“I… uh…” she began, desperately searching for the right words to explain herself. Her head was fuzzy with drunkenness, and she found the task even more difficult to accomplish than usual. “I was just thinking… um…”
Carter frowned at her, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “About what? We’re not really going to have this conversation about the company and your behavior again, are we?”
“No,” Kayla said. “No, really. It’s nothing like that. I was thinking about something else.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Carter said, smiling faintly as he trailed his fingers over her bare calves. He looked so weary. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Kayla hesitated just a moment more, but she knew it was no use. As tipsy as she was, she was practically a fountain of truth. The words came bubbling up past her lips as she sighed, powerless to stop them.
“I feel bad that… that Mom doesn’t pay more attention to you,” she said slowly, trying to carefully choose her words despite the fog shrouding her brain. “I feel bad that she’s gone so much of the time, and that even when she’s here, it’s like she’s… not really here. You know?”
Her stepfather nodded solemnly. “I know,” he said, “but it isn’t that simple. Your mother is as dedicated to her job as I am, and…”
“But she doesn’t need to work, does she?” Kayla interrupted. “Not with you taking care of her.”
Carter took a breath. “Well, that’s not the only reason she works, sweetheart. She has a… drive. A desire to do something more.”
“What about your desires?” Kayla asked him. “Don’t they matter?”
“Everyone has to look out for their own wants and needs,” Carter said, though from his tone, it was clear he didn’t entirely believe it. “You can’t rely on somebody else to fill that void for you. And your mother knows that. That’s part of the reason why she works. She finds it fulfilling.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be anything like her,” Kayla said, folding her arms.
Carter smiled. “Oh, you could stand to learn a thing or two from your mother,” he told her. “If you were more like her, you’d get anything you wanted.”
Kayla squinted at him, trying to discern his meaning. She got the feeling there was something more to what he’d said about being more like her mom, and the look on his face all but confirmed it. He averted his eyes, cleared his throat, and rested his hand on her knee, obviously embarrassed.
“Well,” she said slowly, looking her stepfather up and down. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I could stand to learn a thing or two from her… if it gets me what I want.”
He shifted again, wetting his lips and shooting a sideways glance at her. “And what do you want, Kayla? Obviously, you don’t want to run the business.”
She sat up on her elbows, thinking. “I’m not sure, honestly. I’ve always been into art—illustration, in particular, but… you always told me that wasn’t a viable career option.”
“Well, not if you aren’t independently wealthy,” Carter said, though his voice now held a certain tone, almost as if he’d intended on saying more, but hadn’t.
Kayla caught on. Or at least, she thought she did. Carter was always encouraging her to take risks when it came to business dealings, and she was pretty sure that was exactly what this exchange with her stepfather was turning out to be.
“But, we are wealthy…” Kayla began, but Carter just laughed softly.
“Sweetheart, there’s a big difference between being wealthy, and being independently wealthy. I’m a slave to my own wealth, working to maintain the empire I’ve built, and one day you will be part of that machine. It is bigger than us. Tens of thousands of people depend on us to keep the balls in the air. One day I will pass you the reins to my company, and you will understand.”
“What if there was an option. I mean, what if I was independently wealthy,” she said, “like, if there was another heir to take over the family business, then I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. Right?”
“I suppose that’s true,” Carter said with a little shrug. He seemed like he was actively trying to seem noncommittal, like there was a great battle raging inside of him that he desperately didn’t want anyone to know about, especially his young stepdaughter. “If you weren’t running the company, you would have the time and the money to pursue your own dreams, but there is one obvious problem here. You’re an only child, and at this point, I’m pretty sure that’s not going to change...”
There was a very awkward silence between them and Carter sized her up. Kayla had a feeling they were fighting much the same war, albeit for entirely different reasons.
If I could give my stepfather a baby, I could be free, she thought, her heart beginning to pound. Free to do whatever I wanted to do. Free to be exactly who I want to be.
But there was so much more to it than that. It wasn’t like she’d be helping him through an adoption or talking to her mother about the possibility of fertility treatments. She’d be taking her mother’s place, in a way—a way that was purely sexual and utterly deviant.
The worst part was that she was actually considering it, and that in some sick way, it sort of turned her on.
What would it be like to commit the unthinkable, the forbidden, the taboo? What would it be like to seduce her stepfather, to carry his child, and to help raise it right under her practically-absent mother’s nose?
Kayla didn’t hate her mother. She might not have understood her very well, but she was still her mother. She just knew a good deal when she saw one, and she thought that maybe she could remind her mother of the importance of her family in the process of setting herself free.
She looked at Carter, at his handsome, chiseled face. He could’ve been a model, if he’d wanted to, showing off his body in the name of Calvin Klein. She could just imagine him up on a billboard downtown, his rippling abs, hard pecs, and smoldering eyes on display for everyone to see and envy.
She licked her lips, tasting the slick, strawberry-flavored gloss spread across them, and pushed herself up onto her hands so that she and her stepfather were mere inches from each other.
“I think that I know a way to get you what you want,” she said softly, afraid that if she spoke too loud, it would shatter the reservoir of courage she’d mustered. “A way that benefits us both.”
Carter looked into her eyes. Kayla noticed he was breathing a little heavier, and there was a flare of desire burning in his gray eyes. “I know,” he whispered back. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, Kayla, because I’m thinking it, too.”
Kayla swallowed hard. She hadn’t expected him to catch on to her—not before she’d begun, anyway. Trembling, she watched as her stepfather swept his hand slowly up her leg, approaching the shaven mound between her thighs, the one just barely covered by the sheer panties he’d caught a surre
ptitious glance of earlier.
She knew he was still thinking of that moment. She hadn’t been able to keep it out of her mind, either. She closed her eyes, quelling the nerves inside of her as Carter grazed the coarse pads of his fingers over the seam of her underwear.
“Jesus,” she whimpered, biting hard into her lower lip. “We’re… we’re really gonna do this…”
“Not if you say no,” Carter murmured. She could feel his hot stare on her, could feel the embers of his eyes burning into her flesh as he exposed her thighs inch by inch.
Kayla shook her head. “Don’t stop,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “Please, Daddy. Don’t stop…”
He shuddered at the word “Daddy,” and Kayla smiled and bit her lip. This was going to be even dirtier than she’d thought.
She let her stepfather push her skirt up around her waist, revealing her hips and the flat plane of her taut belly. Carter sucked in a breath through his teeth, trailing his fingers over her skin and winding them into the waistband of her panties. He slowly tugged them aside, his gaze fixed on her smooth, glistening lips, dewy with the evidence of her lust.