Page 21 of Off Limits
For one moment, I was flooded with the warm smell of him, with the soft pressure of his mouth on mine, and the next he was moving away, the warmth of his body gone, his back to me as he walked up to the coffee machine and filled it with water.
It’s a completely normal thing for a parent and child to do, to kiss on the mouth, but it left me breathless and heated.
No matter how hard I try to fight this growing feeling of attraction, it just won’t go away. If anything, boundaries seem to be slipping and blurring between us, making it worse. In the past few days since I’ve been grounded, we’ve spent more and more time together—laughing, touching, hugging… Every night this week Jean-Luc has shut his computer early, and we’ve watched television together while snuggling on the couch.
I tell myself that I’m craving love. That, as my father, Jean-Luc wants to give it to me. He wants to hold me and make me feel safe and secure. But the truth is, I’ve become obsessed with these hours on the couch, breathing in his smell and feeling the rise and fall of his rib cage against me. Every day we’ve gotten a little bit closer, stayed up a little bit later. It feels easier each day to curl in against him and nuzzle into his warmth. It’s become easier for me to lay my hand across his chest, easier for him to rest his cheek against the top of my head. Last night, preoccupied with the police drama we were watching, he’d been mindlessly and unknowingly tracing light circles on the bare skin of my hip where my t-shirt and shorts left a gap. Just the graze of his thumb felt like fire.
I know things can’t go on like this, but I’ve started to crave the touch of his skin so much it’s like a fever. I want to run my hand under his shirt and feel the hair there, feel the electric contact of his bare skin under my fingertips. I’m possessed by a growing and extremely inappropriate physical attraction. It’s not just that Jean-Luc is a hulking specimen of a man, it’s the way he takes care of me, the shelter of his arms, the strength of his commitment to me. On the one hand, I wish things could change between us, that he could somehow see me as a woman. And on the other hand, there’s nothing I love more than being his little girl. I want both, simultaneously, and there’s no way it ever makes sense or is anything less than creepy. I’m perverted.
I tried to chase away those thoughts as I removed the candle from the bun and took a bite, remembering how Jean-Luc was always big on birthdays. Before he and my mom met, my birthday had occasionally been forgotten. But never with Jean-Luc. He always acts like it’s the most important day of the year.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, Jean-Luc produced a card and small, iconic blue box—jewellery from Tiffany’s. I blushed with pleasure and surprise as I read the card: ‘To Dani, love Daddy xo,’ it said in his scrawling handwriting, the word Daddy an embarrassing barometer of how fucked up my thoughts have been lately.
He poked the jewellery box with a finger, pushing it closer to me. “Happy birthday, baby.”
Inside the box was another box, a light blue clamshell, and inside that was a plumply cushioned diamond on a delicate platinum chain.
“Jean-Luc,” I had breathed, lifting the precious, glittering thing out of the clamshell and dangling the chain off my finger. A million points of light bounced off the jewel.
He’d quirked his mouth. “How about calling me Dad?”
“Dad,” I’d repeated. “It’s beautiful.”
“Do you like it?” He reached for my hand where it lay on the counter and ran a thumb over the top of it. “Your mother always loved diamonds.”
He took the chain from my hand and walked behind me, lowering it over my head. I lifted my hair and he closed the necklace clasp, taking a moment to softly kiss the back of my neck just under my hair before running his hands over my shoulders.
I got up from the stool and wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him again—firmly and intentionally on the lips. It was just slightly more of a kiss than the one moments before. I had pressed my lips against his, pulling him in tight with my arms around his neck…and he’d broken away with a little laugh and turned his head, whispering, “I love you, Dani,” in my ear.
“I love you too, Daddy,” I’d said, for one moment letting it be that naughty and that wrong. I leaned into it.
I do love my Daddy, whatever that means. And tonight, now that I’m eighteen, it feels like everything could change between us.
Jean-Luc
THE SIGHT OF Danica coming down the stairs is like a punch to the gut. For a moment, the breath is knocked out of me.
She’s unbelievable. She’s perfect.
She’s…Melanie?
She looks like a grown-ass woman. Like her mother, actually. In a tight white dress, with her curls loosely pinned up, and high heel shoes that emphasize the shapely, grown-up musculature of her legs, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Strikingly similar to Melanie, but so much…
…better, I can’t help but think. She’s my Dani. Silly, brilliant, and loving. She grins at me, her smile bright and wide, and I melt.
“How do I look?” she asks, holding her arms out to give me the full view.
Like your mother, I almost answer. I’ve seen this dress before, and suddenly I have a vivid memory of Melanie in it—at a party for my partner, Bob, just before Mel and I broke up. It’s the last dress I ever saw her in.
“You look incredible,” I say sincerely.
Following her out to the car, I can’t take my eyes off of her. She’s so elegant. I can’t believe she was ever the gawky kid who was perpetually singing in the backseat of my car. She’s the kind of woman I’ll be proud to have on my arm at the most upscale restaurant in town, and the minute I have the thought I cringe.
She’s not a woman on my arm. She’s my stepdaughter.
Nonetheless, when we arrive at the restaurant and the valet opens her car door, I have a moment of pride, knowing he’ll have taken in the sight of her long, lean thighs and the press of her full breasts against the fitted fabric of her dress. Knowing that he probably wants what I have. I hand him the keys to the Jaguar, silently recriminating myself for my thoughts.
Eyes flick surreptitiously towards us as Dani and I follow the Maître D’ through the restaurant to our table, eyes that run up Dani’s perfect legs and tight waist, and then over to me, to see the man who’s with her. I lay a possessive hand on her lower back as I guide her through the watchful diners to her seat.