Father's Keeper (3 page)

“Quite a harvest, Jenny,” Gil said.

I turned to him, laughing, happy. Red
juices staining my pale sweater and my white fingers. The juice, when I licked
it from my fingers, was sweet and sharp--they tasted like summer. “I know! I
can’t believe it.”

He hugged me then. A nice, secure hug
that made me feel loved and safe. The wind blew the dark, sweet scent of ripe
berries in my face and I sighed. “Sometimes crops need to be tended a long time
before they yield the sweetest fruit.”

Somehow that seemed important and I
looked at him. My face turned to Gil and the sun, both warming me. But he bent
quickly, his favorite ball cap obscuring his face from my view as he bent and
started to pluck ripe, wanton strawberries and dropped them in my makeshift
sling. Berry juice stained my top and my fingers, my torso and I felt it
running in a wet river down my belly. Soon it would stain my jeans. And when
Gil finally looked up from where he knelt in the field, his hands brimming with
red orbs, I willed him to bend his mouth to me and lick the trailing juice from
my skin.

When I opened my eyes, Aerosmith
smiled down at me from a  poster and my heart pounded like I’d been caught
having sex in the back seat of the car. I grabbed a pillow, pulled it tight to
me, my heart in my ears and my throat and I realized after taking a deep
breath--in my pussy.

I sucked in a shaky breath and
turning, put my hand out for Carl. He wasn’t there. His jeans were gone from
the floor and his duffel was open, spilling out colorful guts made of band tees
and flannels for chilly weather. “Carl?” I whispered, but I said it softly so
no one would hear. I really didn’t want anyone to answer me.

I heard the kitchen cabinet thud
beneath me and I sat up, my knees weak and watery like I was recovering from a
flu instead of a mildly dirty dream about my father.
Stepfather
. “Either
or. Tomato, tom-ah-to,” I said to myself and then laughed at the sound of my
own brittle voice. “Just a dream, Jen. NO. Big. Deal.” I pulled on little white
socks and a robe. It was June but the nights still got chilly and so did the
floor.

I snuck down the steps like I’d done
something wrong, listening so hard for the sound of voices my ears rang.
Nothing. I heard a radio and Mr. Miller’s old French bull dog Daisy barking her
damn head off. I heard what I was pretty sure was the garbage truck and I heard
the coffee grinder. I did not hear voices. Maybe Gil had run out for something.
Maybe he was outside. Maybe Carl was outside. Maybe he’d run off with a meter
maid. I snorted, covered my nose and mumbled. “Or maybe you could waltz your
fool ass into the room and find out where everyone is, genius.”

“Who you talking to?” Gil asked from
behind me. I hadn’t seen him squatting down to get in the lower cabinet and I
jumped about a foot, clutching my heart and shrieking like some exotic bird.

“Jesus Christ on a crutch, Gil!” I
yelled, my fear turning sharply to anger because no one likes to nearly wet
themselves first thing in the morning.

“Sorry, kid,” he laughed good
naturedly and I could tell by his grin he wasn’t sorry at all. “I was getting
the filters and I guess you missed my big ugly self over here.”

“You’re not ugly,” I said
automatically but then flushed hot when I remembered my dream. He kissed me on
the forehead the way he had for the last eighteen years and I smiled. “Where’s
Carl?”

His face clouded over for just a pulse
beat and I wondered if it was anger I saw. Or just worry. Or something else. “I
sent him down to Erick Urban to see about helping out with some landscaping
stuff. I remembered that Erick just got a contract to do a few small memorial
parks for the schools and he could use a little grunt work laying stone.
Figured if Carl went down an introduced himself he could get an in with the
boys. And Erick’s brother Ken owns the bar that might want a little musical
talent come the weekends in the near future.
I kissed Gil on his stubbly cheek and said, “Thanks.” I meant it too. We’d be
fucked without a little help here and there. A good word or three.

“No problem, kiddo. Coffee?”

“God, yes. I’d sell my soul for
caffeine,” I said, grabbing a mug and holding it out.

“Don’t sell that soul for anything.”

“Just kidding. Listen
…
”
I hopped up the counter mostly because my mother always had a fit when anyone
sat on them. But Gil sat on them just as much as me and it had been a little
thing we shared. She abhorred asses on the counter, we looked at the counter as
one big extra seating space. I stalled then, swinging my feet, kicking the
cabinet.

“Yes?” He leaned against the opposite
counter. Two counters connected to form an L. At the base of the L was the
sink. Gil propped himself on the short part of the L and waited, big blue eyes
shiny with an almost preternatural light. One moment they were sky blue, the
next they were gray like a summer squall.

“About last night,” I said.

“It was fun.”

I frowned, shook my head. “Not that.”

“Not the fire and the beer and the
fish and the singing?” he asked, sipping coffee. Tan, weathered face as
unreadable as a foreign language.

“No. After we went to bed. Carl and I
-
I’m sorry if we were loud. At one point is sounded like
well, I’m sorry if you - you know, saw.”

“I came up,” he said quickly. “To ask
about sheets and stuff, but I really didn’t see anything and I’m sorry if I
startled you. I really didn’t see anything,” he repeated. But he said it a bit
too fast and wouldn’t look at me. “I didn’t want to embarrass you. Or me,” he
said.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I kept saying
over and over and I didn’t know why.

Gil put his hand on my leg and I
stopped swinging it suddenly. The absence of that motion was like coming out of
a noisy room to a deafening silence. We both looked down at his big, tan hand
on my knee, over my white robe. My mouth when dry and he flexed his fingers
against my skin for just an instant before pulling his hand back.

Irrationally, I wanted to grab his
hand and put it back. The heat that blazed up my leg was staggering and best
ignored. I swallowed hard and he said, “Don’t be sorry. That’s silly. You’re
all grown up now, Jenny. And I should have knocked.”

“Does it change how you think of me?”
I blurted. I didn’t even know I was going to ask him that until it flew out of
my mouth like some small winged thing. Part of me wanted to snatch it back in
and swallow it down. Part of me wanted an answer.

“Yes. It does. But not in a bad way,”
he said in a rush. “It just makes me realize that you’ve grown up. You’re a
woman now. And you’re beautiful, kid.” He kissed the tip of my nose and walked
out the door, tossing a “I’m gong to go take a run” over his shoulder.

I watched his broad back recede and
drank my coffee. The clock ticked off a half an hour before I hopped down from
the counter to go take a shower.

* * * *

Carl snaked a hand into my robe and I
jumped. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t even see you there!” My heart clogged my throat
and my body coiled tight when he yanked me in for a rough kiss. “You’re dirty,”
I said, but the words were soft and stifled by his kiss.

“That guy Erick hired me on the spot.
They were digging some holes today and I guess I looked like a real good hole
digger,” he said, his lips pressed over my pulse. Carl pushed his tan nicked up
hands up under my white robe and grabbed my ass. I let him.

“You do look like a real good hole
digger,” I laughed, finding an immense amount of humor in such a small, juvenile
joke.

“I’d like to dig this hole. Ya dig?”
he asked, pushing a finger along the wet ripple of my outer lips to find the
already pulsing nub of my clit.

I squirmed and he swallowed the small
noise I made by kissing me wetly again. “Don’t worry, Jen. My fingers are
clean,” he said. Carl pushed his knee between my legs and nudged me so I opened
my thighs for him. He slipped two fingers deep inside of me and my body bunched
up tight and eager around him. “Where’s Gil?”

“I don’t know,” I said a bit too sharply.
My mind quickly reversed to the warm weight of Gil’s hand on my thigh and when
Carl flexed his fingers in my pussy I whimpered a little. “I’m not my father’s
keeper,” I said with too much attitude for such a simple question.

“Sorrr-eeee,” Carl said. He bit my
shoulder kind of hard and my nipples peaked and tingled under the soft cotton
robe. “Someone is tense. Why so tense, girly?”

I shook my head, feeling perversely on
the verge of tears. Why would I cry over such a simple question. “I’m fine. Just
a bit claustrophobic, I guess. Small town suffocation and all that jazz.”

Carl pulled back and frowned. His
liquid green eyes shining in the late morning light. His eyes were gorgeous,
like some giant feline always watching for his next kill, his next chance to
pounce. “I don’t like it when you’re tense, Jen. Let’s fix that, okay?”

“Mmm-kay,” I managed when he sank to
his knees, parting my robe like long white curtains. I let him push his face
between my legs, his willing tongue lapping at my clit, my outer lips, pushing
rigidly into my wet slit. I rested my ass on the bookshelf that rimmed the
banister of my floor. My ass pushed to books from childhood, books from teen
years, big books of facts and very little fiction that belonged to my mother
Marian. I refused to call her mom right now, I realized. I spread my legs a
little more and mashed my bottom to all the memories that filled the shelves.

“That’s it. Give it to me. Give it to
me, girly. I can feel it,” Carl said and laughed, his lips pressed to my pussy
lips. The tingly vibration of his amusement wound up through my belly and made
me smile.

“I will, I will,” I promised. He
sucked my clit into his mouth and forced two big fingers deep into my cunt. He
dipped the tips in first, smearing my juices around my outside before plunging
back inside.

“If you give it to me, I’ll fuck you.
I’ll fuck you right here on the floor, with your fingers on the spines of all
those fancy books for smart little girls. I’ll fuck you while that big blue and
white teddy bear watches. I’ll fuck you until you weep,” Carl said, his lips
kissing my inner thigh so I squirmed a little from the touch of his mouth on
that sensitive skin.

“Yes, do. Do all of that,” I said,
pushing the image of Gil’s fingers on my skin out, out, out of my head. For
some reason I felt I needed to scrub that bit of memory from my mind.

“Give me that orgasm, then,” Carl said
and bit my clit just hard enough to make little white dots explode in my
vision. My fingers clutched at the sharp edge of the bookshelf my knees shaking
with my release. “Good girl,” Carl said and grabbed my arm. He tugged me down
and I dropped to my knees in the hallway.

Gil was out of the house. I was pretty
sure of it. God, I hoped so, and yet a small part of me wondered if it was
true. Did some part of me want Gil to know that Carl was taking me, fucking me,
having me under his roof. In his home. His little girl. I shook my head. Being
back in Pleasant Parks was fucking with my head. I helped Carl take my robe off
and he tossed it in the corner where it landed on a big steamer trunk that
Marian had found at an auction years before.

“Turn around, Jen. Show me that ass.”

I turned for him and he palmed my
bottom in his warm hands. He pushed the head of his cock to my pussy and thrust
so hard my forehead kissed the bookshelf and I grunted. “I like to fuck you
from behind, you know?” Carl said almost conversationally. His hand skittered
up and down my spine and then stroked my sides, my flank, my ass like he was
petting me.

“I know, Carl.”

“I like to see your ass shake and your
hair sliding over your back. I like the little ladder of your spine and your
shoulders. Your shoulders turn me on to no fucking end, Jen,” he confessed.

I rested my head to the shelf and
sighed, pleasure flooding my lower half. Filling my pussy, my womb, my belly. I
shivered in the warm air because I could feel his gaze on me and it made me
feel odd. Almost high. Definitely powerful. “I know,” I said, because I did.
He’d told me that before.

Carl gripped my hips in his freckled
hands and rocked against me. Lulling me into a peaceful state of euphoria. The
sounds of him fucking me filled my ears and when the thought of Gil’s hand on
my skin turned my face too warm and my stomach too tingly, I focused on the wet
noises of your union.

Carl’s fingers found me and he twirled
light circles around my clit until I bit my lip and swallowed my cries but
offered him a sweet orgasm for his efforts. “That’s my girl,” he said.

When he pulled free I grew still,
knowing this was not the end, sensing where he was going. I heard the lube and
the air in my lungs seemed to swell so that it was too big to hold. I blew out
a breath and said, “Carl--”

“Shh. You seem distracted and this
usually sharpens you up,” he said.

Every time I fought it tooth and nail.
Usually I lost the battle, but I won the war. I only won, though, because in
the end I got off on it. I got off on the protest and the taking, the spark of
pain and the taboo pleasure. The way it tipped Carl over the edge from easy going,
hardworking man to animalistic and aggressive and primal.