Page 13 of Off Limits

Hot tears sting at my eyes—tears that I don’t want him to see. Tears of frustration. Tears of shame. I spin on my heel and stomp angrily across the room, taking the stairs two at a time. By the time I reach the second floor, a powerful sob breaks through me. I run into my room and try to slam the large, heavy door. It sweeps evenly and smoothly across the cement floor, resisting the force I exert on it, and closes in peaceful silence.

When I was a kid, Jean-Luc was a demi-god to me. I loved my mother—I didn’t really start to compute how off the rails she was until I was twelve—but Jean-Luc especially could do no wrong.

My mother was the fun one, the artistic one, the wild one. She encouraged me to do whatever I wanted, to be whatever I wanted. Jean-Luc set all the rules.

But I loved his structure and his reliability. When we moved in with Jean-Luc, I started having dinner every night. I had a bedtime routine for the first time in my life. I loved the way he would tuck me in and read me a story and kiss me on my forehead right between my eyebrows. Sometimes my mother was there, sometimes she wasn’t. But once Jean-Luc came into my life, everything became stable…at least for eight years, until Melanie had to blow it all up.

That stability, that rigidity that I loved, I needed it as a kid. It was security in a frightening world. But a lot has happened in the past year. I’m not a kid anymore, and I’ve gone a long time without living by anybody’s rules.

I shift onto my stomach and stare at my phone. It’s been an hour, and Kye lives less than ten minutes away. I thought he might have texted.

Sorry, I finally text him, and then stare at my phone awhile, willing him to text back. Nothing happens. I put the phone down and roll over onto my back with a sigh.

Maybe rules are just what I need. One moment I had Kye Knight’s dick in my mouth and the next I was wishing it was my stepfather’s. It’s not normal to think that way, but as I remember Jean-Luc leaning over me the feeling comes right back. The heat and the tension; how desire had me so possessed it felt like one more second was all it would take to make me do something impulsive and crazy.

Like lean forward and kiss him.

And then I think the most fucked-up thing. He’s kissed my mom a thousand times. In all that time, I wonder, did he ever think about what it would be like to kiss me?

Jean-Luc

I TAKE A highball of scotch up to my room with me, pausing for just a moment in front of Danica’s door. If she were a child, I would walk into her room and sit on the edge of her bed so we could talk it out. So that no one was going to bed angry.

But she’s not a child. She so very clearly is not a child, since I caught her giving a boy a blowjob in my basement, and I have no idea how to talk about this with her.

Kids have sex at Dani’s age. Lord knows I did. She’s not eight years old anymore, and I feel like now I don’t know the rules.

I drink my scotch in bed, watching the news and trying to distract myself from the irritating events of the night. I should never have agreed to go out with Cynthia. The truth is I’m lonely. I’ve been lonely since Melanie and I separated. But that’s no excuse for my lapse in judgment.

I stare mindlessly at the TV, thinking bitter thoughts about the teenage douchebag sniffing around my daughter and my own loneliness, but not even the endlessly bad news of the world can take my mind off things. Eventually I get ready for bed, and drift off into a restless sleep.

I dream about Cynthia.

We’re in the car and she has her head between my knees.

“Mm, Daddy,” she murmurs, wrapping her lips around my shaft and sucking me down deep into the warm embrace of her mouth.

“Good girl,” I tell her, squeezing my eyes shut and running my fingers through her hair.

But her hair doesn’t feel as straight and slippery as I’m expecting. It’s soft and thick, and I open my eyes and look down to see Melanie’s red hair in my lap. It’s not Cynthia, it’s my wife.

“Mel,” I breathe, groaning and grinding my cock deeper into her mouth. I’ve missed my wife’s mouth.

She raises her head, lifting her eyes to me and pulling back as she runs her tongue up my shaft. Big, bright blue eyes framed by surprisingly dark lashes…

“Daddy,” she purrs.

It’s not Melanie.

It’s Danica.

Danica running her tongue over the head of my cock and then sitting up and looking at me with a delicious smile on her face. Precocious and self-satisfied, like she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Danica!” I shout, and wake myself up…

My eyes fly open in alarm. For a moment, I’m frozen, unable to move. I take a deep breath, aware that my heart is racing, and try to calm down. I have that feeling you sometimes get after a dream where you’re still not sure it isn’t real, and I shift my eyes over to the side without moving my head, for fear that Danica might really be there.

“Fuck.”

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