by Margot Scott
Chapter Five
Hours later, I still couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t because of the unfamiliar bed or the sounds of the city drifting up from the streets below.
It was the kiss.
Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the smoothness of Mason’s lips and the heat of his breath, the tickle of his short-cropped beard against the corners of my mouth.
The memory if it made me want to touch myself.
My feelings were beyond inappropriate, yet I couldn’t deny the truth. The kiss had happened, and here in the dark on this borrowed bed, there was no pretending I hadn’t liked it.
I tossed and turned, waiting for a wave of nausea to hit, for my skin to crawl, but all I felt was restlessness. Sleep was out of the question. I checked the time on my phone and found two missed calls from my mother. At just after twelve o’clock, it was too late to call back; I’d deal with her shit in the morning.
Exasperated, I climbed out of bed and pulled on a long T-shirt over my sports bra. I listened for signs that Mason might still be awake as I crept into the hall. Hearing nothing, I tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.
Lights from other apartment buildings glittered in the distance. The moon was out in full, painting the floors in shades of gray and silver. I poured myself a glass of water and went to stand by the window. It was too bright out to see the stars, but the streetlights were a more than adequate replacement.
Brake lights flashed as traffic lights winked from red to green to yellow. This far above the ground, I couldn’t help feeling like a fairytale princess locked in a tower, cut off from reality and time itself. Only no one had trapped me and I didn’t need saving. I could leave any time I wished.
I padded back upstairs. Soft noises emanating from down the hall stopped me on the way to my door. After a moment’s hesitation, I crept toward the source of the sound, all the way to Mason’s bedroom.
His door had been pushed closed, but hadn’t latched completely. I pressed my ear to the slab—too firmly. My heart stopped as the door inched open just enough for a curious eyeball to peer through.
Inside, I saw Mason seated with his back to the headboard, his face bathed in iridescent light. I heard another soft moan.
The flat-screen television wasn’t visible from this angle, but the grunts and cries confirmed what I suspected: he was watching porn.
Only, he wasn’t.
Porn might’ve been on the screen, but Mason’s eyes were closed.
My body tensed with undue fascination.
He wore only a pair of black boxer briefs, his long legs stretched out across the enormous bed. I hadn’t realized he’d been hiding a six pack under all those paint-stained tees.
Inching forward, I brought my eye closer to the cracked door. It felt wrong to spy on him like this, but I couldn’t stop myself. Part of me wanted to climb into his lap like old times, to trace the slight bump on his nose and stroke the high points of his cheeks. I had spent the past six years wondering about his life without me, what he did with his free time, where he slept.
I would run back to my room in a second, but first I needed a glimpse into his private life. His chest rose and fell. I thought he might be sleeping, until his hand slid into his lap. He cupped himself through his boxers, and I saw it, pushing at the dark fabric.
He was hard.
I gasped. Eyes closed tight, he rubbed himself slowly, like a man with all the time in the world. My inner muscles clenched along with my stomach, my blood running hot and cold, curiosity versus confusion.
Mason my father versus Mason the man.
I licked my lips, incapable of tearing my gaze away from his bulge. This was wrong. I was wrong. Still, I desperately needed to know what he was hiding in there.
My first, last and only relationship had existed entirely online with a German guy I met on an art forum. I had never touched a cock, or seen one in the flesh instead of on a laptop or phone screen, but I knew firsthand how watching someone masturbate could be sexy under the right circumstances. I’d just never imagined those circumstances would involve me spying on the man who used to be my father.
I wanted to race back to my room almost as much as I wanted to stay and see more.
Mason pulled the waistband of his boxers down over his cock. I had always looked forward to this part with my ex, what I thought of as the reveal. But Mason’s erection was an entirely different beast.
The damn thing was almost as thick as my wrist. It couldn’t possibly fit inside a person.
Sweat trickled down from my hairline as I worked to control my breathing. Mason wrapped his hand around his cock and began to stroke. I clamped my lips together to hold back a whimper, and before I knew what’d come over me, I was reaching down to massage my pussy through my underwear.
I wasn’t supposed to react this way toward the man who’d raised me. I wasn’t supposed to feel what I felt watching his fist move up and down over his cock.
The tip glistened in the light from the television. He stopped pumping only to brush his thumb over the place where the head met the shaft. Lips parted, he choked out a grunt, then sucked air through his teeth.
Desire is a universal language; I didn’t have to be fluent to speak it.
The look on Mason’s face was a question to which my body responded with a resounding yes. Slipping beneath the edge of my underwear, I aimed straight for my clit, which was pebble-hard and so sensitive that I nearly cried out when I touched it.
Setting the water glass down on the floor so I wouldn’t drop it, I rubbed myself with one finger, then two, then one again when the pressure became too much. My pussy was sopping, and there seemed to be no end to how wet I could become. It felt right. It felt wrong. It felt so good that it felt bad until it inevitably felt good again.
Mason’s head fell back against the headboard. He quickened his pace, gripping tightly and stroking all the way over the head and then down. Part of me wanted to pause and simply take it all in so I wouldn’t miss anything, but there was no prying my hand away when I was so close—
When we were so close.
“Daddy...” I sighed the word, not sure where it had come from or why it had floated to the top of my mind at this exact moment. I hadn’t called him Daddy since I was small enough to fit on his shoulders. It should’ve felt wrong, but there was no denying how much it turned me on to say it.
He tugged down on the base of his erection, as streaks of translucent white leapt onto his stomach. His jaw clenched. He pumped once, twice, three times, before finally letting go of his cock.
The clatter of his cellphone rattling on the bedside table jolted me back to my senses. I tore my hand from my underwear and released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Mason scowled and picked up the phone.
“What?” he rasped. He hit a button on the TV remote, muting the sound, then tossed the remote control to the foot of the bed.
I started backtracking into the hall on trembling legs.
“Calm down, Gretchen, I can’t understand you.”
I stopped short. Why was my mother calling him so late at night? Reluctantly, I crept back toward the door, still swollen, still aching, still struggling to understand how my body could betray me like this.
He stared blankly ahead, squinted, then smirked.
“Well, where’s she supposed to be?” he asked, his tone mocking. “You won’t let me see her for six years and now you’re calling because you’ve lost track of her?”
My breath stuttered on its way into my chest. The only response my mother had ever offered as to why he had stopped visiting was, your father has his reasons. Of course, I knew now that he wasn’t my father, but even so, she’d been happy to let him pretend for over a decade. What could have happened to make her forbid him from coming to see me?
There was a long stretch of silence, followed by a heavy sigh.
“Yes, she’s here,” he said, and a cold splash of irritation washed over me. I’d already told him my whereabouts were n
one of her business.
Mason sat quietly. Whatever my mother had to say, she was taking a hell of a long time to say it.
“You’re damn right, I invited her. Jett is old enough to make her own decisions... What’s that supposed to mean? Look, whatever agreement we had about my role in her life ended on her eighteenth birthday. I’ll assume you didn’t bother to pass along that card either... For fuck’s sake, you couldn’t make something up? She thinks I abandoned her... I don’t even know what to say to that.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“She was my daughter for twelve years,” he continued. “I never should’ve let you force me out, and I’m sure as hell not sending her home. She’s safe here...” His gaze hardened. “You know what? Go ahead. While you’re at it, you can tell her how you got ahold of those password-protected emails.”
He lobbed his phone at the foot of the bed. I stood like a statue, simmering with anger and confusion. My mother had lied to me; that was hardly a surprise, but the fact that she’d invaded my privacy made my blood boil. As for what Mason had said about her forcing him to leave, I hadn’t even begun to process. What could’ve happened that was so dangerous my mother had insisted he cut me out of his life?
I came to the city looking for answers, only to end up with twice as many questions.
Mason scrubbed at his face with the hand he hadn’t used to jerk off. He righted his boxers and rose from the bed. I realized he was probably on his way to the bathroom, which meant he’d open the door to find me standing there if I didn’t move fast.
I scurried back to my room, praying he wouldn’t hear my footsteps.
Back in bed with the covers pulled up to my chin, I shut my eyes and listened for the pounding of footsteps. When they didn’t come, I began to count. If Mason hadn’t stormed in by the count of one hundred, I could assume he hadn’t heard me.
At one hundred one, I rolled onto my back, my heart one rogue beat away from busting a hole through my chest.
Nothing I’d learned from the moment I arrived in the city made sense. I hugged myself and rocked from side to side as uncertainty, embarrassment, and arousal tumbled like gym shoes in the dryer that was my stomach.
I had kissed the man who was once my father and watched him jerk off. I’d invaded his privacy—like mother, like daughter. Ha. Worse, I had almost gotten off while watching him.
Even now, imagining him hard and flushed, was enough to make my clit throb. I could feel the wetness between my legs, soaking the crotch of my underwear.
Slowly, almost against my own will, I inched my fingers downward.
Eyes closed tight to hold back tears, I surrendered to the gush of pleasure, envisioning another set of fingers in place of my own. Strong fingers. Calloused fingers. Stained with paint and charcoal.
I came like a shot within seconds, fierce and penetrating, teeth gritted and toes curled.
Shifting onto my side, I rode the waves of my orgasm. Panting and twitching. Soothing and stilling.
Footsteps approached, quiet and measured. My pulse thundered in my ears. Why hadn’t I heard the doorknob click? I swore I’d closed it, but it’s possible I’d forgotten to pull it shut in my rush to get back into bed. I kept still as a corpse, as the footsteps grew closer, stopping beside my bed.
Mason must’ve heard me after all, or worse: maybe he’d heard me fingering myself. My inner muscles tightened involuntarily at the thought. Then again, if he had heard me, he would’ve known I wasn’t really sleeping. So, why was he just standing there? Perhaps he only wanted to check on me.
He lingered beside my bed for what felt like an eternity, then retreated. The door clicked shut.
Finally, I let myself breathe.
A car alarm blared somewhere in the city far below. Sirens wailed. I drifted, depleted and confounded, yet grateful to be above it all, in Mason’s castle in the clouds—a place seemingly removed from reality. From consequence. From right and wrong.
I didn’t see it until I opened my eyes the next morning.
On the nightstand, backlit by the rising sun: the glass of water from the night before.
The one I’d left outside his bedroom door.
Chapter Six
I was ten years old the first time I modeled for an artist who wasn’t my father. At the time, Mason was teaching drawing and studio art at the local community college. He’d warily agreed to let me sit in on his evening classes, as long as I promised not to get in the way.
Some nights, he’d place a table in the center of the classroom and arrange it with cut flowers and fruit. Other nights, he’d bring in a model for figure drawing.
My favorite model was a dark-skinned woman named Nadia. She had thick eyebrows and a wine-red mole on her neck and crepe-papery stretch marks around her navel. I could’ve sketched her for hours and not captured everything there was to see on the landscape of her skin.
One evening, the model who was supposed to show up canceled at the last minute. My father appeared to take the news in stride, and quickly began searching the classroom for items he could use in a still life.
I can’t explain it, but from the time I was very young, I was always deeply attuned to my father’s moods. I wet the bed for weeks before he moved out of my mother’s house, and peeled the skin around my fingernails bloody in the days before he left town for good. When he grew solemn, I cried. When his teeth clenched in anger, my stomach cramped.
That night in his classroom, I could feel the tension rolling off of him like storm clouds. I had to do something.
“Daddy,” I said, hooking his sleeve. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what, Jetty?” He waved me off his arm.
“I’ll sit for the class.”
He started to shake his head no and then stopped, his gaze assessing. I stood up straighter to show him I meant business. After a long and thoughtful pause, he told me to take off my shoes and socks and go take a seat at the center of the room.
I had been my father’s model for years, so I knew what was expected of me. What I didn’t expect was the weight of all those stares. They bore down on me like one of those lead aprons they make you wear when you get an x-ray. I imagined myself sinking through the floor.
Mason kept a close eye on me, making sure I got enough bathroom breaks and time to stretch between poses. Eventually, I settled into the job, lulled by the scraping of pencils and buffing of erasers. I began to have fun with it, choosing complex postures that involved standing on one foot, or twisting myself into a human pretzel. I was a lanky kid, long-limbed and flexible. The best part was getting to walk around and survey the sketches afterward.
My father ended class twenty minutes early; he could tell I was getting tired. On their way out, students approached us to thank him for the opportunity to study such a lovely subject. Most children couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes, they said. I was a rare gem.
“You have a beautiful daughter,” said a man with a talent for capturing hands and feet. “I hope we’ll be seeing more of her.” My father thanked the student with a proud smile.
“You did great tonight, Jetty,” he said, as we were locking up the classroom. “Thanks for volunteering.”
I danced and skipped all the way down to the parking garage.
Back home, I told my mother and her then-girlfriend how much fun I’d had posing for my father’s class. My mom’s face turned pale as she listened. Before I could finish telling her what the students had said about me, she rushed into the kitchen to call my father.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed into the phone. “You know how I feel about Jett being photographed in public... I don’t care that it’s just a drawing, I don’t want pictures of her floating around where anyone could see them.”
My stomach braided into knots. I thought I’d done a good thing by offering to model for my father’s class. His students had seemed happy. Had I done something wrong?
“Mason, if I find out you’ve brought her
to another one of your classes, no man or god will be able to protect you, and you will never see her again.”
By then, I knew better than to believe in ancient gods who drove magical chariots across the heavens, or that my parents were anything more than human. But it occurred to me that if my mother were a goddess, she would be a vengeful one.
Chapter Seven
I lay in bed staring at the glass of water until almost noon.
When my anxiety could no longer stand up to my hunger, I threw on a robe and padded down to the kitchen. There were muffins and jam waiting on the table, a fresh pot of coffee in the carafe, and a note about hardboiled eggs in the fridge. I munched a blueberry muffin and poured myself a mug of coffee. The brew was strong, just how I liked it, though there was no way Mason could’ve known.
After breakfast, I showered, hand-washed my bra and left it to dry in the bathroom. I’d packed light so I wouldn’t have to check my bag at the museum. A few pairs of underwear and pants, some simple shirts. Whatever I could fit in my laptop bag. I put on a fresh tank and yesterday’s jeans, which were clean enough, and made a mental note to ask Mason about the laundry situation—
As soon as I was able to look him in the face again.
My whole body knotted with embarrassment as memories from the previous night came rushing back. I had watched the man I once called Daddy jerk himself off, then eavesdropped on an illuminating phone call between him and my mother. To top it all off, I’d made myself come imagining his hand between my thighs.
It was beyond twisted. It was fucked up. But the worst part, without a doubt, was the possibly of him suspecting I’d stood captivated outside his bedroom door, watching him fuck his own fist. Whether or not he’d heard me touching myself afterward was still up for debate.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my thoughts racing as I tried to make sense of it all. Was I so desperate to rekindle Mason’s affection toward me that I’d twisted my innocent curiosity into something perverted? Technically, he wasn’t my real father, but he’d been my dad for twelve years—eighteen if you counted the time I’d spent in the dark. Then, there was the fact that Mason had kissed me—or I’d kissed him. Either way, lines had been blurred from the moment I set foot in his apartment. I wasn’t his daughter anymore, but I was hardly a stranger.