20 comments/ 45834 views/ 18 favorites Reality is Different Ch. 01 By: nomennescio She could feel him standing there behind her, just a foot or so away. See him past her in the mirror, towering above her, filling up the little bathroom. Smell the whiskey on his breath, heavy in this early afternoon - even hear it, a trace of slurring there amidst his smirking drawl. "Well, look at you." The words were drawn out slow and lingering. "What're you getting all tarted up for?" Firm. As firm as she was able, anyway. "I have a date tonight, daddy." She resolved not to look at him, not to notice his gaze in the mirror, focused rather lower than her eyes. Just paid attention to the tube of lipstick in her hand, spreading out its careful sheen of scarlet on her lips. "A date?" He almost scoffed. "With who?" "A boy from school." Lipstick done. Mascara... "You don't know him." "Keeping it a secret, huh?" Closer now. His chest an inch behind her back - she almost jumped to feel suddenly his hand stroke down her outer thigh, crossing from her dark red dress onto bare flesh. "You girls and your secrets...showing off your legs." And then back up again, the fabric sliding slightly on her skin as his fingers crossed her stomach, rose up on her breast. Found her nipples, already peaking up a bit despite herself. "Hell, you ain't got a bra on. Little slut...you gonna put out for this boy of yours?" "Daddy!" She tried to sound shocked, to be admonishing. To push his hand away with hers, for what good it ever did. "Stop it! I'm not. It's our first date, okay? He's nice." "'Nice.'" A grunt of humor in his tone, repeating it. His hand retreated now, but only just - it still was slipped around her waist, holding her against him. Her ass pressed back against him, and she could feel his hardness there against the bottom of her spine, long and firm. Shameless. Reckless. "I've heard that before...just means he don't know how to treat a hot little slut like you." His other hand lifting up the bottom of her dress, forcing down between her thighs to tease her pussy through the silken surface of her thong. "Means I'll have to take care of you when you get home all hot and bothered, won't I?" "You never have to do any of that." Crossly. Mostly cross, a breathless shiver sneaking disobedient into her voice as his fingers slid insistently against her, massaging through the fabric at her clit. He knew her too well, knew her body, how to make her wet...she squirmed a little in his grasp, a token try for freedom with her hands still occupied, knowing how useless it would be. "I could get you in trouble for this, you know. If I called the police..." He laughed at that, arrogant, self-assured, and she loved and hated how it sounded roughly in her ear, how it tingled down her spine. "Trouble, nothing." And his hand dove beneath her thong, slipped on skin already growing damp with her excitement, his middle finger gliding slowly along the channel of her lips. Not quite going inside her, not yet. "Cops come out here, they'd just need one look to see I'm doin' a god-damn public service. God knows what you'd get up to if I didn't keep you satisfied." "Daddy..." It was hard for her to focus, hard to speak. He was so infuriating when he did this. Not least because he was so good at it...she could hardly find the will inside her to resist him as he bent her down over the counter, brusquely yanked down her thong with her dress still hiked up around her waist. Suddenly exposed, the cool air blowing agonizingly across her wet and heated puss as he now cupped it from behind, squeezed it possessive in his grasp. Pathetic little words. "Daddy, stop. He'll be here soon to pick me up. I have to get...ahh..." She couldn't help the cry that tumbled out of her as his finger forced her open, plunged deep inside her with just that perfect touch, as her hips instinctively pushed up and back against him, pleading to be taken. "There's my little slut." Affection in his tone, amidst the drunken gloating. Joined by the sound all too familiar of his zipper pulling open, the sensation of his cock so hard and hungry pressed against her entrance. The bottle of mascara tumbled on the counter, forgotten. "Still want me to stop?" "Mmph." She groaned a little, her cheek pressed into the granite countertop. Feeling his cockhead sliding teasing on her thickened outer lips, his hand upon her back, holding her in place. "Just..." Trailing off. She didn't want to say it. He always made her say it. "What's that, now?" She could hear the feral grin upon his lips, delighting in his control. Taunting her. The slow, unbearable rhythm of his thickness rasping just against her, her lips barely parted on its length. A breath, before surrender. "Just fuck me, daddy. Just...quickly, please." "'ts more like it." One hand on her waist, holding her steady - then she squealed softly, mewled with sensation as she felt him force his way inside, filling her up, pressure on the edge of pain. A groan behind her, lustful and commanding. "Fuck...you got such a tight little pussy, baby girl..." "Ahn..." She could answer nothing more coherent than that, hands grasping helpless for the edges of the counter as his manhood scraped against her inner walls. So big, reaching up into her depths, making her feel so damned full when he stopped for just that briefest moment at the apex. Her hips rolling back against- Bang! My eyes are startled from the glowing screen by the sound from downstairs of a door slammed closed. Shit. I didn't hear him pull up. A rush of color sears abruptly on my cheeks as I quickly close the browser window and leap up from my seat, struggling to button closed my jeans about my waist. Dashing to the bathroom in the hall, to clean off any trace or scent that might reveal what I was doing. There's a certain paranoia even just with this - what if he hears the faucet running? What if he wonders why I would happen to be washing up just as he was coming home? What if... "Sarah, you up there?" His voice booms up the stairwell, and I can only pray my own sounds normal as I call back down. "Yeah, I'm home!" Staring across the sink at the girl looking back at me from inside the mirror. The woman, I guess. Theoretically. Doesn't feel all that much like it, particularly with the childish blush still glowing stubborn on my face, embarrassed and aroused, lingering there for anyone to see despite my sternest efforts to glare it down, away. I shouldn't even be reading that stuff anymore. I told myself I wouldn't. It's messed up, is what it is. Crazy. Makes me think of crazy things. Daughters with their Daddies... I wasn't even aware of it, until recently. I mean, I'd heard about dads who abused their kids, but that's just depressing, not the same thing at all. I'd never heard about them voluntarily together, about the girls who liked it...it was only a month or two ago that I was looking at a website for anonymous confessions, and happened across one entitled "Daddy's girl" - a certain curiosity tickled in my chest just from that short, familiar phrase, an intrigue that I could not name. The author was a woman, or at least she claimed to be. She wrote that she'd been sleeping with her father since she was a teenager, that she loved it, loved the way it made her feel. That it had started one night when they were watching a movie together on the couch, when his hands slipped down to where they never had before, touched her in the places that a father doesn't. That he'd been the first man she went all the way with...maybe even more shocking than all of that was her admission that even now, with her married to another man, she still often saw her dad behind her husband's back. And though she was faithful enough (ha!) to keep it just to blowjobs and some petting, she said that she was wavering on even that. That for all she loved her husband, he didn't make her feel the way her Daddy did. I wasn't even sure if I believed it, when I first read her confession. Or even now, to tell the truth. People really did that? It seemed incredible, impossible...and yet somehow quietly compelling. Like a car crash you can't quite look away from, or a cliff that urges you to step up close and peer over the edge, even as your stomach clenches tight in terror of the drop below. Her account was simply stated, even euphemistic, not touching overmuch on the lurid details of what went on between them - but my heart still beat a rapid patter when I was finished reading, fascinated and appalled. It stuck with me that evening, that night, laying sleepless in my bed as the notion worked its way slowly through my mind. As I tried to decide what I thought of it, if I even believed that it was true or just someone's notion of a joke, an invented tale to rile people up. Trying to imagine what it would be like if it were real, what I would feel if my own dad one day just put his hand upon my breast, what I would say or do. If I might even like it. I didn't have an answer to any of those questions. Not then. But it captured my imagination, a quiet ache of intrigue; I read her confession over again the next day, poring over every word, and this time there was no question of my excitement as she told of how he'd sometimes leave her mother's bed to see her in the night, how he'd volunteered to chaperone her senior prom only for the two of them to slip away together while her date was left alone to mind the punch. It was insane. It was awful - but that was part of what made it so enthralling. To think of someone doing something so forbidden, so dangerous and wrong...it was a tingle up my spine, a hushed and breathless thrill of feeling. There were other stories, too, when I looked for them. Other confessions, similar but different. Different relations - kissing cousins, brothers with their sisters, mothers with their sons...but it was the tales of dads and daughters that I really looked for, that set my pulse to race. Reading sometimes just about an isolated moment, a singular event; a man who felt his daughter up while she lay drunk and passed-out on the couch. A girl who'd crept into her father's bed one night after being dumped. Sometimes about affairs that went on for decades, the women twice as old as me, their fathers senior citizens... It wasn't long at all before I'd exhausted everything which that site had to offer, or at least what I could locate on its creaky interface. But I found other places, when I cast a wider net. Not confessions now but stories, fiction - they were just as electrifying for me to read, maybe even more. What they lacked in credibility was made up for in wildness, in sheer abandon, reading about girls who happily declared themselves their Daddy's slut, his slave, or about fathers who taught their innocent and wide-eyed little girls how to please them, how to suckle at their cocks 'just like a lollipop.' I lost myself in every story, excitement pulsing damp and hungry down beneath my stomach as I held the vision in my mind of a girl stripped and trembling before her Daddy's eyes, squeezed beneath a stern and loving hand. Fingers slipped into my panties, rubbing slow and soft, nurturing the creamy warmth that sweetly flowed inside me as the stories played out in my head. Letting it collect between my thighs, until my breath comes deep and rapid, until I can do nothing more than just surrender to the feeling, close my eyes and bite my lip as I frantically frig myself across the edge, as- Enough! Enough. I glare at myself in the mirror, toss a splash of cooling water on my face to finish off the simmer of arousal that still lingers on my cheeks. I don't need to think about this now. I shouldn't think about it now. There's more important stuff to worry about. Sort of. The aging wooden staircase creaks in half a dozen places as I finally make my way downstairs; it opens up into a mid-sized living room full of slightly ratty furniture, clustered vaguely around a television set that had been new once, years ago. A tall and sturdy figure standing there, looking out the picture window to the street outside as I step quietly into the room. My dad. My daddy - though I haven't called him that in years. Different from the ones that I've been reading about. The father in the stories is always an Adonis, his body cut and chiseled from endless hours in the gym. Never really looking more than maybe thirty-five, his rugged, handsome face by some miracle unwrinkled, and just a dash sometimes of salt mixed in amidst his gorgeous head of hair. The pinnacle of masculine perfection, his merest glance enough to drench the panties of any woman he might encounter, young or old. A stranger or his kin... I mean, I love my dad, and I guess I likely see him through a daughter's eyes. But all the same, that isn't him. He's a big man, strong and stout, but he's got a little belly going - nothing too bad, but I can't pretend that it's the sort of body that would win him Mister Universe. His dark and wavy hair is thinning at the top, the hairline higher on his scalp than it is in photographs we have from years ago; I can tell that bothers him, from the jokes he makes sometimes about getting a toupée, the tiny note of sadness in the smile he gives me when I tell him that he's being silly, that he still looks fine. And when I look for them, it isn't hard to find the crow's feet standing at the corners of his hazel eyes, nor the laugh lines there around his lips, a legacy of all his easy, friendly grins. There's one now, in fact, sunny in his features as he turns to greet me. "Hey-a, sweetie." One thing alike the stories - his teeth still perfect, sterling white, shining at me through his smile. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but how come you're still hanging around here today?" "Why wouldn't I be?" The question comes out half rhetorical - I already know the answer. I guess. I just want to hear him say it. Or maybe I'm pretending that it isn't true. He laughs, anyway. He has a nice laugh, solid and hearty. Genuine. "Well, gee. I could have sworn that today was your birthday. The big two-oh, comes but once a lifetime." Affection in his gaze, warm and vibrant. "Shouldn't you be partying it up with your friends? Staying out until all hours, leaving your poor old man to wonder if you haven't gotten yourself killed?" From someone else, to someone else, there might have been a shade of ugly accusation to this seeming of a joke. But I'm not much of a party girl, and he's not exactly controlling - far from keeping me at home, he's usually the one to urge me out, to try to push me past my mild shyness. Introversion. Whatever you want to call it. "Eh." I just shrug, vague and noncommittal. "I don't really want to make a big deal out of it." "Well, that's just ridiculous," he gently chides me. "What could be a bigger deal than your birthday?" Gestures grandly with his hands - he has big hands. Sturdy, like the rest of him, roughened by his work. I often find myself thinking about them, these days. What those hands could do. Where he might pinch or squeeze, or penetrate, if he wanted to. If I wanted him to. He glances at his watch; I do the same, reflexively. A little after four. "Well, tell you what." Just the slightest note of bargaining, slipped in amongst his cheer. "It might not be the coolest joint in town, but you can have a party here. Call some friends over, I'll clear out so I don't cramp your style. Maybe I'll pick up a cake or something, if you're not too mature for it these days. Or, heck, if you ask nicely, I might forget how old you are and pick up a case of beer. Whaddaya say?" I have to laugh a little at the offer, roll my eyes. "Well, number one, it's a Friday afternoon, so everybody's already going to have plans. Two, like I said, I don't even feel like a party. And three, even if I did, I don't drink." "Really?" He affects surprise, raises one eyebrow with tolerant amusement. "Funny thing, I often seem to find an extra empty or two in the recycling after you have friends over." Embarrassment touches briefly to my cheeks, and I look away, glancing out the window. Autumn there outside, a scattering of brown and golden leaves fallen in the yard. I know that soon enough he'll be out there to rake them up, putting in his hours in the sun, coming back inside with the scent of his exertions. Another difference. In the stories, a father's sweat is the strongest aphrodisiac, a powerful and manly musk whose slightest whiff leaves his daughter humming with desire. With him, it just smells like sweat. Not bad - not exactly. Just... "Anyway, I don't drink much." "Well, that's good to know." A crooked smile hangs for a moment on his lips before falling to a more sincere expression. "Look, if you really don't want a party, I guess that's up to you. But you should do something. It's a milestone, after all. Not a teenager anymore. Not technically, anyway." Another flash of pearly white. "How about we just get a nice dinner at your favorite restaurant?" "La Cabaña?" It's silly how much I brighten up at the suggestion. But I do like going there, and we haven't been in quite a while. "As far as I know, yeah, that's still the one." He chuckles mildly, confirms. "What do you think?" "Well..." I hem and haw a bit, but really, there's no reason not to. I mean, it's expensive, but...what the hell. He's right, it is my birthday. "Okay, okay. Fine." "Good." His eyes crinkle up a little at their corners when he smiles. Strange, sometimes, the things you notice. "Guess I'd better get changed. Don't want to show up looking like a bum, in a dirty work shirt. And you, young lady," already moving towards the bedroom door, he abruptly whirls around to point at me, frowning in a momentary artifice of sternness. "Are going to order something new this time. No more enchiladas." A little huff of laughter escapes me at the warning. I do get the same thing there pretty much every time we go. What can I say, it's delicious. But dad's always after me to broaden my horizons. "All right!" I throw up my arms in mock surrender. "I promise. Something new." "Good," he repeats, quietly affectionate. Looking at me for just half a moment longer before he turns again to trundle up the stairs. Normal, totally, the same kind of little parting glance he's given me forever. No reason I should feel my heartbeat thumping faster in my chest. But it feels like a date, almost. A little. The two of us going out together to a fancy restaurant. I've read stories like that, a girl and her father thrown together for an evening in some romantic setting. He sees her in the candlelight, or yields to her urging for a dance, and suddenly he realizes the woman she's become, realizes the desire that he's never admitted, even to himself. She feels it too, tension electric in the air between them as they slip into flirtation, the spark of primal hunger in her Daddy's eyes as they caress across her body, poured into an outfit tight and daring. An outfit. I glance down at myself, suddenly dismayed. And what am I wearing? A plain and faded t-shirt I've had around practically forever, and a pair of jeans already worn for two days in a row. Dad's not the only one who needs to change. I mean, obviously none of that stuff is going to happen with us. But I can still try to look nice for him. As nice as I'm able, anyway. --- That's a challenge of its own. Upstairs again, gazing discouraged into the full-length mirror fastened to the inside of my closet door. Standing there in just my light blue bra and panties, taking inventory of myself. Depressed, as always, with what I find...my dad may not be quite the same as all the Daddies in the stories, but he's a hell of a lot closer than I am to the daughters. They're always glowingly beautiful, sexy, sultry. Silken hair and flawless skin. Small enough of stature that they can easily still curl up in their Daddy's lap, or be turned over his knee. Slender bellies, and massive, heaving breasts, so large that he can't help but stare, can't help but want her. Can't even fit one completely in his hand, when he fondles her at night. Reality is Different Ch. 01 But me? Ha. I didn't even grow out of an A-cup until I was seventeen years old. I'm thin, too thin, tall and lanky like some teetering performer pushed up onto stilts. Taller than most guys I meet, which of course makes me super popular with them. I remember when I was younger, fifteen, sixteen, reading a magazine interview with a supermodel who said that she was awkward and skinny in high school herself, before her body eventually finished blooming - I waited for so long for the day when that same thing would happen to me, when I'd wake one day to find my lean and gangly figure transformed into a thing of grace and elegance and beauty. By now, I've pretty much given on that. I'm just a bony, gawky girl. Woman. Whatever. Freckles on my face, moles on my back, my arms, my legs...they're tiny, but I can always see them when I look, dark little splotches that are never going to go away. And my hair - no matter what I do with it, it only seems to want to lay down limp and flat upon my scalp. Sandy brown, lighter than my dad's. Bland. The whole package is bland. "Sarah, plain and tall." Murmured sour to the mirror, the way I have a million times before. It fits me to a T. Not the kind of body that would haunt a father's dreams. Not the kind that most guys would even glance back over their shoulders for. And it shows - what have I had, two boyfriends? Three, counting the handful of dates I had with Mark? Maybe I'm only getting into this 'Daddy' shit because I feel like a father is the only man would even care about me. Blah. Self-pity. I quirk a broken smile at myself in the mirror - I'm no stranger to it. It burns savagely, but quick. And there's a certain solace at the end of it, once you've torn into yourself for all your faults...I don't think that's it, anyway. The reason why I find this so exciting. There's something else in it, something powerful and scary and comforting all at once. Forbidden. And anyway, I'm pretty sure my dad wouldn't do anything like that even if I were the sexiest woman on the planet. It's just a fantasy. Just pretend. Harder than I'd like to hunt through the outfits I have hanging on the rack; I need a bigger closet. Or maybe fewer clothes. Track shirt. My old prom dress. Thick brown winter coat...in a story, a girl in my place might decide to slip into a low-cut top and a ridiculously tiny skirt. She might 'accidentally' give her Daddy a good look at her panties as she got into the car - or even go without them, to tempt him, tease him with the briefest little glimpse of her naked puss. Brazen. About a million reasons why I can't do that, why I wouldn't; the most immediate of them is the fact that I don't even own a miniskirt. And it's not like I'm actually trying to act out one of those stories here. I just want to look half-decent, if I'm going somewhere special with him. Here's a possibility. A moderately long black dress of slightly shining charmeuse, slim and fashionably asymmetrical, with just one shoulder strap. I bought it half on impulse (and on sale) when a friend offered to take me clubbing, an adventure that I didn't much enjoy - it's just been sitting in my closet ever since. Not like I have much occasion for it; the look is somewhere between formality and daring, neither one of which is exactly 'me.' But tonight...maybe. It's the work of moments to undo the zipper on the back and step into the dress, to tug it into place, the fabric sliding smoothly on my skin. Not a perfect fit - it's a little tight around my hips, and loose (of course) around my bust. But I think it makes my legs look nice. Draping down on one side to my shin, and on the other only to my middle thigh. Makes me feel very...adult. Which I guess is only right, for this. The neckline even shows a little cleavage, and would likely reveal more if I had more to reveal. The notion flits across my mind of stuffing my bra, something that I haven't done for years. Just to fill it out a bit. I mean- "Sarah?" Dad's voice rumbles from outside the door, derailing my train of thought. "You in there?" "Yeah, dad!" No time to worry about it, I guess. Silly, anyway. He's not going to be looking. "Just getting some new clothes on." "I didn't mean for you to change." He sounds mildly amused, even muffled by the door; I can hear a quiet thump as he leans back against the wall to wait. "All right. Don't take too long, though, or I'll leave without you." Right. I roll my eyes at that, a smile tugging on my lips. Trying to hurry up a little through the rest of my preparations. Shoes - some nice black flats. Dad would have a good few inches on me even if I did wear heels, but still. Jewelry - I hesitate a little before picking out a simple pair of tiny silver hoops from the box on my armoire. Subtle. I think that works best, here. Hair - flat and disobedient, as always. I let it be. Makeup...bleh. I don't have the time or the skill or the no-doubt-vast collection of cosmetics that would be required to make me beautiful, but I can at least accentuate a bit. Eyeliner and mascara, to bring out my lashes. A touch of perfume, the bottle given as a gift from my grandmother last Christmas; it smells a bit like cinnamon and apples, sweet and spicy. Lipstick painted careful on my lips - typically I just use gloss, but today I reach instead for the tube of crimson that I bought and almost never dared to use. The color of it seems almost garish as I press my lips together, survey the overall effect. Eye-catching. 'Painted up like a whore.' That's what the Daddies in the stories sometimes say, when they catch their daughters sneaking out in too much makeup. Telling her that he has to teach her a lesson, as one strong hand holds tight around her wrist, the other rips away her too-revealing clothes. That if she dresses like a whore, he's going to treat her like a whore...I don't really have on that much makeup at all, of course. But the lipstick is a little daring, even by itself. I remember the writer of one story went on and on about his daughter's lips, how full and plump and luscious they were. How hard he'd get, watching her licking clean her lips after a treat of glazed doughnuts, or pancakes and syrup. "Dick suckin' lips," he called them - an ugly, vulgar name, but one that still inspired in me a certain jolt of unspeakable arousal. Particularly as he later wrote about them wrapped lovingly around her Daddy's cock. About looking at her down there on her knees, his hand tangled in her long blonde hair, watching as that ring of soft, plump scarlet slid slowly back and forth around his shaft, as it was painted bit by bit with the smearing of her lipstick on his skin. About the perfect seal they made, permitting not a single drop of precious cum to slip away before she swallowed, and took her Daddy's seed inside herself... I shiver just a trace, thinking of it, and the hint of redness on my cheeks isn't from cosmetics. It shouldn't be so alluring an image. It really shouldn't...I try to pillow out my own lips a little, pursing them, pushing them together, but it only makes me look like a duck. Of course. Whatever. I'm ready. Ready enough. And a little nervous, for no reason I could coherently explain. I have to take a couple calming breaths and fix the smile on my face before I can bring myself to open up my bedroom door, step outside again. Dad's still waiting on the other side, of course, dressed up nicely now himself. His mouth already parting for some cheerful crack or comment - but he falters as he looks as me, stumbles on a vague and half-formed fraction of a word. Shakes his head and chuckles for a moment before he tries again. "Well." My muscles tense inside of me, anxiety I didn't realize I felt. God, I hope I don't look too ridiculous. "I guess maybe I should go back and put on a tuxedo or something. I'm still going to look like a bum if I walk in next to someone dressed like that." Faint relief runs swiftly through me, solidifies the smile on my lips. He likes it. Or he's acting like he does, anyway, which is...it's good enough. "Don't be silly, dad." The words hum brightly from my tongue. "You look fine. You look..." Handsome. No, I can't say that. He does, though. Dark brown slacks, a lighter jacket hanging open over a cream-colored shirt, a trifle worn. The top two buttons sit undone, revealing a hint of chest hair there beneath. He looks a little like the mobsters on those TV shows, drinking with each other in the back of smoky rooms - save for the friendly, honest sparkle in his gaze. His eyebrow lifting lightly upward...shit, I just trailed off in mid-sentence, didn't I? Um. "Uh, good. You look good." "Good enough, eh?" Self-deprecating, as he often is. I can see his pupils flitting here and there across my outfit, upon my features. Holding for a moment on my lips - I bite at one a bit, thinking unavoidably again of what the story said. "Well, so do you. If a little more grown up than what I'm accustomed to." His gentle smile softens any judgment that there might be in the statement. "You all ready to go?" "Yeah," I vigorously nod before remembering I'm not. "Or, well, just about. If you could just zip me up in back..." And I turn around to present him with the zipper, the last few awkward inches still undone. Waiting, as he murmurs his assent. This could almost be a moment from a story, that breathless, shameless voice inside of me is eager to declare. I don't think I've read one quite like it, but it's easy to imagine. The daughter needs help with her outfit, with a stubborn zipper that simply won't obey. Her Daddy, there to lend a hand...but he can hardly focus on the task, looking at her. Distracted by the vision of her body, her slender neck, her shoulder left exposed. Maybe she's skinny, like me. Maybe he likes that. His gaze drifts slowly down her back, jealousy and hunger abruptly burning in his chest as he tastes her with his eyes, as he sees his little girl dressed up like a woman and knows that something must be done. Knows that he must remind her who her Daddy is, that he must teach her she belongs to him, always and forever, before she starts to think that she can just grow up and slip away. One hand grips firm upon her shoulder, steadying. The other on the wayward zipper - but he doesn't pull it up, the way he said he would. Down instead, a smooth and steady motion revealing the bare skin of her back, broken only by her bra clasp. She's too shocked to say a word, standing stiff and helpless as he reaches up again to pull away the single shoulder strap and let the slinky dress tumble off her body to the floor. Abruptly almost naked, and she feels the heat and subtle menace of his presence there behind her. Wondering- Dad's hand touches on my shoulder, and suddenly my heartbeat hastens twice as swift; I have to consciously control my breathing to keep it sounding mostly normal. A tickle in the middle of my back as his thick fingers fumble with the tiny black tab of the zipper, and for a moment, I almost think that maybe...but no. Of course not. He just zips it up, solid and secure. "There you go." Brightly spoken, no quaver in his voice that might signify a struggle with his conscience, with his inner demons. Why would there be? I'm his daughter. He's not like that. I'm sure I'd know it if he were - something would have happened to reveal it, in all the years before. "All right." My own voice sounds a trace unsettled, scratchy; I have to swallow quietly to try to get it back to normal. Turn around again, not quite looking in my father's eyes. "Let's head out, then." --- The days are getting shorter. The sun is low already in the sky as we park outside the restaurant and walk in the front door. Still darker in than out - it's a cozy place, romantic even, lit by candles in colored sconces on the tables and a few low-wattage bulbs hidden in recessed fixtures. Conversations held in murmurs inside lavishly appointed booths, while elegantly-dressed waiters scurry swiftly back and forth with steaming plates of food. Mom and dad went here together sometimes, before I was around. Then it was a place for all of us, a special treat. Now it's just for dad and me...though we haven't been here for a while, in light of the expense. Hard to justify. Still, I'm glad that he suggested it. Sometimes we have to wait around a while for a table to be ready, but it isn't quite as bad as that today. Not long at all, in fact, before we're ushered to a booth, brought past clinking glasses and quiet, throaty laughs, couples gazing at each other in the candlelight. I'm trying to be halfway reasonable, to ignore the foolish thoughts that have been crowding in of late. But I still can't help wondering for a moment if the host that leads us thinks we're one of them. A couple. A pair of lovers, out for a romantic night together. Do we look like one? Hard to miss, of course, how much older he is than me. But that doesn't have to mean so much. He could be in a midlife crisis, a pricy sports car in his garage and a college girl on his arm. I could be looking for support, for comfort, for a sugar daddy. (Funny that they call it that, isn't it?) Or I could just like older men, more mature, more experienced - at least, that's what people say. I don't really have the experience myself to judge. Or I could just be earnestly in love, not care about the difference in our ages. There's no ending to the reasons why we might be together. If he thinks we are, though, or even that we aren't, he doesn't give a hint of it. Perhaps in his position, you learn to show no sign of any such assumptions...he just leads us to our table in sleek, efficient silence. Sits us down - I hesitate a moment before slipping in beside my dad on the same side. I think that's better, right? I mean, if this really were a date, we'd be seated opposite, so this is...I don't know. Maybe I'm just being weird. Too late now to switch. The host leaves us with the menus, and I'm more than glad to bury my face inside of mine. To distract myself with it, hunt for some delicious meal while dad murmurs quietly beside me, half to himself, about his own possibilities. "Hello!" I've hardly even had the time to glance at appetizers when our waiter shows his face. A sturdy black moustache and a mild Spanish accent. "My name is Miguel, and I will be serving you this evening. Our specials tonight are the pollo asada, and a salmon taco plate which I can assure you is very, very good. Would either of you care for anything to drink?" Dad glances expectantly at me, and I answer automatically. "Uh, I guess I'll have a diet coke." My standard drink. Go through too much of the stuff at home, really. "Very good," he makes a discreet scribble or two on the tiny pad of paper clutched in his hand, turning to my dad. "And for you, sir?" Dad flicks a moment through the menu, thoughtfully, before looking up again. "Do the specials still come with a glass of wine?" And as the waiter affirms it with a nod, he smiles decisively. "Then I suppose that's what I'll be having." "All right," the waiter brightly agrees. "And what variety would you like? We have just received a very fine pinot noir from a winery in Portugal, although I would confess that I am partial myself to the Dawson Ranch cabernet sauvignon. Particularly if you are having a meaty dish, it is quite magnificent." "Yes, well..." He shrugs carelessly, glancing down the wine list. "Ah, I'll just have a white wine, I think." A subtle eyebrow lifted from the waiter, as I smile to myself. Dad's about as far from a wine snob as you can get, at least in someone who still drinks the stuff. The man at least recovers his composure quickly. "Of course, sir. White it is. I will be back shortly with your drinks." No sign in his tone, or in his stance as he swiftly walks away, that it was anything but the most refined selection possible. "Honestly, father. White?" I can't resist teasing him a little bit, of course. My voice raised high and posh with the affectation of an aristocratic accent. "He'll think you're a barbarian." "Well, then he'll be right. I'm thinking I'll just order a big hunk of beef, eat it raw." A jaunty grin, effervescent in his expression. "You sure you don't want anything stronger than a soda?" "I'm sure." I shake my head a trifle. "Besides, I might have to drive us home, if you're going to wine it up tonight." "Takes more than a single glass to have much effect on me. More's the pity." He chuckles softly. "Anyway. Pretty sure I'm going to get that pollo asada. You know what you want yet?" Another tiny flutter of my head, negation, as I pick back up the menu. "Not yet. Gimmie a minute." Looking down again across the endless rows of entrées. Silly, but it's difficult for me to even focus on the words. I just feel a little weird tonight. Here. Probably the birthday's a big part of it. I mean, jesus, I'm only nineteen. Twenty. I ought to be enthusiastic about getting older, being an adult. But somehow, I'm just...not. I guess I maybe feel like the world's gotten darker in the past few years, like the brightest moments of my life are in the past. When mom and dad were still together, when it wasn't faintly shameful for me still to live at home. When I hadn't disappointed dad by getting rejected from all the universities I applied to, having to go to a junior college instead...he didn't say he was disappointed, of course. Didn't even act like it - but how could he not be? After all the encouragement he gave me, all the times he helped me when I struggled with my math...I cried, when the last response came in, when I saw that damned 'unfortunately' standing like a scarlet letter in the first few words. I couldn't help it. I'd thought for sure that even if my grades weren't great I'd at least get into one of them. Each rejection hurt a little more, took a deeper bite out of my remaining hopes. When my final chance was dashed, I felt like someone punched me in the stomach, struggling to breathe as tears welled up helpless in my eyes. Dad had been there, giving me some privacy as I opened up the letter but still half-watching from the kitchen; he didn't have to ask me what it said. When he saw me crying, he just came in and put his arms around me, hugged me softly while I wept into his shoulder. Told me it was no big deal - I could just take classes at the community college and then transfer to a four-year. Lots of people do it. He'd taken some required courses at one himself, in his own university days. No big deal...yeah, right. But it made me feel a little better anyway, to have him say it. To have him hold me close and tender, like it didn't even bother him that his only daughter was such a failure, like he wasn't ashamed of me. It was different, then. I hadn't read about this crazy stuff yet, hadn't got the notion of it in my head. A hug was just a hug - comforting, calming. Like a fire in the winter night, pushing back life's chills and sorrows, a warm embrace in which I might easily slip off into a peaceful rest. Now...all of that's still there, but there's an added tingle when I think of it, a nervous tickle in my spine that wasn't there before. Remembering a hundred dirty stories where a father's hug is just a prelude to affection rougher, deeper, stronger. It's not that I want that kind of thing between us. At least, I'm pretty sure I don't. But the image of it still dances in my mind, thrills teasingly along my nerves. I can feel him sitting next to me, his warmth, his presence just half a foot away. He's seated on my dress' shorter side; if he wanted to, he could just reach down and lay his hand upon my knee, squeeze it softly in his grasp. Possessive. Would I like it, if he did? I don't know. It'd be shocking, most of all. He's never done anything to hint that he would have that kind of interest in me. I think I'd be too surprised to stop him, to push his hand away. I'd just sit there frozen as his fingers closed upon my skin, firm and self-assured. As his hand began to move, stroking in a gentle little back-and-forth that brings it slowly upward on my leg, until his fingers sneak beneath the edges of my dress, curl smooth and confident onto my inner thigh. It's an all too easy thing to see, to imagine, to feel myself already warming with his touch, squirming slightly in my seat with the sensation of his thumb drawing slow across my private flesh, his fingertips brushing softly on the gusset of my panties, and the little kiss of pleasure that it gives me shivers slickly up my spine. Reality is Different Ch. 01 "Daddy," I'd whimper to him, whisper pleading and pathetic, mindful of the eyes around us. "You can't, not out in public. Somebody could see..." I don't dare to push away his hand away myself - I know that's not my place. He just chuckles there beside me, deep and easy, unconcerned. "Well, then you'd better not make any noise, hadn't you?" Teasing, as his hand slips in still further, hiking up the bottom of my dress under cover of the table. His fingers scraping on my skin, tracing bold along the little valley where my thigh joins with my hips. Already I can feel the subtle tickle deep inside me, dripping damp between my petals, the flow of my arousal stirred to motion by his touch. Fear and pleasure deliciously commingled in my belly as I strive to do as he suggests, as he commands, biting at my tongue so that an inadvertent moan or murmur won't reveal what he's doing to me. So that he doesn't have to stop... He doesn't even look at me, frowning at his menu as his fingers slip beneath the waistband of my panties to glide and wet themselves against my dewy lips. As though it takes him no attention whatsoever to make me feel this way, for his idle hand to play my body like a harp - my heartbeat thunders in my ears as his middle finger insinuates itself between my folds, touches lazily upon my pearl, and despite the need for silence I can't help a little gasp, a cry that sounds like I'm in pain. A word, "Daddy..." - I'm just a puppet here beneath his hand, my hips mimicking his motions, pressing hopefully against his finger as it slowly circles round my button, my body trembling and hot, and I'm sure anyone who looks can see it, can see my daddy slightly smile as I grab frantic for the table edge and struggle to withstand the rising tide of- "Here are your drinks." The professionally sunny voice of the waiter yanks me back to reality, my eyes opening for real to see him set down a wine glass and a plastic cup of cola. My heart is pounding, and I can only hope the darkness of the room will hide the heat upon my cheeks. Damn it. What is wrong with me? "Are you ready to order?" Shit! I didn't even figure out what I wanted. "Yeah, I'd like the special you mentioned earlier, the pollo asada." Dad answers first, while I scramble through the menu. 'Sopas?' No, I don't really feel like soup. Burritos? Well, maybe one of them could be good, but god, they've got like fifteen different kinds... "Very good." A subtle sound of scribbling beside me. "And for you, señorita?" No time. "Um." There's a little quaver in my voice, still unsettled by my daydream - I search desperate through the listings for a few more seconds before giving up. "I guess I'll have the enchilada dinner, the one with the rice and beans and everything. Beef." "Yes, of course," the waiter genially agrees, scratching down the order before collecting up our menus. "I will try to get those out to both of you with all due haste. Don't hesitate to flag me down if there's something else you need." It's not until he strides briskly off again that I hear dad's exaggerated sigh beside me. I almost don't dare look at him. The fantasies aren't usually about him so directly. Not with his face, his voice, his hand. They're just about somebody's daddy, not mine. Not with me. Not really. I can practically still feel his fingers on my leg; to look him in the eye right now would be...I don't know. But it's not like I can just ignore him. I have to take a breath, steel myself to look half in his direction. To see one eyebrow raised, the sardonic little smile on his lips as his voice pretends at tragedy. "Another promise broken." I can manage laughter - a trace of it, at least. The nervous blush still warm upon my face, tight inside my throat. "Yeah, well..." Words. I need words, I need something I can say. "I guess I'm just a, a creature of habit." "Now that's something I believe...I imagine I can forgive you for it, just this once." His words don't carry quite the humor that they often would - it's muffled by a tone of faint concern, a wrinkle on his brow as his eyes find mine still skittish and evasive. "You all right, sweetie?" "Sure." What else can I say? A chipper smile pushed onto my lips; I force myself to meet his gaze, not to flinch away. Get a grip, Sarah. "Just kind of a big day, you know. How was work?" I'm sure he doesn't miss how obvious a dodge this is - I can see his eyebrow lift a trifle, taking note. But he doesn't challenge me on it. "Entirely too productive, I'm afraid." Spoken just a little rueful, as he takes a sip from his wine. "The second storey's already completely wired up. There was actually an error in the schematics that they gave me that would have likely shorted out the power if anybody drew more than ten amps or so from the bathroom outlet, but I was able to catch it before I started that section. Of course, if I had half a brain in my head, I'd have just wired it to spec first, then discovered the mistake, torn it down and done it all again to get three times the pay. I know the guys working on the piping downstairs wouldn't have hesitated two seconds to do a thing like that..." The smile on my lips becomes a bit more real, settles into place as I lean back in the seat with my glass in hand, listening to him ramble on. Not so much to the words - more just to his voice. He has a nice voice, kind of rough and deep, warm and resonant. A quiet rumble in it, like the purring of a cat, or maybe of a lion. Soothing. I used to fall asleep to it, ages ago, listening to the bedtime stories he made up for me. The adventures of Princess Sarah, finding treasures and fighting dragons. Now...it's still a comfort to let the words flow over me, to let them slow the rapid, guilty patter of my heart. It's just a little daydream, a wandering imagination. Hardly a surprise, with the stuff that I've been reading. Probably a lot of women have such thoughts, momentary fantasies about men they wouldn't really ever do anything with. Even about their fathers. It isn't a big deal, if I don't let it freak me out so much. I do feel a lot more normal, more myself, by the time our food arrives. Steaming plates, piled high, hot enough that the waiter warns us not to touch - I dig into my meal with gusto, chattering freely now between mouthfuls of enchilada soaked in mildly spicy sauce. Joking with him, the way we often do. Laughing. Enjoying myself, my time with him. That's something the stories don't have, don't bother with. They're all about the lust, about grunting, sweating, fluids spurting, bodies stretching...they don't talk about the smaller, honest pleasures. About the warmth and comfort just of sitting there beside him for a meal. About the goofy face he makes to show me that I've got a string of melted cheese dangling from my lip. That's more precious, anyway, I think. I wouldn't trade it for any steel-eyed Daddy with a sculpted body and a foot-long cock. Dad's the first to finish, pushing in his plate as he takes another sip from his second glass of wine. I'm still working on the remainder of my beans and rice. "So." His voice is lightly teasing. "Twenty years...is that old enough for me to start annoying you about grandchildren?" My answer lies somewhere between laughter and a groan. "I think I need another decade or two before I'll start worrying about that." He laughs as well, an easy, rolling baritone. "I think I may have said the same thing to your grandma, right before I found out that a certain someone was pregnant with a certain someone..." I just roll my eyes and hmph a bit. "Don't think I really need to worry about that, either, the way my love life is going at the moment." "Now that," he utters somewhat dryly, "is a complaint that I am all too glad to hear." Belied a moment later by the note of sympathy that creeps into his tone. "It's not all that bad, is it? I know you went out with that one boy not too long ago, what was his name...fellow who showed up in a baseball cap." "Greg." It comes out like a groan. "I'd say it was a pity date, but I'm not sure which one of us was pitied. Maybe both...he spent practically the whole time talking about this TV show he liked. I mean, maybe it's a funny show, but come on." I'm exaggerating a bit - the date wasn't that bad. But neither did it much endear him to me, and when he tried to invite himself inside afterward, I just...I don't know. Freaked out a little. Practically demanded that he leave, didn't even talk to him in lecture the next day. Not a great success. There's a lot more satisfaction in complaining about it, a certain playful spark inside my breast. "I don't really know if boys are doing it for me anymore." "Oh?" One bushy eyebrow shoots high, genuinely taken aback - it's a moment, and another sip of wine, before he tries an answer. Circumspect. "I didn't actually realize that you had any, ah...inclinations, in the other direction." "What?" Confusion slides into a mild blush as I realize what he means. What he thinks I meant. "Oh, no. I didn't...not like that, I'm not...uh. I was just saying, thinking I should maybe look for someone more mature." A tickle of excitement, saying it, despite my fumbling embarrassment. "Someone older." "Oh my god." His turn to groan. "Don't tell me that. You ever show up on the doorstep with somebody my age, and I'll disown you." Silence. Suddenly I don't know what to say, my lips just hanging open, barely parted. The blood abruptly rushing from my face. I didn't expect the strength of this response, even clad in humor. And the quiet brings a cutting self-reflection - what exactly am I even trying to do? Flirt with him? Now that would be messed up. And stupid, too. Obviously when I say 'someone older,' he's not going to think I mean him. Which I don't, even, of course. I'm just- "Hey." A look of worried reassurance in his gaze - my sudden scurrying of panic must be all too plain. And realizing that makes my stomach squirm a little more. "Sweetie, I'm kidding. You know that." A pause, a beat before he speaks again, cautiously. Inquiring. "Are you...I mean, is there someone you're involved with, like that? Is that what this is about?" "Dad!" My laughter sounds forced, even to my own ear. "Of course not! I told you, I'm not, there isn't...I'm just talking, you know?" God, why do I have to be such a weirdo. "Talking nonsense. You should probably just ignore me." "I see." He doesn't sound entirely convinced. But as before, he doesn't challenge me. Never does, basically. It's not his way. I remember once when I was little, I broke a lamp by playing around in the house, and then denied that I had done it when he asked what happened. He didn't make a single accusation; instead, he 'called the police' (holding the receiver down, I later learned) to report that someone had broken in and smashed his favorite lamp - his favorite. Then he told me how glad he was that I was safe, that whoever had done it hadn't hurt me, too. I wandered off, consumed by guilt, and lasted maybe fifteen minutes before rushing back in tears to confess the truth. I'm not a great liar anyway, but ever since then, to my dad, I just can't do it. Even hiding things from him makes me feel uncomfortable. Especially when he looks at me all sincere and caring, the way he's doing now. "Honey, you know the only thing I really care about is that you find somebody who treats you right. Who you love, and who loves you back. I mean, I'd like to think I'm open-minded." He chuckles wryly. "As long as you have that, it doesn't really matter if you're with a boy or girl. Or even some old codger, I suppose. Okay?" "Okay. I know." Softly. I do, too. It's hard for me even to imagine how a father could be more supportive than he's been. If I were gay, I don't think I'd be a bit afraid to tell him. Well, maybe just a bit, but...it'd be so much easier to say than what's really going through my mind. The babble of my foolish inner voice, thinking about what he said. Someone I love, who loves me back, who treats me right. Only one man I can think of who fits that description. Stupid, Sarah. Get your head on straight. I fork up another big bite of mingled rice and beans, so I don't have to speak. Leaving dad to pipe up in my place, adding "I'll say, though, it'll make this old codger feel a little better if you at least try to find somebody in your own age group, first. Not that I've had a huge amount of luck with that, myself." A slight, self-deprecating smile, overwhelmed a moment later as he cheerfully declares, "Now, I'll bet you're wondering about your present." "Dad," I groan around my food. Swallowing before I continue, chiding. "The dinner is enough. More than enough. You don't have to get me anything." "Good!" His brown eyes glitter brightly, mischievous. "It's much more fun to give because you want to, anyway. Giving because you have to is just a chore." Nodding at my food. "It's in the car...are you about done, or would you like to get some dessert first?" "Oh, no," I shake my head, emphatic. "I couldn't eat another bite. Don't think I'm even going to finish this." The cheese congealed as it cooled, making what remains a rather unappetizing mess. "I figure I'm about ready to head out." "All right, then." He swiftly downs the remainder of the wine that he's been nursing, and hails our waiter, and it seems hardly a moment later that the bill is paid, that we're walking through the quiet parking lot back out to the car. There's a chill now in the air, the temperature descending with the fall of night, but I still hesitate a little before crowding close against my dad for warmth. Self-conscious. I mean, it's not like it's anything I haven't done before. We're not super feely with each other, I don't think, nothing out of the ordinary, but I've never been afraid of getting close to him. Leaning against him as we walk, or together on the couch...not like in the stories, of course, where even at eighteen the girls still climb up eagerly into their Daddy's lap. Just normal stuff. His arm around my back, sometimes, comforting and warm. "Here we go," he remarks unnecessarily as we stop before the car. It's nothing particularly fancy, not a sports car or a Lamborghini or an expensive Jaguar or anything. Just a regular sedan, getting near a decade old. Dark red paint, somewhat faded. "Now, I'm afraid I didn't wrap it," he unlocks the trunk, "So you're going to need to close your eyes." Obediently, I shut them, an indulgent smile tugging softly on my lips. He loves the ceremony of these things, the familiar rituals. I guess I do, too, though it makes me feel a little childish to admit it. Surprises on my birthday. My hands held out expectantly before me, waiting for my gift...I can't quite keep my mind from wandering, thinking once again about the stories that I've read. A few of them were centered around birthdays, though it seemed like it was always the girl's eighteenth. I can practically imagine how it would go, if this were one of them. Seeing it in my head. I'd be on pins and needles, excited, wondering what my Daddy got me, even while a secret part of me knew that all I really want is Him. That I want nothing given to me so much as I desire to be taken. Trembling a little from the cold and from his nearness, my eyes held firmly closed at his command, I would truly not expect the warmth and pressure of a pair of weathered lips kissed suddenly to mine, of strong arms circling around my back. But my shock is melted to delight as swiftly as he lifts me up into the air, crushes me so sweetly against his chest. Liquid fire flowing in my hips, my legs already wrapped around his waist - he kisses roughly, nibbles at my neck, growling as he descends that he's been waiting years to give this gift to me. I can feel now exactly what it is, the steel rod that's pressing hot against my inner thigh, thick and tall and hungry. The present every little girl wants, her Daddy's cock, hard and throbbing just for her. My nipples ache and tingle, my body fairly shivers with anticipation as he sets me down atop the trunk, as his hand slips beneath my dress to rip away my flimsy panties and I feel suddenly the chill of evening air blowing slow across my flushed and dewy flower. My eyes still raptly shut, absorbed completely in sensation as he brings one calloused finger there to ease between my thickened, sopping lips, probing there inside me, preparing my untrained body for the moment soon to come... This time, it's the sound of the trunk slammed shut that jolts me back to reason. Frustration, anger at myself pounding hot at the back of my skull for the ease with which I slipped into the fantasy, for the trace of dampness that I feel between my thighs. This is ridiculous. Doubly ridiculous. Even if my dad were somehow attracted to me, he sure as hell wouldn't do something like that in the middle of a goddamn parking lot. And I'm not even going to both trying to think about what he would do, because he isn't, and the whole thing is absurd. And I wouldn't want him to be, anyway. It would only make things insanely complicated, awkward, no matter what some people claimed in a few 'confessions' that were probably as much a work of fiction as the stories. It's just a fantasy about control, about authority, about obedience. It's not really- I almost jump as something touches on my hands, before suddenly remembering what I'm doing, why my eyes are closed. Large and flat. A slight weight to it, a texture like that of glossy paper. I can't quite place the feeling of it, despite the sense I have of its familiarity...Dad's voice rumbles pleasantly before me in the same moment, warm and energetic. "Okay, you can open them again." The first sight that greets me as I open up my eyes is his open, hopeful grin. The second is the record lightly balanced in my hands, still held half in his so I don't accidentally drop it. A simple thing, the design of the outer jacket - a field of black, the left and lower corner filled up with the figure of a suited man in shades of grey, holding in his hands a slightly battered saxophone. Text across the top, printed big and blocky; 'Thomas Parker,' and below it, 'Ice and Stone'...my heart almost stops beating as I realize abruptly what I'm holding. My voice still disbelieving. "Dad, you didn't...is this an original?" His grin widens just a little as he nods; I can only stare, marvel at the relic in my hands. I guess to most people it wouldn't look like much - the jacket all scratched up, faded and marked with age, and god knows what condition the record inside is in, if it's even playable. I don't care. It doesn't matter...it's a piece of history, Tom Parker's first album, released half a decade before he found his fame. They didn't make many of them at all, and a lot were lost, destroyed one way or another even before he made it big. So rare now that even a sleeve alone in good condition can go for hundreds of dollars. "We can't afford this!" It's all that I can think to say, struggling to find my tongue. "How much did you...I mean, how did you even...?" His gentle chuckle rings warmly in my ear. "Wasn't especially easy, I'll admit." A tone of explanation, story-telling. "I started looking months ago. Not just for this - I drew up a little list of rarer records that I thought you might appreciate, though this one was near the top. Called all the music shops within about a hundred miles, plus thrift stores, consignment, that kind of thing. No luck. I was thinking I'd have to give it up, just get you a book or something...until just a week ago, I finally got a lead. At an antique store, of all places. Almost didn't believe it, 'til I drove out there myself." A twinkle in his eye. "I don't think the man there even really knew what he had - he only wanted ten bucks for the record, tried to sell me on the player that it had come with. I gave him fifty, so at least I wouldn't be ripping him off too badly." Reality is Different Ch. 02 It's been a week now since my birthday. Almost a week. I don't feel any different. Or, well. Maybe it'd be more accurate to say that I don't feel any older. Still no sudden bloom of beauty, nor of wisdom or assurance. Still struggling to do better in my studies, to keep my eyes from glazing over as I read the book assigned for English, laying on the bed. The warmth of early afternoon outside my window, close and sleepy. I'm trying to stay focused. I really am. But the archaic words I need to parse keep fuzzing there beneath my gaze, my mind wandering afield. Distractions. That's the difference. One particular distraction, anyway, in a million different forms...I think I might be going crazy, maybe. A little bit. I can't get it off my mind - it's like all I can think about is sex, drifting off into a fantasy at the slightest provocation. Dirty daydreams bubbling up eager in my mind when they find anything at all to hang upon, or even sometimes when they don't. I can't even maintain the comforting illusion anymore that I'm just thinking about someone's daddy, not my own. No mistaking that it's my father that I see before me when I close my eyes. His hands that touch me, his chest that crushes down upon my own, his arms that hold me, his lips that kiss, his erection that presses hot between my thighs... I haven't even seen it. Not for real, despite the crucial role that it so often plays inside my fantasies. In the stories it's always huge, imposing, so that's how I imagine it, but it's not like I really know. I mean...I've seen him naked, but it was a long, long time ago, when I was just a child, young enough to have the just the barest hint of memories surviving to today. Young on earth to wonder what on earth this thing was that I saw dangling between my father's legs, so different from what I had there. It looked big then. But everything looks big, when you're a little girl. Not like it matters anyway, if he is or isn't. Firstly because nothing's going to happen, either way. Secondly, because probably I'd barely know the difference. It's not as if I'm some connoisseur of cock. I've only seen two of them in real life - not counting when I saw my dad's, or any embarrassing-to-remember games of 'doctor' I may have played with the boy who once lived down the street. Two seen, two touched, one tasted...and that's it, the sum and total of my sexual experience. I know it isn't true, but there are times when I feel as though I must be the only twenty-year-old virgin on the planet, when my girlfriends laugh and brag and gossip with each other about the guys they've been with, and I can only sit there quiet, trying not to call attention to myself. Listening to their accounts with mingled envy and dismay. I can't say exactly why I haven't done it. I don't think it's just one single reason. I mean, I've never had guys beating down my door, never had my pick of anyone I might desire. If I did, maybe I would have gone farther, would have wanted to. I'd imagine it's easier, if the guy you're with is the hunk that everybody drools over, someone that drives you crazy with desire, instead of just...someone that was interested. Someone who could make you laugh, sometimes, who could address at least a little of the urges that those teenage hormones raise inside you. Necking on the couch, touching one another in the back seat of a car. Even if they weren't the hottest things on two legs, it wouldn't have been too hard for me to yield to the moment, to content myself with who I had. But I never let myself do it, in any of the opportunities I had. My first time can only happen once - I wanted it to be special, to be with someone special. I guess I still want that. Even if the idea of my virginity as a precious gift is just some medieval, patriarchical anachronism...I don't want to be in a position where I'd look back and cringe, remembering who I gave it to. And I'm pretty sure that's where I'd be right now, if I'd ever given in when either of my former boyfriends had suggested we go all the way. I liked them, both of them, but even at the time I think I knew it wasn't love, that it wouldn't be forever. The thought, the word is an anxious little ache in the middle of my stomach. Forever. Such a stupid thing to fret about. But that's what I do. I think too much. I worry about the ends of things even before I've started. And there's always an end. So how can I give myself to someone when I know that in six months or in a year, we'll be broken up, will be no one to each other? Even if I do love him at that moment, how will I feel about it five years down the road, when he's just that jerk with the ponytail? It's not even a surprise now to find my thoughts drifting in the direction of my dad. Nervous, furtive wonderings. Just - if anything is forever in my life, it's him. Us. I love him, and I can't even imagine how that would ever change. If it were with him, my first time, if I gave him my virginity, if he were willing to take it, it's like it would almost be...safekeeping. God, what a foolish idea. But I mean, I know he's always going to care about me, always going to love me. I wouldn't ever be just that girl he fucked that once, the one whose name he can't even quite remember. He wouldn't turn into a man that I regret I ever saw. If he were the one to have me for the very first time, to make me into a woman...a giddy little pulse of feeling shivers up my spine, then drops back down again, sternly scolded. It isn't a romantic notion. It isn't. But god, it feels like one. Entrusting my daddy with my innocence. Having my first time be with the man that I love most in all the world, who I know would be just as careful as I need, who would do everything he could to make sure that I enjoyed it. Whispers of husky reassurance in my ear as his strong arms held tightly, tenderly around my back, as his hardness pushed between my hips. Pressure growing at my center until all at once it blossoms into pain, my body tearing open for his passage, and suddenly my daddy is inside me and I know with utter certainty that I belong to him... Christ, I'm wet again. Frustration laid atop my simmering arousal, casting round for something it can blame. It's these fucking stories. I forbade myself to read them anymore, and even sometimes kept to that restriction, but they still live inside my head, giving rise to all these foolish fantasies. My imagination imitating things I've read before, and the rest of me is just drawn along behind it as it dreams of what it might be like to be my father's lover, to have him kiss me with ferocity and fire, to taste his tongue as it invades my mouth. Of disobeying his commands and being punished for it, turned over his knee, my jeans and panties yanked down to bunch about my shins. All my struggling is futile against his greater strength, my arm held twisted there behind my back. I can only beg and plead with him, promise I'll do better, before even this is silenced by the electric, agonizing smack of his palm upon the bare skin of my bottom. The sudden pain of it is enough to make me gasp, make tears well up abruptly in my eyes as my body tenses there upon his lap, my muscles tighten - it only makes the next stroke hurt even worse, arches up my spine in anguish as sensation sears along my nerves. Sobbing openly, brokenly as he maintains a slightly varied pace, so that I don't know exactly when each stroke is going to come; my behind glows cherry red from his assault, but beyond the pain, beyond the tears, there's a growing warmth inside of me, a rosy sense of rightness. I know he's doing it for me, to correct me of my faults and failings. I know he only punishes me because he loves me - and as I stop resisting, as I surrender slack across his knees, lift up my hips a little bit to give him greater access, he lets me know of his approval. The steady smacking of his opened palm now interspersed with moments where he pauses, where his big hand stops and strokes along one aching cheek. Caresses soothingly upon my burning skin before the next strike comes, alternating pain with pleasure until I don't know even which one I prefer, until the fragrance of my arousal fills the room and his fingers can slip easily between my sopping lips. Impaling me with gentle thrusts, my labored breathing mirrored to the movements of his finger there inside me, even while his other hand comes down to slap from time to time upon my rear, and I can only softly tremble in his lap, hoping that my fervent cries and whimpers will tell him my devotion, that he knows how glad I am to be his little girl. This time, the daydream isn't interrupted. It only finishes, fades, falls silent and leaves me lying on my bed with a dismal hollow in its place. They always seem so exciting, so thrilling. Or sometimes only quiet, sweet. Imagining what it might be like to wake up naked next to him on some morning after, cradled closely in his arms, feeling warm and safe and fuzzy in my dad's embrace...but it's a dream, a fantasy in every sense. A mirage, all of it. I mean, jesus, there's no reason I should think that I would actually like it if he spanked me for real. He's never done it, even when I was little. But the stories made it sound like something sexy, fulfilling, so that's how I imagine about it, in phrases and in moments that are only copied from some author's pen. Keyboard. Whatever. Just like all the other things that I've been thinking for the past few months, as though a few charged words could tell me how I'd really feel if things were like that between my dad and me. As though it all were perfectly simple, that I could have him as a father and as a lover, too, with not a trace of conflict or of complication between the two. That's the problem, isn't it. Sex is easy in the stories, a simple thing in every way. You hardly even have to think about it - just get close to someone, even your own father, and pretty soon events will unfold in such a way that the two of you will end up naked with each other. There's always mutual attraction, and worries and misunderstandings always end up resolved, or else just help lead to the couple's union. Never any second thoughts afterward, no recriminations to speak of in the light and the sobriety of day. The act itself is easy, too, always perfectly fulfilling, unbearably satisfying for both of them; even when the girl is pure and chaste as fallen snow, she still knows how to give such pleasure to her daddy that he comes more times than I think is even really possible for guys. Nor is he any less adroit at bringing her across the edge of rapture, sometimes managing it with just a hand upon her breast, or even just a kiss, a word, a command. And when the deed is done, it's happily ever after - at least, when there's an end at all, when it's not left open for the girl's induction into greater and greater debaucheries, for her use by an ever-widening circle of relatives and her father's friends. The only ending that can happen is an affirmation that everything is fine forever, that their desire and devotion to one another will never fade or tarnish. What surprise can there be, that it would sound appealing? It's a fairy tale, no less than the ones I had read to me as a child. A place where nothing can go wrong, where even pain is a delight. Reality is different. Harder. You don't always know exactly what you want. You can make mistakes, ones that don't end up making you happy in the end. And even if you try for your desires, they might not turn out the way you want...I mean, what if something did happen somehow between my dad and me, and he just didn't like it? If I wasn't any good? Not like I really know much of anything about how to satisfy a man, for all the pornographic fancies that I carry in my head. Probably half of them are just ridiculous, things that wouldn't even feel good if I really tried them, that have no place outside a story. How heartbreaking would it be if he did harbor some quiet, secret desire for me, if one evening we drank together, lost our inhibitions and ended up in bed...and it was just a disappointment? If it wasn't like either of us had dreamt about, if the reality were only drab and awkward when placed against the fantasy? I don't know which would be worse, if he didn't like it, or if I didn't, or if neither of us did - though it's the first of these that lingers painful in my mind. Waking up the morning after in a cloud of bliss, thinking everything was perfect, my fantasies fulfilled. Feeling like the girls in the stories sometimes do, adoration glowing like a beacon in my heart as I press against my father, move to softly kiss him as a welcome to the day...only for him to stop me, grab my shoulders, push me back. Only to hear the quiet rumble of his voice, serious and low, aching with a sympathetic sorrow as he tells me that what we did was a mistake, that it never should have happened. And when I protest that it's okay, that I wanted it, that I love him, he only shakes his head, and I can see the truth there in his eyes - that he doesn't feel what I do, that whatever spark of interest he had carried in me had been cured by this brief taste. That I'd had my chance, and I just wasn't good enough to be a woman he'd desire. I feel sick inside, thinking about it. My stomach twisted into knots, frantic, pleading. It isn't fair. It wouldn't be, if something like that happened. But that's what life is really like. Shit happens. Things go wrong. You make mistakes, and they hurt, and there's nothing you can do about it but wait for them to heal. Or to scar...maybe that's where all of this is really coming from. Wanting to go back to when my life was simple, when I didn't have to worry about anything but having fun and doing what I'm told, when there wasn't anything beyond that. When dad was like a superhero to me, big and strong and perfect, and I could feel utterly secure, knowing he was looking after me. Knowing that nothing bad could ever happen on his watch. Some truth to that, I think. Judging by the quiet ache of yearning that I feel in the thumping of my heart, considering the notion. I know my dad is just a man. Troubles of his own, flaws and errors and regrets. But I can't quite let go the burnished image that I have of him, the glow of almost worship, of a child for the parent she loves most. A girl for her Daddy. Is it so wrong for me to think of him like that, as my knight, my hero? Is it so awful to feel a little bit infatuated, a little bit in love, to say just that if he did want me like that, I might not turn him down? It doesn't have to be anything more than that. Just an acknowledgment, an admission to myself. And if there are heartaches in how it might play out, if something like that came to pass - well, there are some the other way, too, in deciding or pretending that it isn't true. If dad felt something for me, and I felt something back, but nothing ever happened from it because of what we feared...that would be a kind of tragedy as well. A loss. I wish I knew for sure. I wish I could know, if he's ever felt even a flicker of attraction, looking at me. If he's ever thought of me at night, the way I have of him. I mean, he must get lonely, in that way. It's been a few years now since the divorce, and though he's gone out dating a few times since then, nothing's ever really come of it. I'm pretty much the only woman in his life. Has there ever been a moment like the stories talk about, where he finds his gaze wandering unbidden down my body, and has to drag it back up into place? Where he hesitates a second outside the bathroom that I shower in, imagining me naked, lathered up, wet hands sliding on my skin? Maybe only just before he falls asleep, in that twilight time when the mind is free to wander wild and unruly, he's lingered for a little while on the thought that I'm a woman, that he's a man. That we could lie together, if we wanted to. There isn't any reason I should think he has. No evidence. I can't recall a single time that he's acted in any way untoward, any occasion where it seemed like he might be staring where a father generally doesn't. And I've tried. But still. That isn't really proof. If he did feel something like that, he wouldn't want to let me know of it, any more than I've wanted him to know about the fantasies I've had. It would be secret, if he felt that way, nothing easily uncovered. In the stories, something like that often seems to be revealed when the girl hears her father masturbating, calling out her name, but... Wait. The stories. Sudden inspiration perks up bright inside my breast - the clearest way that someone might discover what I've been thinking of is if they saw what I've been reading, if they ran across the history on my computer. Not really something that I've been too concerned about, since I'm the only one who uses it. I haven't even cleared it out. But if dad felt something similar, if he had thoughts the same as mine...I might be able to discern the fact by looking into his. He could have been visiting the very same locations that I have. There could well have been nights that we were almost connected, seated in our separate rooms but reading the same story as each other. Both of us enthralled by the idea of a girl with her Daddy, both of us imagining that it was us the words described, him and me, finding joy in one another...I mean, okay, maybe it isn't very likely. But it's possible. And it wouldn't be too difficult for me to check. I close the book for English, leave it forgotten on the bed as I clamber to my feet. Can't focus now on reading, anyway. There's an excited little tingle up along my spine as I make my way down the stairway and to my father's bedroom, the creaking of the wooden steps seeming twice as loud as usual beneath my socks. Not that it matters, really. He isn't home, shouldn't be for hours yet, though his schedule is always a bit irregular, difficult to predict. If he does come home while I'm on his computer, well...I can probably just quickly turn it off. So long as I don't miss the truck pulling up again. Which I shouldn't. It's quiet, taking my first step into his room. Slightly darker in here than in much of the rest of the house, thick curtains on the windows, mostly closed. Motes of dust drift slowly in the narrow beam of light that slips in from outside, dancing endlessly in the subtle currents of the air. The bed is only loosely made, forest-green covers tossed half into position after he got up. It's a big bed. King-sized, I think. Lonely, maybe, for him to sleep in it all by himself...his computer is on the desk beside the window, waiting for my approach, but I hesitate a while here, just inside the door. Slightly anxious. It's a funny feeling, being here. I mean, I go into his room often enough, but it's basically always when he's there himself, or when he's asked me to get something for him from it. It's a little different now, sneaking in while he's away. The faded wallpaper seems to stare at me, as though I'm an intruder. I guess I kind of am, at that. Creeping up to his computer - it's an older one than mine, a big beige box beneath the desk and a clunky CRT on top. Beeping softly to me in greeting as I push the little button on the front that lifts it whirring into life. He doesn't use it all that much. Invoices mostly, email for work, that kind of thing. He used to call me in to help him sometimes with one task or another, until he got the hang of things himself. I almost miss that. Teaching him how to attach a file to his message, or where to find things he downloaded from the web. The role reversal, with him uncertain, ignorant, and me confident and capable. The wry and tiny smile he'd give me afterward, swearing that he had it down now, that he wouldn't have to bother me again...which was true, eventually. It's been years since he's asked me for my help with anything, computer-wise. I guess he's comfortable with it now. I hope he is. Comfortable enough that he would use it when looking for something that would get him off, that he would take advantage of the internet's vast selection of pornography - and leave some trace for me to find. Reality is Different Ch. 02 It's ready, finally. Booted up, sitting at the desktop. He doesn't even use a password. Open, honest, welcoming...that's my dad. And a silent stab of guilt inside, thinking it. I'm invading his privacy here. Or I'm planning to, about to. No doubt of that, no pleasant-sounding justification - he's always respected my space, and now I'm very deliberately prying into his computer to try to find out where he gets his jollies. God, it sounds awful when I think about it like that. It is awful. I mean...maybe in the stories a girl and her dad always turn out to have the same desires, but in reality I could find almost anything. He could be into something totally disgusting, like scat, or animals, or corpses, something that would freak me out to find, and it would be completely my own fault for looking when he'd kept it private, hidden. And even if he isn't, even if I don't find anything at all, it's still a violation for me to look. I shouldn't do it. I should turn this off right now, go back to my room, finish up my reading. I don't though. Guilt threads quiet through my nerves, mixed with my excitement, but I stay right where I am, sitting in his chair, biting slightly anxious at my lip as I open up the browser. I need to know. If I find something weird, anything except the kind of thing I'm looking for, I'll just - I'll forget about it. Put it out of my mind. And if I do find what I'm looking for, if he's been looking up the same kinds of things that I have, then...then I'll know. I still wouldn't do anything about it, necessarily, not like I'd immediately strip down to greet him in the nude when he came home. But I'd know that he might be open to the possibility of something more between us. That if I crept into his bed one night, the way the girls in the stories sometimes do, it might not have to end in tears. It isn't really unexpected, but I still feel a trace surprise to see how empty his browser history is. Numerous days missing altogether, when I sort by date, times he maybe didn't even turn on his computer, and the recent dates that I expand only have a couple dozen records each. Google maps, our bank's website, the news...nothing that looks in the slightest to be sexual in nature. Not yesterday, anyway. Nor the day before, nor three days before that. Maybe there just isn't anything here for me to find. It's a little hard for me to picture, anyway, my dad looking up porn on the computer. Like it's something that's beneath him, unnecessary, undignified. Not that he's the sort to worry too much about looking dignified, but... Wait, now. There's something distinctive - 'X-hub adult torrent listings.' Rather suggestive, to say the least; my heartbeat tickles faster as I click the link, check it out. At first glance, it looks to be pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of links with very porny names. Frequently added, apparently - the ones I see right now are dated for today, classified as movies, pictures, clips...how about that. I didn't realize dad even really knew about torrents. I'm kind of proud of him. It's just a few moments hunting through the start menu to figure out what program he uses to handle them, and from there, what his standard download folder is. 'C:\Docs\Financial\Taxes\Tax04' - I can't help giggling a little, seeing that. I guess he does have a bit of sneakiness in him, after all. I don't know quite what I expect to find, opening it up. What I hope to find, maybe. I've read stories where a girl happens across her father's porn collection, though it's usually presented as an accident, not like what I did. Where she becomes aware of his desires with the discovery of a folder titled with her name. Inside it...different things, in different stories. Sometimes pictures taken of her, surreptitious in the shower or asleep, liberties taken when she was unaware. Sometimes mostly innocent, images of her dancing, or on the beach, or doing gymnastics, photographs whose intent is only made apparent by the fact of where they're found, and that they all at least are mildly suggestive of her form. Sometimes they aren't of her at all - a large collection that seems at first to be no more than random, different women posing naked, or engaged in sex, and only gradually does she come to notice how each of them resembles her, at least a little... But there isn't any folder here entitled 'Sarah.' Nor any text files that might be stories like the ones that I've been reading - I wouldn't care to admit the chill of disappointment that settles in my heart, noticing that absence. It looks like it's mostly videos. A scattering of subfolders, too, that might be pictures or something. Names like those that I saw listed on the website that he used, eye-grabbingly explicit. 'Naughty teen drains cock after school.' 'Hottie fucked hard.' 'Teen gets first cock.' ...actually, hey. My pulse sparks up again a little faster, excitement prickles on my skin as I scroll back up to scan the names, confirming what I think I see. A lot of these mention teens, maybe even most of them. Even some of those that don't have titles that are suggestive of it, of youth. Mention made of babysitters, of cheerleaders - a nervous, gleeful grin tugs upward on my lips. I think my dad likes girls my age. Or, well...damn it. I'm not even a teenager anymore. Close to my age, though. Close enough, as far as these things go. Right? The next file that catches my attention is no less intriguing. 'Tiny-titted teen taken from behind.' A thumbnail that looks consistent with the title - jesus, that could be me. I mean, I don't usually think of them as tiny, but let's face it, if I were in one of these that's probably how I'd be billed...I have to see it. Breathless feeling aches eager at my chest, tickling between my thighs. This is what he's into, what he likes. It's a peek into his desires. I have to look. I have to. Two tries required for my anxious fingers to manage a proper double-click, before the computer chugs audibly into action, throwing up the player window. A second after that before the movie actually starts. The girl that shows up on the screen is wearing a bright pink tube top and a pair of shorts so tiny they might as well be underwear, swaying slightly on her feet, coquettish for the camera as it pans across her body. There's sound, too - a quiet beetling from the headphones that I didn't even notice until just now, stuck behind his cheap white speakers; I quickly grab them, stick them on my ears to listen. Not that there's all that much to hear. Not even the suggestion of a plot, just a man's voice from off-camera, speaking firm and smirking to the girl. Commands, compliments - that she's got a hot little bod, that she should take off her top. And she doesn't hesitate to obey him, smiling confidently as she pulls it up and off her body, revealing breasts about as big as mine. Maybe a little smaller...the man appears now on the screen as well, cooing about her 'itty bitty titties.' Crowding up behind her, one hand stroking at her chest, the other slid down inside her shorts as he murmurs breathily, filling up the silence with vaguely possessive appreciation. "Oh, yeah. Nice little tits on you." It's not so interesting, in itself. In fact, I'd probably just think it silly...if it weren't for the awareness which keeps pulsing in my head that this is what my dad enjoys. What excites him. That almost certainly he's sat down right in this very chair and touched himself, watching it. The same hand that softly strokes behind my neck wrapped instead around his shaft, rousing it to stand up tall and proud. Did he imagine himself as the male star? His arm wrapped around the girl's waist, lifting her bare toes just off the floor as he carries her over to the couch, tosses her over the side so that her hips are raised up high above her head? Her shorts pulled down around her knees, holding them together as his hand slides hungry down her thigh. It could be in our living room - the style of our couch is even similar, if a bit more worn and dirty than the soft white fabric on the screen. The girl...she doesn't really look that much like me. Skinny, maybe, but her hair, her face is pretty much completely different. As is the steel stud that passes through her clit, revealed as the man buries his face between her legs, her starkly-shaven mound clean and bare for his exploring tongue. Maybe even waxed. I mean, I try to keep things mostly trimmed down there, but...she isn't me. No. No real chance that he'd have thought about me, watching it. I wouldn't think so, anyway. Oh, well. I can still pretend to hear a few more words amidst the girl's murmurs of encouragement. "Do you like my pink little pussy, daddy?" Just the addition of that single name, and it turns into something from the stories, from my fantasies. Wetness stirring eager there inside me, a tingling between my hips. An easy thing to let my hand slip down inside my jeans, my fingers quietly exploring in long-familiar territory, rubbing slowly at my pussy through the cotton fabric of my panties. Stroking the little fire there inside as I watch the figures on the screen carry out their roles, the man standing up again so that he can fulfill the promise of the title. His erection heavy in his hand, aimed between her slippery and swollen lips. The somewhat unconvincing cry of pleasure that she makes as he first thrusts inside her. My attention, though, is only halfway on the video - visuals aren't usually what does it for me, anyway. The other half is on my dad, on the idea that I'm pleasuring myself right where he has, to the same video that he uses. Trying to imagine how he does it. He wouldn't have his pants completely off, no, I can't see that. Just open at the top, unzipped, his boxers pushed down, his manhood thick within his grasp. Slowly. He'd do it only slowly, his big hand gliding up and down across his shaft, his breathing heavy, forceful, rough. My own hand mimics the pace that I imagine, tracing back and forth along my moistened lips, excitement soaking in my skin. What does he do, when he gets close? Does he make weird faces, like Jeremy tended to? Noises? I can maybe hear him growling, when he's near release. Low and quiet in his throat, in his belly, powerful and masculine like the purring often present in his voice, the little rumble of it stronger at the edge of ecstasy. Tension stiff inside his limbs as it comes over him, as his cock swells up one last time, huge and red and angry, and then fires resolute into the air, unloads his precious seed in a grand and pearly barrage. My daddy's cum, spurting messy, ropey, thick to splatter where it may... Or, well. Reality is a dull, didactic pedant - I don't actually see any conspicuous stains around his computer. Maybe he uses a tissue or something to catch it, to clean up afterwards. Though this, too, seems somehow as though it should be beneath him, the image of him carefully wiping off his softening manhood with kleenex. The soppy bundle thrown into the garbage afterward, or the toilet...I'm sure it's just the stories that I've read that makes the notion of it seem almost like sacrilege. In the stories, a father's cum is always treasured, always valued and adored, not something to be just thrown away. If we were in one of them, my dad and I...I might have another duty, helping him on the computer. He might call me in before he started with this stuff, have me ready, standing by. He might let me watch him as he brought himself to hardness, leaning backwards languid in the chair so I could clearly see his sturdy fingers curled around his thick and throbbing shaft, stroking slow and powerful as he sampled from the vast array of sex that the internet has to offer. He wouldn't have to say a word, when the moment came for me to help - I'd be eager, ready when his testicles pulled up tight in anticipation of release, diving down between his knees to take him in my mouth, to seal my lips around his cock before the first jet even fired. Welcoming his every salty spurt of cum as it spatters viscous at the back of my throat, puddles delicious on my tongue, swallowing it every time so that not a drop is wasted, not a drip is lost. And when his orgasm was complete, I'd so diligently lick him clean, attend so lovingly and thorough to my daddy's mighty cock that not a single one of all the countless billions of his sperm would have to end up anywhere except inside of me. Where it belongs. Somewhere at the back of my mind, a voice is telling me how silly all this is. Ridiculous, the idea of basically giving him a blowjob just for masturbation cleanup. But the feeling of the daydream still runs thrilling through my nerves, throbs so wild and enticing. The fantasy of it played out inside my head, my attention shared between it and the action on the screen. My fingers slipped down inside my panties, rubbing quick between my slick and aching petals, tweaking softly at my pearl as I listen to the pair of lovers moan and grunt and swear at one another. Easing towards my own release. God, I shouldn't do this here. It's too distracting. I might not hear him if he does come home, especially with the headphones on. If he found me like this, caught me masturbating in his chair...an anxious shiver trembles through me, but it takes no longer than a moment for my imagination to seize upon the notion, to claim it for her own, guided once again by the stories that I've read where something like that happens. Where a father finds his wide-eyed little girl looking at his porn, staring so enthralled that she doesn't realize he's there. Excitement prickles down my spine, contemplating that. He could be home already. He could be standing in the doorway right now, watching me - I don't let myself look back to check, to dash the dream upon reality. It would be impossible for him to miss what I've been doing, the figures looming on the screen in peach and pink, my legs pulled up before me on the chair, spread wide to let my fingers roam and play. With the fevered groaning of the actors in my ears, he'd hardly have to strive for stealth to step up close behind without me knowing. I wouldn't have a clue that he was there until suddenly he spoke, bending down a little so that his mouth was right beside my ear, so that I could feel the warmth and moisture of his breath as his words come rough and firm right there beside me. Slightly smirking, teasing, taunting. "Find anything you like?" "Daddy!" I'd almost jump out of my skin, startled at his sudden presence at my side, mortified that he should catch me like this. Perhaps my flailing might pull the headphones from their jack, and the sloppy, squealing sounds of sex would blare loudly from the speakers, as though it weren't already obvious enough what I was watching. And though I'd try instinctively to conceal myself, to close my opened thighs, turn half away from him, there'd be no way for me to hide the color on my cheeks, nor the anxious stutter of my tongue as it tried pathetically for an excuse. "I was only, I - I didn't..." I can hear the throaty rumble of his chuckle, low and quiet as he looms above me. Feel the heat and tension of his gaze flowing slowly down my body, stroking on my stiffened nipples, on my hips, on the jeans that still lie open and undone. The normal friendly timbre of his voice now mixed in with a deeper roughness of command. He glances over for a moment at the monitor, at the bodies locked in carnal congress, before his eyes return to me, staring dark and penetrating. "Has anyone ever done that to you, baby?" The slightest note of warning to his tone. If I should answer wrong... "No." It comes out just a whisper, at least at first, a nervous shaking of my head. "Never." "No?" He repeats it, questioning, rotating my chair so that I have to face him more directly. And when I still try to hide my gaze away, his hand reaches back behind my skull, grips it tightly, forces me to look him in the eye. "You're not lying to your daddy now, are you?" Terror rushes slickly down my spine, blended achingly with my arousal. I can hardly speak, can hardly breath, forcing words out high and trembling through an anxious throat. "No, daddy, I swear! I've never...nobody's ever done that to me." Answering the question there beneath, the one he almost asked. "I'm still a virgin, daddy." The intensity that burns within his gaze doesn't waver, doesn't falter - but his grip behind my neck does soften, fingers stroking slightly on my skin the way he has before. "Good." The word is drawn out long and slow, deep and approving. Then his mouth pulls wide into a dark and hungry smile, and my burgeoning relief is turned to ice inside my veins. "You won't be, soon enough." "What?" It's a strained and shaken whisper, looking fearful up into his eyes. I don't know how to process what he's said, how to face what it could mean. My stomach twisted up inside, queasy, frightened. Thrilled. He ignores the question. Just speaks again, commands. "Stand up, Sarah." Firm words, without a trace of doubt that I will jump to his instruction...and indeed, I'm already rising to my feet, obedience a quicker thing than thought. Struggling a moment to pull my jeans back up into place, before he stops me with a frown, another word. "No." He speaks it slightly softer than before, but it's still an order, still holds my hands in place as surely as if he'd grabbed them in his own. Standing there before him frozen now, trembling, feeling the denim slowly slipping down upon my skin, beneath my fingers. "Take them off. Everything." Shock. My heartbeat pounds inside my ears, the blood rushing from my face. This time I'm not able to obey. "Daddy, I can't." The words escaping hushed and pleading. He wouldn't really do it. Make me strip down in front of him... No mistaking, though, the storm of anger welling up inside his gaze, fury cold and pointed at my defiance. Biting scorn that hits me when he speaks, stinging like a slap across the face. "You can't? Or you won't?" A curl of displeasure at his lips that sets my soul to ache. I try to answer, to explain, excuse. Still a shaken whisper. "Daddy, I-" I get no further, interrupted. "I thought you were a good girl, Sarah." Sharp, accusing. I can feel his disappointment in me, his ire crawling on my skin, and I want so bad to make it better. "Was I wrong?" My head shakes frantic, fervent, looking up at him. "No, daddy, I am, I swear, I just-" "What does a good girl do, Sarah?" Again he interrupts, breaking up my answer before it's halfway formed? His gaze in mine, unrelenting - I feel like I should look away, but I can't do it, staring captured up at him like a fawn before the coming headlights of a car. I know the answer to the question. It's a struggle for me to say it, though, to force the words out ghostly from my tongue. "A good girl does what her Daddy says." "That's right," he murmurs back, and the trace approval that I feel in his voice is like a lifeline, a slender thread of hope to which I cling, desperate in the storm. He speaks again, quiet, measured, giving me another chance. "Now be a good girl, and strip down for your daddy." It's a long and anguished moment, hesitating, staring up into his hard brown eyes. The stern, demanding frown that's drawn tight across his lips. Feeling the rapid patter of my heart, pounding as though it's about to burst. He's so close before me, so big, so strong. He could do it in an instant, if he wanted to. He could tear away my clothes, rip them into tatters and leave me naked in the shreds. Or he could force me to do it, strike me, slap me, hurt me until I had no choice but to comply, just to make it stop. I know that it's because he loves me that he picks this way instead. Because he wants me to obey him of my own free will. Because he wants me to be a good girl...and god, I want to be one for him as well, the tug of longing deep inside that goes beyond what words can say. Wanting to put all my trust in him, to drown my doubts in the waters of devotion, to have no space at all between his command and my desire. The feeling in my breast of what it would be like for him to whisper in my ear how much he loves me, as I lie naked in his arms, stripped to serve him... Reality is Different Ch. 02 The jeans are first to fall, crumpled to the floor about my ankles. Then my blouse, unbuttoned slowly by my awkward, shaky fingers while he circles round me in slow, appraising silence, his gaze devouring the slow unveiling of my body. My bra - he stops behind me then, steps up close enough that I can feel him there, goosebumps rising on my skin. Waiting, while I unhook the stubborn clasp, free my breasts to breathe the air, the stiff excitement of my nipples betraying me arousal for him to plainly see. As if he didn't know already, as if he couldn't read me like a book...it's just a moment after that his strong arm slips around my waist, pulls me back against his chest. A little squeak of terror escaping from my throat to feel his hardness pressed against my bottom through the sturdy fabric of his work pants; up above, his other hand comes round to close around my breast, to squeeze it in his grasp. First softly, but then harder, rougher, pinching agonizing at my throbbing nipple. "There's my girl." The approval, the affection in his voice makes me want to just collapse against him, surrender to his strength. Sensation flowing hot inside my veins with the scraping of his thumb against that pink and pebbled peak, rubbing it between his fingers, tweaking to and fro. His tones seem almost to hiss with satisfaction. "I love these little tits of yours, sweetheart." "They're not too small?" It's a struggle for my tongue to shape the question, to speak my fear. My voice emerging tiny, trembling. "No." His lips are buried in my hair, kissing forceful at my scalp between his words. His other hand descending from my tummy to slip into my panties, warm and rough against my dewy flesh. Gliding on my petals, in my most private place, taken for his own. "They're just right. The perfect size for me to squeeze..." And as though to demonstrate the point, he abruptly grips me tighter. Not just at my breast - around my pussy, too, cupped within his fingers, my thickened lips abruptly sizzling with pleasure as they're gently crushed beneath his hand. The feeling of it arcing up along my spine in a shiver, an overwhelming spasm of delight... This time I do collapse, my knees buckling beneath me as his touch reverberates along my nerves. But my daddy is prepared, ready, catching me before I fall as if it'd been expected. Hauling me up again into the air as though I weighed nothing whatsoever, one arm behind me back, the other one beneath my knees. Smirking softly down at me as I struggle just to weakly grasp his shirt, as I stare up submissively into his eyes. "Daddy..." The word escapes my fantasy, finds my lips in real life, its sweetness tingling upon my tongue. Spoken weak and plaintive, like a prayer, like a plea. Help me, daddy. Save me. Love me. Take me...my fingers working quick between my legs as I slump down awkward in the chair, but in my imagination I'm still quiescent, limp, a rag doll in my daddy's arms. Almost naked, just my panties there to hide me from his eyes. He carries me like that across the little distance to the bed, and then he drops me, lets me tumble down in disarray across the covers. Stands so tall above me as his familiar hands stroke bare across my skin, straighten out my tangled limbs, and that same look I thought about before is solid in his gaze, ownership and love, possessive adoration. His palm atop my thigh, his thumb outstretched to caress across the very bottom of my panties, and the terror that I feel is blended with my pleasure to make a greater whole, a joy that aches and cries inside me, escapes in little gasps from between my parted lips. There isn't any thought in me that I should try to keep his fingers from curling into that tiny scrap of cloth, that I should keep him from pulling them away, the damp fabric stretching in his hands as he smoothly sweeps it from my legs and tosses it to crumple on the carpet. I'm exposed to him. A flutter in my stomach, an electric twinge along my nerves. My tawny little thatch of fur unveiled to his eyes, the glittering of pinkness that it hides pulled slowly open as his strong hands spread apart my thighs, a rose that's blooming in the light, and the knowledge of his gaze there in my secret place is a thrilling agony. Wondering what he thinks of it. What he really would...his right hand drifting lightly down my thigh again, and I can only hold my breath to feel it gently close around my puss. To hear his voice rumble down again from high above me, rough and husky, the most familiar sound in all the world. "What is this, Sarah?" Thought is hard to manage, in the midst of this sensation. Words, harder still. They stumble from my tongue, breathless, hopeful. "It's my pussy." "Wrong." Firm, reprimanding. It seems punishment enough to feel his hand retreat, not to have him touch me anymore, but that proves just a prelude to the sweetly textured pain that shudders through me as he slaps it down again upon my dampened, blood-thick lips. A helpless cry forced from my throat, my hips rolled back into the covers as though they could escape, as though to flee...at least, until his sturdy fingers stroke there softly for a while, soothe the stinging of the hurt he had to give. "I'll give you another chance." His eyes boring into mine. "Whose is it?" Now I know what he wants me to say. "It's your pussy, daddy." Whispered with a giddy tremor up my spine - and how glad I am to see the tiny nod he gives me, the subtle smile that pulls approving on his lips. To hear ecstatic in my ear the rasping sound of his zipper fly as it's undone. "That's right, baby girl." Affection and desire, rushing hot within his tones. I'm still staring fixed into his eyes - I don't see it, only feel as his manhood slaps down thick upon my mound, as the head draws slowly back to nestle there between my sopping lips, pushing just a fraction of an inch within to bump against my barrier. "It belongs to me. You belong to me. My sweet little pussy, my little cunt." Harsh words again, glittering sharp inside my mind, a note of anguish distantly delicious as he bends down closer, as one strong hand rises up to grasp upon my cheek, to run his calloused thumb across. The smile on his face is predatory, frightening, exhilarating. "This is going to hurt you." It does. My hymen is no guard against his force, splitting like a tissue with his single thrust. My innocence extinguished with a stab of pain that arcs like lightning up along my nerves, a strangled cry escaping high up in my throat, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. I whimper like a wounded animal, but my sobbing is devoured by his hungry kisses, his sternly weathered lips mashed to mine. And with every rapid heartbeat the pain becomes a little less, dulls into the distance until I can begin to feel other things. His cock inside me, pushing slowly in and out, smearing red with my own blood. Filling up the emptiness I never realized I felt. The almost groaning of sensation as my body stretches to his girth, the quiver there inside me of that something that I could not begin to name. The knowing it's my Daddy taking me at last, my pussy opening to welcome him inside me on a tide of my arousal, hips pushing back inexpertly to meet his thrusts...his voice is growling above me, insistent in my ear, all-important. "No more boyfriends, baby girl. Daddy doesn't share. You aren't even going to talk to boys without getting my permission." A breathless, keening whisper. "Yes, Daddy." It feels so good to tell him yes, to agree with him, to obey him. And it's hardly any kind of loss - what use would I have for any boy, when I already have my Daddy? "No more classes, either." He continues, murmured, husky orders, his accelerating thrusts as punctuation. "You don't need them to be my slut, my pretty little cunt. You're going to stay at home the way a good girl should, cook and clean for me the way your mother didn't want to do. You're going to be here any time I want you, ready to be fucked." "Yes, Daddy." It comes out mewling, a tiny little cry. My legs bent back and wrapped around his waist, begging him to stay inside me as his thickness pounds within, an alternating sense of emptiness in his withdrawal and overwhelming pressure as he pushes deep inside again, the friction of his shaft against those puffed and pinkened lips like liquid joy along my nerves. "No clothes." He growls close beside my ear, pawing at my breast, my body rocking back and forth beneath his thrusts, and his words are all that's left inside my mind. "I want you naked, baby girl. I want that sexy little body of yours on display for me to see, for me to use, any time I get the urge." His fingers tracing up between my breasts, along my sternum - then they grip around my neck, gently squeeze, and the subtle terror of this threat is but another thrill, a spice that's added to my bubbling of bliss. "Maybe just a collar, hm? Something so anyone can see who you belong to." "Yes, Daddy." The words are almost hidden by my panting, by the faintly liquid sound of slapping, sweating flesh as he drives into me like a jackhammer, every thrust bombarding pleasure on my mind. My arms locked desperately behind his neck, holding tight, hanging from him like a lariat when he raises higher. Delirious with delight, intoxicated with my Daddy's touch... "And maybe I'll knock you up, too." His voice echoes in my soul, taunting, tantalizing, while my body shakes and shudders like I'm taken by an epileptic fit. He's near the edge himself, swollen huge inside me. That electric moment of release looming misty there before us. "You want that, Sarah?" Words carried on his lips, pressed deliciously against my skin. "You want me to cum inside you, get you pregnant? You want that skinny little belly to fill up with your daddy's baby?" "Ohh...yes, daddy, yes, yes..." Again the words rise up to touch my tongue for real, the borders of my daydream blurring with my own exhilaration, with the heat of my arousal. I'm teetering before the precipice, fingers stroking swift and shameless at my clit, holding on that last plateau where I have to either back down and let myself relax or else just dive right off the edge. My eyes shut tight to better see the visions in my head, encouraged by the liquid sounds of sex still coming from the headphones. Slightly awkward, tricky, with the chair's stiff back behind me - but the thought again of where I am right now just serves to send another shiver up my spine, urgent and ecstatic. In my daddy's bedroom, in his chair, where he's cum who knows how many times himself. It makes me feel so close to him, thinking about that, as though the fantasy is real. His throbbing manhood sheathed so deep inside me. His arms locked around my back, crushing me so tightly to his chest that I can't breathe, that I don't want to breathe. The deep and manly groan he makes, ringing so divinely in my ears...then his shaft swells up one last time, and he explodes into my depths. My daddy's cum, spurting up in jets so powerful and thick that I can feel them paint my inner walls. Each salvo striking deep into my womb, and such an agony of pleasure crawls perfectly along my nerves to think of it, of being filled to overflowing with his seed, his essence, of it planted in my garden, of carrying my father's child... "Daddy..." It's a squeal from the apex of my throat, twisted sideways in the seat, frantic motions half-unconscious as I madly pinch and twist my button, driving headlong off the edge. Ecstasy devouring my mind, shattering my conscious, and for some mad, eternal moment I'm lost inside of it, carried from the world by the waves of rapture rolling so delightful from beneath my belly. My hips rocking back and forth as though the dream were real, as though to push my daddy deeper still inside me, to milk his manhood of its most precious load. Heaven shining golden there behind my eyes, no more or less than just my father's bed. I don't know quite how long it takes before my nerves begin to settle once again, before I can begin to think. A moment taken there to breathe before I even try. My frantic heartbeat slowing, scooting back to sit up in the chair as I let my mind to drift across the content of my fantasies...jesus. Even this is too familiar now, the mingling of weary, blissful afterglow with my misgivings of reflection, the queasy sense of trepidation that I get when looking back on what so recently had thrilled me. Something like regret, or self-recrimination, for the ideas I had welcomed eagerly into my head, that I giddily imagined as though there was nothing wrong with them at all. Fantasizing about my dad making me drop out of college to be some kind of sex slave. It's horrifying, ridiculous. Embarrassing. I don't want that. No doubt on that point, no ambiguity of feeling, no quiet longing lurking there below the surface - even if there is something of excitement in the fantasy, I'm certain that I don't want anything like that for real. Even the idea that started all of this, of him catching me...I don't want that to happen, either. It would be just... Tension abruptly prickles paranoid on the back of my neck - I hesitate for just a moment before shifting in the chair to glance behind me. Relief flooding just as swiftly through me, slackening my tightened shoulders to see that I'm alone. Thank god. But I still hurry up a little to shut down everything, return the headphones where I found them. Getting caught like that...yeah. I can feel pretty sure it wouldn't work out quite so nicely as it does in all the stories, in my daydream. That isn't any way I'd want him to find out what I've been feeling, what I've been thinking about. And at the end, likewise taken from the stories, the words that my imagination placed upon my father's lips about him making me pregnant, about carrying his child...that one is pretty crazy, too. Sick, impossible. I'm nowhere close to feeling like I want a baby, and even if I were, I'm not an idiot - I know how awful it would be if I had one with my dad, the mutations or whatever that can come from the pairing of two people closely related to one another. On top of all the social reasons, the emotional and moral for why such a thing is never done. I know. But the thought of it still lingers quiet in my mind a while, even now that reason is returned. Being planted with my father's seed. Bearing him a child... I don't think it's for the thing itself, the perverse allure that the image carries. Not like I've got a hankering for morning sickness, aches and pains, for my belly swollen up like a balloon. It's...it's about the bond that it implies, I think. Like what you tell a kid about where babies come from, "when a man and woman love each other very much." About loving him, being something for him that I - god, I don't know. Outside his room now, my clothing straightened up again, everything set back the way I found it, pretty much. Leaning with my back against the wall as the peaceful glow of my release is slowly set to stir again by the conflict of my feelings, my thoughts. I love him, yeah. No one in the world who means as much to me, and sometimes I don't know even how to say it, how to show it. Could be that's where some of these fantasies are coming from, some unconscious need to express the affection that I feel for him. Being taken to his bed, tasked to cook and clean, as though I were a housewife. His wife. How absurd, the hollow pang I feel in my heartbeat, considering the notion. It's silly, something like that. So...domestic. But there's a kind of sweetness to it, too. Simplicity. If I could focus all of my attention just on making him happy, not have to worry about anything beyond these four familiar walls, if I didn't want to. If he could handle things in all the world outside, and I could be the devoted woman he deserves, the one my mother wasn't. Staying here with him, to greet him with a kiss when he gets home from work, serve him his favorite meal, to snuggle up against him in his bed at night. We already share so much. It would only be a little more, a little further... Well. I'm being foolish, probably. But not all of that is even such a bad idea, necessarily. Helping out around the house, cooking...there's no reason why I couldn't do that for him, why I shouldn't. I mean, I tend to have a fair amount of time between my classes, or after them, when dad is still at work. We've kind of eaten staggered meals a lot the last few years, TV dinners, fast food, that kind of thing. It might be nice to change things up a bit, to cook for both of us. Sometimes, at least. To give it a try...I'm not exactly a great chef. I mean, I know the basics, and I even enjoy it, to an extent. The instant stuff is just - well, easier. But it might be fun, to do it properly. For him. --- It's about an hour later that my dad gets home. This time, I don't fail to notice his arrival, the heavy diesel rumble of his work truck pulling up the drive, and I'm standing ready for him in the middle of the living room by the time he opens up the door, steps through. Backlit for a moment by the sun outside, as though he were a hero in a movie, showing up to save the day. "Hey, dad." I'm first to speak, to greet him with a slightly giddy smile. Sitting back against the armrest of our couch, an ambiguous, uncertain tingle in my legs. His familiar features, worn and slightly wrinkled, look so handsome to me today. Standing tall before me in his rugged blue work shirt, a little rumpled now and dirty from his labors of the day. I almost feel like I should rush in to meet him with a hug. Or more than 'almost.' That's what a girl might do if this were a story...but I guess that's why I can't, shouldn't. I just sit there where I am, instead. "Hey there, kiddo." If he's a bit surprised to see me down here waiting for him, he hides it well. Just quirks a smile back at me, gestures with one hand at me while he steps into the house. "What's up with the apron?" My fingers trace along it for a moment, down my chest. It's simple, cotton, discolored in a couple places with old stains. "I thought I'd make us dinner today." And there is a certain pleasant pride to say it, grinning foolish. Tempered just a little by the wondering of worry that rises up, reflective. "Uh, you didn't eat already, did you?" "No, no," his voice is just a trace distracted, working through the usual routine of getting home. Taking off the heavy toolbelt that he wears around his waist, loaded down with gear - I used to think he looked like a hero from a comic book with all that stuff, like Batman taking off for work. Just a moment's hesitation before I scurry over to help him with it. "Thanks, sweetie. No, not yet...you don't have to do that, though. Sounds more like my job, parent and all. What do you feel like having? I'll try my best to cobble it together." "Daaad." Affectionate exasperation. Of course he'd try to take the burden on himself. "You have a job, remember? An actual one, keeps you pretty busy? You need a chance to take it easy, not have to worry about anything." And when he makes as though to protest again, I add "Anyway, I already made it. I'm keeping it warm in the kitchen right now." Slightly parted lips close and open once before he speaks again, wryly. "Ah." A shrug, genial, accepting. His gaze drifts past me to the adjoining dining room, small and cozy. Eyebrow lifting just a trace to see how I've neatly set the table up with cloth placemats, napkins, silverware. "Well, I guess that's that, then. May as well eat now...what's the occasion, if I might ask?" "No occasion." His hand is rough, calloused in my own as I gently tug him towards the table, to his chair. "I just thought it would be nice, you know? We aren't really eating together as often as we used to. I kinda miss it." "Since your mom and I split up, you mean." His voice comes quietly beside me, just a shade restrained. Reality is Different Ch. 03 All characters are over 18 It's quiet in the house. Strangely quiet, a shroud of silence fallen in the instant of my passage through the door, a feeling of foreboding deep inside my belly that I don't know how I could explain. The kind of feeling that you sometimes get when you're up alone at night and you hear a noise coming somewhere from downstairs, or when you think you do, and all the shadows suddenly loom larger, darker, staring at you from the corners of the room. When the voice of reason in your head tries patiently to counsel that there's no such thing as monsters, that you outgrew such fears a long, long time ago, that it's childish to freak out about imagined noises in the dark...but your heart still pulses worried in your throat, and you have to flip on all the lights you can before you peek your head out into the hall. Making sure the world is still the one you know, that nothing's lurking there in wait for you, with scaly skin and glowing eyes. "Dad?" I toss my backpack down upon the couch, glad at least to lose the burden. The ambiguous uncertainty I feel reflected in my voice, high and tight with trepidation. I don't know why I'm even calling for him - he's almost never home before me. So it's another faint surprise, one that lodges nervous in my breast, to hear him answer back. "Come upstairs, Sarah." Serious. Solemn. His voice resonating through the house, sounding somehow as though he's right beside me despite the distance and the walls between us. There's no choice but to obey him, a nameless worry crawling slow along my spine, my breathing slightly shallow, rapid as I make my way up through our aging staircase. Steeper, darker in this moment than it's ever seemed before. The creaking of the wooden boards beneath my feet is the only sound I hear, and its low and steady tempo only serves to magnify my dread. At the landing, now. The lights are on inside my room, the door is opened wide. Dad's there beside my desk, his arms crossed at his chest, a frown upon his lips, and my throat is pulled already tight with panic. I only hold there in the doorway, afraid to enter, to approach. He's mad at me. The kind of anger that he never shows, that he never feels, now painted thick and glaring on his brow. I don't know why. What did I do? What could I have done? "Come here." His voice is iron, cold and hard, growling in my ear. No patience for my fear, my apprehension - and if I'm frightened to approach him at this moment, the thought of my defying him is even worse. I have to do it. Tiny steps in his direction, as slowly as I dare, delaying what's before me for as long as I can manage. My eyes downcast, penitent for whatever wrong I've done, risking only little glances at him through my lashes. He stands so big and tall right now, towering above me as I draw closer. As though I'm just a little girl again. "What is this?" His words hiss threatening at me while I'm still six feet away, his hand extending in a sweeping gesture to the computer that I didn't see before. My computer, my monitor, the browser open to a page I've seen before. I can't make out the text itself, not quite, but the colors and the layout I can see are enough to tell me all too clearly what it must be. What he's found, the reason for the fury I see boiling in his eyes. "Dad," it comes out desperate, pleading, a word stumbling for purchase. Panic flooding helpless through my mind, twisting queasy at my stomach. What can I say? What reason could I ever give, what explanation wouldn't make things worse? "Daddy, I...it isn't what you think. I just - there was a link, you know, someone posted it, they didn't say what it would be, and I only clicked on it, that's all." It tastes like poison, lying to him, the deception clumsy on my tongue. "I didn't even read it, mostly, not really. I wouldn't, daddy, I didn't..." A moment passes as I trail into silence. His eyes still dark on me, staring, heavy and intense. Unreadable. Then he speaks again, repeats. "Come here, Sarah." His body language telling me he wants me there before him...I'm trembling as I draw closer, pushing forward my protesting feet that tell me just to run away, to hide, to flee. But if I did, he'd only catch me, and my punishment would be far worse. I must do as he says, as he orders, drawing closer step by step. Three feet. Two. He's a mountain there before me; I have to crane back my head to try to look him in the eye. A feeble, ghostly smile forced onto my lips, struggling to lend support to the explanation that I gave. It was just an accident. I didn't seek it out. Please believe me, daddy. Please. I don't see him move - I only feel it, a sudden shock of white sensation as he backhands me across the face, as I stumble, almost fall down at his feet from the force of his attack. Tears well up in my eyes before the pain has time to reach my consciousness...but it finds me soon enough, the stinging sharpness that blooms pinkly where he struck me, glowing hot upon my cheek, while my heart pounds swiftly in a greater agony of fear. I've only just regained my footing when he takes a step in my direction, advances on me with his jaw still set, his gaze still hard and sharp as steel, and I stumble backwards, terrified of what he'll do. "Daddy, no..." Helpless pleading as I back away, tears trickling along my cheeks. He's reaching for me, his hand extending out to grab me, and there's no further I can get away, my back already pressed against the wall. His fingers curling around my neck, squeezing with a tiny fraction of his strength that still leaves me gasping, struggling to breathe, staring desperate up into his eyes as though he were a vengeful god. "Do not lie to me, Sarah." His grip closes briefly tighter with the word, precise and threatening, a warning to which I can only pitifully nod. I'm pinned against the wall, I can't escape. He's so much bigger than I am, so much stronger. Looming there before me, leaning down to look me in the eye, his stern and rugged features filling up my vision as he speaks again. The bitter taste of venom in his voice, painful in my ear. "I know about the stories you've been reading. I know what you've been doing up here, masturbating like a little whore." There's only one thing I can think to say. "I'm sorry, daddy." The words just thinly gasped, forced past his hand still tight around my throat. Urgent, anguished, pleading. One of my hands is latched around his wrist, the other pressed into his broad and sturdy chest, but I don't even try to push him off - I know how fruitless it would be. "Please, I shouldn't have..." My body weak and trembling before him, tears streaking slickly down my cheeks. The pain still throbs there where he struck me, the uncomfortable constriction of his fingers round my neck - but worse than either one of these is the knowledge that he's right, that he's given nothing but a fraction of the punishment that I deserve. I lied to him. I tried to keep things secret. I dove into these fervid, foul fantasies, as though I had any right at all...the shame I feel roils sick inside my stomach, miserable for having failed him, for having let him down. It surrenders to him, staring up in damp and earnest misery into his eyes, confessing all my wrongs. "I'm so, so sorry..." Joy. Relief - I've pleased him, at least a little bit. His grip relaxes, the flicker of a smile even playing at those regal lips. A shadow of amusement set to mingle with his righteous wrath. "And what are you sorry for, exactly?" His hand turns, rises up to touch upon my face. His fingers trailing through my tears, spreading them across my cheek, my mouth. I can taste them, their salty tang of shame and sorrow mixing with the subtle satisfaction of his fingers scraping rough upon my lips. "For getting caught?" "No," I shake my head at him, sincere, insistent. Whispering my apologies into his fingertips. "For lying. I knew I shouldn't, daddy, but I was so ashamed, I thought I couldn't let you know." My hand squeezing at his wrist, fervent and imploring. I want to kiss his fingers, to kneel at his feet, to abase myself and make him see how bad I feel for what I've done. To tell him I'd do anything to make it right... "And what about for wasting my time, hm?" His voice halfway between a growl and a purr, deep and husky, dangerous. Taunting, as his fingers move to curl at my jawline, his cracked and calloused thumbtip taking over at the task of stroking at my mouth. The motion soft, seductive, pushing at that pliant flesh in slow, implacable caresses, and the shiver that I feel along my spine isn't just from fear. Thrilling at his touch, warmth kindling deliciously between my thighs, my lower lips tingling jealously for a similar attention. The sensation of it subtle, sweetly aching...it's hard for me to hear his words, to understand them. "Are you sorry for that? For staying up here, diddling yourself with those girly little fingers while I was downstairs waiting for you to realize your place?" The moment hangs there anxiously between us, a beat that feels like hours as I grapple for the meaning of his words. The sense of what he's saying slipping slow into my disbelieving consciousness. My gaze shocked wide and white, staring up into his penetrating eyes, his predatory smile. My lips parting for some instinctive, thoughtless exclamation - but I've only just begun to shape it when his meaty thumb thrust bold into my mouth, turns my speech into an incoherent mush as it lays heavy on my tongue. Tasting subtly of oil, of grease, of dirt and sweat...and yet it's almost automatic how I accept its presence there, my lips closing once again to seal it eagerly inside, teeth touching daintily between his knuckles. How I suckle softly at his digit, clean him with my tongue, lapping diligent across that cherished skin. My heartbeat pounding madly in my chest, ecstatic at this opportunity to serve him. "Don't worry, now." His voice caresses rough upon my consciousness, filling up the part of me that still can think. Commanding my attention. "You're going to make up for all that wasted time. All those years you should have been there in your daddy's bed." Stepping even closer, trapping me between him and the wall as his other hand comes up, brushes mine aside to grasp and fondle at my chest, squeezing one small breast possessively within his grasp. The pleasure that I feel with his touch is only heightened by the note of arrogant appreciation which climbs into his gaze, regarding me. Mixing with the spice and danger of the threat already there. "I'm going to mold you, baby girl. I'm going to make you mine, my slut, my little angel-whore." His fingers latch upon my rigid nipple, pinch it in his viselike grip until I can't help crying out. As best as I can manage, around his thumb still in my mouth. Then he slides in closer still, the stubble of his cheek rasping coarse against my skin as his lips touch barely to my ear, whispering low and husky, stinging and delicious. "Is that what you want, baby?" My answer is a moan, a whimper pitiful and plaintive - I can feel his responding chuckle rumble confidently through his chest, aggressive and amused. And a moment's keening loss inside me as his thumb is ripped away, as I no longer have the comfort of its imposing presence in my mouth. "Use your words, little girl." His face appearing one again before me, strong and weathered, smirking. His finger sliding confidently on my chin, my neck, leaving in its wake a sopping trail of my own saliva. "...yes, daddy." Soft and breathless, my voice is just a whisper. A vibrant glow inside my breast, while my stomach flutters wildly with nerves. "'Yes, daddy,' what?" Firm, demanding. My eyes are fixed to his, trapped there like my body is against the wall, but I can feel his hand as it continues sliding down, catching on my blouse's neckline. A moment there, the fabric tightening behind my back...I can't keep myself from flinching as a button loudly snaps, flies off to impact on the floor. His hand descending lower still, into the space that's newly opened. "I want you to do it." Whispered, still. The thrill inside my heart aches almost painful, an electric throbbing of excitement for me to say this wish aloud, to think that it could be. To feel his fingers stroking in the valley of my breasts, another button snapping at his strength. "I want to be your little slut." The word emerges only faintly, my tongue struggling to shape its harshness. A sheen of scarlet on my cheeks, deliciously humiliated...but it's joined by such a sense of bliss inside me as I see the lustful satisfaction rise up triumphant in his gaze, curl smirking in his smile. "Good..." One long downward stroke, and the remaining buttons of my blouse are torn away like tissue paper by his descending hand, sent to roll and scatter on the floor. The fabric pulled apart, opened, my naked breasts exposed for him to see. My nipples hard as little diamonds, standing tall as though to beg for his attention, for his eyes, for his fingers tough as iron to pinch them once again. The prayer is halfway answered. Not a pinch but a caress, his fleshy thumbtip scraping at one pink and pebbled nub. An exultant gasp escaping slowly from my throat, almost squealing with delight. His lips descending to my neck, a forceful kiss encircled by the scratch of day-old whiskers on my skin, intoxicating pleasure buzzing dizzy in my mind...daddy. I say it in my head, in tiny groans and whimpers, gratitude and pleading both reflected in the name. Oh, daddy, daddy... Then his hand is stroking down again across my belly, outstretched fingers laying claim to everything they touch. Sneaking in beneath the waistband of my jeans - two fingers twist expertly to unhook the little metal clasp before his hand invades my panties, demanding, bold, before he cups possessively upon my puss. A single firm, insistent squeeze enough to overwhelm my senses with a spasm of delight, to leave me trembling against his broad and sturdy chest, while his exploring fingers probe and stroke amidst my petals, coated in the slick and hopeful flow of my arousal. "Daddy..." I speak it now, squeal the word, whining to him like an animal in heat. The flush of feeling on my cheeks as I clutch weakly at his shirt, as his strong arm closes tight around my back and his middle finger presses undeniably between my drooling inner lips. Pathetic whimpers, my hips quivering against his hand. "Please..." I don't know what I'm even asking him, what I'm begging for. Just that I want him to be the one to give it to me. Deeper. His finger hooked inside me, his rough voice resonating in my skull. Powerful, amused. "You're dripping wet, baby girl. You must need daddy bad." Pumping in and out of me with lazy, teasing strokes, just quick enough to make me want it more, want it faster, harder. "Is that right? You need your daddy to make you cum?" I have no words of my own. I can only echo his, gasped out breathlessly between the stifled moans that rise up helpless from my throat. "Ohh, yes, daddy, make me cum." Writhing wanton there against him, my breasts exposed against his shirt, helplessly ecstatic at the sensation of my rigid nipples rubbing, scraping at the fabric. Drinking every drop of Him that I can find. "make me cum, daddy, please, please..." "Mmm." Another quiet chuckle in his chest - I gasp and shudder in a momentary flood of feeling as his big hand slaps against my burning pussy, his middle finger thrusting firm and hard into my depths, squeezing agonizingly exquisite at my inner walls. And then an aching cry of need as motion stops, as he just stands there, holding me impaled. A husky whisper in my ear, almost conspiratorial. "You need to do something first." His lips caress my earlobe, the moisture of his breath warm upon my skin. "You need to tell me who you belong to, little slut." Even with my mind so overwhelmed with pleasure and with need, I know the answer that he wants. The only answer that could be. "I belong to you, daddy." The words are thrilling on my tongue, an electric tingle that arcs deliriously along my nerves as I intone them soft and worshipful. "That's right." Murmuring approval - I whimper quietly into his chest to feel him give me my reward, a moment's searing pleasure as his palm grinds rough against my clit. "Daddy owns you, babygirl. Every inch of you is mine, to do with as I please. This is Daddy's mouth to use," his thumb strokes perfectly again across my lower lip. "These are Daddy's tits to taste, to squeeze, Daddy's pretty little cunt to fuck into submission." Another shudder up my spine, as his meaty finger bucks inside me. My head tilts back drunkenly to look him in the eye, and the subtle smile that he wears is thick with threat and promise. A deceptive softness to his voice now, insidiously gentle. "I'll protect you, sweetheart. Daddy takes care of his property. But you're never going to leave, you understand?" No worry to his tone, no pleading - just certainty, as pitiless and firm as the rigid heat that I feel pressing to my belly. His hand slides round to loosely grasp again around my neck, squeezing mild and possessive. His voice a low, seductive rumble in my mind. "I'm keeping you, Sarah. This is what you're meant to be. My pet. My obedient little girl, my precious little whore." Just the slightest trace of fire, of the undeniable command of which he's capable, before he lets me go. "Now get down on your knees. It's time for you to serve your Daddy properly." There isn't any hesitation, no question inside of me, no doubt. A good girl does what her Daddy says. And that's exactly what I want to be...he looms up tall before me as I sink down to my knees, as the metal buckle of his belt softly clinks to be undone, his zipper hissing as the stiffened slab of his arousal is released for me to see, for me to touch, thick and hot and heavy. I know the bliss that burns inside my chest, I recognize it, the sense of satisfaction like slipping on a shirt that fits just right. Belonging. This is where I'm meant to be, kneeling at my Daddy's feet. What I'm meant to be, the favored toy of his desires, loved and used. His strong hands curled behind my skull to firmly force my mouth around his straining manhood. My tongue caressing it beneath in adoration, servant to his pleasure, starving for the coming moment when I might be favored with his seed, when I can taste my Daddy's cum, treasuring every salty, viscous drop. My jaw forced wide to accommodate his girth, as he already pounds against my throat, and I fall deeper to the fuzz of bliss inside my mind... --- Warm. Quiet. My eyes open only slowly, scratchy, their corners crusted up with sleep. Daylight glaring in at me through my bedroom window blinds. Bright. Too bright - I must have slept in late. The thought drifts dully through my consciousness as it stirs grumbling to motion. Dreaming...god, the dream I had. Already the details are fading from my memory, evaporating to a vague, uncertain fog, but I can feel what it was like, my body's lingering reaction to its stimulation, the liquid heat still aching down within my hips. My dad, discovering somehow the fantasies I've had, deciding that it's time to make me his - thinking of it sends another pulse of hunger down between my legs, another cry of need, almost deep enough to hurt. Touch me. Begging, though he isn't there to listen. Touch me, daddy. In the sleepy warmth beneath the covers, I don't feel much reason not to let my hand slip down below my waist. Inside my panties, the fabric there already dampened from my emanations of the night. My fingers rubbing slow across the slickness of my nether lips, stroking at my clit, my mind reaching out to grab what I can still remember of the dream before it slips entirely away. Little flashes, feelings, imagined instants where his hand sits firm around my tender throat, where it squeezes, pinches at my breasts. Where I'm kneeling down submissive at his feet with a sense of such belonging, such utter rightness. My Daddy standing tall above me, protecting me from everything, and all I need to know is how to make him happy. All I need to do is be his baby girl. His angel and his slut, his perfect little princess and his eager little whore, and the seeming conflict of the roles resolved by my devotion, by my willingness to cast myself to any shape that he desires. And god, how it would feel when he carried me to bed, when his strong arms spread my legs apart and I was suddenly impaled with his thickness, crushed beneath his weight, my body battered by the ferocity and power of his lust. Being taken by him, being used in every way, until I can only lay there limply in a mindless haze of rapture, until at last he roars out his release, he explodes inside of me, until I'm gifted with the blessing of my daddy's seed... Reality is Different Ch. 03 Primed already by the dream, it takes no more than a minute for my busy fingers to carry me beyond the edge. My orgasm only small this morning, quick and sweet, a warm and vibrant shiver running frantic through my body as my toes curl up ecstatic at the bottom of the covers. A few brief moments in that fuzzy realm of agonizing pleasure - then reality returns again around me, the thrilling madness of desire draining from my skull and leaving in its wake a familiar mingling of shame and longing. Embarrassed by my thoughts, by the absurd direction of my dreams, even as that foolish, hopeful little part of me still wishes they were true. Ugh. I swing up swiftly out of bed, trying to get focused, to shake off the cobwebs of fatigue and bodily distraction still clinging to my bones. Glancing at the mirror as I move over to my chest of drawers - the same girl that I always see is still there looking back at me, tall and mousey, her hair all mussed from sleep. Somewhat pink of cheek right now, after her release. Bare legs stretching down below a loose and slightly holey nightshirt...god, if I just lift it up a couple inches you can see the little patch of dampness at the bottom of my panties, evidence of my activities. Blatant. Obscene, almost. I could just go downstairs like this. The thought slips tantalizing though my mind, daring, mischievous. Dangerous. See if dad would look, if he would notice. In the stories, they could sometimes even smell it, the fragrance of their little girl's arousal. A subtle, powerful perfume that tells him all he needs to know, that stirs the flame of his desire, deep and urgent instincts called up by his daughter's scent... Yeah. Or more likely, he'd just think I peed myself a little. I glance again into the mirror, give myself a grimace as I peel down my sodden panties to replace them with another pair. Safer this way. Wiser. The fantasies are fun, exciting, but I can't go acting like they're real...though there is an eager little sparkle of excitement in my breast as I make sure the used pair of my underwear sits at the top and center of my half-full hamper, plainly visible if anyone should look. Easy for my dad to snatch up, maybe, if the impulse takes him as he wanders through my room. Sniffing at them, when he takes them to a private place. Rubbing them all over his erection as he envisions what they held. Ejaculating right into their base, so that even if they're cleaned I'd soon be wearing something that was soaked with our commingled cum, so that a little bit of his might be there still, held against my puss. Grr. Get a grip, Sarah. My blush persists, my pulse still rapid as I stand hesitant before the chest of drawers, trying to decide if I should put on pants or anything before I go downstairs. A question that would once have been almost irrelevant. Three months ago I wouldn't have thought twice before heading down like this. It's only with the emergence of these feelings that I've become aware of my exposure to him, when it happens. Those bare legs in the mornings, before I shower and get dressed...I've started sometimes slipping on a pair of shorts beforehand, just so I can look him in the eye. So that the feeling that I have of almost nakedness before him doesn't paralyze my tongue. I shouldn't, though. That's what Martin says. The man who answered my request for help, a single offer of assistance mixed in with all the other responses that I got - condemnation, mocking, and more than a couple comments bragging about unrelated affairs with their own family members. Martin at least gave me an email address, a name, said that he'd been involved with his own daughter for a number of years. That he would try to answer some of the questions that I have. He did, at that. Some. Not everything, of course. Not my biggest wonder, the question that feels as though it's at the center of all this. "Is my dad interested in me?" Couldn't answer that, he said. No way that he could tell for certain, hearing just my second-hand descriptions. Not unless a move is made. But he's been providing me with other little pieces of advice, saying that if I want my dad to see me as a sexual creature, as a potential object of desire, I need to be sexual around him. To flirt - not necessarily with him, but for him to see. To dress up in appealing clothes. And maybe more important, to stay undressed in any circumstance I can, any occasion where it can be justified...I mean, it makes sense, mostly. More or less. I do want him to see my legs, to want them. I shouldn't cover up. It's just hard for me to act normal, if I don't. And there's that quiet, doubtful voice inside of me, pointing out that he's already been seeing me like that for years, that if it made any difference, surely he would already feel the way I hope. Still. It takes a couple moments, breathing slow and even as I stand before the mirror, tugging at the bottom of my nightshirt to get it mostly even...but eventually I do decide to head downstairs the way I am. Tamping down the persistent jitter that seems to find its way so often to my nerves, of late. I pad my way along the wooden flooring, my feet protected from the increasing chill of autumn by a pair of calf-length woolen socks, thick and woolen with a red stripe at their tops. At least it's Saturday. Not going to be late for anything. He should be at home all day, too. Unless he has any important jobs to get done...but for better or for worse, that hasn't been the case too often, recently. I used to hate it when he would have to work on weekends, when I was little. I'd nurse a quiet grudge at him, pettily upset, as though he chose to be away...I know better now, of course. Though I think I might still be somewhat disappointed, if I should find him gone. Not an issue, it soon seems. "I don't even know, honestly." My dad's voice comes faintly through the doorway when I'm halfway down the stairs - I almost answer back in greeting, before I realize that he's probably not talking to me. His tones mostly mild, touched just faintly with vexation. I don't hear anybody else, but he speaks again a moment later; I guess he's on the phone. "No. I mean it's nothing I can put my finger on, exactly. She's just acting strangely lately." Another step. Then the meaning of his words hit home, and I freeze immediately in place, a sudden fluttering of tension in my stomach. He's talking about me. He must be. I mean, okay, he could mean someone else, but...I lean carefully against the wall, delaying my descent into the creaky section of the stairs while my ears strain forcefully to pick out the low rumble of my father's voice. "Hell, I can't even say. Just odd, you know? A little bit erratic. Half the time she's quiet, totally distracted, and the other half she's acting just about as sweetly as I've ever seen her. She made dinner for me four times in the past week, if you can believe that. I don't know if she's feeling guilty for something, or..." He pauses then again, waiting for the person on the other end to finish speaking. No question now that he's talking about me. "No, I haven't asked her." A beat. "That's just not how things are with us. It's been...no, listen. She talks to me, you know? Tells me what's going on in her life. Usually she does, at any rate. And I-" Suddenly he sighs, and I can hear the tiny thread of irritation tugging at his voice. "No, that's not a dig at you. It's just the way things are. Point is, I want to give her a chance to tell me what's going on herself, before I go demanding answers. If she doesn't want to, I'm sure she has a good reason." Another pause, before a tiny snort of laughter sounds gently disparaging from his nose. "No, that would surprise me very much. Listen, just...maybe I shouldn't even have said anything. This could easily be nothing, anyway, just a mood she's in." There's a longer quiet this time, as he listens to the person on the other end. The person whose identity I'm pretty sure I know. Not a lot of people he'd be talking to about me, after all. Not many who could interpret the fact that I'm mostly open with him as an insult. "Yes, of course I will. You - yeah. Honestly, if I had to guess, I'd say she's just lonely. You know how shy she can be. And on her birthday, she was complaining to me a little bit about her love life. Or her lack of it. I think it's bothering her, maybe." "Mmm." He listens for a while again, interrupted only by a moment's chuckle and a brief, sardonic comment. "Not to change the subject, of course." And then a long ensuing silence before I hear him softly whistle, mild and disapproving. His voice more careful, neutral when he speaks. "Well, I'll pass it along, of course. But to be honest, I don't expect that she'll be interested." A beat. "No, I don't have anything to do with that." The tone of irritation returning, stronger now. "Believe it or not, Elaine, I'm on your side in this. More or less. I think she needs her mother in her life. But there's not a lot that I can do when she says she doesn't want to see you, you know?" Ha. My lips tug upward towards a tiny smirk of satisfaction. I was right. It's my mom. And better still, she's getting the reminder she deserves about how terrible she is...though my gleeful schadenfreude is tamped down a moment later, as dad adopts more sympathetic tones. "No, I understand. It's okay. God knows, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes with this...listen, it might take her a while, but I do think that she'll forgive you. Eventually. She told me the other day that she doesn't hate you, which is - well, it's something, right?" Another quiet huff of laughter while he listens to her speak. Then, "Exactly. So. I'll try to float the idea, I suppose, see if I can sell her on it. And I'll give you a call if she wants to go, okay?" A tiny pause. "Okay. Talk to you later, then. Bye." I don't actually hear him hanging up...but he doesn't speak again, and as time begins to pass I can soon pick out the sounds of footsteps ranging further from the phone, wandering a bit. I'm pretty sure the conversation's genuinely over. Not that I feel I should move quite yet. It would be a little too coincidental if I appeared the very moment he hung up. Better if I wait a while here, consider what I heard before continuing downstairs. What there is to consider, anyhow. Some suggestion of my mom's that I'm already itching to refuse, to throw back in her face, even if it's only indirectly. And dad...I can't be too surprised that he would notice something off in the way that I've been acting lately. He knows me much too well for a thing like this to slip beneath his gaze. And certainly I've seen the little looks he's given me, the questions in his eyes. Lonely. I guess he's pretty close, at that. Maybe even closer than I'd want to say. Those bitter worries that I've had, self-pitying, wondering if I'm only focusing on him like this because I feel like no one else would want me. Because unconsciously I think he's safe, he won't reject me...and because he wouldn't ever actually pursue me, either. Someone I can fantasize about, someone I can snuggle up against and tell myself that I desire, without the obligations or the nervous anguish of any actual involvement. Like some foolish schoolgirl, dreaming of whatever heartthrob decorates her bedroom walls, knowing deep inside herself that it can never happen. That could be how it is with me. Just a fearful, lonely little girl, focused on her daddy because she knows he'd never really touch her. Because she doesn't have the guts for what she tells herself she wants. No. The answer surges stubborn out of me, tight and troubled. It isn't like that. I do want this. If he wants it, if he wants me...and maybe it does frighten me a little, thinking how it might feel if it really came to pass, but that doesn't mean that I'm just lying to myself. The fear is even part of the appeal it holds. Putting myself into my father's hands, not knowing what he'll do with me. Being completely under his control, his to use, his to punish. His to love. There's a subtle, anxious sweetness to the threat of the idea, the spice of danger heady in my thoughts. If it were real, if it could be... Downstairs. The steps creak under me as I descend, announcing my arrival before I have to say a word. My dad there on the couch, reading through the paper - but it's lowered by the time I'm fully in the doorway, his eyes cast up to meet me. Smiling, white and friendly. "Well, good morning, lazybones." His tone is ally to the cheerful greeting, humming with a spark of quiet laughter that welcomes me to join. "Good thing you came down when you did. I was just about to head up there to dump a pail of water on your head." "Mm. Good thing then, yeah." I smile faintly back at him as I draw closer, feeling still the slightly nervous beating of my heart. It isn't that much of an answer. But I'm distracted, watching him, keeping conscious of his eyes. Another thing that Martin said to do - a man who feels an interest in someone that he shouldn't, or in someone that he thinks he shouldn't, may never genuinely act on that attraction. He may never say anything that would reveal it, even, if he has a modicum of self-control. But men's eyes don't take well to such discipline, he said. They instinctively explore on an inviting curve, devour any offering of flesh that they find pleasing, and it's always a conscious effort for their owners to keep them more or less in line. Which is why I have to present myself to him like this, wearing as little clothing as my anxious heart can handle. Giving him something he might stare at in some unguarded moment...and if I'm lucky, allowing me to notice. No such luck, as yet. Yes, he looks at me. Even glances down as I approach, a flitting of his pupils that I barely catch, taking in my state of dress. But there isn't any staring at the way my legs are bare, revealed, no lustful, leering smirk. Just the soft and friendly gaze I know. The paper crinkles in his hand as he folds it over, speaks into the silence that I've left. "So, what's on the agenda for today? Get together with some friends, raise some hell?" "Probably not, no." Quietly indulgent, edging closer to the couch. Closer to him. He's sitting there already dressed, an undershirt and sturdy jeans, a heavy watch around his wrist. Even if he isn't looking, I still can feel my relative undress, the subtle weakness of exposure. Vulnerability. An awkward simmer on my cheeks as my awareness fixates on the precise location my nightshirt's lower hemline. From where he's sitting, I'm pretty sure that he could clearly see the bottom of my panties protruding just below. If I had worn the pair that I had on last night, this morning... "Um, I don't really have any kind of plans today. How about you?" "Eh." His broad shoulders ripple with an easygoing shrug. "I figure I should probably open up the truck. Thing's been giving me some trouble lately, starting, and dollars to doughnuts it's the carburetor again." A pause - his lip quirks up, wry, inquiring. "If you're going to be around, I suppose you could maybe help me out with that a little. If you feel up to it." "Of course." My answer comes out eager, automatic. "Anything." Standing closer now, a few short feet before the couch, and I can't keep myself from thinking how sometimes in the stories a girl would be required to appear like this before her father, to present herself for his inspection. His gaze so firm and unrelenting as it draws methodically across her body, penetrating, potent. As though to see into her soul, to find the slightest lapse in her obedience, in her devotion - and then to cure her of them, by whatever means would be required. Pain or pleasure from his hands, sculpting her into his perfect little girl, his prize, his loyal pet. Turn around, Sarah. I can almost hear him say the words, quiet and commanding. Just the barest moment's hesitation before I would obey, spinning in a slow and careful circle so that he can look at me from every angle, so that he can decide if I deserve to service his desires. A hopeful ache inside my breast, praying that I do. Perhaps he'd speak again. Kneel. A single word, imperative, as though from a medieval king - then I would gladly genuflect before him, abase myself upon the floor, crawl up close to hug myself against his leg the way that women sometimes do in those movie posters, paintings of epic fantasy. Barbarians standing tall and shirtless, nearly-naked maidens clutching tight to the protector who stands heroically above them. A pose that says so plainly she would do anything for him. "Here, sit down." They aren't quite so demanding, the words he actually speaks, casual and mild as he pats briefly on the couch's middle cushion. But I still find a slightly wicked thrill in rushing to obey, plopping down affectionate beside him. My eyes in his, as he continues. "You know, your mom called me a little bit ago." Blech. This already. I was hoping for at least a couple minutes here before I had to face it. "Yeah?" I'd worry that my sour look might give away my snooping - except I'm pretty sure I'd look the same way if I really had found out about her call just now. "What did she want?" "Well, mostly just checking in on you. I told her you couldn't talk, too busy sleeping it off after your wild party last night." He says it deadpan, with just the slightest shadow of humor to his smile; I can return only a faint roll of the eyes, tolerant, amused. "But she also pointed out that Thanksgiving will be coming up pretty soon, and you still haven't been out there to visit her." "And?" It comes out somewhat biting, despite myself. Looking halfway away from him. "And she'd like to see you." No response in kind, of course. He speaks still patient, soft. Slightly wry, as he continues. "And I may have told her that I'd try to talk you into going, so I hope you'll think about it for at least a couple seconds before you turn it down." "Dad..." The word is quiet, plaintive, faintly frustrated. Unfair of her, to make him ask me for her. I don't want to tell him 'no.' Don't want to throw him off with empty promises to consider it forever, the way I would if she'd just brought it up herself. He deserves better than that. And there's no reason why he should be asking, should be shilling for her like this, with the way that she betrayed him... "Hey." He steps into my silence, speaks sincere and understanding. "I get it. She's the worst person in the world." His gentle smile doesn't quite endorse the words. "But she cares about you, sweetheart. You know she does. Wouldn't be bugging you to come and visit all the time, if she didn't. And hell, if nothing else, she's bound to have some better food out there than the crud I put together last Thanksgiving." I have to laugh at that, my tense and restless feeling cracking with a snort of sudden, unavoidable amusement. It was pretty bad, last year. The middle of the turkey somehow was actually still cold, and the stuffing not just oversalted but burnt black against the pan. We eventually just got takeout. Chow mein...god. There's another snort of humor as I glance over at my dad again, the smile quirked up somewhat foolish on my lips. But my voice is quieter, restrained. Softly hopeful. "Would you be going with me?" "Ah." My expression droops back down a bit - his answer's clear already from that slight and flat pronunciation before he speaks another word. Before he shakes his head. "That would be pretty awkward, I would think. I mean, I'd say we're mostly civil now, your mom and I, but - well, it's easier to be civil over the phone. And I'm sure Roger wouldn't be quite as eager to sponsor my trip out, either. I'm afraid you'd have to take this flight by your lonesome." Reality is Different Ch. 03 "Mm." Another muted, wordless sound. I guess it isn't too surprising. Not like we're still one big happy family, glad to spend some time together. Even if you're as even-tempered as my dad, I can't think it would be a pleasant thing to eat across the table from the man who stole your wife, to smile and chat and laugh with him, as though everything were fine between them. To see my mom, as well, the woman who so blithely cast off her marriage vows, who lied to him, to me, just to go out and get fucked by someone with a slightly bigger wallet. I hope he doesn't miss her. My eyes touch on his hand, laying on the cushion there beside his knee. I don't think he does. Even when the storm of anger that had gripped him was blown over, he never really tried to win her back or anything. Not that I'm aware. No pleading phone calls, begging for her to return. He's said a couple times that he misses how things were before, but never about mom herself. I hope that means he knows he doesn't need her, that he deserves a better woman, that he's more than man enough to get one. A women who can see his strength, his kindness, who loves him with all the fire and the fervency that is his due. Who would cherish him. Honor him. Obey. "I don't really want to." My voice is low and even when I speak again, a faint admission. Leaning over sideways on the couch, enough to rest my head against his shoulder. Feeling just his presence, his body's gentle warmth. A little taste. "But I'll go and see her, if you tell me to." There's a subtle kind of satisfaction, saying it. Simplicity. If I didn't have to worry what to do, if there were only his command, his word. Doing what my Daddy says... "Sweetheart, don't be silly." He turns his head to better look at me. I can barely see it, at the corner of my eye; it's easier to hear the slight perplexion in his tone, mixed in with the more familiar sound of reassurance. "I'm not going to tell you to do something you don't want to do. Just think about it, okay? You've got a week or so, anyway, before you really need to give a yes or no." "Okay." Quiet. Perhaps a tiny trace of disappointment in my voice, my offer of obedience rebuffed...though I can't exactly find it a surprise. It's one more strike against my fantasy, a point the voice of reason in me always raises. He's not that kind of man, the kind the stories always seem to feature. Hard men, brooding, forceful and demanding. The kind of men who don't care who they hurt, who just take what they desire. Even the body of their only daughter. Men who give commands and expect them to be followed, who don't hesitate to back them up with punishment, with pain. In my dreams, I cast my father in that role, I make him speak the necessary words. But when the lights are on, there's no pretending that it fits him. He's sympathetic, kind, for all his size and strength. He'd never put his wants above my own, never make demands of me to satisfy his own desires. He loves me. And I love him for it, for the regard and the concern that shows in every move he makes, for being so much my unfailing protector, always there to sacrifice on my behalf. And yet I fantasize like this about him turning round and using me, controlling me, making me his toy....it's insane, impossible, it's an utter contradiction. Loving who he is, more than I even should, all while wishing he would treat me in a way the father that I know would never do. "Actually, um," I speak again abruptly, staring at his hand. His cracked and calloused fingers halfway curled around the paper's edge. Just to feel that hand upon my body...it wouldn't need to be a forceful thing, not really. I've kind of gravitated to that sort of story, but it doesn't have to limit my desires. If he would stroke right now behind my neck, the way he often has before. If I could ask him for it, or only show him that I need it, that I need him. His fingers roaming on my naked skin, slow and gentle, pleasure in each soft caress. If it didn't matter who we were to one another, or if we just forgot. "I thought we could do something together today, maybe." "Yeah?" Bright enough, inquiring. "What'd you have in mind?" "What about a picnic?" I look up now, crane back my neck to meet his eye as the suggestion leaves my lips. Only half-considered. Maybe foolish, even - how long since we've done something like that? Years? "Um, we could bike out to the park, bring along some food. If you're not too busy with the truck..." He laughs at that, brief and mild. "Heck, no. I can work on the truck any day. A picnic with my favorite daughter, that's..." Trailing off a moment, with a mischievous sparkle in his eye. "...well, probably we could pull that off most days, too. But you get the point. Picnic it is. Though, ah, I think we're actually running a trifle low on provisions at the moment...you want me to run out to the grocery store while you get dressed?" "Nah, I'll do it." The smile drifts hopeful back onto my face. "Honestly, I need a little while before I'll be hungry enough to eat, anyway. You can just hang out, take it easy; I'll head over to the store." "Sounds like a plan." A pronouncement light and cheerful, captivating with the richness of his voice. Friendly. Familiar, the way that people talk when they're so close to one another that it hardly even matters what they say. Affection in his tone, the kind that adds the meaning to the moments when he calls me his favorite daughter. If this were a story -- god, how I keep going back to that. But if it were, he might reach out right now, put his hand upon my naked knee, might gently squeeze it in his grasp. It wouldn't be the way I fantasized about before, in the middle of my birthday dinner. Not possessive and demanding. Just absently instead, unthought, a gesture that he means to be no more than kind. Unconsciously inspired by the glimpses that I've tried to tempt him with, the suggestions that I've sought to give. He doesn't even truly realize at first how intimate the action is, his fingers rough and strong against my skin. Not until I gasp, and blush, and look away, unable to conceal my reaction to his touch - then suddenly he sees more clearly what he's doing, pulls his hand away, gives me some uneasy, slightly stammering apology to which I can think of no response. Nothing further in that moment. Only later, as he turns it over in his mind, as he finds that he can't keep himself from thinking about touching me again. Thinking also how I failed to pull away when he stepped beyond what's proper, how I didn't tell him "no." How in fact I pushed in a little closer to his side, how my legs had shifted slightly, opened wider... "Well." Reality disrupts my daydream once again, my father speaking firm and final, pushing to his feet. Leaving me to sit up on my own. "Guess I'll take the opportunity to pop open the truck, take a look at least. You can take your time, come and get me when you're ready for that picnic, okay?" Standing there above me, half a smile on his lips. Tall like this, with me still sitting down. Or, well. He's always tall. But the differential's greater, here. Closer to my fantasies. His little girl, craning back my neck to meet his eyes. Looking at him through my lashes. "Okay." I want to add another word. Daddy. Okay, daddy. Yes, daddy...it hangs there just behind my lips, almost spoken, holding an allure far greater than anything that reason would suggest. As though if I just spoke the words that those girls in the stories use, it would bring my fantasies to life. But I can't. My worries stand before me, hold me back. It's still too unfamiliar for me to call him that, too much out of the ordinary. I can get away with it in closer moments, when there's some great stirring of emotion there excusing it, gratitude or joy, something he could maybe tell himself would be the reason I would slip back into that old endearment. Or maybe it's just in moments like that that I can get out of my own head enough to do it. When there's a burst of feeling there to pull me past the fear. Without it...I can only sit there watching, concealing my quiet yearning as he quirks at me a little smile, tousles at my hair in brief, affectionate farewell before he heads out the front door. Leaving me alone there on the couch, wishing things could be as simple as they are inside my dreams. --- "There's still a piece of chicken left." An old and checkered tablecloth lies between us on the grass, laden with the remnants of our lunch. Nothing particularly fancy. A little tub of mac and cheese I put together from a box. The peels from two oranges, somewhat past their prime. A plastic container of fried chicken, from the supermarket deli - that's a favorite of my dad's. And then the thing I hesitated over for a while before putting in the bag - dad's box of wine, taken from the fridge. It isn't normally my drink. Not that I dislike it or anything, not really. It's silly, but every time I have some I keep on expecting it to taste like grape juice, to be sweeter than it really is. The reality is jarring. But Martin said that drinking with somebody is one of the best ways of breaking past taboos and inhibitions, so...wine it was. What I drank of it now courses pleasant in my veins, giving everything a certain fuzzy glow. "Don't you want it for yourself?" Dad's sitting with his back against a narrow tree, his legs stretched out beside the tablecloth. An inquiring eyebrow raised in my direction. "I think I must've ate at least two-thirds of that already." "You ate two-thirds of everything," I point out the obvious, and can't help a little snort of laughter as he puts on a stricken look, pretending shocked and mortified. "And anyway, it's gotten pretty cold. I don't think I could eat it even if I was still hungry. Lukewarm chicken is kinda gross." "But you figure I won't mind? What am I, the human garbage disposal?" Amusement plays pleasantly about his lips, threading through the words. "I don't know. 'Human' might be pushing it." Friendly teasing, warm inside my voice, my smile. "I'm not sure a human being could survive some of the things I've seen you eat." That earns a brief guffaw, his familiar grin appearing wide and white in his expression. Mirrored in my own. "All right, all right, hand it over." True to form, he hardly hesitates to a hearty bite out of the wing, speaking several seconds later around half a mouthful still of chicken. "You gnow, shpeaking of cold, you musht be freeshing in that oudfit." Oh, boy. I flush at that, look away a moment, biting slightly at my lip. I know exactly what he means. The clothing I picked out for this excursion, after going glumly through my closet for what must have been a half an hour. Hard to decide that kind of thing, when I don't know what he likes. What he would like, on me. This is one of the girliest things I own, though. A light and airy summer dress, done up in pink and white. Cut high up on my legs, frilly, low around my chest - it's revealing, in a way I think still looks mostly innocent. I hope. But it's closing in on winter now, and while I managed well enough in getting here, and even through most of the meal, the wind is starting to pick up. I can feel it on my skin, goosebumps rising with that faintly uncomfortable tingle as the chill slips easily beneath the flimsy cotton. I do manage to smile back at him, at least. Eventually. A little awkwardly. "I'm okay." Slightly hollow, forced. If I were cold, we'd have to head back home...and I don't want to go just yet. "Of course, of course." His head shakes mildly, indulgent disapproval. "Sitting here practically a popsicle, and you say you're all right. Why you girls refuse on dressing for the weather, I'll never know." Another beat before he moves, sitting upright off the tree as he grabs for the collar of his jacket. "Here, you can put this on. I'm inclined to let you suffer, personally, but..." "Dad, no." I'll admit it, my protest is mostly driven by politeness, manners. One never accepts a gift the first time it's offered, after all. "Then you'll just be cold instead." "Well." His sturdy hands don't even pause, taking off his heavy jacket. The rasping of the metal zipper singing quiet to the air as it's undone. "I suppose there's always the caveman method, too. If you're not too cool for it." It's a spark of pure delight, the feeling passing through me with the words. Tugging up my smile into something giddy and sincere, while my heart soars higher in my chest. "Never." The 'caveman method' - it's kind of silly, cute, how glad he always is to declare himself a savage, a barbarian. A brute. It's just his term for keeping warm by cramming people close to one another. An answer that he gave when I was younger, when I would complain about the cold and he didn't want to turn the heat on. We'd curl up together on the couch beneath a blanket, watch TV or read aloud. Mom, too, at least sometimes. All three of us, a family, with dad there in the middle...it had the feeling of a game, almost. Something fun, exciting, so much so that I would halfway look forward to the colder days, to the chance of playing caveman on the couch. Or on the grass, today. Perhaps a trace surprise there in my dad's expression, his eyebrow faintly elevated at the speed of my agreement, at how eagerly I'm crawling over to set down at his side, to take my place beneath his arm. But he suggested it, not me, and there's a blessing of security in that. If he wonders anything about my behavior, he doesn't ask it - just hums something almost silently beneath his breath, slipping off his jacket to lay it out and open as a makeshift blanket there across our laps. Leaning back again against the tree, and my heartbeat thrills a rapid patter to press in close beside him, to feel his body's gentle warmth, the presence of his arm behind my back, laid down loosely with his palm against the earth. My cheek is nestled at his shoulder, abruptly grateful for the rising chill of winter, for offering this moment. It could be something from a story, too. Unsurprising now, the direction my imagination takes, the gleeful whisper in my mind. A girl and her father, thrown together in the cold...god, how many of them used that as a basis, as the impetus for their desire, or an excuse for its fulfillment? In sleeping bags, on winter nights, in cars that broke down on some isolated country road, far from any help. It's only practical at first, conserving body heat to help withstand the bitter chill outside. But it takes no more than minutes for the father to develop an uncomfortable awareness of his daughter's body pressed to his, her curves so soft and tempting, inviting him to touch. And for her own part...she has no doubts on what she wants, no uncertainties. She makes no protest when first she feels her father's fingers curl upon her finely rounded bottom, when he loosely grasps it in his hand. Or maybe just a single word, whispered in the tiny space between them. "Daddy..." Playful, tender, less a thing of reprimand than of encouragement. Her lips a centimeter from his neck, her every exhalation like a subtle kiss. I can feel what you're doing, daddy. I don't want you to stop... And now we have a scene that's similar to that, my dad and me. Alike enough to stir the flame that burns familiar in my hips, enough to cause that foolish, hopeful voice inside of me to dwell upon the fact that it was him that offered it, to wonder breathless if he might not have those fantasies in mind as well. In my head, I know it's silly, it's absurd - this is just one more sometime ritual we share, a game, a joke we've had since I was little. In any kind of an objective sense, our position now is likely even less risqué than what we had this morning, when I sat beside him on the couch. We might be sharing space beneath a makeshift blanket now, but we're also out in public, restraining what could happen, and unlike before, I actually have something on beneath the waist. Aside from underwear. It still feels different, though. Even if it's just because of what I've read...I can't help thinking of whatever tiny possibility there is that he did intend it in that way, that it was flirtation, his suggestion I should warm up at his side. A signal of his own desire. And what I could do to answer back in kind, to show him that I'm his to take...it could be a murmur there beside him, an exaggerated shiver for effect. My hand clasping at his wrist. "Daddy, I'm still cold." "Well." He might reflect on it a moment, pretend to think of a solution, while taking careful cognizance of how I hold myself against him, the way I've brought my hand to sit upon his waist. His fingers curling on my hip, instinctively possessive. "I suppose we could always get a little closer." His voice vibrating low and rich, huskier than usual in the close confines of our pose...but I don't have time to lose myself in its enchanting rumble. Even as he finishes the words, I can feel his strong arm tightening behind my back, carrying me upward; it's no more than a moment later that he has me lying there on top of him, my back against his chest, my bottom planted neatly in his lap. Gently captured, held with one arm now circling around my waist, the other just beneath my breasts. Beautifully trapped in his embrace. "Is that better, baby girl?" I don't intend to shiver, this time. Neither is it from the cold. Just from the feeling of his breath, tracing warm and moist upon my scalp, his lips buried in my hair. My entire body rising up as he inhales, lifted on his chest as though I weighed nothing at all...when I can speak again, my voice emerges only weakly, trembling with want. "It's a little better, daddy." My heartbeat pounding swiftly, a flutter in my breast, overwhelmed with what I've been already given. Afraid to ask for more. "But I'm still...it's..." "Still not perfect, princess?" He speaks again behind me, interrupts, and I can feel the rumble of his voice vibrating so delicious through his chest into my body, into my soul. One big hand pulling free from its position to slide boldly up my side, roughened fingers slightly scraping at my neck, my cheek, brushing at my ear as they slip amongst my loose and messy locks. His tone is confident, subtly amused. Teasing. "Such a demanding little girl you are. Needy." His thumb strokes gently at my jaw. "Are you needy, Sarah?" "Yes, daddy." Close to breathless. The word has never felt as fitting as it does to me this moment. 'Desire' isn't strong enough a term to name the feeling aching in my stomach, throbbing urgent in my heart. It's more than that, it's deeper. Need. I need my daddy's love, his touch, his careful guidance and command. Without it I would wither into nothing, a flower in the dark. "Yes, of course you are," he murmurs back beguiling to my scalp, completely self-assured. His solid hand descending languidly one more upon my skin, tracing out my features, my profile. Beneath my brow, along my nose. An electric moment, held what feels like hours, as he strokes across my lips, as they're crushed pliant and obedient beneath his fingertips. There's a smile in his voice when at last he speaks again, a husky, smirking arrogance. "I do know one other way to keep a girl warm. But it's not the sort of thing a father's usually supposed to do." Dangerous and playful, a lion flirting with his prey. "You'll have to promise to be very good for daddy, if you want it." "I promise, daddy." The excitement and the tension hum almost melodic in my tone, trembling on top of him. "I swear, I'll do anything you want." He chuckles at that, low and powerful. The sound reverberating so exquisite through me, stirring up the butterflies inside my chest. "That's right, babygirl." His voice inside my mind, inside my soul, the only thing I need to hear. "You will." And then all my thoughts are frozen as I feel my father's hand slide down to grasp upon my breast, his sturdy fingers squeezing subtle and divine. Pleasure singing sharp along my nerves, along my spine, arching up instinctive at the sensation of those calloused digits stroking on my flesh, with just the slender fabric of my dress keeping him from contact. Down below, his other hand descends insistently between my thighs, rubbing slow and forceful through my skirt, and already I can't keep myself from letting out a little moan, a cry that bubbles up inside me as my hips press back against his touch. Reality is Different Ch. 04 All characters over 18. The story is intended to be read from chapter 1, and will likely lack a great deal of context if one were to simply jump in here. * It's almost another week before I venture anything again. If I could even call it that, what happened in the park. A brief confession of domestic dreams he didn't, couldn't understand. A compliment I passed off as something second-hand, that probably he wouldn't have thought twice about even if I'd said flat-out it was from me. In the moment I was nervous, terrified, my stomach tied up into knots, but when I look back on it again it seems like I did hardly anything at all. Especially when held beside the girls that I read about. The ones that deal with their attraction by sneaking down into their father's bedroom, into his bed. That sidle lithe and slender to his side, slowly waking him with tiny kisses and caresses, with her body thrown on top of his. Naked there, as her hips rub hopefully against his morning hardness, playing to his lustful dreams, so that by the time his consciousness begins to surface he's already half committed, taken too much by desire to stop when he discovers that they're real, that the nameless woman in his fantasies is actually his daughter. It's fiction. I know that. It's imaginary. The situations, the reactions. The girls who would do anything like that - if they exist at all, they must be vanishingly few in number. Probably. But it still makes me feel almost like a coward. I could do it, after all, if I really wanted to. I could try. Even if it might not resolve itself as perfectly as it does inside the stories...at least then he'd know. I'd know. There's nothing stopping me, not really. Nothing but my own fears, my own worries. Self-consciousness. Inexperience. The quiet, scornful voice inside that keeps on telling me that this is crazy, that there isn't really any chance at all that he would want me. It's about the most that I can do instead to slip down into his bedroom when he isn't there. That's something of a new routine, in fact. A habit. Or in danger of becoming one, at least. Wednesdays are too busy with my classes, and he often comes home early Fridays, but it seems like every other weekday I end up sneaking guiltily downstairs into my father's room again, thrilling at the faint, ambiguous excitement that tingles down my spine. Nervousness, transgression, titillation, all wrapped up tight with one another in my stomach as I trespass into his space. Sometimes I've been sitting down in front of his computer, checking out the folder that I found before, browsing through this little peek I have into the shape of his desires. A giddy spark inside to notice some new video, or a folder full of pictures, to look through it myself and envision how he would have touched himself, wrapped his strong and calloused hand around his shaft. Other days aren't as dramatic. Or maybe they're just different. Sometimes I just stay in there a while, sit in his chair, look inside his closet. Take off my outer clothes and climb into his bed - that part took some working up to, building up my courage, convincing myself that he wouldn't suddenly show up before I could redress, that even if he did, I could come up with some kind of explanation for how I'd thought to nap in his bedroom instead of mine. The sheets, the blankets, he hasn't washed them for a while now, and there's an ambience that lingers when I've curled up between them, a subtle scent of him that's left there from the hours that he spends here every night. Familiar, warm, the feeling it evokes inside. I think I even understand a little better recently, what the stories have been getting at when they talk about a girl being spurred into arousal by the fragrance of her father's body, of his sweat. Exaggerated, maybe, especially the ones that have her practically orgasm on the spot, just from sniffing at his shirt...but there's something not so different in the pleasant ache I feel when I'm burrowed deep beneath his covers, delighting in the little traces there that tickle at my nose. Sweat, yes. His exertions of the day, with whatever million tiny hormones it contains. And soap, and skin, and the antiperspirant he puts on every morning, all blended in with one another to comprise my father's own distinctive musk. His odor, masculine and powerful and just...Him. I guess it makes sense, after all. In a way. Smell is the sense most linked to your emotions. I've read that somewhere, anyway. So smelling him, it makes me feel the same way he makes me feel. The way that the idea of him does. It makes it easier to think about him, to pretend he's there beside me. And that's mostly what I'm doing, on those early afternoons. Pretending. Thinking. Dreaming, with my hand slipped down between my legs, rubbing slowly at my petals when I happen on a fantasy I like. Or just wondering, sometimes, in the almost sleepy stillness. If I could only bring myself to follow through, to slip down like this into his bedroom when I know it isn't empty. If I only had a reason. Reasons. Yeah. In the stories, it doesn't have to be deliberate. There doesn't need to be a scheme, a plan, a decision that you make. There's no shortage of events and circumstances that can send a girl to spend the night beside her father, an arrangement that begins as something only practical and innocent, until awareness of one another's bodies blooms into desire, and then to passion. It could be almost anything, the cause. Houseguests visiting, borrowing her room, or his. Some trip they take together, a hotel room that only has one bed. A lightning storm outside that drives the fearful girl out from underneath her covers in search of comfort, reassurance. The kind that she can only get when nestled close beside her Daddy. It's the last of these I find especially compelling, even if it is a little childish. Even before the girl's descent into depravity begins. The idea of it, when I put myself into her place, of running to my father's room consumed with terror, frightened at the crash and thunder of the hostile world outside. The dream of being swept up in his arms, held so close against his broad and solid chest as he murmurs in my ear how it's okay, how he's there for me, how there's nothing that I need to be afraid of. The security I'd feel in his embrace, protected by his size, his strength, his love. It's enough to make me almost wish that I still had such fears, that nightmares woke me screaming from my sleep, just so I could scurry from my bed to have my Daddy set the world right again. To put myself into his hands, let him take away my worries and my fears... That's something at the heart of this, I think. Something that the stories even sometimes miss, when they focus so much on the mechanics and the physicality of what the girl and her father do with one another. When it's all about the act itself, how deep into her throat he penetrates, how many times she comes. Because it's not just sex, the allure this has, it can't be. I could imagine any man to be the perfect lover, some generic stud with superbly sculpted muscles and an erection out to here. There'd be no reason why it would have to be my dad, no reason there would be stories about anybody's father, if it wasn't the relationship that really mattered, the history they share and their feelings for each other. The fact that he's been watching over me, protecting me, since earlier than I can even properly recall. The myriad of times that I've relied on him to help me with the problems that the world throws my way, or that I get into myself. I'd trust my life to him without a thought, my soul, because I know he'd guard them better than I could myself. Because he loves me more than any other person ever could. And I want so badly to be worthy of that love, to make him proud of me, to make him happy. It's from that kind of feeling that the fantasies arise. Taking those emotions, that relationship, out beyond all limits. To entrust myself completely to my father, devote myself to pleasing him, to show him my submission to his every whim and whisper. To have him be my guardian forever, my King, my Daddy. To be his little girl, his queen and princess both. Names. It's an idle thought, distraction, slow and lazy in the warmth beneath his covers. Pet names, that kind of thing. He calls me princess. Calls me his little girl, sometimes...or he did it at the park, anyway, when he was prompted. Sweetheart. That one's probably his favorite, along with sweetie. 'Honey,' too, sometimes, though that's mostly what my mother calls me...it's kind of funny, really, how much overlap there is between the names that people call their kids and the names they use for lovers. Most of what dad calls me, it could be either. Both. And there are lots of others, too, ones that I've heard used. Mostly food-related, it seems like, or at least evocative of taste. Pumpkin. Cupcake. Sugar. Light names, nothing anyone would take as too suggestive, too salacious. Just endearing, pleasant. They dare further, in the stories. Even at the beginning of them, before the action really starts, you can still tell what's going to happen by the names the father uses for his little girl, the edge to them of sexuality, of possessiveness beyond what most would say is proper. Kitten. Baby. Baby girl...there's a pleasant little shiver up my spine, thinking that one. So many stories use it, even though I'm pretty sure I've never heard a girl called that by her dad. Not for real, or even on TV or anything. The words sometimes conjoined, merged together into one, 'babygirl' - but I can tell why it's so popular. There's something just about it, the feeling of the phrase, a thrilling blend of affection and authority, of comfort and control. It speaks of ownership as clearly as a leash and collar, but in a way that makes it sound so sweet, so right. If my father ever called me that... I speak it softly to myself, underneath my breath. Trying to hear it in his voice. Baby girl. Husky, quiet, with that slow, delicious rumble that he has. The two names flowing liquid into one another, rolling like a foreign tongue. Babygirrrl...god, he'd only have to say it once, and I'd know he felt something for me. It's like a shibboleth, a sibboleth, however you're supposed to say it. A secret word that speaks to the initiated. I can't believe that anyone would use it innocently. I don't. A man who calls his daughter that, he's either sleeping with her, or else he wants to. Telling her his lusts in not so many words, in a way that she would only understand if she feels something similar herself. There could be other things like that. Other signals, other signs that don't convey their meaning until you view them in the proper light. Like the girls, the women that I've seen a couple times with "Daddy's girl" printed on their shirts, their jewelry, their license plates. I always used to find it slightly odd, off-putting - I mean, I always loved my dad, even when we sometimes fought, but I wouldn't have defined myself by that, made it front and center of the identity I show the world. Now...I wonder. It makes so much more sense if I look at it the way the stories always mean the phrase, as a sign of more than just familial belonging. If it's intended as a badge of honor for the girls who've earned their fathers' full attention, a wink and nod at anyone who comprehends its meaning, the other membership of that exclusive club. Or like before, it could be intended as a message to the man himself, to the Daddy that it names. A promise, an enticement. He couldn't miss the implication, if he's read the sorts of things that she has, that I have, if he's shared such fantasies himself. Even if he didn't know for sure she meant it in that way, he'd still have to wonder, he'd send her signals of his own. Run his hand along her thigh one evening as she took her place beside him. I wonder what my own dad would say, what he'd do, if he saw me wearing something like that. Maybe a pair of those velour pants, the phrase curved brazenly across their back. "Daddy's Girl," spelled out ostentatiously in glitter. I don't remember ever really seeing such a thing, but it must exist somewhere. If I made sure that I was bending over when he first saw me wearing them, stretched out as though preparing for a jog, the fabric fitted snug around my bottom, accentuating as best it can the meagre assets I possess. Presenting to my Daddy as clearly as I'm capable exactly what the words are there to offer, what's his to take...god, the image of it stirs a flush upon my cheeks, between my thighs, my fingers rubbing quicker on my button. How bold, outrageous, blatant it would be, to pretend that I don't see him there behind me, watching, to 'limber up' by wiggling my hips at him, provocative and tempting. Clinging to that thin veneer of innocence until at last he steps up close behind and plants his hand upon my rear, giving me a slight, possessive squeeze... Or, well. That's just another fantasy, I know. I'm not exactly skilled on putting on such a display - probably I'd look entirely ridiculous, obvious in my intentions, if I could somehow even get myself to try. Just the pair of pants would be too much, too distinctive, too plain in their suggestion - I can't imagine what explanation I would tell him if I wore something like that, if he asked. But still, there's maybe something in the core of the idea, to giving him that kind of halfway-secret message. If the medium I used were somewhat less direct. Just a t-shirt, maybe. I know I've seen them. A baby tee, very girly, very pink, with it written out in cutesy letters on the front. And if he asked about it, I could just say I thought it would look good on me. And that anyway, I am a daddy's girl - hiding in the ambiguity the phrase affords. Hinting at the truth I really mean, without having myself shackled to it. And if he had any thoughts along those lines himself, if he's read the things I have, it would surely be enough to make him wonder. To attempt perhaps some subtle, soft suggestion of his own. Something for me to think about. To maybe try, if I can find something that fits the bill. But not today. There's another plan that I already have in motion. Another hope. I don't like to really think that it's a plan - it makes it sound like something cheap, dishonest. But everyone has hopes for what they do, and you don't always want to blurt them out. This is just something like that. Dinner, first. It's much more regular in recent days for me to make it, but this time I pulled out all the stops. Or all the stops I can afford to, on our budget. A canceled lecture gave me time enough to head out grocery shopping, hunting through the dollar store for deals before I moved on to the supermarket for the rest. An hour in the kitchen, chopping, mixing, roasting; I had to ruin the surprise a little bit by calling him at work to ask what time he would be coming home, but it was still a thrill to hear his work truck rumble up the driveway just as I was finished, setting down the stove to simmer so that I could greet him at the doorway, grinning like a fool. Excitement humming warm and giddy in my heart, enough to push me past my normal hesitation to rush in for a hug, treasuring the feeling of his brief embrace before he had to separate again, to put away his tools. Euphoric. That's the sentiment that carries through the meal, though his just-so-slightly hammy exclamations of how good it is, how amazing it all looks. Kidding on the square. Silly, blissful, adolescent, like a girl with her first crush. In my head I know it probably won't come to anything, the evening I've arranged, but my heart is having none of it, singing to the heavens every time his eyes meet mine. There's a glass of wine again for each of us, one I only sip while he drinks his more deeply, rambling at my request about his efforts of the day, rewiring a flooded basement and calling up a former client who still hasn't paid his bill. Allowing me the chance again to lose myself inside the gentle rhythm of his voice, to laugh and chat with him across the table, intimate and warm. I didn't put down candles for the meal, didn't dim the lights...but I thought about it, doing so. Perhaps some other time, if I can find the confidence, can gird my will enough to try for such transparent signals of romance. Almost over now, at any rate. My own dish sits already in the sink, while he works through the last few bites of his, takes another swallow from the glass that I quite recently refilled. Nearly dark outside the window, these yawning autumn nights...it's time, I think, for me to ask, to offer what I hoped we would do next. I can feel the quiet simmer on my cheeks, just at the thought, even though I know it's something that should come across as innocent. It is innocent. Mostly. The bulk of it. But it still takes a while for me to settle down the anxious tightness in my throat, waiting for a moment when his gaze is touched to mine. "So, um, I thought-" "There's actually another-" We start to speak almost in unison, stepping onto one another's words until he swiftly breaks off, chuckling. I giggle slightly, too, a bubbling of nervous laughter as he gestures with his wine. "Go on, you go first." "No, no," I instantly demur, glad for any little chance I get at deference. To show him my submission. A good girl's not supposed to put herself before her Daddy, after all. A sparkle of excitement in my stomach, any time I get to play the role... "I'm sure yours is more important." "Well, I don't know about that." A snort of slight amusement, as he quirks a smile back at me. "But, ah, yeah. I told you how I ran into Frank at the building site today. You remember him, right?" My answer is a momentary nod. He did. I do. I've met him, anyway, a couple times. My dad and him were kind of friends, once, colleagues - I think he was a plumber? Something like that. I remember once he came over with a bunch of other guys to watch the super bowl. But that was years ago - I haven't seen him lately, and I don't think that dad has either. "Anyway, we caught up. He has a son, you know, about your age. Graduating high school now. I'm pretty sure you never met the guy, but I talked to him a couple times, a while ago. Seemed like a good kid. Nice enough. Respectful. Or he was then, at any rate." There's a certain circumspection in my father's voice I don't completely understand, a subtle dryness to his tongue. "From what Frank tells me, you and him really have a lot in common. He's into the computers, too, writes programs for them or something. And I guess he's..." A vague and errant gesture with his hand, conveying almost nothing. "He's quiet, you know. A little bit withdrawn, which I think I might be able to accuse you of as well. So I thought - well, really, it was both of us, Frank and I. We thought that it might be good if you two, ah, met each other. Andy. That's his name, the kid's name. Andrew." It takes another second, staring, faintly puzzled, before I realize what he's suggesting. "Wait," my voice emerges slightly sharp with disbelief, with the faintest flutter of dismay. "Are you trying to set me up on a date?" He looks sheepish. Awkward, uncomfortable at the suggestion...but he nods, lightly. "Hey, it's not exactly my first instinct, believe you me. I'm pretty sure I'd rather lock you up inside a tower somewhere, not let anybody close. But, well..." A quiet clucking of his tongue. "I don't know, sweetheart. It just seemed like you might need, or want, or - I don't know, a bit of help. A push. Let's call it that, a little push. You've kinda just been hanging out around the house a lot, lately, and I just...I thought it might be good for you. You know?" Reality is Different Ch. 04 The smile that I try to show him is more than slightly thin, uneasy. Chagrin and flustered feeling twisting uncomfortably in my stomach as my gaze evades him, dodging down onto the tablecloth to hide amidst the silverware. I don't want this. Not at all, it's just the opposite of what I've been struggling to get myself to do. For him to send me off with someone else, to separate us when I'm trying to get closer. Certainly it isn't where I hoped tonight would go. And there's an anxious little part of me that wonders if that isn't his intention, if I'm the one that's being blind. If he maybe knows exactly what I'm doing, what I'm trying to do, and this is just his way of gently saying 'no.' Pointing me at someone that I wouldn't be insane to want, to love... "Hey, I get it." Mild and understanding, a sympathetic smile quirked up wryly on his lips. "Embarrassing as hell to have your father set you up with someone, right? What is this, the middle ages?" He throws up his palms as though exasperated, as though he's making the objection for himself. "But hey, if you think about it, he'll be dealing with that too. You'll have a conversation ready-made, talking about what utter squares your dads are. Or feebs, or - you know, whatever the preferred term is for that these days. I've even got a picture of the guy, if you want to see him. Borrowed it from Frankie..." All this reassurance doesn't quite address the reason that I'm less than thrilled with the idea. But if there's comfort in the words, it's with the fact that they don't particularly come across as someone subtly dissuading his daughter from an unacceptable attraction. More like what it claims to be, an attempt at helping out, at finding me a date. Something I might have even quietly appreciated, past my immediate humiliation, back before this fantasy of mine began...still. At least my gnawing of unease is slightly settled as my father stands up halfway from the table to pull a little photo from his pocket, pass it off to me. "I'm no expert in the subject, but I wouldn't say he's a bad-looking kid. Probably not going to be a quarterback at college, but..." He shrugs as he drifts off, as I appraise the little picture. Bidding for more time before I have to speak, if nothing else. There isn't really even all that much to see. A somewhat slender boy with brown, disheveled hair and casually rumpled clothes, standing with the kind of passively resistant pose that's often found when teenagers are asked to pose in their parents' photos. He's standing by what looks to be the welcome sign of a state park, or maybe national, smiling the sort of smile that everybody seems to wear in family photos. I can't make out much else - it isn't big enough. He isn't obvious deformed, at any rate, or coated with acne. But neither do I fall in love at this first sight. "So, what." There's a tang of faint displeasure to my tone, of discontent. "I guess they're doing the same thing right now? Frank's trying to convince this Andy guy that he should go out with me?" "Not quite." He speaks it reassuringly, slipping down into the chair that's next to mine. Professional, the tone of voice he uses with his clients, showing them he knows exactly what he's doing, that he's thought of everything. "I told Frankie not to say anything until I got an answer out of you. There's no pressure here, sweetheart. The whole thing's up to you. You won't be letting anybody down." Except for him, of course. With what he's done to set this up for me, with the concern it shows - it would disappoint my father if refused. Inevitably. Mumbling some flimsy, weak half-truth of an excuse for why I can't, or won't. And if I don't, if I accept... "Then what if I say yes, and he says no?" My voice still faintly sour, ungrateful. Almost whining, searching for the smallest problem in his plan. Trying to derail it, without it being my decision. "Well." His answer comes out slowly, tinged with quiet irony. "I'd think it would actually be pretty obvious, what would happen then. Or what wouldn't happen, rather." His gaze at me a little askance, questioning, before returning to his normal comforting amusement. "Anyway, I'd be awfully surprised. I gave him a picture, too. I'm pretty sure that that poor kid would be begging Frank to set this up. Probably he'll make him wash the car a couple times or something, just to get a chance to meet you." Yeah. Right. I don't answer this, just shake my head a trace, impulsive, frustrated. Look back down at the table, wishing I could only snap my fingers to turn everything around. Even the little compliment his words implied doesn't make me feel much better, because I know he didn't mean it. Or at best, he meant it only as father, not as a man. A man doesn't send a woman off with someone else, if he thinks she's attractive...it's a brief assemblage of moments before he speaks again, delicately dry. Inquiring. "You know, princess, I'm getting the oddest feeling that you're not completely thrilled with this idea." I only shrug at that. Barely, my shoulders feeling leaden, stubborn, unresponsive to my will. Another breath, the passing of a beat before I speak. "Dad, can I tell you something?" My voice emerging quiet now, hesitant, struggling to keep an even keel. "Mm, I don't know, sweetie. You know how much I hate being told things." There's careful humor in his tone, in the pretense of his disapproval. A doubtful frown upon his lips that swiftly vanishes, quirks up again into a sympathetic smile. Soft as he continues, tender and concerned. "I'd imagine I can let you, just this once. What is it?" "I'm just...with the whole dating thing, you know? I don't feel like, I'm not - um. I'm not sure I even..." Drifting down to silence, frustration aching in my throat. I'm babbling, not making any sense at all. I don't know even what I want to say. Not really. That suicidal impulse pulsing in my heart, just to tell him how I feel, tell him my desires, even though I know I can't. Not just from what could happen - it's the thing itself, the telling that's impossible, the forcing of the words onto my tongue. I can't. There's a wall that stands before me, an edifice of inhibition, of propriety and terror. Of taboo. Like the way I shy away from cursing anywhere that he could hear, but multiplied a thousandfold, so strong that I can hardly even think to break it. I can't just say it. Even if I thought he felt the same, even if I knew it, I'm not sure that I'd be able to. But I have to tell him something. I want to tell him something, anything that touches even distantly upon the way I feel, anything that could maybe chip away a little at the barrier that blocks my path...I have to shut my eyes before I speak again, seek out courage in the darkness there behind my eyelids. "The guys I've dated, that I've gone out with." Calm, Sarah. My heart is racing, pounding nervous in my chest, but I can say this. My voice emerging whisper-thin. "I mean, I've done some things with them, but I didn't...I haven't done everything. Everything I could have, you know, what - that a lot of girls do. That most girls do, I think." I open up my eyes again, a crack, a peek. My dad's still there. His bulk, his size, his body leaning slightly forward in the chair. His hand upon the table, close to mine. His expression hesitant, uncertain. "I'm still a virgin." It takes him a while to respond to this. His turn now to part his lips without a sound, trying once or twice before he actually speaks, a beat that lingers with the tension in my throat. Straining still, as though I haven't truly said the words until I hear his answer. "Really?" I'm not even sure that it's a question, how it comes out. A muddled mingling of feeling in the word, careful flatness stamped on top of his reaction, beyond what I can clearly understand...but it's hard to miss at least the intonation of surprise, his eyebrow faintly elevated. The rest of him unmoving, as though frozen into place. "Yeah." Beyond the queasy, anxious feeling in my stomach, there's actually a certain note of quiet satisfaction. I said it. I told him - and there's warmth enough in that to even strengthen my own tongue, to sound a little more myself as I elaborate, explain. "I mean, not...not in every way, you know. I've - well, I probably shouldn't wear white gloves. Or a..." My right hand gestures briefly towards my mouth, evocative of something that would cover it. Abortive, as the blush burns brighter on my cheeks. Too much, still, for me even to imply so plainly that I've given anyone a blowjob. It's easier to say the things I haven't done than it is to tell him what I have. "But the other ways, the main ways. The thing that people mostly mean...yeah." A moment's pause, before a question of my own. "Did you think I wasn't?" He lets out his breath before he answer this, almost whistling between pursed lips as he shifts backwards in his chair, retreating. Discomfort in his tone. "Well. Ah, I just didn't know, really." It's his gaze now that slides away from mine, hovering a little to my right. "I suppose I'd mostly come to terms with the idea that you weren't, though. Or that you probably weren't, that I couldn't assume...uh. Not for any particular reason, of course, just - you know how it is. You can be a little shy, but you've had your share of evenings out, of parties, and I know what kids are like these days. It wasn't even that much different when I was young myself." His chuckle comes out weakly, a trifle ill at ease. Not exactly often that we talk about this stuff. About sex. "I guess I did assume you'd likely...been with someone, yes. More or less." "You didn't think that I'd have told you?" My voice descending to a lower timber, huskier, almost imploring, and I'm not even sure of why. It isn't like I would have, really. If I think about it honestly. Not like I told him of the other things I did. Before all this began, I don't think I'd even have considered it, wouldn't have it cross my mind that I should let my father know if I go all the way. If my innocence is taken in a parked car on some darkened street, or in a boyfriend's room when his family's away. It's only these ideas lodged inside my consciousness that makes it seem like something that's expected, something that I'd think he should demand. That I should tell him everything, hold no secrets from my Daddy. It isn't sexual, the feeling, not really. Not directly, anyway. Ties more into the sense of adoration that the stories so exalt, that my heart quickens to adopt, the devoted worship of a girl for the man she treasures most. In my imagination, I would come before him every night to give him my confession, offer an accounting of everything that I've done wrong and right. Every action that would earn the benediction of his hand, stroking softly at my cheek, rubbing tenderly behind my neck...and everything that would deserve a punishment as well, that would see me turned across his knee to be corrected of my faults. He would know me perfectly, inside and out. I'd be an open book, a pane of glass, naked and exposed for him to see. His actual response, of course, is a bit more realistic. "Tell me that?" A single note of startled laughter looses from his throat, almost disbelieving, as I let my gaze drift down again. Tracing slightly guilty at the buttons of his shirt. "No. No, sweetheart, I can't exactly say I did. I mean, granted, we tend to share a lot, but it's...I didn't think it was that much. And you may recall there was a while there when I kinda had to fight to get you to tell me anything that you were up to." His smile still bemused, a touch perplexed. "To be honest, I'm not sure why you're even telling me this now." That's a question, even for myself. But I think I have an inkling of an answer. The thrill of that confession I imagined - that's a part of it, of course, revealing my secrets to him, the private aspects of my life. But there's more practical considerations, too, a reason why I'd want him to know I haven't been with anyone. I think it matters to him, maybe. The stuff I found on his computer - there was a sign of it even from the very first one that I saw. "Teen gets first cock." Not exactly subtle, the suggestion of the words, even if they probably weren't actually true of what the video depicts. Innocence. Virginity. A girl still unused and undespoiled, at least until the male star comes onscreen to do the honors. Her body shared with no one else, belonging just to him. There were a few such videos I noticed, names that caught my eye. "Sexy bitch gets cherry popped." "First time virgin caught on cam." "Defloration" - that one especially was memorable, a four-dollar word mixed in with all the piles of 'tits' and 'cock' and 'fuck.' The plucking of a maiden's flower...it might just be coincidence, the handful of such videos he has, a kind of overlap in concept with the younger women that he clearly likes. But there's enough of them to make me wonder, to hope that there could be a benefit to my 'condition.' That my lack of real experience in sex might somehow hold the possibility of tempting him - if only he's aware of it. Not that I can give that as the reason, clearly. A shrug, instead, my voice a trifle quiet, thick, struggling with half-truths and diversions. "You're my dad. You're supposed to know everything about me, pretty much." Awkward, an empty explanation. The moment hangs there silently between us until I speak again, add to the attempt. "And anyway, I feel like I'm maybe...ready, you know. Not to be one anymore. If it's with the right person, the right guy." With you, daddy. I think the words as forceful, as emphatic as I can, as though to plant them in his head, to awaken him to the suggestion. Plaintive. Has it even crossed your mind? Just the smallest, guilty thought, the briefest flicker of temptation... He doesn't answer for a while, breathing low and even. Looking halfway at me with an uncertain, thoughtful gaze, struggling to make some sense out of the incoherent mess I've given him. When he does speak, it's only slowly, questioning. "Then...what, you're thinking that you'd only want to go out on a date with this guy if you can see yourself...doing more?" I just shrug again, noncommittal, a little bit disheartened. Obviously, that has almost nothing to do with what I'm really thinking. But I kind of doubt that something more intelligible could be made to fit to what I've said. Save for the truth, of course. The last thing I could say. The moment draws out silently again, as he waits perhaps for more response than this. But eventually he shakes his head a trace, lets out his breath through pursed and troubled lips. His voice follows afterward, probing quietly. "I don't know, sweetheart. You ask me, that sounds a little backwards. Usually you take some time to get to know someone before deciding anything like that, if you would or wouldn't want to...well, to be with them." The euphemism emerges faintly tight, uncomfortable. "Making up your mind before you even meet the guy, it seems like a great way to end up doing something you'll regret. Or maybe to avoid doing anything at all." The last few words of this are spoken slightly firmer, his tone strengthening with sudden revelation. Knowing. He understands - not everything, I'm pretty sure, but he knows it's an excuse, it's an evasion. I half expect for him to call me out on it, to refuse my faint deception. But of course, he doesn't, won't. It's not his way. Or perhaps he wonders just a little bit, perhaps he's not completely sure...either way, he only sits there quiet as the seconds pass, and when he speaks again, it's softer, more abstracted. "I guess we haven't talked about this kind of thing that much. Birds and bees and boys. I was...I mean, your mom gave you the Talk and such, and I suppose I-" "No she didn't." At last I answer, murmur, interrupt. Sourly. It's small of me, I know it is, but I don't want to give her even just this modicum of credit. "No?" He sounds surprised. "She said she did. I think. A while ago, of course, but..." "She tried to." I have to grant her that, reluctantly. Looking up to see the quiet question in my father's eyes. "But I pretty much knew everything she was telling me already from health class, and from the computer and stuff. So it wasn't really anything." "Ah." He accepts this easily enough, sounding distantly amused. It's true, of course. However many years ago that was now, when my mom came in all serious to tell me things I'd heard before already, to barely hint about the nature of activities that I'd seen for myself in videos online. I wasn't angry at her then, didn't realize what she was really like - it was just embarrassing, and I was glad to see it swiftly end. As was she, I think. Probably I shouldn't be surprised to hear she'd let dad think she'd done more than she really had. "Anyway," he continues mildly, a careful question in his tone. Subtle hesitation in his words. "I guess I'm a bit...well. I just wonder." His eyes on mine - I can see that, in the brief and fleeting moments that my own gaze flickers to his face. "Is it on purpose, that you haven't? Or is it just how things worked out?" The smile that flits across my lips is a slight and nervous shadow, driven by the anxious thumping of my heart. As uncomfortable as it might be normally to talk about this with your parents, it's nothing put against the situation I'm in now, facing both the prospect of a father's judgment and of a man's appraisal. Even if the latter part is just a hope, a dream. "Um." I'm not sure what he wants to hear, which answer he'd prefer. That I'm committed to my innocence, virtuous and pure...or that I'm willing, eager, waiting only for an opportunity to indulge my deepest instincts. A man like him, to show me everything that I've been missing. Neither one of which is even true, of course. Not really, not exactly. "It's kind of both, I guess." My voice is slender, weak, reaching for a quietly self-conscious humor that it can't completely grasp. The nervousness I feel behind it must be all too plain for him to hear. "I mean, I'm...I didn't like decide I definitely wouldn't, or that I'm waiting to get married or anything like that. I just - I've never really felt as though I should. Not yet." He doesn't answer this. Not quickly, anyway, not in words - but from the corner of my eye I see him slightly nod his head, as though approving, and I can't help the hopeful question that tumbles subtly imploring from my throat. "Are you glad, or...are you proud of me, for waiting?" "Hah." He laughs abruptly, startled, the sound of it a trace uncomfortable. More than a trace. "Proud might be a little much. I think I'm..." And then a pause, as he realizes how this sounds. "That is, I'm obviously plenty proud of you, sweetheart. For all kinds of reasons. I just wouldn't say that it quite applies to this, so much. I don't want to try to tell you what you should and shouldn't do, as far as...anyway, what I mean is, I wouldn't be any less proud of you if you did have that, ah, experience. Or if you decide to have it in the future." The answer hangs there for a while, careful, proper. Then he briefly laughs again, softer now, and continues on in tones that taste of faint confession, of relief. "I'll say, though, I'm - I think you've made the right choice, in being careful. Obviously I'm biased, and probably I'm a little bit old-fashioned, too, but...you only get one first time, after all. A lot of women out there, they end up just kind of tossing theirs away, spending it with people they regret. Which - and honestly, it even is about the time for you to try things out, to make mistakes, to have regrets, but some things are worth doing right, I think. Worth waiting for, until you find somebody really special. Maybe not the man you'll end up getting married to, I'm not sure that was ever realistic, but someone who...who you absolutely love, you know? Who doesn't give you any reservations." The smile quirking upward on his lips, slightly rueful, self-aware. "Who appreciates what you'd be giving him, by holding back right now." Reality is Different Ch. 04 "That's what I think, too." The words spill out a little quickly, urgent, almost whispered as I dare to meet his eyes. A trace of conflict there, I think. If it isn't my imagination. Wishing, hoping that his thoughts were even more aligned to mine, that he might have meant the intimations I can read into his answer. A man I absolutely love - who could that be but him? Who else could I love so utterly as the man who made me, raised me, who's been caring for me all my life? Who, if his words are any indication - and an excited tingle aches along my spine at this - would see allure in my inexperience, my innocence. Would maybe want me more, knowing he would be the first to take it. It happens like that sometimes, in the stories. The daughter pure and chaste, virginal as fallen snow - still impossibly adept at sex, of course, once the action starts, but described as never having been with anyone before. She confesses to her father, to her Daddy that she's always loved him, yearned for him, that she never yielded to any of the countless boys and men who lusted for her beauty, because she knew she wanted him to be her first, her only. A dream that found its spark when she was just a little girl, cradled in his arms, or maybe spying on her parents in their bed one night, learning how a woman is supposed to treat the man she loves. The years she's waited only make her longing keener, deeper, until the night she comes to him and begs for him to take her, teach her in the ways of love, to mark her as his own. I can't say it's really like that, my own situation. Not honestly. No such years of dreaming, praying for my dad to show up at my bed, to step into the shower after me. The image of him didn't occupy my thoughts when I struggled anxiously to figure out the what and if I ought to do, sitting with my boyfriend on the couch. But it isn't so far off that I can't pretend, imagine. Wonder. That unease, uncertainty I always felt, the flame of hunger and the fear of what pursuing it would mean. The hesitation, the note of dissonant dissent that held and strengthened til I knew I didn't want to give myself away, not then, not there...it wouldn't be so difficult for me to tell myself my father had some role in that, even if I didn't recognize it at the time. To make myself believe it was an instinct that I felt, some subconscious certainty that there was only one man that I really loved, one man I would want to take away my innocence. A whispered voice inside of me that I just didn't understand, until I read the stories, the confessions, until they made me realize the way I really felt. Made me realize what's possible between us, if only we accept it. Want it. "I mean, it shouldn't be some random guy I get set up on a date with. It should be...someone special to me, someone who really matters." The answer falters slightly on my tongue, artlessly uncertain, my gaze again evading his as I strive to offer him some hint of what could be, some tiny hook for his own desires to maybe latch upon, without actually revealing the truth of what I feel. "It can be, sweetheart." There's a touch of distant puzzlement mixed in with the comfort in his tone. I can hear it there, mixed in quietly behind the words. "It will be, rather. Nobody's saying that going out with someone means you have to - have to do anything that you don't want to. Or, well, I'm sure the boys in question might be inclined to say that, but you can pop them in the nose a couple times if they get pushy." His smile amused, flickering a moment before he speaks again more seriously. Tenderly. "And yeah, you probably aren't going to fall in love with him. With Andrew. You might find out after five minutes that you can't even stand the guy. But you can't be sure until you try. Love won't just...fall into your lap, sweetie. I wish it did. You have to put yourself out there, meet people, spend time with them. Hard as it can be, sometimes. Embarrassing, or awkward, or it can even hurt, but you have to wager something if you want to win, y'know?" A tiny pause. Then, like a capstone, "I think you should probably let me arrange this with him." It isn't quite an order that he gives, not a command. But it's about as close to one as he would ever give. He's telling me to do this, in his own way. All those fantasies of dutiful submission, of obedience before a father's whims - it isn't quite the same, to obey a firm suggestion that sends you off with someone else. Not the way the stories tend to go. And what the girls that I read about would do, confronted with a situation like this...I don't even know. It isn't something that's come up, if any of the ones I've seen. She might resist, in words alone. If she raised her eyes again to him in pitiful protest, her lower lip aquiver, her aspect like a prayer. "But Daddy, if I went out with him, I wouldn't be a virgin anymore when I came back." Her voice descending then, hushed and sorrowful, answering the question on his brow. "I wouldn't want to do it. I swear I wouldn't. But I can't help myself. I just get so excited when I'm around a boy, when they start touching me. It makes me feel so good to do the things they say." Moving closer, huddling herself against him, her bosom crushed against his chest as she seeks out the comfort and the warmth of his embrace. Her voice near tears, confiding, pleading. "I'm just too weak, Daddy. Someone's going to take control of me, to use me, I know they are. And I just wish it could be somebody who loves me, someone who would keep me safe..." ...yeah. I don't think so. There's nothing I can really say, no protest I can make. Nothing I can do but nod my head a trace, reluctant, misgiving lumped uncomfortably in my throat. "Okay." Quiet. Sullen-sounding, more so than I mean or want. I shouldn't be so bothered by it, really. It's just a day, a single date, if it even comes to pass. Nothing that I haven't done before...though I haven't been on any since I started with these stories, with the fantasies of lustful fathers and their willing little girls. He's maybe even more right, righter than he knows, my dad. Maybe this is what I need, to meet somebody my own age, an ordinary boy who stirs my heart. Maybe then I would forget all this, get over my perverted daydreams. If it's just desperation, loneliness that's pushing me to such ideas, the fervid imagination of a girl driven slightly crazy by too much time alone. Strange, though, how much I'm troubled by the thought of all this ending, how much my heart rebels against it, stubbornly insistent. Wanting for this to be real, a genuine desire, not just a phase or passing fancy. It feels real. The excitement that it sparks inside my breast, the tingle deep between my thighs, imagining what he could do to me. The tender warmth that I envision, nestled naked in his arms, cradled close in his embrace. Even if it's crazy, even if it isn't something that could really happen, I don't want the dream of it to go away, the ideas in themselves. There's value to the fantasies, even if they're destined never to be more. A thrilling ache to think about them, a sweetness that I wouldn't want to lose. "All right, then." His tone is mild, delicate, clearly conscious of my limited enthusiasm for the plan. "I'll talk to Frankie tomorrow, get it all set up. Tell him to make sure Andy doesn't expect too much from it, either. It's...just think of it as something fun, you know? No pressure, nothing too important, just a chance to spend some time with someone new." He pauses then, giving me a reassuring smile that I struggle to return, before briskly changing subjects. "Anyway. What was it you were going to say before?" "What?" Confusion for a moment, before I realize what he's referring to. With all this talks of dates and virtue, I'd almost forgotten my intentions for the evening. Ironically enough. But even now that I remember, I'm not sure the time is right. Not anymore. "Oh, um. I was just - it was nothing. A silly idea I had." "Yeah?" Lively, bright, the sparkle in his tone, the warmth that carries from his steady smile. His arms are lightly crossed upon his chest, a strangely soothing pose. "Well, you know me. I'm all for silly. What was it?" Hesitation. I can only do this once. Or at least, it might not be the same, the second time. I wanted it to be the ending to an evening almost intimate, something casual and close. A dinner where we laughed and drank and looked into each other's eyes, descending practically into flirtation as the alcohol sat warm inside his belly, awakening the instincts of desire. Some deep and hungry part of him that only saw a woman there across the table, a girl to be won, a form that he could strip and twist and use for his own pleasures, so that by the end his body almost groaned with thoughts of what he'd like to do...and yeah, I guess a lot of that was never going to happen, probably. But it still doesn't seem completely wise, to try for this when he's just talked of handing me to someone else. Maybe it could work, though. After all, I didn't plan on telling him that I was still a virgin, either, didn't realize how it would please him. A pleasant tickle yet to think of it, of the subtle tracing of a smile he wore, relieved and...curious? Intrigued? If it wasn't my imagination painting my own dreams upon his face, seeing them reflected in his eyes. It isn't proof he feels that kind of interest in me, isn't even really evidence. But it's enough to hang a hope upon. A wish. "I was just thinking we could watch a movie, maybe." Glancing up again to meet his gaze, to watch for his reactions. "Something I downloaded, that I had recommended by a friend." Martin's kind of a friend, at least. Maybe more of an accomplice. "Well," he answers mildly. "I imagine I could be persuaded. Not much else I had to do tonight." A pause. "Downloaded, though. What, so we'd watch it upstairs, on your computer?" "No, no." It's oddly comforting, a balm upon my confidence, to correct him on this stuff. A reassurance that I sorely need, with what I'm trying now. "I burned it to a DVD. Remember how I had you get the player that can handle DVD-Rs? So we could do that?" "I remember you being very insistent about something when we picked it out. That's about all." Laughter in his tone, in the teasing curl of his lips. "Downstairs, then, I take it. Sounds like a plan...what's the movie?" A secret little smile tugs in my expression as I push up from the table, excitement thrilling soft along my nerves. "Snow White." And though his eyebrow lifts a bit, he doesn't question this before I've scampered off to climb the stairway to my room. --- They come up pretty often in the stories. Movies do, or TV nights. Not just in the stories, either - the confessions sometimes feature them as well. Evenings spent together on the couch, crowded close and warm against each other, watching anything that happens to be on...I must have read a hundred little tales that had it as the moment things began, the circumstance that set the wheels in motion. A widower and his devoted daughter, perhaps, maintaining a tradition that they had since she was just a little girl. An excuse for her to squeeze up snug against him, for him to slip his arm around her waist, each of them so painfully aware of the other's presence at their side, of the desires that they've felt and never spoken. Not until tonight. Or other situations. The mother still alive, there in the same room, stretched out alone in the recliner while the girl and her father share the couch. She doesn't satisfy him anymore, his wife, doesn't give him the attention that a man requires, and the pent-up need inside of him is more than strong enough to overwhelm his shock and hesitation when his daughter starts to touch him under cover of the blanket that they share. Stroking soft and tantalizing on his chest, across his leg, a subtle exploration that somehow promises so much. His own hand soon finds itself upon her thigh, caressed across her satin skin, moving boldly inward while she fumbles at his fly. And god, that single, perfect moment when her soft and loving fingers are first wrapped around her Daddy's cock, when she feels it in her grasp, throbbing with desire, hard and hot as iron from the forge. That shiver of delicious satisfaction, knowing it's because of her, knowing that her Daddy wants her, the finest compliment a man can give his little girl. She wouldn't dream to let him down, not the way her mother does. She wouldn't want to. Triumphant satisfaction sizzling along her nerves to hold his tempting thickness in her hand, to feel his heartbeat in its steady, hungry twitch. To run her fingers down along his length, stroke him back and forth, pressing closer to his side as she slowly masturbates her father there beneath the covers. His own hand hardly hesitates before it ventures to her inner thighs, sneaking underneath her skirt to brush upon her veiled treasure. It's a struggle not to gasp, to moan, to reveal what they're doing to the woman that's so near - but somehow the danger only makes their pleasure greater, adds a thrill of wickedness and risk to every slow caress. And yet they still want more. An ache of disappointment for the father, of desire left frustrated when his daughter stops abruptly, pulls off from his side, saying that she has to use the toilet - but understanding brings an ardor burning only brighter when she returns a minute after that to climb into his lap, and he can feel her bottom pressing naked now into his groin. His erection slipping hot between the heaven of her thighs, slick with her arousal. Rubbing eagerly against her puffy, shaven mound, brushing at her labia with every jostle, every twist...the pleasured hunger of the moment is so powerful that he feels more annoyed than worried when his wife, her mother breaks the silence. Her voice like nails on a chalkboard, commenting sidelong and snippy that she's getting much too old these days to sit up in her father's lap like that. Disapproving. Blindly unaware of what's really going on, those scant few feet away. He can't think of anything to say, to answer. Not with the distraction of his daughter grinding so deliciously upon his groin. She has to respond instead, a gleeful mischief in her smile as she looks backward to her father, still slightly squirming in his lap. Speaking in a little girl's voice. "I'm not really too old to sit with you like this, am I daddy?" Her tone is dulcet, sweet, a sheer façade of innocence that shimmers in her wide and open eyes, even as she gives her hips a subtle twist around his straining hardness, sends a jolt of pure and primal pleasure shuddering along his spine. He can't keep his arm from clutching tighter on her waist, instinctively possessive, can't answer anything beyond an almost gasping affirmation. "No, baby, you can do this any time you want." The groaning of desire, of lust, is hardly hidden in his tone. Only a fool could fail to notice them, could not think that something was amiss. But her mother is just such a fool, returning her attention to the television with a petty hmph as the father starts to slowly thrust between his daughters thighs, his thickness sliding so exquisite on her sensitive and swollen lips. Rocking gently there beneath her, as urgent and remorseless as the tides, the tip of his arousal kissing teasingly upon her opening with every pass. Wetting one another with their commingled need. Her back is arched, her body burning in his grasp, a pulse of sheer sensation shivering along her spine with her Daddy's every thrust, with the feeling of his manhood slipping, rubbing deeper in her folds. Nosing at her clit, almost captured...so near, so close. She's built for this, her form, her body, shaped to guide his arrow to its mark, every line and curve and channel made to show the way. They don't even have to try. Not consciously. Not really. The slightest touch of instinct, angling herself a trifle forward, pushing backward with her bottom just as she feels his hips reverse, and then... There. Ohh, I can see it, I can feel it, almost, the gasp she has to try to turn into a yawn as at last her Daddy's cockhead batters past her sopping petals, stretches wide her womanhood to sheathe himself inside her. That ecstatic, agonizing instant as her body tries to fight and welcome his intrusion both, clenching tight before his thickness even while the eager flow of her arousal eases his advance. Sensation rolling up in waves along her nerves, singing, screaming, crying out in pain and pleasure as he plunges halfway to the hilt in this single, sudden stroke. Her Daddy. The thought is sharp and shining in her consciousness, deliciously divine, a jagged line of blissful triumph atop her body's maelstrom of feeling. One that pulses only brighter, breathlessly exhilarated as time begins to flow again, as he gingerly withdraws a little just to push in deeper. His strong arm locked about her waist, crushing her into his lap, and she feels as though the very air is being forced out of her lungs to make room for his invasion. Her Daddy laying claim to his possession, filling up the emptiness inside her, making her his woman. All the other boys she's known are nothing to her now, their faces cast into the fire as submission shivers sweetly through her soul, as she yields herself completely to her father's will, the way she ought, as her body molds itself in service of his lusts. She belongs to him. The fact is plain, apparent, written out in every move she makes, in the ecstasy that shudders up her spine, in her muffled whimpers of delight. Their pace accelerating now, with her mother safely gone upstairs to bed - her father pounds inside her faster, harder, murmuring into her ear how tight she is, how wet, how much he loves her little pussy. How good a girl she's being for her Daddy. The praise, the husky tone of his approval is a rapture of its own, an ecstasy that puddles perfectly inside her mind, mingles so exquisite with his quickening assault upon her puss. Filled, fulfilled in every sense. This is what she wants to be, what she's meant to be - bent before his will, a toy for his desires. His obedient, obliging little girl, eager for the moment that he thrusts again so deep inside her, one last time, when she can feel his manhood pulse and thicken, preparing to unload into her depths. Her Daddy's cum, his seed, his essence, the gift for which she aches so desperately. The moment when she's claimed forever as his own, marked as his possession, bound and bonded to his side... God, not right now. A scowl to the mirror, nervous, tense, excited. I have to force myself to step out of the fantasy, to stop the subtle rubbing of my thighs against each other, the sneaking of my hand beneath my waist. Now's not the time, not with him waiting for me in the living room downstairs. Despite the warm and smoky pleading of my hips...it's better anyway, maybe, if I'm a trace frustrated when I sit down there beside him, if I'm a little bit aroused. Dads can tell that in the stories, sometimes, responding to their little girls' unanswered needs, their own desires aroused in sympathy. Like a stag confronted by a lovely deer in heat. A dream, of course. As is the evening that I've planned, the idea that my dad would suddenly lust over me, if I just sat down to watch a movie with him, if I scooched up close beside him on the couch. I don't believe it, not as such. But even if they're massively exaggerated, the reactions that the stories talk about, there might still be a grain of truth behind it all, some foundation that those writers simply build up to the clouds. Some trace of an association that a man might feel in a darkened room, with his arm around his daughter's back, alike to when he'd go out with a woman he desired. The slightest consciousness of where his hand is touched, of my presence at his side, my cheek against his chest...that's all I'm really hoping for, tonight. The most I'd possibly expect. Reality is Different Ch. 05 All characters over 18. I rest my head against the window, looking out through dirt-streaked glass as we take the last few curves that lead up to the house. My eyes anticipate the homes that line the way, flickering to them for little moments in a kind of quiet countdown. It's dark now, late - or late-ish, anyway. Half past eight, according to the LCD display that's glowing steady from the dash. The vague unease, the tugging of discomfort in my stomach only makes it feel later, like I'm in a scene that already should have ended. The early nights of autumn, too. It's a relief to glance ahead and see the outlines of the house swing familiar into view, the gentle-angled roof and light blue facing of the home I've had for all my life. To hear the faintly injured squealing of the brakes as we pull up a moment later, as the aging hatchback grinds protesting to a stop. "Well. Here we are." He's a little chubbier than how the photo looked. Andy is. Andrew. Mostly in the face, I guess, a puffiness like baby fat that clashes with the rest of his appearance. It stands up on his cheeks in two big bubbles when he smiles, which he seems to do a lot...a kind of smile, anyway. An awkward kind, uncomfortable and nervous. Which, and if I'm being honest, is probably the same way mine have been as well, uncertain how to treat him, what to do. Uncertain what I even want this halfway date of ours to be, or what I wanted it to be. Wondering if it makes sense to say you're pleased with disappointment. "Anyway, uh." He speaks again, after a second's silence. "I suppose I should, um - escort the fair lady to the door, huh?" Another tight and clumsy grimace of a grin - he aims it at me for a moment so I can see that it's a joke. Or something like a joke, at any rate. The flicker of a smile that I return must come across as an encouragement, because he swiftly lurches from his seat and scurries round the car to open up my door for me, and slam it shut once I get out. Chivalrous, I guess. I'm sure that's what he's going for, at least, walking carefully a foot or two away from me as we head up to the house, stopping just before the door. "I, ah." He's first to speak, again. It's been that way all afternoon, all evening, me mostly just responding - which isn't really fair to him, I know. It bothers me, somewhat. He tried, for this. He decided where to go, came up with conversation, paid for everything, and I haven't even really given him all that much of a chance. Didn't start the evening with that much of an open mind, an open heart, despite what I intended. "I don't know about you, but I had fun tonight." He even sounds sincere. As far as I can tell. "Yeah." I'm not sure I do, as much. "It was interesting. I'm...I'm glad we did this. Glad we met." It's obviously not an accident, the tiny step he takes towards me, the way his arm lifts barely upward. I can see the worry in his eye, the calculation. Desperation, maybe. "You think, ah..." His voice emerges slightly chirpy, tight - he coughs a little, and when he tries again it's dropped into a timbre low enough to sound a trifle forced. "Think it's the kind of evening that should end with a kiss? I'm not too sure, myself." Jesus. "Um." My gaze flits over to the door as though attempting to escape, but only manages to batter fruitlessly against the simple patterns in the wood. I don't know what I ought to say to this. I don't know even what I really ought to feel, if the aversive apathy that's curdled in my stomach is the reaction I'd have always felt after the evening I've just had with him, or if it's just a product of my own particular insanity. Of the fantasies I halfway tried to leave behind when we set out this afternoon, so I at least could give this guy some fraction of a chance, an opportunity. Could find out maybe if I am just in a phase, a passing fancy, a fixation that could be swept aside when I run into someone new. An ordinary boy, who likes me as I am. "Yeah, I guess not." He volunteers the answer for himself, after a couple seconds of my silence. Plainly disappointed, embarrassed, though he tries to hide it with another awkward grin, an easygoing shrug. He starts to push his hand towards me instead, as though to offer up a handshake, but seems to change his mind before it's halfway there, and redirects the motion to a vague and formless gesture as he begins to back away. "Maybe next time, huh? If - yeah." Another couple steps, still walking backwards; he manages to make his way down from the porch comparatively gracefully, all things considered. "I'll give you a call sometime, the next few days. Or I'll...don't have your number, do I. We can exchange-" For a moment there, he dances through a quick, abortive little shuffle, stepping back towards me again and then rethinking it immediately afterward, apparently preferring not to lose the progress that he's made on this farewell. "-no, I'll just get it from your dad. Well, from my dad. From...hah. Oh my god." That last bit muttered barely audible, underneath his breath, before he crisply finishes. "I'll get it. I'll call you. Good night." "Good night." I give a little wave as well, despite the fact that he's already turned around. Watching as he walks back quickly, stiffly to the shabby car that's parked right at the curb, his shoulders lifted high and tight. Seething with self-loathing, if I had to make a guess. And it's a little weird, I know, but I think I feel a greater kinship with the guy, seeing this, than I have in all the other hours that we spent in one another's company. A spark of recognition, sympathy, if not quite of affection...I know that awkwardness myself, the fumbling with what you hoped to do, with what seemed so easy in your head. The stinging judgment that descends when you just know you've come off as a fool, and you can only pray you didn't look as clumsy in the other person's eyes as you appeared in yours. It's comforting to see it, in a way. Nice to know I'm not the only one who struggles with the curse of self-awareness, the inner critic always waiting to harangue you for everything that you've done wrong. It's still a definite relief, though, to turn around and head inside, to leave behind the deepening of night, and all the evening's uncomfortable moments that I would just as soon forget. I breathe a little easier just stepping through the door into the living room, the feeling of it warm and welcoming beneath the steady incandescent lights. The television's off, the couch abandoned...huh. Maybe dad's out in the garage. Usually he doesn't leave the lights on when he- "How'd it go?" I almost jump out of my skin to hear him speak up suddenly behind me, letting out a startled little yelp before I whirl around. He's sitting by the window, in the easy chair that no one ever uses, practically. His eyebrow raised at my response, a tiny smile curving at the corner of his mouth. "Jeez, dad, you scared the - heck out of me." "Sorry." He chuckles briefly, sounding more amused than actually apologetic. "Your poor old dad was just watching out for when you would come home." A twinkle as his eye, as his voice drops down near mourning. "I've been worried sick, you know. My only daughter, staying out until all hours with dangerous characters." Oh, brother. I roll my eyes, but I can't keep myself from smiling. My heartbeat flowing smoothly from the rapidness of fright into that of faint and prickling excitement. I can feel my insides melting warm and gooey just to look at him again, just to gaze upon my daddy's stubbled, handsome features, as though it were uncounted weeks since last I saw him, instead of only half a day. "Silly." Teasing, as I wander up a little closer, baby steps that bring me near. He's sitting back, relaxed, his hair a trifle mussed. A book held in his hand, beside him, one finger held inside to keep his place. "You're the one that set me up with him. It's completely your own fault." "Too true, too true." He sighs at that, theatrical, and softly clucks his tongue. "Really, I'm just sorry that I didn't get the chance to put the fear of god into the guy before he picked you up. It's about the only fun a father gets on days like this. Feels somehow wrong to miss it." My smile quirks up sideways, wry, a little secret. "Yeah, I kinda hoped that you would be here, too." If not for entirely the same reasons...it was partially my own idea, partially suggestions from my co-conspirator, but I'd had some thoughts about the way the preparation for my date could go, the opportunities it might afford between me and my dad. There was certainly a fantasy in it, that he'd burst in on me as I was in the bathroom putting on cosmetics, abruptly grabby and demanding, transformed into a father from the stories. That he would touch me, bend me over, lift me off the floor and pin me to the counter, claim my body for his own before my suitor has a chance - I played that one out a couple times, inside my head. But there were other thoughts as well, a little more believable. Things that I could do. Advice. If I came downstairs as I was getting ready for the date to ask him what he thinks I ought to wear, what outfit might look good on me. He'd probably protest, at first. He'd say he doesn't know, that he isn't any good at helping with that kind of thing. Or maybe he would joke around, instead - "A burqa." I can almost hear him say it, hear the quiet laughter in his eyes. "It'd be very you, I think. And it's 'in' this season, too, I think." "Daddy!" I'd have to whine a little, scold him, plead to get us back in the direction that I hoped. Or maybe I would have to stick with 'dad.' "Come on, really. I need to know what I should wear." And I could maybe bite my lower lip a moment, looking hopeful up into his eyes. "What would you want to see me in, if you were a guy?" I thought that it would be a kind of clever line, at least. If you were a guy - he'd laugh if I said that, I'm pretty sure, would act offended, wounded, as if I'd just dealt him a mortal blow. And I could giggle softly, shake my head, tell him "You know what I mean" - but the question would remain, now defanged of its suggestiveness by that little back-and-forth. How does he like his women dressed? What could I wear to catch the spark of his desire, if he should look at me the way he'd look at any other girl on the street? He'd have to think of it, at least a little bit. He'd have to answer something, even if it was only something careful, indirect. Certainly I can't imagine he would tell me that I should show off my breasts, or that I should squeeze myself into some tiny latex miniskirt...but I could still search for secret meanings in whatever he did say, could obey them ever after. If he mentioned anything about my legs, I could leave them bare forever, refuse to ever touch a pair of pants again. If he asked about my makeup, I could buy a whole new kit, paint myself up dark and vibrant for him every day. If he talked about high heels, I could learn to wear them better than I have, could slip into stilettos when I go to meet him at the door, when I walk around the house, giving him the best view that I could. That was the idea, anyway. But it pretty much relied upon him being there before I left. The vague ambitions that I had, as well, of halfway modeling for him the clothes that I could wear, holding them against my body so that he could see how they would look, while really my attention, my intention would be on the moments I was switching from one outfit to another, allowing him these momentary glimpses of how little I was truly wearing underneath. A camisole, perhaps. A pair of panties, striped in white and baby blue...and nothing else, the rest of me exposed, revealed for my daddy's gaze... It's crazy, maybe. Probably. I wouldn't really have gone through with it, a lot of it, if he'd been home. I don't think I would have, anyway. But I've been feeling kinda crazy lately, in these past few days. Daring. Eager and excited, driven by that manic little part of me that's foolishly emboldened by that recent evening that we spent, the experience of being carried in his arms upstairs, kissed so light and loving on the forehead. I know I can't read that much into it, not truly...but my heart still tries to, all the same, dwelling on the memory any time it gets the chance, and it's hard to keep the rest of me from being pulled along. I've been wearing that same shirt again, the past few nights, hoping that he likes to see me in it, or at least that it might offer me some modicum of luck. And I've been going down the stairs without a bra more often, in the morning, in the night. Still nervous, every time I do...but it's getting easier, I feel like. I'm getting used to it, enough to really face him, to talk to him like that. While still the feelings it evokes of nakedness, transgression circle anxious and delicious in my stomach. Knowing he could look at me, can see the outline of my breasts beneath the thin and tattered shirts I'm wearing. Can see the little pebbles there that top them off, hard with the excitement, the arousal that seems an almost constant part of me these days. A thrilling, agonizing itch. Even now, I feel it. Standing here before him, creeping close. A moment since I've spoken. His body fills up the recliner pretty much completely, his arms at rest upon the sides. No room for me to plop myself beside him, nestle close against his chest, the way I would if he were on the couch. And even though I know it would be foolish, there's a part of me that wants to climb into his lap instead, to curl up against him, to be enfolded in his arms...or more than simply wants to, really. A part of me that says I should. That treats it not as just a fantasy, but as something real, something I could do, should do. An urge that softly pulses in my chest until I force myself to gingerly set down instead upon the corner of the coffee table. Still close to him, this way - my knee is almost touched to his, between us. But not as dangerous as what that wild part of me desires. "I, um. It might be luckier that way, I think." "Hm." His eyebrow lifts a tiny bit, his smile quirking broad and curious. "Haven't heard that one before. Maybe so, though, maybe so." He looks at me a moment longer, appraisingly, before letting out a little tch, sucking air between his teeth. "Take it the evening didn't go so well." "You could say that." I quirk a crooked smile at him, shake my head. A trace of the theatrical inside my voice, to pour out my travails. "He basically just asked if he should kiss me, back there at the door." "Ouch." He laughs at that, amused and sympathetic. "That's...well, a rookie mistake, at best." And there's a beat before he adds, "Still, at least that means he likes you, right?" "Yeah." I grant the fact without enthusiasm, glancing off into the corner with a little shrug. "I guess so, anyway. Not too sure about the other way around, though." "Ah." There's understanding in his gaze as he exhales for a moment, settles slightly back into the chair. A wry expression on his face. "That's a bit more of a problem, I suppose. Kid turn out to be a jerk or something?" "No, no." I shake my head at that, mild but emphatic. "Nothing like that, really. He seemed...okay. I mean, it isn't like I couldn't stand the guy or anything. It's just..." A sigh, a frown, another shrug, glancing up into my father's features. The implicit question in his eyes. "There's just a lot of little things, you know? Like, even right when he showed up - and I know this isn't really fair, I mean, I wouldn't want for anyone to decide the way they felt about me because of it. But he was...short, kinda. Shorter than me, at least." "Mmm." His answer sympathetic, soft and understated. "I think I see how that could be a problem." "Yeah." Hesitation for a moment, as my eyes touch briefly onto his and dodge away again. As nervous feeling tickles, tightens at my throat. Familiar. Wondering how I can say what's in my thoughts, if I should say it. "I mean, I feel like I want somebody who - who can make me feel small, you know? Someone who..." Trailing off. I'm not sure that I can speak the rest, the words that whisper in my head. Someone big and strong enough to feel like my protector. Someone powerful enough that he could effortlessly overwhelm me, if he chose, could bury me beneath his size, his bulk. Someone like you. Exactly like you, daddy... "You've kind of mentioned that before, I know." He says it quietly, after a moment of my silence. "How you hated being tall, how..." An idle gesture speaks the rest of my complaints, the grief I spilled upon the subject in the middle of my teenage years, when everything was an injustice. "Guess you can blame me for that one, huh?" "I guess so." A feeble smile flashes wry in my expression, glancing up again to meet his eyes. Just for a second. It's often difficult for me to keep them there, of late, hard to maintain my gaze in his. The electric spark of contact builds so quickly in my stomach when I look into his eyes, rising stronger than I can endure, until I have to drop mine down again, dazzled, like I'm staring at the sun. Seek out safety in his shirt, or in my hands, or on the floor...at least for a little while, until I feel brave enough to try again. I know I'm doing it. I know it must seem weird, if it's something that he notices. But I can't exactly help it now, can't bring myself to meet his level gaze for an extended period without my insides twisting furious around each other, without a blush igniting bright and crimson on my cheeks. And the crazy, dreamy part of me, the part that spins out all my fantasies - she's eager to declare it as a sign, of course, as a symbol of significance. Calling into mind a handful of the stories that I've read, where the Daddy taught his daughter to be properly submissive to his will, to hide her eyes until he graced her by the speaking of her name. I'm not even sure exactly what I think of that, in honesty, if I'd say I like the notion of it...but either way, there's a certain thrill I can't deny to see my actions through that lens. To halfway pretend it's what I'm doing, that it's why. "That's not the only problem with him, though." I speak up again before my silence can drag on too long. "He was also...I mean, as long as I'm being unfair. I didn't really like his voice." "His voice?" A shadow of surprise, his eyebrow lifting slightly. "No." I shake my head, definitive. "It was all, like, reedy, thin. A little squeaky, even. Not unbearable or anything, but I just didn't - bleh." "I see." He speaks it quietly bemused, amused. "You do have your standards, don't you." Teasing, gently. "It's important!" I briefly stamp a serious expression on my face, a tiny moue. Evaporating once again as I continue, dissolved to a self-conscious little smile. "How somebody sounds. Come on, you know what I mean. You can barely stand to listen to some people. And then some others just have really sexy voices, that they get inside your head and you just want to...mph." A vague and muffled sound, to swallow up the rest of the suggestion before I have to give it shape. I'm pretty sure I'm blushing as it is, just with what I've said already. Just with what I'm thinking, the 'some people' that I have in mind. My father's voice, its dusky richness and its timbre, the faint vibration that it seems to carry through the air and up my spine...how could Andrew compare? A part of me does wonder, just a bit. If I'm being honest with myself. Which way the connection really flows. Am I having all these feelings, all these fantasies about my dad because of how he looks, because of how his voice affects me? Or do I only tingle at the sound of it because of how I feel already, because I've cast him into all these dreams, put so many words into his mouth? I told myself that I would try to give this other guy a chance, that I'd let myself be open to the possibilities...but did I, really? Or did I only seize upon the ways he wasn't like my father, and reject him for the difference? Holding tightly to this crazy thought inside of me, the slender thread of hope. Reality is Different Ch. 05 And does it even make a difference. Whatever way the reason goes, I didn't feel anything for Andy past a certain vague comradery, alternating with discomfort. While my dad, my Daddy...it trembles yet inside of me, the yearning he inspires. It thrills delicious through me when I gaze upon his features, when I listen to his words. And in the spark of this reflection, I hardly hesitate to add a little more. Looking at him, from the corner of my eyes. "You must have had women tell you that you have a nice voice." He only seems to shrug at that. Just easy, unconcerned. Amused. "Well, I suppose I haven't gotten any complaints, at any rate. I usually consider that to be a victory." Laughter sparkles in his eye, good-natured. "Just out of curiosity, did you enjoy yourself at all, or should I call up Frank and let him know his kid's a completely unappealing lump?" "Mm. I mean, I didn't hate it." I answer somewhat distantly, after a breath. "We had an early dinner, and he took me to a stand-up thing. Um, a comedy show, you know, at that old theater downtown. That part was pretty fun, I guess." A beat. "We talked a little, too. A bit. We have some things in common, even. Read some of the same webcomics." My smile is a little sheepish, saying that. Embarrassed. "He was nice and everything. But it's like - he was too nice. Or...maybe 'nice' isn't even the right word. It just seemed like he didn't ever want to disagree with me. He didn't really tell me his opinions about anything, practically, until he asked me mine. Except - once, near the beginning, we were talking about music, right? And he says he'll listen to everything but rap and country. And I say that I actually like some of those earlier country singers, from the 70s and stuff, like Jerry Reed. And so then he turns around and says that yeah, no, definitely early country's good, he likes that too. And can you guess the one singer that he said he likes?" "Hm." Dad's mouth quirks up in wry commiseration. "I'm going to say 'Jerry Reed.'" "Bingo." I let out a sour sigh, roll my eyes a little at the recollection. "I mean, really. Come on. That's just...dumb. I probably should have asked him what his favorite song was, of Reed's, but I guess I didn't really want to make a whole thing out of it. Still, though." It seemed so pointless, so trivial a thing for him to lie about. Petty, even if it had been true. So shallow a connection claimed, to say our taste in music is the same, or in movies, or in comic strips, as though that would be a reason we should leap into each other's arms. I guess the funny thing is that it kind of has been, in the past. With the boyfriends that I've had before, with the guys that I would even sometimes try to talk to, once in a blue moon, bringing up a movie or a television show I'd seen as a way to start a conversation. As something we could talk about, while we got the feel of each other. Or as a flag that we could wave - and I've felt it for myself, the subtle glee of finding out he also watches Doctor Who, or listens to the Cardigans. But tonight it seemed just silly, when I thought about it, a vacuous connection when compared to others I could share. To one other in particular. It's so much deeper of a link, the one I have with him. My dad. It's all our history together, all my childhood, everything he's done for me, everything that makes me who I am. Or even more than that - it's anchored in our very being, written in our DNA. Carried in my every drop of blood. I'm only here because of him. I'm of him, of his stock, his seed. Like Eve and Adam, created from a part of him to be his wife, his mate...no other man on earth could ever rival that connection, could ever be as close to me as he is, at the very heart of things. No other man could ever matter more. There's one more thought in that, as well, another little notion that I almost hesitate to entertain. It's crazy, and it's backwards, and I know full well that it's the very opposite of true...but still, a tiny voice inside me wants to rhapsodize that somehow, all the genes we share would only make me better suited as the mother of his child, if such a thing could ever happen. That they would mean I'm tuned and fitted to the task, my body built to fill that function, my womb intended for his seed. Purring senseless deep inside of me that any sons or daughters I would give him would be even more 'his children' than the ones that any other woman in the world would bear - and the thought of that suffices to call up a fantasy I've had a couple times before, played back in a flash inside my head. The one where he declares he's going to knock me up, and frowns at me when I respond with shocked denial. Where I'm bent across the armrest of the couch, my face pressed down into the cushions, my wrists held pinned behind my back. My bottom lifted helplessly into the air for him to use, or to abuse... He starts out just with little swats, spanking mostly gently through the fabric of my skirt, telling me I shouldn't contradict my Daddy. Explaining that it isn't my decision, that I belong to him, his property to do with as he wishes. But when I try again to squirm away, to free myself, when I answer that he can't, that I'm his daughter - that's when the flame of righteous anger touches harsh and smoky to his voice, when it curls taut and vicious in his assault upon my flesh. My skirt pulled up, my panties torn away; his calloused hand now slaps against bare skin, far stronger than before, and I can only cringe and whimper there beneath, jolting deeper down into the cushions as the pain of my defiance rolls like thunderclaps along my nerves, dampens in the corners of my eyes. His words implacable inside my mind, the voice of god, commandments carved in stone. I own you, babygirl. Your body is my toy. Your only purpose is to please me, to be the little slut your Daddy wants. His meaty fingers probing, pressing painful at my entrance, slick with my own treacherous arousal. His hardness there as well, nosing dangerously between my folds, rubbing so exquisite underneath. Now beg for me to do it. Beg for Daddy's baby. I do beg. I plead, I pray, I offer to do anything he wants instead. Anything but that - and then I gasp, I shudder in an agony of pain and pleasure as he sheathes himself inside me in a single, savage thrust. My teeth clenched desperate to withstand the strength of the sensation, my fingers balling helpless into fists upon the cushion as my Daddy takes me, as he fucks me hard and fast and merciless. The slapping of his hips against my skin almost as loud and as excruciating as the spanking he was giving me just moments prior...his voice behind me growls rough and low, sneering that I'm right, that I will do anything he wants. That right now he wants to breed me like the little whore I am, to fill me with his seed so he can watch my belly grow, so that anyone who looks at me will know I'm taken, claimed, possessed. So that I'm bound to him completely, not just his daughter but his little wife, the mother of his child, of all the children that my womb will give him. I struggle to resist, of course, despite the subtle tingle of the words inside my stomach. I buck, I twist, I strive to push him off, to get away - but his strength is that of steel, his grip like shackles round my wrists. He doesn't even have to try. His victory is easy, his conquest of my body so complete and absolute...it flows inside of me, the sweetly anguished thrill of my defeat, pounding hot upon the center of my consciousness in equal tempo with his manhood there along my channel. And my eagerness to fight, my desire to resist his will is further decimated every time I'm drowned beneath those tides, every time I quake and shudder in the throes of an unwilling rapture, the ecstasy he mercilessly hammers from my flesh. The feeling is a fire, an inferno that consumes my mind and leaves nothing to remain but instinct, nothing but sensation and desire. There's nothing left of me than just the hungry little whore that my Daddy said I was, the toy he wanted me to be, mewling in pathetic, overwhelming gladness as he ravages my tender, dripping puss. Pushing back to meet his thrusts, trembling with joy at every dirty word he growls in my ear - my submission is already certain by the time he groans behind me and accelerates his pace still faster, by the time his thickness swells and pulses deep within. It's only icing when I feel the messy splatter of his cum explode along my battered channel, ropey salvoes painting hot and white against my inner walls, overflowing in my womb. Shuddering, collapsing to a final, cataclysmic bliss certaint that he's just fulfilled his threat, his promise, that my Daddy's seed has taken root inside his little girl's belly... "-overly enthusiastic, I suppose." It takes a slow, reluctant moment before his voice begins to drag me back, before I'm able to let go the little vision so I can face reality again. Disentangling my focus from the tangled nest of fantasies inside of me to point it at my dad, to hear his words despite the noisy thumping of my heartbeat in my ears. Despite the warmth that tingles on my cheeks, between my thighs. "Can't completely blame him. When you build something up enough inside your head, any little conflict can start to look like a catastrophe. And then you end up making something of an ass out of yourself trying to get it all to go the way you want again." I barely manage to look up enough to catch his wryly self-effacing smile. "I don't think I ever pulled exactly that move there, myself, but I certainly acted like an idiot trying to impress my share of women, way back in the caveman days. Not that I'm trying to really make excuses for the kid, but...well, at least it's something of a compliment for him to act like that, right?" "Mm." I only hum a quiet answer, staring mostly at my folded hands, my knees. Still not listening to him completely, if I'm being honest. Other thoughts are on my mind, other feelings clutching crowded at my throat. The lingering remainder of my daydream that my consciousness refuses to let go, that tugs so deep and urgent at my stomach. The wild, eager voice that wheedles in my ear, pleading that I've tried the 'normal' thing now, haven't I? I went out on this halfway date, I gave the guy a chance, and my feelings haven't dissipated, haven't weakened in the slightest. Isn't that an indication that it's something real, my desires, my attraction to the man that sits before me now. Isn't it a sign that I should follow them, pursue these dreams that ache inside my breast? "I don't know." Murmured softly, to myself as much as him. "I guess so, maybe. I just wish I didn't always get my compliments from people I don't like." A feeble smile, served up like an offering. "Well, better that than insults from the people who you do." It's a gentle teasing in his tone, mixed with sympathy in equal measure. Settling more seriously as he asks, "Definitely not a keeper, then?" "No." I firmly shake my head. "I mean, like I said, it isn't like I hate the guy. He just didn't...didn't make me feel anything, you know? He didn't grab me. Literally, even; I'm pretty sure he didn't touch me once, the whole time we were out. Which..." It starts as just a verbal stumble, consternation reigniting on my cheeks how I feel how he could misinterpret what I said, what it would mean about my expectations for the evening. But the thought that follows afterward is almost an epiphany, a sudden fervent hope of something I could say. A touch. If I told him it was something that I liked, for a man to make himself my master, that it was something that I thought about, imagined. That I was waiting for someone to put his hands on me, to take control. I wouldn't have to say that it was him I thought about, wouldn't even have to hint it, really. But he could think it for himself, if he were so inclined. If I made sure he knew how eagerly I would obey, how certain he could be of my submission. It's daunting, terrifying, the thought of really saying it to him, the image of me spilling such a secret, even if it's not my worst...but it isn't quite as scary as I think it would have been, a couple weeks ago. "...um, which, I mean, just like a little bit, you know, like on the hand or on my arm or something." I falter through the explanation, thinking frantically about what I should say, how I can phrase the feelings in my head without them sticking in my throat. "And I wouldn't especially have wanted him to do it anyway, of course. But he was - I guess he was just overall too careful with that stuff. Especially there at the end, when he asked if he should kiss me." I take a couple careful breaths before I speak again, piling up together all the courage I can find into the center of my chest. Quickly - I don't want him to change the subject now, to take away this little avenue I think I've found. "That kind of thing, um." Anxious tightness in my throat, still looking at my hands, my fingers curled round each other at my knees, kneading nervously together. "I feel like, a guy I'd want, you know...he wouldn't do that. Or - hah." Tittering a moment's skittish laughter. "Or yeah, obviously, he wouldn't ask like that. But like, the man I think about - I wouldn't want for him to even care so much, maybe, if I was wanting him to kiss me, or to touch me or whatever. He'd just...just do it, you know. Because he wanted to. Even if he thought I maybe didn't." I risk a glance into his eyes at that, appraising. Unsuccessful. His mouth a thin, flat line, his body still, his brow set low above a gaze of quiet brown, dark and strong and thoroughly unreadable. There's little I can do but swallow down my nerves to push on further, looking down now to the armrest of his chair. "It's something that I've kinda thought about, sometimes. That it would be exciting, if somebody just...if he was aggressive, you know. Authoritative." Somebody. He. The name I really mean hangs heavy on my tongue, unsaid. "If he didn't worry what I wanted, because he just decided I - that I was his, that he could treat me any way he wanted to. If he told me what to do, and if he punished me when I-" The words are coming faster as I build up steam, as I force myself beyond the fear and the embarrassment of telling him this kind of thing - but it all comes crashing to a halt when I look up again and see his lips now shaped into a subtle frown, their curve a seeming flavor of distaste. Disgust. Suddenly my heart collapses in my chest, my waning fear is vaulted back into its fullest strength, lodges like a rock inside my throat, cutting off what I had thought to say. Leaving me to only stare at him as though I were a deer before a speeding car, frozen by the doom about to strike. A moment passes in that panicked silence, a second's searching for escape. "...I'm...I mean, I don't..." Reaching desperately for a reversal, to back away from what I've said - but it's too late for that, too late by far. I can't take back the words, can't pretend I was just kidding, that it was only some strange joke. Or...I guess I maybe could have, actually. If I'd done it right at the beginning, instead of freaking out like this, instead of sitting here so plainly mortified. But of course, I missed that chance. And all I can think to do instead is minimize, to play it off as best I can. "...I guess that's pretty crazy, huh." Humiliation in my voice, mingled with self-pity. "No..." It comes out awfully false, his first response. Flat and blandly reassuring, like an automatic instinct of some comforting denial. He has to cough, and shake his head, and flex a plastic smile experimentally across his face before he sounds himself again. "No. No, that's not crazy, sweetie. I'm just...huf. God. Uh. I understand it's actually quite common, that kind of - of a thing. Of a desire, for a woman to have. Probably even the most common kind, as far as those things go. I only, ah." The breath that he lets out is slightly strained, tinged with an uncomfortable, self-conscious humor. "You're certainly hitting me with these little revelations lately. Not that I'm complaining, mind. I'm glad you trust me enough to tell me. I just need a bit to get accustomed. And with something like this..." He shakes his head again, a trace. A pained expression flitting through his features, thoughtful, troubled. Inward-looking, til his eyes rise up again to mine. "You know how important you are to me, princess. I'm your dad. And it's bad enough sometimes just knowing that you're going to...going to do what all young ladies do, get yourself involved with a bunch of idiots who don't deserve you. Eventually get married to another idiot who doesn't deserve you. That's - it's one of those things that you learn to accept. But the thought of some lunkhead treating you like that, like what you said..." His lips curl briefly in a sour rictus of a smile, tight against his teeth. But his voice is only gently rueful, wry. "It's about enough to make me want to lock you up in that tower, after all." Silence for an answer. The only one that I can think, can give. I wish he would, would lock me up, would keep me close. But I can't exactly tell him that. No more than I can tell him that he was supposed to cast himself into the role that I described, that if he thought of other boys at all they should have only been the competition, a pack of fools for him to shove aside when he asserts his own dominion. So I simply sit there, hunching over, staring at my hands. My lower legs pulled back beneath the table under me, as though I might just curl into a ball to flee from my embarrassment. "Listen. Hey." Strong, but soft - his voice is like an outstretched hand, already bouncing back to its accustomed self-assurance. Reassurance. "Don't worry about it. Like I said, it's a pretty common thing. You shouldn't have much trouble finding someone, ah...someone who can scratch that kind of itch." The euphemism spoken slightly hurried, rushed off the scene before it has a chance to linger. "But you know, what I'd say - what I would say is, you maybe shouldn't be expecting anyone to act like that out of the blue, if you just go on a date with them. It's the kind of thing that people tend to talk about to one another first, let each other know exactly what they like. Because, well...anyone who really treated you like that before you told him it was something that you wanted, that's a guy who genuinely doesn't care about you. That's someone who I guarantee will hurt you, and not in any way you want him to." He speaks it seriously, cautioning, despite the halfway joke that's tossed in at the very end. The firm and careful tones of fatherly concern...but they relent a little as he presses forward, sliding back towards notes of lightness, humor. "Anyway, though. It isn't really something you should have to look for, I don't think. Not specifically. I'm not any kind of expert on the subject, but I'm pretty sure most guys out there are more than willing to play up the alpha male act if a pretty girl asks them to. Mind you, they might need to practice at it for a while to get it right, but..." I'd still been mostly stewing in self-pity, in the cringing of humiliation, only inching towards recovery of some composure. But something in the way he says this catches my attention. A certain rueful self-awareness, like the flavor of a memory, reflection. A crooked curve I notice at the corner of his lips, when I raise my eyes enough to see...and somehow, I find my voice again, or at least a piece of it. "Most guys?" It comes out quiet, hardly taller than a murmur. Probing, with my eyebrow raised - but he understands the wondering implicit to the words. He laughs, a trifle awkwardly, and briefly nods before he shakes his head. "Hell, I probably shouldn't even tell you this. But if we're apparently just spilling every grisly secret now..." Still hesitating for a time, before he pushes on. "Your mom - and don't let her know I told you this, because she'd probably fly back here just to kill me. But she used to be into that kind of thing herself. She'd ask for me to slap her, spank her, when we were...well, I'd imagine you can guess the 'when.' Plus a couple other things along those lines. I suppose I maybe shouldn't be surprised, so much, that you'd turn out to have some similar...proclivities, let's say." Flashing me a faint, half-hearted grin. Reality is Different Ch. 05 My own expression is considerably flatter, blinking with a broad, ambivalent surprise. That's not something I expected of my mom. It doesn't feel like it fits the image that I have of her, all tightly wound and falsely proper, preoccupied with just the outer face of things. And it's pretty gross to think about, as well. Picturing my mother naked, being spanked - ugh. But what really bothers me about it is the seeming similarity it brings to light, the idea that there's anything I share with her, beyond the biological relationship I can't escape. The hateful thought again that he could be reminded of the woman who betrayed him when he looks at me. It's almost enough to turn me off to it completely, the whole idea of submission to his touch, to his command. Almost. Because the silver lining of the news would be that this is nothing new to him, not something that disgusts him after all...or at least not in itself. Not if he agreed, at any rate. I wouldn't think... "Did you, um." The question comes out tinged with an insistent inquiry, a need for certainty that pushes past my hesitation. "Did you do it?" My gaze appraising, venturing to meet his own. He laughs again, an uncomfortable chuckle. "Well. It's not exactly my first instinct, understand. But I think I managed well enough. Once I'd had a bit of practice, anyway." Smiling wryly as he says it - but his humor seems to dim a little in the momentary pause that follows. The faintest shadow falling on his features. His tone as he continues tastes somewhat more of a confession, an inner secret told. His eyes unfocused, looking through me to the wall behind, or to the past. "I did wonder, just a bit, after everything went south. If that was part of it, if I wasn't - wasn't giving her something that she needed. I don't particularly think it was. We were always rather different people. And that part of our relationship, the physical part, was probably the last to fall apart, when I look back on it. But still. It's the kind of thing a man can tend to fret about, somewhat." I want to reassure him, to tell him that he's right. There's no way she could have been unsatisfied by him, no way that any woman could. He's a stud, a love machine, the king of every sexual delight - not that I can say such things, of course. Not that I even really know. I mean, I think I can be pretty sure he isn't terrible, at any rate. Mom never hurled any accusations of incompetence in that arena at him, none that I heard. And the fights sometimes were serious enough that I'm pretty sure she would have, if it were something on her mind...but he could be merely decent, adequate, if I think about it honestly, given only what I truly know. It's just the fantasies, the stories that insist he has to be a titan in the bedroom, unequalled at the art of love. Or that whisper crooked logic in my ear, how it doesn't matter anyway, how great he is compared to other guys. If he's the only one who takes me, he'll be the best I've ever had. All unspeakable - although the thought, the inquiry that does climb up upon my tongue is only slightly less so. Humming with a faint, peculiar hopefulness, an urgency I pray is something only I can hear. "Was it something you liked, too?" I know how dangerous the question is, the further probing that it represents - or at least, I realize it by the time the words are fully spoken. But I feel like I have to know, to get this further glimpse into his dreams before the opportunity escapes me. "Or was it only...was it just because she did?" His gaze refocuses, and he looks at me a moment. Just briefly, level, his smile flat, and I can't even say if there's a question in his eyes, the way that there so often is of late. The only thing that's saving me from breaking out into a blush is the fact that one's already burning on my cheeks...but when he speaks, his tone is light as ever, the gentle rumble that I know, and I can't help a certain quiver of relief. "Like I said, it isn't my first instinct. But it's...I think most men can come to an appreciation of it. Probably for the same reason that so many women feel an interest. One of those primitive instincts, I suppose, some kind of yin and yang." The gaze that drifted from my features as he answered flits back over to me now, smirking wry and self-aware. "Me, I...I didn't mind. I'll put it that way." I had retreated when he seemed to show displeasure at my revelations - but I'm leaning forward now, closer to him, eager and excited. Nervous yet, of course, a tickle of it high up in my throat, even as I try to lightly tease him. "Is that why you never spanked me, when I was growing up?" Innocently spoken, more or less. But it's the nearest thing that I can think of which would link me to the notion, that could spur the image of it in his mind. "You?" My teasing is at least returned. "I'm not sure you've ever done anything to deserve a spanking, have you?" "Da-a-ad." I playfully protest, a bid for time as I consider what to say, what transgression I can offer. Thinking for a moment if I dare to throw out something naughty and salacious, some sexually charged infraction that could inflame his lusts, his jealousy, even as it demonstrates how badly I'm in need of his correction. Tempting him to make up for the time he's lost...unfortunately, though, I can't really even think of anything I've done that qualifies, and after a couple seconds pass I opt instead for softer fare. "What about the time I set the bathroom rug on fire?" "Nah." Something like a wink within his tone. "That was for the best. I never liked the color, anyway." "Oh, of course." I roll my eyes a bit, affectionate, struggling to hold my smile in check. "Well, then what about...what about when I borrowed the truck without asking you, and scraped the side of it all up against a wall?" Just a couple years ago, that one. I'd have been more than old enough for it to have that spice, that spark of possibility, if he'd have ordered me across his knee as discipline for what I did. He laughs in recollection. "Okay, that time, I might have been a little tempted. If you hadn't practically been crying when you came in to let me know..." His smile curving tender, warm. Starting to relax, perhaps, from the uncertain caution that I pushed him to before. "No, you were always a good kid, sweetheart. Even when you were bad, you were pretty good about it. I never felt like physical punishment was ever really called for." "Still, though." A little quieter as I push on, hesitation traced across my tongue. The lilting melody of teasing sinking down into sincerity, to an earnesty that thuds inside my heart. "Do you ever wonder if I might have turned out better, if you did? Like maybe I'd be...I don't know. More behaved, or more obedient, or if it would just, um..." God, I don't know how to say it, don't know what I even want to say. The sentiment that aches inside of me gets jumbled, broken, blunted by the rules I have to follow, by the walls that block the way, an incoherent mess of words in place of everything that can't be said. I need you, daddy. I want to be with you. I love you, need you so, so much...I have to reach for anything instead, for passing thoughts, for idle recollections, detritus of the mind that might show just a sliver of the truth. "I read about - there was this experiment they did, you know, with dogs. Or with puppies, anyway. Where they split them up into three groups, and like...one group, the first group, they only treated them nicely. They would pet them, and give them treats, that kind of thing. And the second group, they only punished them. Not for anything they did, but just as a general rule, like hitting them with newspapers or something. And then the third group, they did both. They were nice and mean at different times, but totally at random, not based on how the dog behaved." "And it was kind of funny, what they found. Because...I don't really know why they thought to test this, even, what the point of all this was. But they found out that it ended up being the third group that showed the most affection to the researchers. Who would like run up begging to be petted. I guess since...I mean, you'd think that it would be the first group, really, that would act like that the most. But it, um. It wasn't." Bizarre. I know it is, by the time I'm halfway through the explanation. But it doesn't really hit me fully til I finish. The judgment slicing sharp inside my stomach as the seconds start to pass without an answer, as I see the furrows rising on his brow, the little frown that curves his mouth again, perplexed. God, how weird a thing for me to say to him, to bring up at this moment. I'm not even sure exactly what it would suggest, what I'd intend for it to tell him. It's just something that I've read about online, a second-hand account that stuck in my imagination. I don't know even what it means to me, how it fits into my feelings. Maybe part of it is that it doesn't fit. Part of the problem with it, anyway. After all, if you were looking at my life through the lens of that experiment, there isn't really any question of the group that I'd be in. Never given any punishment more severe than just a weekend's grounding. Treated with unfailing tenderness, concern and kindness from the man in charge of me. And the thought that this could mean that I'm a runner-up, that some other girl out there would love her daddy more than me, just because he smacked her butt a bit when she was being bad...it feels like a bitter insult, something that I can't believe is true, I don't. But then just as much, beside the instinct of denial, is the idea that it maybe could be true. Applied to me, specifically. The foolish thought that it would somehow make me love him even more if he just did that kind of thing, if he made me sometimes taste his wrath, his ire, instead of just his gentle fondness. Thinking of the sort of discipline, of course, that the daddies often give their daughters in the stories, that he even said he gave my mom. Little slaps and solid spankings. Being grabbed by his strong hands, being tossed about at his desire - the fantasy itself is thrilling, but even more to think that it would only heighten how I feel. The dream of being so fanatically devoted, desperate to deserve his touch and his affection, of rushing eagerly to meet him at the doorway, like a loyal pet would for her master. The thought of having nothing else inside of me but this, nothing but my adoration for my beloved Daddy...it's compelling and disturbing, all at the same time. Enough to spin my mind in circles, to make my heart beat faster, if it weren't already going like a kettle drum. And it's crazy, too. I know it is. Obsessive. Jesus christ, I mean, it isn't even something about people. It was an experiment with giving random punishments to dogs. The only kind of a connection that it has to what we've been discussing is the one that I've imagined, that I've just made up in my head. That I couldn't even say to him, if it were genuinely something real. Hardly any kind of a surprise, that he'd be looking at me with that faintly questioning expression once again, the subtle, troubled frown that tells me that I've screwed this up. And if I were really clever, charismatic, if I were as seductive as the girls that I read about, then maybe I could find a way to turn it all around, to repair the moment that we almost seemed to have...but as it is, there isn't much that I can think to do but pull away, try to flee the scene. Speaking faint into that awkward silence, as I rise up to my feet. "Anyway, I've got homework I should-" "Sarah..." He interrupts me as I'm halfway turned around, looking to the stairs. Quietly. A little pained, almost, the way he says my name...it feels like it, anyway. And I'm almost afraid to face him, too, anxious feeling in my throat as I turn around again. "Yeah?" Glancing for the briefest moment up into his eyes, before the significance I feel there sends my gaze escaping to the safety of his shirt. A second passes. Then he smiles slightly, crooked, shakes his head. "Nothing. You've got the right idea. Take care of that homework, huh?" My own lips flicker momentarily into a shadow of a smile. But I don't really answer anything. Just nod a little bit, turning on my heel a final time to make my way upstairs alone. Wishing once again that things could only be as simple as they are in all the fantasies, the stories, that I could know what's in his heart, find the words to make him feel the way I do. The ache of yearning tugging forceful in my stomach, in my breast, as I step beyond my bedroom door. - Calculus assignments, for better or for worse, have a way of clearing out the stronger feelings from your consciousness. Or at least, of clearing everything except frustration. The chain rule, the quotient rule, the product - it seems like there's a million different algorithms that I have to keep in mind, flipping backwards through the book to check back over the examples, and then forward to the end to be certain that I've done it right. It's half past ten before I'm done, and even that is likely quicker than it would be if my professor hadn't given us a relatively small assignment for tonight. It's more than a relief when at last I pop my papers back into my bag, when I can scurry off into the bathroom so I can get myself prepared for bed. Slipping off my outer clothes and sliding down beneath the covers, waiting for my dad to tromp his way upstairs and bid me my good night. And waiting. I'm not exactly worried, at the start. He doesn't really show up on a schedule. Just heads up usually before he goes to bed himself, any time from maybe nine until eleven. Sometimes when I'm tired I even fall asleep before he gets there, though I'm light enough a sleeper that I usually wake up again when he opens up my door, when he pokes his head inside. But today, tonight - I can't help wondering a little, as the minutes keep on passing. Particularly when the hour comes and goes. I don't hear any sounds of his activity downstairs, even when I strain my ears against the silence. No quiet creaking as he wanders to and fro, no vague and incoherent beetling of a television playing softly through the floor. And I can't entirely prevent myself from wondering if he simply isn't coming, if he maybe just forgot. Silly, probably, how much I'm bothered by the thought. It isn't like I've never slept a night without his blessing, like it would be something truly shocking if he missed it just this once. It's a ritual we share, but not a perfect one; there's certainly been scattered days on which he hasn't given me that benediction, for one reason or another, or even none at all. And with all the things I dream about him giving me and never actually receive, it seems almost absurd that I'd be troubled by this absence in particular, that a part of me would feel hurt by the denial of a couple simple words, an almost pointless trip up to my room. Maybe that's the reason, though. When so much of what I think about is fantasy, the little touches that I have of something real become more precious, more important. It's something I can cling to, a scrap of solace to appease the gnawing hunger of my heart...that's the intuition that I feel, anyway, as I slip out of my bed again and pad my way downstairs. Not sneaking, really. Not exactly. Just careful, every footstep planted flush against the wall to minimize the noise when I pass along the squeaky section of the stairs, poking out my head around the edge before I walk into the living room. Quiet. Dark. He isn't there. Which is pretty much what I expected, I suppose. But it's still a certain disappointment as I tiptoe out into the hall to see the light that dimly seeps beneath his bedroom door, to have the confirmation that he just forgot about the nightly ritual we share. Injured feeling with the implication that it doesn't mean as much to him. Not what it does to me. I've padded silent to the door, already put my hand upon the knob, before another notion wanders in, called to mind by my accustomed reason for intruding on his space. Remembering the videos he watches, the ones I go in there to see...I don't know when he does it, really. When he masturbates. He doesn't have a huge amount of time alone, without me in the house. Or at least, not time he can rely upon, that would be neatly patterned, known before the moment. I head out with my friends sometimes, on weekends or on other small excursions, but that isn't really something that he could predict, look forward to, even if I hadn't kinda fallen from the habit recently. And I guess probably the thing I'd most expect would be that he would simply take advantage of that kind of opportunity as it arose, that he maybe even did today, while I was on my quasi-date. But if he has some kind of a routine for it, a schedule...it would almost have to be a time like this. Late at night, when I've already gone to bed, when he can feel more or less assured that he's effectively alone. That's when he might open up his hidden folder, let his sturdy jeans drop heavy to the floor. When he would bring himself to hardness with his videos of teenaged girls stripped and screaming, servicing the lusts of older men. He could be doing it right now. My breathing shallower, excited, enamored of the thought. His meaty fingers stroking lazily along his manhood, wrapped around his girth, engorged with all the strength of his desires. With his headphones on, his attention on the screen, he might not notice as the door behind him eases open, as I take a step or two inside...there are stories like that, that I've read. Of course there are. Where the girl walks in on her father masturbating, where she's scandalized, and then swiftly gripped with growing fascination, hunger. But I could almost see it happening with him, with us. If I played the proper part. If I spoke up loudly from the doorway, with a tone of startled disbelief, aghast. "Daddy?!" Maybe he would spin around to face me in his chair, just from the shock of the occasion. Giving me a chance to look at him, to stare, to spend that little instant memorizing every inch and vein and wrinkle of my Daddy's cock. The totem of my fantasies finally exposed for me to see, tall and proud and powerful...but even if he didn't, it wouldn't really have to change that much. If he just closed the player window, tried to quickly shove himself into his boxer shorts - it would still be more than obvious what he was up to. I'd know, and he'd know that I knew, and I'd know that he knew that I knew, as far back into repetition as you'd care to go. In the stories, they apologize. Pretty often, anyway. And I can see him doing it as well. Even if it just would be a minor thing, a little 'sorry' let out with an awkward chuckle in between the rest of what he'd say...it still could be enough. Because then I could be reassuring, comforting, the way he was with me when I came home a couple hours before. Drifting closer to him as I told him it's okay, I understand the way it is. "You're a man, daddy. You have needs." Pouring every ounce of adoration that I can into the words, mingled with an urgent undercurrent of concern. Maybe I could put my hand upon his arm, a gentle touch. Maybe I could kneel before him on the floor, staring worshipful into his eyes. "It must be so hard for you, the last few years. Not having anybody to take care of you, that way. It isn't fair." I could leave in long, expectant pauses, opportunities for him to make the final move himself, to murmur low and hungry in my ear how I can make things right. How a good girl always tries to make her Daddy happy, if she can. Only if he kept his silence would I have to offer for myself, biting softly at my lower lip before I asked, "Is there anything that I can do to make you feel better?" A pleading in my eyes, a prayer. "Anything at all?"