Chapter 11
The next few weeks unfolded like a string of cutout paper hearts.
My first day of college was less than a month away. There were books to buy, and dorm supplies to shop for. I had stopped returning my mother’s texts and calls. All of that was barely a niggle at the back of my mind.
Nothing existed outside of my father and I and our secret.
We grew drunk on each other, and like all intoxicants, our desire made us reckless. Kisses stolen in empty galleries. A flash of skin or tongue. In the backs of cabs coming home from parties, with my father’s hand down the front of my dress and his fingers inside me. We even held hands on the subway.
But the bulk of our time was spent in bed, always naked, always ravenous.
“Fuck, I love watching you grind on my cock,” he said, his fingers digging furrows into the flesh of my hips. “You’re gonna make me come.”
“No, don’t,” I said. “I want to suck you off so I can taste both of us in my mouth at the same time.”
Hands braced against my father’s chest, I glided my pussy along his erection, sliding easily. I was so fucking wet—always so fucking wet when he was around. There was no helping it.
“Sweetheart,” he said through gritted teeth, “you can’t tell me not to come and then say stuff like that.”
I laughed and then yelped as he reached around to slap my ass.
“Sorry, Daddy.”
“Yeah right,” he growled. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
He lifted his head to catch my nipple in his mouth. The wet warmth of his tongue sent electrical currents of need zipping through my bloodstream. His back arched off the mattress as I buffed my clit against his sensitive cockhead. I was used to masturbating on my back. Riding my father like this took a bit more effort, but the view was definitely worth it. It reminded me of humping a beloved stuffed animal, only hotter and slipperier, with way more direct pressure on my clit.
“I’m close.” I rocked my hips, letting the tension build. “Just one more minute.”
“Whatever you need, baby.” He licked and sucked my nipple, and the coalescing of pleasure from above and below made my stomach flutter.
I closed my eyes. “Oh, that. Keep doing that.”
He trailed kisses across my breasts, catching my other nipple with his teeth. His cock throbbed beneath me. It must’ve been torture, holding back his own release while I used him to get myself off. Clit pulsing, pussy dripping... I held his face with both hands and kissed his lips, recalling our first kiss and how it had changed everything. I thought about his cock and how close it was to my opening, how all it would take for it to slip inside me was one miscalculated thrust.
My orgasm flashed through me like lightning. I whimpered into his mouth. He slipped his tongue between my lips and tasted me, his muscles tense with the effort it must have taken to hold off from coming.
I took a moment to catch my breath.
“Okay,” I said. “Your turn.”
I slid down his body and grasped his cock, slick and hard like granite against my palm. I painted my lips with the drop of precum beading at the tip, then took the head into my mouth. He tasted sweet and tangy, a flavor I’d come to recognize as my own. I bobbed my head, taking as much of him as I could fit without gagging.
“Fuck me,” he growled, his fingers closing around my hair.
I released him with a wet pop.
“Is that a request?” I asked, gently cupping his balls the way he liked them to be cupped. He made a sound like a moan and a snarl combined. His whole body shuddered as I tongued the small slit at the tip of his cock. I was getting good at this.
“Careful,” he said, “or you’ll get a facial instead of a mouthful.”
I flashed him a wicked smile. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Gripping his shaft, I wrapped my lips around him and resumed sucking him off, relishing the salt of him mixed with my own sweetness. I loved the sounds he made and the musky scent of his sweat. I knew exactly where he liked to be licked and how hard to suck.
As with everything else involving my father, I couldn’t get enough. It was like I’d been born to do this and I supposed, in a way, I had.
Precum leaked onto my tongue and down the back of my throat. His cock was thick. I had to be thoughtful about my positioning so I didn’t end up with a sore jaw. His gaze never left my face. Sometimes he admitted to wishing he were a photographer, so he could instantly capture these moments without having to pause.
More than once I thought about suggesting we make a video, like the one he’d made with my mother, but I was afraid mentioning her would be like summoning her presence into the room. I didn’t want her here any more than I wanted to move back home.
My father’s grip tightened around my hair. He was close. I could tell by the shallowness of his breathing and the way his hips bucked with each swipe of my tongue. This was by far my favorite part, watching and hearing and feeling him lose his composure in the seconds before he was about to blow. I sucked harder and faster, using my hand as an extension of my mouth, and listened for the helpless panting, felt the sudden swelling of his cock.
Hot, salty cum gushed over my tongue and splattered my throat. I swallowed. He loved it when I swallowed, and I loved anything that allowed me to take parts of him inside me.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Paige… Baby.”
I held him in my mouth as he softened, then let him slip out. Quiet as a cat, I crawled up the bed and settled into the crook of his arm. He pulled me close and kissed my forehead, my right cheek, then my left.
“Shit,” he said. I’d come to learn that excessive swearing before, during and shortly after orgasm was just one of his quirks. “How’d you get so good at that?”
I nuzzled his neck. “Natural talent. Though it helps to have a patient and thorough teacher.”
“If only every student exhibited your boundless enthusiasm.”
It was true. I had taken to practicing the art of the blow job like mastering a new creative medium, always ready and eager to drop to my knees, and not just in the bedroom. Likewise, my father was an expert at cunnilingus. He could make me come in under three minutes using only the very tip of his tongue. But he much preferred to draw it out, to watch me sweat and squirm.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I grabbed his phone from the bedside table. “Almost five o’clock.”
“We should get up.” He rolled on top of me and buried his face in the hair at my neck. “Remind me again why we should get up.”
“Because no one can live on sex and cuddling alone?”
“I’m willing to test that theory.”
I laughed, relaxing into the feeling of being trapped by his weight.
We did in fact have plans to meet up with a small group of my father’s friends and colleagues for dinner. After an early start in the studio—he preferred morning light for painting—we’d spent the afternoon alternately napping and making love. I used to cringe at that phrase. Making love. It sounded so corny. But that’s exactly what we were doing, transforming desire into something tangible with our bodies.
My father’s love was alchemy. He made me into something else, like new growth after a forest fire. Supple, yet strong.
I thought about sex all the time now. The first night we spent together, he joked that he”d created a monster and we’d laughed about it. But it was true.
“I was thinking I’d invite everyone back for drinks tonight,” he said.
“Sounds good.” I skimmed my fingernails down the center of his back and relished the rush of warm breath that followed. He kissed my neck, then rose from the bed, his hair wild and chest sheened with sweat. His and mine.
He stretched his arms and shoulders, smiling with a look that made my skin tingle as if his gaze could physically touch me.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“No, really. What is it?”
“I was just thinking I could paint you from every angle and still not come close to capturing the beauty of your soul.”
My chest swelled with warmth.
“I love you, too, Dad.”
He studied me a moment longer, then went into the bathroom to shower. I spread out like a starfish on the bed and listened for the water beating against the tile. I’d join him in a minute. But for now, I simply wanted to lay here and marvel at how this had become my life.
I was in love with my father.
It was like a bomb had gone off inside me, forever altering the landscape. Nothing would be the same again. We”d done things to each other that I hadn’t even known were doable, yet we’d somehow managed to hold off on the one thing I craved more than anything. I was still a virgin, technically speaking, but for how much longer?
Not too long, I hoped.
At first, my father had insisted we wait until I was on birth control. When I suggested condoms, he thanked me for reminding him to go get tested. Then he said he wanted my first time to be something special. I told him every day with him was special, so could he please hurry up and fuck me before my pussy imploded.
That one earned me a time-out in the studio with a box of crayons and a bowl of fruit.
I couldn’t help it. I was cock-hungry. He made me feel edgy and desperate, like my consciousness had been condensed and then relocated to my pelvis. I didn’t like feeling desperate. I tried to be patient—really, I did. Until last week, when all that pent-up frustration came to a head.
We were in the elevator on our way back from a Youth in the Arts fundraiser. He had me pinned to the wall with his erection prodding my backside and his mouth at my ear. His voice gruff and breathy, he whispered in detail all the ways he was going to make me come. All the ways except the one I was dying to hear. Distraught and out of my mind with arousal, I threatened to pack my things and leave that night if he didn’t fuck me.
He called my bluff as soon as we reached his floor, then he called me a brat when I suddenly “changed my mind” about leaving. The gravity in his stare as he assured me that he would not be manipulated nearly plunged my stomach back to the ground. If I wanted him to do this, I was going to have to wait however long it took for him to be ready.
I had a choice. With him, I always had a choice.
I chose to wait.
My father’s phone vibrated on the nightstand. Feeling nosy, I checked to see who had texted him and then instantly regretted it. The text was from Kristin, the model whose job I’d assumed when she’d come down with the flu a few weeks ago. I was pretty sure he had been sleeping with her before I came to New York. In the text, she claimed to be feeling much better, and that someone named Maddox was in town. She wanted to know if my father was free tonight, followed by two question marks and a winky-faced kiss emoji.
I thought about deleting it. I even fantasized about how satisfying it would feel to erase every trace of her from his phone. But that would be petty and childish, and I was working so hard to prove I could be mature.
Leaving the phone on the bed, I tiptoed into the bathroom and slipped inside the walk-in shower. My father smiled when he saw me, his skin frothed with body wash.
“You got a text a few minutes ago,” I said, trying to sound aloof.
“From who?” He moved aside to let me stand in the spray, then offered me the shampoo bottle.
“I didn’t check.”
I washed and conditioned my hair. He rinsed himself and then lathered his hands to wash me. Sighing, I pressed my palms to the warm tile as he smoothed the rose-scented soap over my breasts and belly, along my arms and back, then lower, rounding over my hips and thighs.
He cupped my pussy in one hand and used the other to wash my backside and cleft. I gasped at the throb of pleasure that pulsed through me when his fingers met between my legs.
“You sure you don’t know who it was from?” He drew wet, soapy circles over my already sensitive clit and teased the skin around my back entrance.
A warm shiver hurried down my spine. My father had become exceptionally good at reading me, not that I was adept at hiding my feelings. One time he lit up a joint after sex, and in my weed-induced miasma, I found myself wondering if he could actually read my mind. My mother had always been a champion at subterfuge; you would think I’d have picked up a few tricks, but no.
His teeth grazed my shoulder. “It’s all right if you checked. I know you can’t always resist. But I’d prefer that you tell me the truth.”
Heat rushed to my face, though I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or arousal or both. I’d been making an effort these past few weeks, trying to prove I was as grown-up as I looked. He had to have seen it, how hard I’d been working to act like a responsible adult.
His finger prodded my rear opening, and my muscles tightened instinctively. No one had ever been inside me like that before. Not even me.
“It’s okay, baby. I promise I won’t be upset.” He continued to stroke me, undeterred by my body’s involuntary urge to shut him out. “Just tell me the truth.”
The truth squatted like a toad in my mouth. I bit my lips together.
Once again, he tested my opening. I wanted so badly to let him in, to trust that he meant it when he’d said it was okay that I’d snooped. It was the sort of crime my mother would’ve held against me for months. Was it possible that after all these years he might still love me unconditionally, the way a parent is supposed to?
A breath whooshed out of me, and his finger slid inside. I moaned, catching water in my mouth. My skin prickled as though I’d been electrified. I was alive and open, sensitive all over. I felt each drop water and every inch of his finger.
His cock stirred against my hip. He continued to rub my clit with his other hand, which made me want to rock my hips. Forward to chase the pleasure, backward to revel in the forbidden feeling of having my asshole breached.
“It was Kristin,” I confessed. There was no point in hiding from him anymore. “She said someone named Maddox was in town and asked if you were free tonight.”
His touch wavered for the briefest of moments, as though his mind had wandered and come back around. I pressed my shoulder to his chest. “Dad, who’s Maddox?”
“An old friend,” he said. I began to think that was all he was going to say on the matter, until he added, “He’s the closest thing I have to family, besides you and your mother.”
“Why don’t I remember him?”
“Because you’ve never met.” He sighed and cupped my mound gently. “We lost touch for a while after you were born.” He paused. “I know he’d love to meet you, which is precisely why he shouldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maddox and I…occasionally share lovers,” he said. “He knows what I’m like when I’m crazy about someone. If he sees us together, he’ll know something isn’t right. And if by some freak chance he doesn’t see what’s going on, he’s still going to hit on you just to irritate me.”
They’d shared lovers. The thought of being passed between two men made me want to press myself harder against him—that was, until I understood the true implication of Kristin’s text message. She was inviting my father to a threesome.
I immediately felt sick.
“So, you and Kristin have…with Maddox?”
He withdrew from my rear, then returned with two fingers. I cried out at the sudden invasion.
“We have,” he said. I opened my mouth to the spray to wash away some of the bitterness I felt. “You look mildly scandalized,” he teased.
That wasn’t true. I didn’t mind that he had participated in group sex. What bothered me was the thought of having to smile and make small talk with Kristin, all the while knowing she’d had his cock inside her when he still hadn’t fucked me.
Pressing my full weight into my palms, I spread my hands flat against the tile and turned to look at him. “I’m not scandalized,” I said. “Just curious.”
My father’s gaze darkened. “You like the thought of being shared?”
“Maybe. Yes.”
“You want to know what it’s like to feel twice as many hands on you? Twice as many cocks begging for your attention? One here—” He moved faster in an out of my asshole. “—and another here.” He slid two fingers into my pussy.
I moaned. Illicit images played out like a slideshow across my mind. Four hands gliding over my hips and breasts, two mouths kissing and licking my nipples. Two cocks sliding in and out, using me, filling me to bursting. It was depraved and brutally comical, considering I had yet to have one man’s cock inside me, yet here I was greedily wishing for two.
My inner muscles clenched around his fingers, in front as well as behind. He was hard again. He hummed as I took his cock between my soapy hands. I needed this, needed his body and the reassurance of his desire for me. Especially after learning about his history with Kristin.
“Fuck me,” I begged. “Please, fuck me, Daddy. My ass or my pussy, wherever you want. You don’t have to come inside me. Just, please…do it.”
He groaned into my ear, picking up the pace with his fingers. I grappled for something to hold he up, but the tile was too slick, so I used his shoulder. He withdrew from my pussy and pulled me against him, trapping his erection between us. We kissed, wet and sloppy. I could practically taste his desperation.
Grasping his shaft, I guided his cock between my legs. He rocked forward, gliding against me. This was it. He was finally going to fuck me.
The sigh that seeped from his chest had to have left him hollow. He slid out of my backside and angled his cock back against my belly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”
His rejection crushed me. He may as well have been standing on my chest.
“Why not?” I asked, my voice barely a squeak above the rushing water.
He cradled my face. “We don’t have time, sweetheart.”
Liar, I thought. We’d had three weeks, plus the rest of our lives, and at least two hours till dinner. We had all the time in the world. I stood there, deflated, as he kissed my forehead and detached the shower massager from its post on the wall. My skin humped with goosebumps as he rinsed the soap from me, then from himself.
I didn’t find the will to speak again until he’d finished toweling me off.
“If you like threesomes, then why do you get so jealous when other people flirt with me?”
“It’s different.” He wrapped the towel around my shoulders and then motioned for me to sit on the edge of the tub so he could comb my hair. “You aren’t someone else’s wife or girlfriend. You’re my daughter. I made you. That makes you mine.”
I didn’t want to be soothed by the gentle glide of the comb, but the rhythmic drag and swoosh had me drifting. I was his, completely, which was right where I wanted to be. I couldn’t understand this self-imposed restraint toward something he already owned.
“When people see us together,” he said, “they don’t see a couple. They see me and they see you. They watch you, like a piece of fucking performance art, or fruit ripening on the vine. I’m the vine in this scenario, in case that wasn’t clear.”
The comb snagged in my hair. He worked through the knot carefully, his touch as tender as his tone was strained.
“You can’t see their mouths watering, but I can,” he said. “I’ve watched their cocks perk up at the sight of you. And short of overplaying the role of the protective father figure, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
The air felt charged with our mutual frustration. I pulled the towel tighter around myself like a cocoon. After a long stretch of silence, he added, “There’s only one person I’d be willing to share you with, and that’s one more reason why he’s not coming tonight.”
He had to be talking about Maddox.
I left him to finish getting ready.
In the bedroom, I couldn’t stop myself from rereading the text message. I was curious about this old friend of my father’s whom I’d never heard of. The man my father deemed worthy enough to share his bed as well as his daughter. Part of me wanted to meet him if only to see for myself what made Maddox so special.
But, more than that, I wanted a chance to discover what Maddox knew.
It had been a while since I’d given thought to my father’s reasons for leaving me. Probably because he was so present, the past didn’t seem to matter. However, as deep as our connection ran, there was clearly something keeping him at arm’s length. Something he was determined to step over and around, rather than face. I was used to this kind of avoidance from my mother. That he would perpetuate it had me questioning if this thing between us had something to do with her.
If Maddox had known my father before I was born, then perhaps he’d met my mother. If they were as close as my father had said—close enough to be considered family—then it was possible that my father had confided in Maddox his reasons for abandoning me.
My father’s electric razor buzzed from the bathroom. He would be looking to get dressed soon. Quickly, I secreted his phone into the walk-in closet and thumbed a reply text to Kristin with the name of the restaurant and a time shortly after we were set to arrive. He would not be happy once he realized what I’d done, but it was a risk I had to take.
I tossed the phone on the bed and returned to the closet to finish getting ready. I had managed to convince my father to continue his work on the painting, regardless of whether he intended to show it. After a few sessions, he’d presented me with a debit card with my name on it and said, “Modeling for me is work. You deserve to be compensated.”
I went out and bought myself clothes. Mostly gauzy shirts and backless dresses, things I could wear to parties and gallery openings. I wanted to feel his skin against mine as he led me through crowded rooms.
Tonight, it was paramount that I look sexy and grown-up. Kristin would be there, and so would Maddox. I needed to make an impression—preferably a large one in the vicinity of Maddox’s trousers. I opted for a slinky, loose-fitted violet dress with an asymmetrical hem. Black lace-trimmed panties, no bra.
Standing at the full-length mirror, I knew I’d made the right choice when my father’s hands came around to softly pinch my nipples through the fabric. Our eyes met in the glass, his gaze hot enough to warm my cheeks.
“If I haven’t ripped this dress off you by dessert, it’ll be a miracle.”