————
He crept into her room one night. He simply stood there for a long while, drinking in the sight of his daughter’s face and feet poking out of her sheets. She had been the platonic love of his life ever since his wife had died giving birth to her. He had cared for her, provided for her, made her the center of his existence. He had no intention of remarrying, or even of having any relationships outside the one he had created with his wife, now deceased. Instead, he had poured all the love and devotion he had had for her into his love and devotion towards his daughter.
He had never seen her as anything other than his beautiful, precious daughter. She was everything to him. All that he had, he would give her in a heartbeat.
And so it had been, for a long time. Such a long time.
Then she left. He was happy to see her grow from the foundations he had laid, loved to see how she excelled. But from the first few weeks after she had moved out that summer, he began to realize that as well as pride and accomplishment and hope, he felt another emotion he was not proud of. She had never failed to show appreciation for all the good things he did for her. He knew that she felt grateful for the advantages he had provided. And yet there was a small voice, growing louder and louder as the months wore on, growing louder even though he told himself the voice was not being fair or rational. “How dare she?” was what the voice wanted to yell. “How could she leave me?”
And now, for a few days, she was back. She had no need for a car and so he’d gone in his own to pick her up from her dorm. It was during the long drive back that he noticed her legs for the first time.
Her visit was absolutely unexceptional, banal family visit stuff, and as they chatted and as he took her from restaurant to shopping mall to friend’s house and so on, he found it harder and harder to take his mind–his eyes–off of her legs. And then the tummy she loved to show off. Her beautiful long neck.
The swell of her breasts.
Her wonderful, lovely, gracious and clever countenance.
And, to his surprise, he felt no guilt. She was beautiful, who could deny it? During her brief stay, why not enjoy what she now apparently had to offer?
Today, her final day staying in the house for this short vacation, he had taken her to a farewell dinner he arranged with her friends. The girls laughed and faux-flirted with each other and the waitstaff, while he smiled and stayed relatively quiet, not wanting to be the old man who ruins the “vibe”.
His daughter looked at him occasionally. He felt more and more certain. She was glancing at him, not to communicate, not to share a moment of comfort or connection. She was watching him. She watching him watch them. Watch her.
He hadn’t want to think it out loud to himself but, her dress. It was shorter than it had to be. It was lower cut than it needed to be. It left her back bare, he believed she clearly was wearing no bra.
She knew he would be at the gathering. Why dress like that? Why watch him so closely this evening?
On the drive home they were both silent. This was unusual. Why was she silent? Why was he?
Her shoulder strap on her right side, certainly she was not being so careless as to leave the one facing him down over her shoulder. But the one away from him, the one he could plausibly appear not to notice–that had fallen, and she’d done nothing to correct it.
As he hugged her goodnight, as the hug ended, she took his face in her hands, almost maternally. “Thank you, Dad, it was a wonderful night.” She leaned in and he almost quaked, shrunk back, ran away–and she tilted his head down a little and kissed his forehead. Just as it had seemed at the beginning of the gesture–maternal.
She went to bed, and he was left on his own, ruminating on the long, painful drive that would take her away from him again tomorrow.
And here he was, now, as she slept, appraising her in a way he never had before.
He stepped forward. Carefully, carefully. He removed her sheet.
—
He was surprised, and pleased, to find nothing else was there to keep her warm – not a single piece of clothing. His daughter, like his wife before her, apparently preferred to sleep in the nude. Or, he was beginning to allow himself to suspect, perhaps she usually did not.
She lay there on her back, one arm back under her head, one arm splayed out over the edge. This stretched her chest upwards. Her chest, as beautiful as he had begun to imagine. He allowed his gaze (his heart rate rising enormously together with another part of himself), to rest there for a time. He allowed his imagination to kiss her breasts, to stroke her nipples.
He then continued his imaginary journey downwards, touching her tight tummy in his mind, he could almost feel himself leaning in to kiss her bare pubis. In a manner similar to the way her arm was splayed out, so also her legs–one bent at the knee to curl back under the other, but the effect of this was to open her hips to him, to invite him to consider what was between them. Why did she shave it? For how long had that been happening?
For as much as part of him revulsed at the thought of a man seeing his own daughter in this way–for that long, nevertheless, did he continue watching, her tummy rising and falling slowly behind the focus of his new longing.
He moved on, wanting to miss nothing.
With his imagine he brushed her long legs and caressed her feet.
And finally he looked back up, at her face. Even in sleep, her expression exuded easy confidence. Was she dreaming of her future, of a future he had envisioned for her, full of accomplishment and mastery? A future in which she glided to the top and looked down at those she’d left behind, her inferiors?
—
He had known he would do this but had banished all thought of it from himself until the deed was done. And now, he was kissing her feet. Tenderly, he worked his way up, trying not to breath, but insisting on feeling her legs with his lips.
He told himself he could do these things without waking her, if he was careful.
He also wondered intensely, how she would react when she did awaken. How would she express the desire she had been expressing, and encouraging, this evening?
He was kissing her shins, her thighs, her iliac crest. Her pubis.
He stayed there a while, gently, aware that any force would trigger an awakening, and knowing he must take pains to never intend that to happen.
He moved on, finally, after resisting a surprising temptation to kiss those lips nearby, to simply throw caution to the wind and begin to probe with his tongue.
He continued upwards, kneeling beside her, kissing her tummy, her ribs. Her chest. He risked the smallest touch of his lips upon her nipples. She still had not awakened!
He moved up to kiss her shoulders, her neck. Her cheeks. He stared in awkward lust, his eyes mere inches from her face, able to appreciate every detail.