CHAPTER ONE
Gwen
It’s getting harder and harder to pretend everything is okay. I don’t know why that thought comes to me, when I’m knuckle deep in my pussy and thinking about a girl. She’s naked and on her knees, looking up at a dreamboat of a man, who is wearing jeans and a tee shirt and looking like… Well, I don’t know what the man looks like, because the picture cuts off right above the leather belt so only an inch of so of the white cotton of his tee shirt shows.
Of course, I fill in the blanks quite nicely. I’d only want to attach one face to that man, and he certainly has the body for it. In the picture, the man has one hand on the girl’s cheek, and his forearm is visible, so I can only imagine how big his biceps must be. Of course, that is filling in the blanks, too. The man I imagine in the picture has a body that would make me fall to my knees and look right up at him, too. He seems a stereotypical man’s man to me, from his square jaw and powerful body to the fact he made his fortune in construction. Despite that, there is tenderness in his eyes.
Paul DiSarrono.
The man even has a name that makes him seem strong and sexy. I move my finger with a little more urgency and the girl in the picture fades. Instead my mind fills with images of Paul. There are a great many to choose from, because I have seen him every day for the last three weeks. I’d seen him tearing down the old wooden fence in the yard and I’ve watched him building a new fence, brick by brick. I saw him tear out a wall between two bedrooms, each barely the size of a closet, and then work his magic so the new room, a nice master bedroom, appears to be how the original builders intended it. I’ve seen his muscles straining and I’d seen his muscles at rest.
I see his muscles now.
I see them and imagine his arms around me as my finger moves faster and I bring another hand down, slipping it under the first to rub at my clit. The bathing suit restrains me somewhat, but it adds to the whole insanity of masturbating like this, in the backyard on a Sunday afternoon, when the people next door might glance over the brick wall and see me. Paul is gone, after all of his work back here today, tearing up weeds, cutting back trees and who knows what else. He’s on his way to Petersville, an hour-and-a-half away so he won’t certainly see me. The neighbors, though… I wonder if the chance of discovery adds to the thrill for me.
I can’t let go of the simple reality. Things aren’t all right and pretending everything is okay isn’t working anymore. It doesn’t convince me at all, not as it used to. This situation is a crisis and it won’t be long before this crisis comes to a head. Three weeks. There are three weeks left until I am homeless and I have absolutely no idea where I will go.
Those thoughts aren’t fun, while I’m touching myself, so I drive them deep below the surface and think of Paul again. He owns the house, which means he owns the backyard in which my fingers – and images of his body – are inexorably driving me toward orgasm. Hell, he owns the porch on which the lounge chair sits and he owns the lounge chair as well.
I’m in his backyard because he is a kind man despite the roughness of his exterior. I rent a room here, or at least I used to. He had tenants, the Harold’s, who rented the house from him. I rented the room from them, or at least I did until I spent a weekend at Lake Tahoe and returned home to find all of their things gone. Paul had showed up, while I was still trying to wrap my mind around all of that.
He didn’t even know I was living at the house, but he letting me to stay while he fixes the house up for sale. He thinks I have a place to move into at the end of next month. I don’t. I have no idea what I’m going to do because I also have no job. I found that out just before I left for Lake Tahoe.
So, I’m fucked, so to speak.
Right now, I’m doing a great job of doing exactly that to myself. I imagine the comfort of his arms again, that glorious combination of tenderness, kindness, and rough, no-nonsense manliness that seems to define him. I imagine how he might touch me, and how he might hold me. I imagine kneeling in front of him, staring up at him as he caresses my cheek just like that girl in the picture.
I don’t think he owns the picture. It was in a box in the garage along with a few other items the Harolds no longer appeared want. It was right at the top of the box, and when I saw it, I couldn’t help myself. I ‘borrowed’ it, and now it rests in the drawer of my nightstand. Other items in the box did catch my eye, but after secreting away the picture, I came out of my room to find Paul in the living room and didn’t want to be seen to be snooping.
Now might be a good time to explore the rest of the contents, but I’m busy right now and as the sun warms my body and visions of Paul warm my mind, I am in no mood to move.
I hate that my mind flicks over worry and arousal just as my finger flicks over my clit. I hate that my impending destitution is never far from my mind, especially when I want to concentrate on something far more pleasant. Such as, the way Paul’s muscles bulge when he lifts lumber or the attention to detail he puts into the smallest task, or a hundred other things about him that I find as alluring as can be.
My climax should have happened some time ago, but reality keeps encroaching on the fantasy. I’m on borrowed time and for some reason I can’t bring myself to face the problem head on. I should be out searching for a job and making plans, but instead, I expend just as much energy avoiding having to face things.
Damn! Now, the problem is weighing heavily enough on me that I can’t even masturbate about the sexiest man I’ve ever met, without my situation completely clouding everything! I hate feeling as if I’m helpless and I hate feeling as if there’s nothing I can do about it, when I know for a fact that I’m not useless. I am not unable to function. I am talented and I am smart, for Heaven’s sake! I have no idea at all why I keep finding myself in situations like this.
Damn it! I’m not getting anywhere in the orgasm department with this kind of crap filling my head.
I pull my hands out of my bikini bottoms and sit up. I let out a frustrated groan and then get up and pad my way back into the house. I figure that if I head back to my bedroom I can take another look at the picture. If it makes me suddenly desperate for more, then I can take care of business. If not, I suppose I’ll have to see about checking out job postings online.
Brilliant, Gwen. Let your hormones decide. “Oh, shut up, me,” I mutter.
A thought occurs to me. Instead of heading to my room, I go into the kitchen. I grab a can of soda and pop the top, as I cross to the door that opens into the garage. I pick my way carefully over the concrete floor until I reach the pile of left behinds. The box is exactly where I left it, next to a rusty bicycle pump and a dented camp stove. I slow down as I get closer. Sure, the Harolds left me in a bind, but it’s still an invasion of privacy.
However, the idea of finding other pictures, like the one of the girl on her knees, is stronger than any sense of propriety. It quickly outweighs any care I have for the privacy of those creeps, who left the way they did. I open the box, move the linen pillowcase off the top, and pick up the first item, a paperback.
The book is shocking, because the title is ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’, but the girl and the guy are doing things no father should ever do with his daughter! Of course, I don’t have any experience in that department. My mother died in childbirth and my father didn’t stick around to see if I’d make it. My grandparents had to raise me and, while I’m grateful for that, they were already in their late sixties when I got to high school. A counselor once told me I had trust issues, because my dad abandoned me. He didn’t see the irony of telling me that after he’d seduced me.
Just about every man who has ever offered me help has done so while unzipping his pants. I know that not all men are like that, but it sure seems that all the men I’ve ever met behave that way. Well, everyone except for Paul. He’s—
The book has pictures inside as well, and although some of them are very explicit, most of them aren’t nearly as sexy as the one on the cover. I flip back to the cover page. It was written in 1972. I flip it over and look at the back. The book is about a girl who finds an older man. They embark on a relationship, where he protects her and guides her. He’s her Daddy and she’s his little girl.
I don’t know why the story interests me so much. I close the box and bring the book to my room. I intend to put it in the nightstand drawer, but instead I start reading. In ten minutes I’m shocked and even a little repulsed. Ten minutes later, I’m still shocked, but not repulsed in the slightest. Ten minutes after that, I’m breathing heavily and the walls are spinning. I put the book in the nightstand and head to the backyard for air.
The book described me.
The book talks about a girl, like me, and a man who comes along and helps her break through all the barriers she had put up around herself. The main character might as well have been named Gwen. Somehow, the fact that she called the man Daddy, instead of by his name, doesn’t bother me at all. I was confused, though. I went out and lie on the lounger and put my hand between my legs. I seem to recall what I last did there because I ache with need.