfather MFM Romance
#3 - Daddy’s New Girl: An Inappropriate Age-Gap Romance
#4 - Sharing Our Daddy: An Inappropriate Age-Gap FMF Romance

A Splash of Cream at the Alabaster Cafe

In the Shadow of the Beast
 Haven
“What’s scaring you, Hannah?”
“Nothing,” she answers quickly. “It was just a dream.”
“You’re running from somebody,” I persist.
She’s quiet for a moment, then, “Yes,” she says quietly.
“Your boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
So you stole his car. I wonder what lengths a man might go to to regain
a $200,000 car.
I wrap my hand around her head and kiss her hair, making her sigh.
“Are you in danger?” I ask.
She pauses for a minute, as if she’s considering the question. “Maybe.”
There’s a cracking sensation in my chest. I barely know her, but the
thought that someone hurt her makes me see red. Rage floods my veins,
sudden and unbidden, and I take a deep breath to calm myself down.
“You’re safe here,” I tell her, keeping my voice even. “We’d never let
anything happen to you. You couldn’t be in a safer place.”
 Stepbully
I grab her arm and point at the box of torn comic books on the floor. “You
need to clean this up,” I say in a snarky tone. I don’t know why, but it feels
good to let her know this doesn’t change anything. We’re not buddies now.
Her smile falls and she narrows her eyes at me. “You’re such a jerk,
Cole.”
“Yeah, and you jerked it real good for me, thank you.” I grin. The look
in her eyes is pure poison.
“Fuck you,” she spits out.
“Oh, you will. You did a nice job of getting me off tonight, but your
debt’s not paid yet.”
She scowls, but her eyes widen, revealing her fear, and it’s fucking
delicious.
I lean over her. I’m much taller than her, and I enjoy emphasizing our
physical difference. “One handjob isn’t going to do it, sweetheart.”
She stares back at me, her cheeks flaming red, and I blow her a kiss.
 About the Author
Hi, I’m Astra Rose :)
I write about powerful men who are powerless against their desires.
My stories explore taboos and power imbalances, including age gap and daddy kink, and I’m proud
to write stories that make you feel something. I believe that smut is (actually, physiologically) good
for you.
Hailing from the icy-cold nation of Canada, I have no choice but to write steamy dark romance and
hot erotic fiction in order to stay warm. This is also why my words contain so many extra vowels.
I’m an INFJ, a Scorpio, and my D&D alignment is True Neutral. I’m interested in Simulation
Theory, the multiverse, and non-local consciousness theories. What even is reality?

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