Page 19 of Off Limits

I wish I could know the other sides of Jean-Luc, sides only my mother got to see. What it’s like when Jean-Luc is intimate with somebody. How reverential he would be with his hands on my body, how his eyes would look if he wanted me.

I’m so fucked up. I’m so completely fucked up.

“Nothing,” I say with a sigh, turning to the window and looking out of it, unseeing. “Just an annoying day.”

I knew Melanie wasn’t like other moms from a young age. I think I always knew. Friends loved my mom because she was pretty and fun, but they couldn’t understand how scared I was all the time, how unstable and uncertain things always seemed.

She was fun at sleepovers, fun after school, but Melanie could turn on a dime, raging and manic and unpredictable.

She pulled me out of grade school twice because of some fight she’d had with a teacher, wrenching me away from my friends with promises that it would be better somewhere else. Melanie was always after the new, better thing. And usually with little consideration of how it would impact me.

When she met Jean-Luc, my life changed, and my world became full colour. Suddenly, someone was always there for me.

With Melanie, there’d been countless incidents when she’d forgotten to pick me up from school or hadn’t attended one of my recitals. I was so used to it I always got nervous that moment I stepped out the school door, or the curtain opened, revealing the audience. As often as not, there was an empty space where my mother was supposed to be.

But once Jean-Luc was in my life, his big, strong presence was everywhere: Sitting in the auditorium seats by himself because Melanie had flaked out, waiting outside the school doors every time I needed him, making sure I had something to eat every single day.

Is it any wonder I think I love him?

I’ve always known he was handsome on an intellectual level. Women are always talking about his looks. My teachers and my friends’ mothers tripped over themselves preening and fawning in front of Jean-Luc. But now that I’ve started noticing it for myself, it’s changing everything.

As a child, I loved hugging him and snuggling against him. The huge size of him, and the hard, broad planes of his muscles made me feel safe. Now I’m craving that touch in a different way. I want to be held against him to feel safe, but also to breathe him in and be close. I want him to feel my body against his. And not just in the past week. When I think about it, it feels like maybe I’ve loved Jean-Luc for a long time. Maybe longer than I ever let myself be aware of.

After a couple of hours at our respective desks—Jean Luc in his office, working, and me at the dining room table, completing my homework—we reconvene in the kitchen and I help with dinner.

Jean-Luc has cooked every meal for as long as I can remember. The son of a chef, he’s an excellent cook, with a real love for food. It’s so different from Melanie, who barely even eats, and I’ve started thinking about trying to learn from him.

He sets me up with a cutting board and some vegetables to prep as he moves around the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans and gathering his tools. He’s still dressed for work but his collar is loosened and his shirt is untucked. When he runs a hand over his scalp and gives me a crooked smile, his thick hair gets mussed in a sexy, effortless way.

“You’re quite a sight with that knife,” he comments, and I laugh, holding it menacingly and then making a show of chopping the vegetables with violence.

“Okay, okay!” he laughs. “Stop. You’re going to ruin the texture of the vegetables.” He gives me an affectionate shake of the head, and I return to cutting the leeks in the careful way he showed me.

“It’s good to have you here, Dani,” he says after a moment, giving me a soft, sentimental look. “You really make me happy, sweetheart.”

It’s such a frank, honest, and loving comment—so different from any way Melanie has ever treated me—that I’m sincerely surprised.

“Thanks,” I say kind of breathlessly, and then, impulsively, I put down my knife and reach over to him, wrapping my arms around him and hugging him tight. I can’t shake off this desire that overcame me in the car. I need his closeness, even if it’s just a chaste hug.

“Oof,” he breathes out with a laugh, and then wraps his arms around me too, squeezing me in against him.

I lean my cheek against his chest, breathing in the smell of him, and don’t let go. My breasts are pressed against him, it’s a tight, intimate hug, and once I’m in it I can’t pull away. It feels so good to be close to him, to smell him and be hugged by him, I can’t bring myself to break the embrace.

I don’t feel like he wants me to, either. He leans back against the counter, pulling me against him, and lifts a hand to cup my head, and kisses the top of my hair.

“I love you, Dani-girl,” he murmurs.

“I love you too, Dad,” I whisper. I can feel his chest rising and falling against me as he breathes.

“And you’ll always be my little girl.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

It’s a weird thing to say when all I’m thinking about is how fucking good his body feels against mine, how I’d do anything to be in this embrace in a different context, but my feelings for Jean-Luc are complex. I’m grappling with this growing, inappropriate attraction to him, but I still so love being his little girl.

I drag a hand slowly up his back, grazing his shirt with my nails in a frankly affectionate gesture, and he leans his head down and kisses my temple, smoothing my hair back with his hand like he’s petting me. “My baby,” he coos.

I tilt my face up, burying my nose in his neck and deeply inhaling his scent. I wish I could tilt my face all the way up, brushing my mouth against his and feeling his lips against mine. Jean-Luc would be an amazing kisser, I know it.

---